MULTIPLI-CITIES: REPRESENTATIONS OF IRAN IN MEMOIRS FROM THE IRANIAN DIASPORA

Abstract

This work is about cities – both within and outside of Iran – as represented in memoirs from the Iranian diaspora, and as they intersect with questions of diasporic identity. I read the representation of cities primarily as part of a system of signs participating in the discourse and cultural work of the Iranian diasporic memoir. I propose that the representation of cities can be read as a nationalist articulation of the diaspora’s identity, one I identify as tied to a sense of “Iranian exceptionalism”. Thus, I suggest a reconsideration of arguments made by scholars of the Iranian diaspora, which celebrates the characterisation of the Iranian diasporic identity as fluid and cosmopolitan, proposing how scholarship itself expresses sentiments of this exceptionalism as it attempts to justify the place and relevance of literature from the Iranian diaspora. This study thus attempts to capture the spirit of a young, emerging diasporic voice both in literature and scholarship as it seeks to make its mark on the world.