ABSTRACT

City of Knowledge is a descriptive construct I used to conceptualize the relationship between sociality and knowledge in Iran. The analysis of this relationship in the preceding chapters is predicated on three dislocations that aim at rethinking the way in which Iran is understood in contemporary historical and anthropological scholarship. By foregrounding the analysis of the interconnections between forms of knowledge, techniques of power and processes of subject formation, the book has sought to understand how Iranians relate to their culture, their history and their poetry. Through a genealogical and ethnographic approach, the chapters have described the changing facets of this relationship and have demonstrated how history, poetry and culture more generally are relevant forces in the making of modern Iran. Incorporating and expressing but also transcending religious and political affiliation, these forces contribute to establish a referential ground for recognition and subject formation that operates as a resilient dimension in the making of Iranian identities.