ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author offers to raise structural questions about the course of the Revolution and explores a set of repetitions in Iranian history that him help to unpack some of the dynamic instabilities of the Revolution into researchable issues. He deals with three vignettes suggestive of the power and of the uncrystallized direction of the generational experience of young Iranians who will provide the active political base in Iran over the next few decades. These are Ramadan 1984, Houston, August 1984, Istanbul and Muharram 1984, Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The local Shi'is, they said, were somewhat backward and ignorant about Islam, their women went about unveiled, and so on, but they were very receptive to what the Iranians had to say about the Revolution. Most applications of Brinton to the Iranian case have focused on the immediate causes of the Revolution and the first two stages. Hossein Bashiriyeh has attempted to shift attention from the transitional to the Thermidor phase.
