ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the elements of the Orientalist grand narrative that are considered as blocks while exploring Iran. Showing the degree to which the Orientalist grand narrative must have been present as potential explanation for what was going on in family, professional and other interpersonal encounters indicates how perceptions need to be shifted to arrive at the small-culture analysis of events. The chapter presents a tour of the Orientalist grand narrative. It is about many years after the events of the 1970s that have been able to recover evidence of it. For this reason, as with the understanding of the nature of the events in Iran, the chapter sets what is experienced in the upbringing of the 1950s and 60s against later understandings. This backwards and forwards referencing across diverse cultural scenarios and periods is part of the deCentred approach to interculturality through dissolved boundaries and therefore at the core of what we might call intercultural competence.
