[00:01:08] Nahid: Hello. I’m very pleased for our conversation today with Professor Norma Claire Moruzzi on her new book, Tied Up in Tehran, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. Tied Up in Tehran: Women, Social Change, and the Politics of Daily Life in Post-Revolutionary Iran. Norma Claire Moruzzi received her PhD in political science from the Johns Hopkins University.

[00:01:34] She’s professor of political science and gender and women’s studies with affiliations in history and art history, director of the International Studies Program, and co-chair of the Middle East and Muslim Societies cluster at the University of Illinois, Chicago. I, I have a feeling I haven’t introduced you yet as the, as a professor of political science at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

[00:01:57] Um, she is an associate editor for the Journal of Iranian Studies and a past chair and member of the editorial committee of the journal Middle East Report. Before I give some more introductions, uh, Norma, Jan, I just want to say hello. Thank you so much for being on this show.

[00:02:13] Norma: Oh, hello, and it’s really a pleasure to be here. And I should say, just in terms of being responsible and also completely accurate- Mm-hmm … I’m a joint professor in political science and gender and women’s studies, and that’s actually pretty much who I am

[00:02:26] Nahid: Okay, wonderful. Yeah. Um, so Professor Morou’s research and teaching address the politics of social identity with particular emphasis on the intersection of gender, religion, and nationalisms. Now, this is relevant to your book. Uh, from 1998 to 2008, you regularly conducted field work in Iran while also participating in and conducting workshops for women’s groups and contributing to local journals.

[00:02:52] Your book, um, analyzes these transformations in Iranian women’s lives since the 1979 revolution. And, um, you know, I, I, I want to start sort of by, um… It’s, it’s a really delightful book. It’s, you know, it’s sort of one of these big questions about Iran, which is how do we examine and analyze and narrate politics in Iran?

[00:03:17] And of course, your argument is that fundamental changes in Iranian national political identity that have occurred since the 1979 revolution can actually best be observed through deconstructing ordinary practices of quotidian social life. We were on a panel together at MESA, where you had multiple discussants of your book,

[00:03:40] and, um, in that, I mentioned that, at first glance, Tied Up in Tehran has resonances to, um… You know, it has this sort of alarming notion of, ooh, stuck in Tehran and tied up in Tehran. And I, I wonder if… You may have not liked this reference, because, um, but I feel like you’re doing it in a completely, uh, opposite way to what that title denotes.

[00:04:04] The book, for example, Not Without My Daughter, right? Sort of stuck in, in Tehran. And, um, and, uh, but then you kind of turn it around and, throughout the book, delve deep into the social and political occurrences and phenomena spanning primarily the 1990s and 2000s, um, reaching both back and forth into time to unpack and give us an on-the-ground sort of, you know, in-person thick description of, of the events that you narrate.

[00:04:32] However, the title comes from an incident when you were actually tied up in, in Tehran. So I would love to start by just asking you to , tell us what that was about. Why did you get tied up in Tehran? Which is how the book starts.

[00:04:45] Norma: Uh, yeah. So, so I will, I will, uh, spare everyone from telling the complete story in all its details. I mean, it’s there. It’s the first substantive chapter after the introductory, uh, uh, chapters, which provide some history about me and, and, and Iran for those who need it, and, and a, and a kind of, uh, overview, which is actually subtitled How to Read This Book.

[00:05:07] So that’s- Mm-hmm … Tied Up in Tehran. And, and, and in a way, the, the, the book, the project really came together around this story, and then using that as a, as a, as a kind of starting point and a method. Because, I was visiting my Persian teacher, and she — We were getting ready to have A, um, just chatting, uh, and as Iranians chat in, in her living room.

[00:05:33] Of course, we had snacks, so we were eating tangerines and drinking tea. And just around the time in the evening, this was an evening visit, that I thought, “Gee, it’s around time I should start getting back,” um, there was a home invasion. I mean, three young guys, uh, wearing little masks. I mean, okay, they were wearing bandanas, and they were carrying fruit knives, which sounds funny, but, you know, they were carrying knives.

[00:05:56] And, and as I describe in the book, they were little knives. And so initially I wasn’t sure if this was a joke, uh, or is real, but apparently … And then I figured out it was real. And they tied us up. Uh, they, they, they stole things from, from, particularly from my host. Uh, went around the, the home and took the usual kinds of, of, you know, transportable, easily saleable objects- Mm-hmm

[00:06:21] uh, which just has its own implications. But, but for me, um, and I was, I was tied up, and the, at this, initially, we were, the three of us sitting there, another guest as well, who was older. Uh, and she was tied up differently because older people are respected. And that’s part of what already started indicating certain kinds of differences from what this experience would’ve been like certainly in the US and many other places.

[00:06:44] Mm-hmm. And, um, he, the, this young man pointed to my, I was wearing a ring, a gold ring with a carnelian stone, which is actually my wedding ring, and my husband has one that matches. We had them made in Iran when we got married. And he, he wanted it, right? He wanted that. And I, uh, sat there, and I pulled myself together, and I, and this famous phrase where I, I pulled myself up because my Farsi was not very good, but I knew how to do this.

[00:07:08] Mm-hmm. And I said, “Man aroos farangi hastam. In baroye aroos.” And which means, “I am the foreign bride. This is for bride.” Uh, but it’s a kind of archaic phrasing. I mean, that’s why you giggled, right? It’s not just- Mm-hmm. It’s kind of odd. Um, but it did what I kind of knew it would do, although quite dramatically, which is this young man, who was sort of a, sort of street thief, jumps back, um, throws his hand up the airs in, up in the air, starts profusely apologizing-

[00:07:39] puts all my cash back in my bag. Uh, like a, he’s so sorry because I’m the foreign, I’m not just a foreign guest, I’m this whole particular quality of the, this, this sort of foreign bride. And it’s a, it’s a hospitality claim, uh, and a responsibility claim for mutuality. I, I, which I explain in the book. So, so, um, they did take my leather jacket, ’cause it was hanging up with everyone else’s, and it was Iranian, and they couldn’t tell the difference.

[00:08:05] But otherwise- Mm-hmm … I was inviolable, even though I stayed tied up. And- Mm … it goes on for hours. And it, and the whole point is that it’s, it’s hard to tell throughout this, is this, how serious is this? I mean- Mm … yeah, they’ve got these weapons. They’re little weapons, but- Mm-hmm Sort of tied us up. Um, they are stealing things from my hosts.

[00:08:27] Uh, but there’s also this way in which, especially compared to here, the level of violence is nothing like what it would be in the US. And in the, and throughout this, uh, there’s also a whole incident about eating tangerines, in which, you know, you have to keep eating snacks- … even when you’re tied up, including the minder who’s been left with us, and he has to aid our eating of the snacks because, because again, hospitality carries through anything.

[00:08:51] And so this became a kind of metaphor. It, it turned out, I mean, I, at that was point, I’d been doing quite a bit of field work. You know, I was, I was really determined to write this, this, this serious book, and it is a serious book. I did write a serious book- Mm-hmm … even though it’s, it’s quite- Hopefully amusing in, in places, but about, about women and societal change and how you observe politics.

[00:09:10] But all anybody who knew about this story wanted to do was hear the story. And, and I will say that even this story, I mean, as I s- explain in the chapter, um, it got re- re- retold to me a few weeks later in a shop. It had become a kind of urban legend, apparently. So that tells you something else about, at that time, the level of violence.

[00:09:30] This was so unique, and- Mm-hmm … women, and one of them is a foreigner, and they got tied up. And- Mm-hmm … and my husband and I are like, “Uh,” “We know who this is.” But, but, uh, it, it, people want to hear this, and also because it, it, it then, it, it lent itself to exploring, like, who these young men were. They were probably actually construction workers from, day workers from- Mm

[00:09:52] from, from a site around the corner. What, what, what has happened to this neighborhood? Why they would assume that this house in a garden would have gold and riches, and asked for that. Mm. Uh, and, and how my host said that, you know, “The gold is all on the roofs of the mosques.” I mean, she just- Mm. … walked back, but she still had to turn over the, you know, the stereo and what else, and the camera and the TV.

[00:10:14] Um- Mm … how the police reacted, but, but also how this, you know, this kind of, um, this large ramshackle, uh, property and, and what that signifies both in terms of the class position, the sort of pre-revolutionary position, and its post-revolutionary economic decline for the family. It’s a c- it’s a family compound.

[00:10:33] Mm-hmm. It, how the, the municipality was interested in, in purchasing it because it, it, the garden was so extraordinary, but it’s where, of course, developers wanted to sell it. It was a family argument. We’d been talking about it that evening. Uh, all the other houses on the street, you could sort of see what had happened: abandoned, turned, knocked down and turned into a high rise, uh, turned into a wedding venue- Mm

[00:10:55] turned into some kind of weird showplace that you could view over the wall, and I saw photos of in a, in an architectural exhibit. Uh- Mm … clearly somebody with money close to the regime. Mm-hmm. So this, this kind of transitional change since the revolution was both quite visible and then even misunderstood even by locals, too.

[00:11:14] Like, how do you read the signs? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So that, that story le- That’s where the title comes from, as a, as a, as this question. Is this, is this a tragedy? Is this a farce? Mm-hmm. Like, how do we interpret this as a- Mm … as a question, and I ask that in that at the end of the chapter. Uh, and then a kind of method for looking at very ordinary experiences m- most not quite- Mm

[00:11:35] as dramatic as that one,

[00:11:36] Nahid: Hello.

[00:11:37] Norma: which is why it’s the opening. And then, and then kind of exploring them and using them to open up larger social questions and transitions and, um, and, and what’s going on.

[00:11:47] Nahid: Mm-hmm. It really is in some ways, you know, as you also suggest, uh, two books, uh, in, in one . You have these anecdotes and stories, and then delve into the subject matter f- uh, you know, with, uh, sort of, you know, uh, trying to understand these social processes aided by theoretical frameworks that you offer.

[00:12:07] And so you can modify your reading and the dep- you know, on the depth of the subject matter and, um, which is something that you, uh, do suggest in terms of, you know, the many layers that you, uh, integrate into the telling of these stories. And I think that’s also reflected in the chapter titles that you have in your 12 chapters.

[00:12:28] Um, you know, such as How Our Mothers Drive Us Crazy: Hospitality, Ritual, and the Burden of the Social. Or Food as a Social Relation: Sabzi and the Question of Household Skilled Labor. Um, Through the Looking Glass, one of my favorite chapters actually, Reflexive Cinema and Society in Post-Revolutionary Iran.

[00:12:48] Um, Shopping for Shoes: Consumer Identity, Commodity Fetishism, and Gender as a Branch are some of the titles of the chapters. , I think one of your, uh, most feminist interventions in the book , in terms of an interpretation of the Iranian social and political sphere, is the invocation of Luce, , Irigaray’s notion of alternative feminine identity as a metaphor useful for interpreting Iranian life.

[00:13:17] Um, you know, this being grounded in a reflection of female genitals. I’m not sure how many, a plural, connected complexity of internal and external, you know, surfaces, overlaps, repetitions, capacities. Not sure how many of our listeners are actually familiar with Irigaray’s, notion of alternative feminine identity.

[00:13:35] I wonder if you can just guide us a little bit why you found her work to be pertinent or helpful for, uh, , narrating, Iranian social and political processes.

[00:13:47] Norma: That, that’s, yeah, thank you for that. I know I really appreciate that because as you say, I, I really intended this book to be able to be read at multiple levels, including by people who are not academics but are interested readers who could read it at the level of the stories, and then the sort of straightforward analysis.

[00:14:04] And I very intentionally put the m- the vast majority, let’s put it that way- Mm-hmm … of the, of the sort of academic prose and the, and the references and stuff in the footnotes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So you could have a, a cleaner read, um, if you, if, if, if that’s what you wanted to do, or you could, you could really sort of intersect in there.

[00:14:22] The, the Cambridge was willing to publish them at the bottom of the page because they’re not just references- Mm-hmm … they’re of- often comments. Yes. Uh, sort of elaborate comments so that you could, you could intersect back and forth. And, – I think that it does work, and the reason I say that is because I, as I was in the process of working on the book, I, I occasionally taught a, a chapter draft or two- Yeah.

[00:14:44] Mm-hmm … um, to students, I mean, just a couple of times, but to see sort of how this is going. And, there w- there was later I, I t- I did teach, um, I think two drafts in a mixed course, a, a kind of upper level undergraduate graduate course. Mm-hmm. And, and, and what made me very happy, so this is a side lead into that answer, was when I asked the students what they thought and how they thought it was to read, the undergraduates all said it was really easy.

[00:15:10] Mm-hmm. And the graduates were horrified and said, “No, it was very difficult.” And of course, what that reflected was the undergraduates did the kind of straight read. Hmm. And the graduate students were working back and forth with the footnotes. Mm-hmm. And I thought, “This is exactly what I want.” . I want, I want people who are less interested in all that, uh, that, that sort of textual political theory stuff- Mm-hmm … uh, to be able to get something out of it. And they got it. I mean, they, you know- Mm-hmm … they had to write about it and stuff, and- Mm-hmm … uh, it was a class. It w- they had assignments. And then, but the graduate students could appreciate what, what kind of theoretical interventions were going on.

[00:15:43] Mm-hmm. And, and that, the Irigaray actually is true. It’s in the chapter. It’s not just in the notes. And, and that is one place- Mm-hmm … where it, it gets a little bit, uh, theoretical, let’s say there. I’m quite sure that most readers are not particularly familiar. She’s a- Mm-hmm … she’s a sub-genre of feminist theory, um, and I won’t go into exactly what, and, and a, and a kind of experimental prose.

[00:16:07] Mm-hmm. But what she did in her work, and, and sort of there’s the issue about the genitalia, but it was about theorizing an alternative model of identity, of a feminine model, which was not, which was not just like a, a behavioral model, but actually one, she, she went back to, I’d say, the, the sort of- I, I’m trying to not get too technical here, but- Mm-hmm

[00:16:30] but this, this sort of, um, uh, subconscious model, I mean, it’s a psychoanalytic model, but it’s- Mm-hmm … it’s not Freudian, about that identity is always sort of premised on this male model of the unified subject, let’s put it that way. Mm-hmm. A unified subject that is sort of autonomous and, uh, you know, has

[00:16:47] What you want is mastery of the self. . Irigaray develops this other version of a kind of plural subjectivity that, that is constantly reflexive. That’s, let’s- Mm … it’s not just mental, but it’s a kind of a, a different format. And, and I use that, so that comes up in a, in a chapter of all things on, not especially on women, but on, uh, collective art practices and these particular, , site-specific art installations that I was able to see and then try to research and- because they’ve been so powerful for my own experiences. And the whole experience of researching them, which became extremely initially frustrating and then became a story in itself, which was that because they were collective, they were done by a group of artists, there were several of them, with overlapping but not identical groups of people, because they were not particularly focused on, um, archiving that-

[00:17:40] Nahid: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:40] Norma: It’s not a sole author, right?

[00:17:43] Mm-hmm. It’s a, it is collective, and therefore, it gets blurred. Who, who did what? Um, when? Which one? You know, ’cause again, there were about three of these similar, uh, with, with overlapping people, but they were distinct distinct sites, distinct, um, installations. And they were all- Mm

[00:17:59] temporary as well. So that was- Mm … also part of the issue. And, and I use that as a metaphor because it, in fact, it was a very important kind of intervention in the, in the Tehran and Iranian art scene. It sort of opened up the notion of the, with the white cube and the single o- you know, the single artist and all this, and there were women involved as well, but, but it was men and women.

[00:18:20] Uh, to, to use it as a metaphor for the revolution, as . a plural effort, not, no, not just Khomeini, not just the clergy- Mm … not just the Islamic revolution, but a popular revolution. And these questions about who, who exactly i- did it, right? Well- Mm-hmm … a number of people. And how do you really sort that out?

[00:18:39] Well, you can, but at the same time, it’s open, and that, and that this was part of the… So it was important for me to find a theoretical angle to sort of to… Because that’s how I sort of framed then eventually this, this, this chapter about- Mm … about the art practice, but also about, it becomes then, it’s, it’s pretty much the last chapter.

[00:19:00] How do we think looking back about after reading through the various, various discussions in the book and the observations and where Iran is now? After the revolution, clearly mixed legacy, mixed experience, but at the same time, you’ve got this educated, empowered population even- Mm … and perhaps bec- despite the fact that, that they are so, uh, repressed and oppressed.

[00:19:24] But you got an educated, empowered population in a way that has been post-revolutionary, right? At the time of the revolution, the population was majority illiterate, and the vast majority of women were illiterate. Um, so it, you know, all of that has been, has been accomplished by the post-revolutionary government as part of this sort of collective project of, of a kind of social justice vision that wasn’t necessarily specifically Islamic, or what that meant to people was a kind of- Mm-hmm

[00:19:52] social justice in, in a lot of ways. And then it, of course, becomes something else, and that’s an argument about orthodoxy versus, versus a different kind of collective faith. Um, but how do we talk about this while recognizing that, that sort of ongoing potential? And there are other chapters that discuss this recurrent, um- Mm-hmm

[00:20:12] sort of- Efflorescence? I don’t know what else to say. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, sort of little, like, not explosions, that’s not the word. But, but- Mm-hmm … these street protests, these very liberatory street protests that then- Mm-hmm … are repressed, um, they’re put down, people seem to go away. Us somewhat older people all say, “Ah, the younger generation, they’re so quietist, they don’t care.

[00:20:30] They’re just interested in their lives.” And then there’s this spark and this claim, right? Popular claim. People go in the street- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm … demonstrating, often peacefully for the, for the big protests that I’m tracking. Um, and they get something done. They don’t necessarily get done what their intention is, but they move, they move the project of democratization, which is not necessarily the case, the same thing, I would say.

[00:20:55] … Democratization at the, at the societal level is fundamental, but it’s not necessarily the same thing as, as, as sort of taking the state, right? The state is still there. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But it makes a difference. So that’s a long argument, but maybe hopefully to help tell people, yes, this really is about talking about Iran.

[00:21:12] No, you don’t really have to know about Luce Irigaray or French feminists post Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. Or get in the weeds of that. You, you just, just sort of go with it and, and, and read about, like, the art practice and how that might be tied to sort of a sense of, of a collective effort to make- Mm-hmm

[00:21:32] a difference. Um, and, and that comes through, I hope, in a number of chapters without the, the, the hea- heavy theoretical question.

[00:21:41] Nahid: Yeah, I very much like this sort of structure of the book where, , you can choose which arguments you engage with a little more deeply, sort of theoretically, and which you kind of, you know, read and, and, uh, get the overall sort of, , narrative. Um, I’m just wondering, based on what you were just talking about in terms of Irigaray and also your overall argument in the book about the slow process of change, the, um, quotidian everyday acts that, uh, you observe, uh, throughout your book, , by way of being there in person and doing your field work.

[00:22:15] Because you just brought it up, you, uh, , you agree with Foucault on the incandescence and the collective will behind the waves that led to the 1979 revolution, and, uh, s- do see that as a radical break from what existed before. Um, but I’m wondering, do you then, you know, utilizing Irigaray, do you then argue that what we saw, for example, during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising, which of course this week is the, is the fourth anniversary of the Woman Life Uprising in Iran .

[00:22:49] Um, it was in September, mid-September, that, Mahsa Jina Amini died in, morality police detention and the uprising sparked in Iran. Um, but overall, do you not apply that same kind of logic of radical break to the Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising? Because you do argue , in the book that what we’ve seen in Iran and that culminated in the Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising really was, the culmination of repeated and multiple women’s movements throughout the post-revolutionary decades.

[00:23:21] And how do you sort of distinguish between the theory that you apply to the 1979 revolution and what you then apply to Woman, Life, Freedom,

[00:23:31] Norma: Yeah. No, I, and I want to say I, I really appreciate doing this, uh, interview this week

[00:23:37] Nahid: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:38] Norma: precisely because it’s, it’s the anniversary of, of the Women, Life, Freedom movement. And- Mm … and, and the book was published in October of 2025. So it’s the first- Mm-hmm … since the book is out that that’s the case. Mm-hmm.

[00:23:50] Mm-hmm. Which is just a nice marker and a nice- Yeah … moment of, of review of the book and of Iran. Mm-hmm. I think the best way I can answer that is that at some point when I was, when I was doing the field work in Iran, I became deeply skeptical of claims of a break,

[00:24:03] Nahid: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:04] Norma: which often came up in discussions of the family.

[00:24:06] You know, break with the family, and that’s it. And then, but if you really engaged, right, no, nothing like, nothing like whoever, you know. Mm-hmm. Like, like my parents or, or, or, or the, the parents, nothing like the grandparents. You know, there was a break, and that shows that everybody’s moving forward. But if, if you, if you got into more detail, it usually turned out that there were all sorts of ways in which there was no break at all, and there were repetitions-

[00:24:30] and this was also, um, especially in gender roles, right? So- … a break politically, but then, um, you know, an, an, an elder had- You know, been this political radical, but married a woman much younger with, with almost no, no education, right? And it’s some- Mm-hmm. I mean, that, but there were examples like this.

[00:24:47] But the, but this claim of a break. And, and at the same time, I observed individuals where they didn’t claim a break. In fact, they had worked very hard to keep, to, to transform their relationship with, with their families. And, and the family, in many places, and I think especially in Iran, can be argued is really the last source of, of, of imposed authority.

[00:25:08] I mean, not just- Uh-huh … the last, but the most fundamental. Mm-hmm. Uh, so yes, there’s the state, but, it’s, it’s, it’s in the family that that gets imposed for various reasons, you know, every, in, at the level of the every day.

[00:25:20] So, so, so instead of a break, I started looking for this, this, for transformation, right?

[00:25:25] Which takes time, and is, and happens slowly, right? Mm-hmm. Because it has to be, it has to be, it has to be a more organic process. And, and that’s what I try to, to sort of talk about in terms of, in some ways, the, the example of the, the collective art practice, and then what- Mm-hmm … how that paralleled the revolution.

[00:25:43] But I definitely thought of that in terms of, of the chapter on Woman, Life, Freedom, and tying that, as you say, with the previous, the women’s movements, um, efforts, but also the demo- the democracy efforts, right? Mm-hmm. The, the Where Is My Vote campaign, um- Mm … and how those came together in Women, Life, Freedom.

[00:26:02] So in certain ways, as, as I said at the very beginning, I’m, I’m a professor of, of political science and gender and women’s studies, and I guess that’s important because, um, feminist work and feminist research and gender and women studies- Mm-hmm … has emphasized for quite a while a method of, of attending to the detail and the every day, right?

[00:26:18] Uh, the personal is political, right? Mm-hmm. Power is, is intimate. Uh, and, and political science often looks at the state and big political questions of democracy. And, uh, and at the same time, doesn’t always remember that, that, uh, in political science in general, that especially if you’re looking at an authoritarian state, um, you can’t just believe what the, what the state says.

[00:26:39] It’s authoritarian- Mm-hmm … right? It’s, it’s, it’s got a- Mm … it’s not claiming to be accountable to its population. So you have to put these two methods together, right? Mm-hmm. You go, and so what I was trying to do was, was, was, was look carefully at what, what actually happens on the ground, and, and also think big questions at the same time.

[00:26:57] And, and with, with Women, Life, Freedom, that’s what I felt I saw. Uh, most of those movements that I discuss in the chapter, the, the big political, what I say, movements that moved society forward in this ongoing process of democratization and empowerment. The Where Is My Vote campaign, um, the, uh, the, the women’s consortium, which, which was part of that- That campaign before the election fraud issues, et cetera.

[00:27:25] Uh, more than that, I mean, the student movement earlier, the student, um, protests that were, that were quite a bit earlier, the Women, Life, Freedom. In every case, they were- they’re pointed to often as, as, as they lost, right? It failed. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, and that’s part of what I think it’s, it’s a mistake, and it’s a mistake to assume that the only success is the break.

[00:27:46] Because, because the break often just flips things, which isn’t great anyway. But, but, but then they just, the assumption is, “Well, you know, we didn’t do anything,” and, and this led to a certain amount of the, you know, somebody has to come in from outside to save us because- Mm-hmm … if you look at what each of those movements actually achieved, it was tremendous.

[00:28:06] They pushed back the arbitrary authority of the state. Mm-hmm. They, they really changed the accountability of the state. And by the state, I mean, for the most part, the non-elected part of the state, right? Mm-hmm. The security apparatus, the, the clerical, um, authoritarian apparatus, which often has been at odds with the elected aspect of the state.

[00:28:25] Sometimes has co-opted it, but, and right now it’s, they’re in a kind of weird, uh negotiation, I would say, with- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm … the possession. But, um, but this, this has changed things. And certainly with Woman, Life, Freedom, they- Mm-hmm … hijab is not forced. Hijab is no longer enforced. The state has recognized they cannot enforce this.

[00:28:46] Mm-hmm. And even after Woman, Life, Freedom, you know, there were certain voices in the government saying, “Yes, now, you know, we’re gonna do it even harsher,” and they couldn’t. There’s no- Mm-hmm. They c- they actually can’t. It’s not just that they won’t, they can’t. Mm-hmm. And that’s a change. W- th- many of us on, you know, ordinary Iranians, but also scholars, we assume that would be the last thing to change.

[00:29:07] You know- Mm-hmm … mandatory hijab was the symbol of the regime. They’re never gonna back off. People did that. Mm-hmm. A popular movement did that, and a peaceful popular movement, right? Mm-hmm. So no, they didn’t bring down the government, but they did what their main goal was. They t- and they, and, and what they, and they made transformation, and that’s how democracy actually happens, I think.

[00:29:29] Mm-hmm. Um, because otherwise you can, you can claim, uh, that you have a democratic state, and you can have elections. Uh, and, and y- I mean, we see this all over the world. At this point, it’s, it’s very rare that states don’t have elections, even if the outcome is 99% for the sitting authority figure- Mm-hmm … uh, which already tells you something.

[00:29:51] But, but because you’re, you’re supposed to have elections. That’s sort of legitimacy, unless, basically, unless you’re a Gulf monarchy. Mm-hmm. That’s how the world works now. Um, so- Mm-hmm … so if taking the state, that expression that, that is used in political science, that, that’s important. But it’s also, we’ve seen plenty of examples where, where really popular revolutions have been co-opted, undermined, uh, changed, and, and authoritarianism continues under a different guise or under different- Mm-hmm

[00:30:21] leaders. In Iran, that’s been changing over time, and the, and the, and the level of commitment, I think, that, that keeps moving that democratization process forward. So that’s why I like this notion of a transformation, an ongoing- Mm-hmm … transformation, uh- Mm-hmm … that is slow, and is over time, and is very frustrating to people- Mm-hmm

[00:30:40] there often- Mm-hmm … but is real. And, and, and, and in some ways that’s sometimes what, what the, the job of a researcher is to, to be able to mark those. To say- Mm-hmm … “Yes, look at this.” It’s, it’s like if you live with a kid, and, and- Mm-hmm … unless you’re marking their height on the wall, you don’t necessarily notice.

[00:30:57] It’s, it’s a little bit every day- Mm-hmm … how much they grow. Mm-hmm. But if, if, if the aunt and uncle come to visit, “Wow, you’ve grown so much,” they say. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. Because it’s visible. So, so that’s a little bit, you know, what our job as researchers, I think, often is to do, is to bring a little of that perspective.

[00:31:14] Nahid: Mm-hmm. Thank you for that, Norma. I mean, you’re right. You know, that’s, you know, each struggle in itself may seem to fail, sometimes crushed, sometimes dissipating, but a quiet revolution is not only made up of private personal choices, but also shaped by the effects of generations of activism within individualized lives and across societal expectations.

[00:31:36] Um, and you know, of course, the Iranian, um… I think Iranians overall, but especially in the diaspora, they’re extremely polarized. And if you bring up any notion of these gains having been made on a daily, sort of, gradual way, you bring in, you know, Asif Bijoy’s notion of, uh, quiet encroachment of the ordinary repeatedly in your text.

[00:31:59] Um, uh, these notions of any kind of achievement through the everyday or quotidian is, , really, , contested by those who are very critical of the Islamic Republic and argue that the only way toward any kind of progress is to get rid of the state altogether. And that’s why, you know, every time you bring up this notion of, well, you know, uh, hijab is no longer strictly enforced in the streets, and we see footage of that and photos of that, they will say, “Well, but they, you know, almost had a whole law, uh, a bill that they were discussing to impose a mandatory hijab again,” and so on.

[00:32:37] And so I wonder, you know, do you, do you deal with these, um, critiques from both sides, or do you just simply stay… As, as a scholar and as a researcher, how do you deal with these, uh, sort of very polarizing critiques that, uh, condemn any kind of understanding of social or political progress in post-revolutionary Iran, given the extent to which, , the Islamic Republic, , both commits crimes, but also is, demonized to to a greater extent perhaps in US and Western media in a way that we don’t see any nuances, where, , we are, um, criticized for actually even observing the state and/or observing society, observing, developments or processes in post-revolutionary Iran?

[00:33:26] I wonder if that’s something you struggle with and how you position yourself as a scholar , in your research.

[00:33:33] Norma: It’s, uh, I find it frustrating Um, I also find it to some degree counterproductive to engage with in the sense of if, if one is going to take such an ideological position o- on anything, that it’s either all bad or all good. Mm-hmm. There’s, there’s very little room for, for real, real in-depth research there, right?

[00:33:57] The conclusion is fixed. And in a sense it’s like the experiment is supposed to come- Mm-hmm … arrive at the outcome, the, the, the predisposed outcome. So right, we’re trained not to do that as, as responsible researchers and, and scholars. Uh, I would also say that, that there’s an aspect of this that kind of…

[00:34:18] And it’s understandable, as you say. I mean, this is the, the regime has done some terrible things, um, in the last years, but all the way through, right? It’s used violence on its own people, um, in, in widespread cases. It’s, uh, it’s been arbitrary and corrupt. Uh- Mm-hmm … yeah. Y- I mean- Mm-hmm … there are aspects of, of this that are indefensible, and I don’t defend them.

[00:34:41] This is very much- Mm … an analysis of society, and I made that, I tried to make that clear from the very beginning. Uh, this is not an analysis of the state. It’s one reason why there’s a little brief overview at the beginning, because- Mm. Mm-hmm … since it is written for a wide kind of audience, for people who really don’t know, and that includes readers who are not Iranian and are not Middle East specialists.

[00:35:04] I- I- Mm-hmm … there was this sense of like, “Huh? What? What’s going on? How does this work?” Mm-hmm. And then here, and then more knowledgeable readers were like, “You don’t need that, right? I, I know all this stuff.” So it’s in, it’s in one of those early how to read the book chapters. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right? You need… If you don’t know this stuff, I mean, here’s a little bit of an outline about how the state works and the two branches, the elected and the inel- unelected.

[00:35:25] But the, but the kind of, of, of all or nothing, I’d say almost a Manichaean approach to- Mm-hmm … to thinking about Iran, um, is a, it’s a kind of diaspora position often. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Of, of people who’ve had to leave for various reasons, , who left not, not just of their own, you know, like, “Oh, I, I’ve got bright horizons,” but, but- Mm-hmm

[00:35:47] felt they had to for, for good reasons. And also, the reason I say diaspora is that this is also a, a kind of, this has also been pushed, a narrative, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It’s been pushed very much by, by external money. And, and- Mm … the money’s been tracked. It’s coming from external national governments, including our own, the United States government, and others, a few others- Mm

[00:36:07] that have very key interests in, in destabilizing Iran. And this is not just about, like, overturning the state, but destabilizing Iran. Mm-hmm. So- Mm-hmm … so that’s one thing. And then some of that is also, of course, it’s internal in, in Iran, this, this, this kind of attitude and, and, and conversation. Precisely because the outside money and this message that, that nothing will, uh- is, is worth it, but to overthrow it- Mm-hmm

[00:36:31] get rid of the state, is being strongly funded and beamed directly in through satellite television, and it’s widespread. And so- Mm … you know, you’ve got outside money inside the country. And, and we’ve seen this not just in Iran, but everywhere, social media, et cetera, how messages including whatever they are get, get spread and transmitted without a lot of, uh, pushback necessarily- Mm-hmm

[00:36:50] especially if you don’t have a vibrant civil society that, and independent researchers and nonprofits and whatever that can kind of come in and sort of provide some sort of, um, at least vetting, right, or, or judgment about- Mm-hmm … accuracy. So you don’t have that in Iran. Mm-hmm. Uh, people are distrustful of the government’s claims if something isn’t true, even if maybe it’s the, the government is accurate about that, if something isn’t true.

[00:37:14] Mm-hmm. And that’s a long way around saying that I think the other side of this is, is a, is a very kind of funny, uh, national tendency that exists- Mm-hmm … right before the revolution, and that’s why I say transform rather than break- Mm … um, which is to sort of think of I- Iran as absolute unique, nothing like any of its neighbors.

[00:37:33] Mm-hmm. For various reasons, right, including, um, you know, state limits on travel both from inside Iran and from outside. Most Iranians have, have not necessarily traveled to the neighboring regions, right? Maybe, maybe if they’re well-to-do, they’ve gone on vacation in Turkey. Mm-hmm. Um, maybe if they’re religious, they’ve gone on pilgrimage in Iraq.

[00:37:52] But they haven’t really visited, right? Mm-hmm. They go elsewhere, if they can, to, for vacation, which is again- Mm … understandable. But just as before the revolution, the Shah said, you know, the, the claim was, “We’re gonna make Iran into the Switzerland of the Middle East.” Mm. Right? Switzerland. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This little landlocked mountain country that has its own natural defenses from being invaded, you know-

[00:38:15] throughout history, et cetera. Um, but that’s what we’re gonna aim for, as opposed to trying to come up with some, you know, like, let’s, let’s lead the way in terms of, uh, developing. Y- which in many way, in some ways they, they did. But Switzerland. Mm-hmm. And since then, you know, there is still this kind of, again, you know, we’re the best or we’re the worst attitude.

[00:38:34] Uh, and people don’t do a comparison with this- Mm-hmm … case around them. So if you, if… And this has been through for years, right? At levels of intense internal Iranian popular frustration with the government and the situation, and this desire which would come up. I mean, it came up during the Iraq War, right?

[00:38:53] Yeah. Americans need to come in and do this to us as well. And you would say, have you, you look at what’s going on there, right? Mm. People have lost electricity. They’ve got no state security, which mean there are militias running rampant. Um- Mm … you know, ISIS emerged in Iraq, right? Mm-hmm. That whole phenomenon, and yet there was absolutely no engagement with that.

[00:39:11] Never mind, you know, Afghanistan. Okay, well- Mm … we’re not Afghanistan. Okay, true enough. Mm. But you look at the kind of what happens when after a US invasion, to just the level of ordinary daily life, and I mean, like running water and electricity. Mm-hmm. Uh, and non-state violence, and there was just, just, there’s like a refusal to engage and think that could happen.

[00:39:35] Instead, it’s this notion that, um, the United States is gonna go in, there’s gonna be a quick, like, transition at the very top. Nothing else will change in terms of, you know, disruption, and, uh, then everything is gonna be like a Hollywood movie. Uh, with, with… So, so a certain amount of unrealistic thinking and magical thinking- Mm-hmm

[00:39:54] that still seems to expect like, Big Daddy is gonna save us. And Big Daddy might be, you know- Donald Trump. Um, it might be Khomeini. This is, I mean, if you want to track this phenomenon, you know- Mm-hmm … like it’s, it’s- Mm-hmm … from the Shah, it’s gonna be Khomeini. Um, then it’s gonna be, you know, somebody else.

[00:40:11] You know, it’s the, it’s the fantasy of a break that somebody else will do for me.

[00:40:16] Nahid: Mm-hmm

[00:40:16] Norma: And at least the revolution, people were trying to do something for themselves, right? Mm-hmm.

[00:40:21] Mm-hmm. Misguided, uh, blind to what the future might hold. I mean, just thinking all we need to do is get rid of the Shah. Like, what beyond that, the next step. But some of this claim now is, is similar, right? Mm-hmm. And now it’s the, the, the, the Shah in waiting, right? Mm-hmm. That, and that’s toned down a little bit, although it’s coming back.

[00:40:38] It’s being pushed again. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. Right? That’s all we need. He’s gonna come back. He’s got a plan. And it’s like, this sounds, this is so familiar, and it hasn’t worked any time. And, and this kind of almost, I’d say almost lazy thinking. And in certain ways, you know, as a, as a teacher, and as a political science teacher, you know, like- Mm-hmm

[00:40:57] there’s a way in which, that’s why I say I get frustrated. Like- Mm-hmm … if my students make these kinds of claims about other places, I’m not talking about Iran. Mm-hmm. In American politics, you know, you get, they get pushed. I- it’s my job to push them a little bit- Mm-hmm … we’re in class to think more complexly.

[00:41:12] Now, life is not a seminar, I realize. No. And, and those of us who are teachers may, may do a little, uh, too much of that. Um, but it is one of the reasons I just, I feel a little bit like, well, this is, this is dead-end thinking. Mm-hmm. And it’s dangerous. That’s the other problem. It’s dangerous, especially because there’s so much money that’s pushing it

[00:41:29] Nahid: Absolutely. Um, yeah, thank you. I, I, I, I have a feeling this discussion is useful for a lot of younger scholars who are, coming up and, and find themselves in this very polarized field and, uh, wielding attacks from all kinds of sides depending on their, the positions they take. It’s a particularly sort of difficult time to be in the Iranian diaspora.

[00:41:52] But I think I’m, I want to turn the subject towards something lighter. Another of my favorite chapters is the, is the one on jokes. Democratic Intimacies: Jokes, Sex, and Tarof. And you start the chapter by basically telling a joke, which, uh, as you write in the course of the chapter, you were really not sure you should be mentioning in this, you know, writing about in this book, and how would reader- readers even, , feel about you , writing this joke out.

[00:42:20] But it’s basically about three men sitting around and talking about sort of trying to one-up each other about how they’re able to keep their women satisfied. , The two are talking about all, you know, the flowers they buy, the things they, the gifts they buy, this and that.

[00:42:35] , And the third one basically just says, “I don’t do any of that, and basically I just impose myself on her, and that’s that.” And, , and I’m just wondering, can you talk a little bit about, , this chapter and the notion of transgression and what role that plays in, , opening up spaces and, and, uh,, democratization basically, uh, as the title of the chapter goes, Democratic Intimacies.

[00:42:59] Can you talk a little bit about , how you came to write this chapter?

[00:43:04] Norma: And that’s such a great question, uh, ’cause it is- … it’s, it’s, you know, it’s about, it’s, uh, it, the title says Jokes, Sex and Tarof. Mm-hmm. But actually it’s not about sex, it’s about bathroom sanitation. But that didn’t seem like it would work, and that was intentional- Oh … because precisely there was a p- a period a little bit, uh, a couple, a number of years ago, where there was suddenly a lot of books about how, well, Iranians are having sex.

[00:43:27] Wow. Right. And this was, like, shocking, and people were so excited, outside readers. Mm-hmm. Uh, and part of it was like, like, no kidding, you know? Mm. I mean, but because in fact, I mean, uh, you know, uh, yes, sex, whatever, but, but that’s not really what’s so different, right? Mm-hmm. It’s what, what people wanna focus on, but what’s really different and what’s hard to understand in another culture?

[00:43:50] And, and one of the hardest things in any cultural differences, any, even cultures that seem very, very similar, is, is humor, for instance. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Right? Those nuances, those, those, those taken for granted assumptions are, are some of the last that you catch to ca- to, to be really inside a culture. Um, but also it’s coming from outside, and I don’t have an Iranian background.

[00:44:14] Mm-hmm. Um, and I, and I hadn’t studied the Middle East before working on Iran, so I, I, I ca- I had to learn, um, both, you know, knowledge, uh, and scholarship, but also practices along the way. And one was, uh, wa- was, was toilets, right? Mm-hmm. The, the difference between an, a, a sort of Iranian or Asian toilet, a floor squat toilet, and a Western toilet.

[00:44:35] Mm. And I remember my first trip just facing this- … and just not knowing how, what, how to mana- manage this. Because I wa- also, this is early in the 1990s when hijab was- Mm-hmm … was much more seriously enfor- enforced. So even not a chador. You had a sort of long overcoat. Mm-hmm. And a, and a scarf, and long sleeves, and all these layers, and I’m like…

[00:44:56] And pants on, and like, just looking at that and, and, and saying like This isn’t going to work. And having to be taken, I mean, whether in visiting someone’s house or something, or, you know, like- Mm-hmm … find, find me a sit-down toilet. Um, so it was like, you know, it was embarrassing, but it was also real in terms of like, this is this is a real cultural challenge, and it’s gotta be mastered, and I’m not quite sure what to do here.

[00:45:20] And people don’t… You know, how do you do that? That’s something you teach little kids. Mm-hmm. You don’t necessarily- Mm-hmm … they’re not, they’re not directions exactly for this sort of thing. But it’s fundamental. It’s fundamental in culture. And- Mm … if you don’t know it, it’s a big problem.

[00:45:34] But, but so, so, so jokes, you know, so that was one thing. I mean, why sex is not, not something that’s so, so, so productive to really engage here, it seems to me, if we really wanna think about what’s different and what does it tell us about- Mm-hmm … what’s going on in Iran. Um, so the, the bathroom habits , were something, that’s never really talked about- Mm-hmm

[00:45:52] in the same way- Mm-hmm … in, in scholarship or et cetera, and yet is this, you know, fundamentally different from the West, and, and sort of, and how each side views each other. Mm-hmm. Each side views each other as fundamentally unclean. But each side views each other that way, and there are reasons for that, and what’s definitions of cleanliness and how…

[00:46:10] And it’s not just, um, religious purity. I’m talking about actual, like, sanitation. Mm-hmm. So, so there was that section, but, but also there were the jokes, and that was partly, too, because in the… You read other scholarship, and often there’s a little discussion, and it’s about the horror of these sexist jokes.

[00:46:26] Mm-hmm. And it’s such a sexist culture. Mm-hmm. And, and the researcher especially is, if it’s a woman, is just, you know, sh- it, uh, uh, takes it often, and I discuss a few of these instances, as being a personal affront, you know. Mm-hmm. And an effort to, to strong-arm them from the difference. If you’ve gotten more inside of Iranian culture and understand the, the jokes and the humor, you realize, oh, ah, this is terrible.

[00:46:46] This is exactly the moment where, where someone is trying to open things up. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. But the, the lack of comprehension of how the humor works means that the outsider is like, “They’re pushing me away.” Mm-hmm. Right? It’s a m- Mm-hmm … it’s a complete misreading. And that’s, that’s why it became interesting to me, right?

[00:47:05] Mm-hmm. That this is… Then, then here’s someone who’s, who’s trying to understand, trying, thinks that they’re getting into the culture, and just actually when, at the moment that they are They, they think they’re being pushed out when in fact people are trying to bring them in. Mm-hmm. Um, and so part of that too is that these sexual jokes, uh, unlike sexual jokes often in the West, which are often at women’s expense- Mm-hmm

[00:47:26] right? Uh, these are almost always at the expense of a clueless man. Mm-hmm. Um, I mean, that the third individual who imposes himself on his wife is the butt of the joke. . Um, because it’s so, his behavior is so completely to be ridiculed and rejected. And the, the punchline makes clear that it’s not just sexual behavior, it’s like he has no idea how-

[00:47:50] a civilized person should be conducting themselves, right? . A house-trained person, I mean, almost like , … a puppy, right? He’s not even basically house-trained. Um, so the j- the humor in that sense functions differently. And again, the sexual humor- … often is about the, the, the, the misguided intentions of the, the perpetrator, right?

[00:48:07] Mm-hmm. And I don’t mean misguided sympathetically, I mean that, that this is the butt of the humor. Mm-hmm. It’s not… And so the power relation in the jokes is not rolling downhill on the vulnerable. Mm-hmm. It’s precisely often targeted up. Mm-hmm. You know, it’s, it’s the way humor… And that, and that’s also a kind of indication of, of societies that are, have been more under repression and, and, and critique has to come in, in, in sort of veiled and guarded ways.

[00:48:32] Mm-hmm. And then of course the, the, the important part, I mean, the demo- democratization part is, is about taarof. And, many of your listeners will of course know what taarof is, um, and some won’t. It’s a kind of, um, of etiquette, of, of, of deference. Uh, but it’s often mutual. And, and interestingly-

[00:48:50] like outside of Iran, like in the diaspora, often younger people hate taarof ’cause they see- Mm-hmm … it as hierarchical imposed, but they only do taarof in the family, and that’s where it is most hierarchical. You have to give way for elders. You ha- you have to do that, and even though supposedly you’re being offered to go first, if you don’t give way to them, boy, are you in trouble, right?

[00:49:10] Mm-hmm. So it seems like hypocrisy. But in Iran- Mm-hmm … taarof is most com- it’s among equals. And suddenly there, it’s this, this, this sort of a game of- Mm-hmm … each individual saves face. And so the argument I’m making is that this, this endless process about arguing who goes through the door between, between equals means that whoever goes through the door first, who apparently, , has – priority, actually loses the game because the person , who wins the taarof exchange is the one who a- is able to get the other one through the door first.

[00:49:43] Mm-hmm. Um, but that’s only the case when it’s, when it’s mutual. And yet after the revolution- The mutuality of the society, I mean, the sort of almost caste difference in terms of class- Mm … uh, peasants and, and the rural and the urban, uh, the middle class and everybody else. You know, the middle class was tiny.

[00:50:02] That all changes, right? And lots of people- Mm … aren’t happy about it at the beginning, but it changes. And you see that in this mutual, this joke, and they’re really funny little videos on YouTube and stuff about tarof, you know, done by often second generation in the US, about this is how it works- Mm-hmm

[00:50:20] right? An endless thing about y- whatever. And- Who pays the restaurant bill. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Who pays the restaurant bill, how you win that is by paying the bill, right? Uh, and it can come to blows. I mean, I’ve had to- … to back myself from that ’cause I realized I don’t wanna be pushed over in the mud, right?

[00:50:36] So it’s- … kind of a joke, but you have to be close. That’s only among mutual friends. Mm-hmm. So it’s, it’s, it’s these things that, that don’t make a lot of sense from the outside, but- Mm … but actually are very unexpected in how significant they are if you unpack them. And they’re just- Mm … day to day. People do not think about this when they’re tarofing.

[00:50:52] Um- Mm-hmm … but, but, but I had to figure out what, what was going on, what I was supposed to do, and what it meant. I mean, ’cause I’m always asking that kind of question, what does this means? So- Mm-hmm … so I, put things together in slightly different ways

[00:51:06] Nahid: Yeah, it really– I know you’re a political scientist, but, um, this is in part, work of, um, anthropology and ethnography, and it just, , validates, um, how difficult it is to make sense of social processes and even political processes if you don’t have that kind of granule text- you know, textured understanding of any number of, uh, the things you write about in your book, including tarof and, um, yeah, positioning for hierarchy, social or otherwise, uh, through this social practice.

[00:51:42] Um, moving on to… I just want to cover a little bit more of the book before we run out of time , as I said earlier, another one of my favorite chapters, which I’ve actually already taught to students in a cinema class, is, um, on your reflexive cinema. Most prominently, you write about the films of Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and later Jafar Panahi.

[00:52:05] You know, where the fourth wall is regularly broken, and we as viewers are constantly called upon to meditate on the notion of representation and reality and, and that of authority writ large. Swept up in the, um, for example, the charismatic authority of a revolutionary leader’s project for Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, for example.

[00:52:25] Um, I wonder, you know, how have these Iranian filmmakers you write about eschewed easy interpretations of the aftermath of this world historical event in favor of more multi-sided nuanced layers of examining the notion of the gaze, of authority, of, you know, making sense of life? Can you tell us a little bit about this chapter?

[00:52:50] Norma: Yeah There was a whole period in, in probably the ’80s into the ’90s where the most, I would say the most exciting, um, messages coming out of Iran were, were through film, right? And this was, it’s referred to as the Iranian New Wave. . These directors that you mentioned, especially Kiarostami, but now also Panahi, got a lot of attention outside.

[00:53:11] . Uh, film festivals, things like that. Rightly so. I mean, right- rightly so. But it’s also because, you know, often they were, they were doing very interesting things in terms of, of cinema. Mm-hmm. And as you say, I mean, this whole notion of breaking the fourth wall. Which means the, that, that, that sort of naturalism of, of film that we’re used to, right?

[00:53:28] Mm-hmm. The convention that, that I’m sitting here, I’m invisible, and this is real life happening in front of me. Mm-hmm. I mean, even if it’s special effects, but which Iranians don’t tend to use as much. Uh, you know, these were very naturalistic, intimate films- Mm-hmm … for the most part. But, um, but they, this started happening very early in, in the period.

[00:53:44] And, and also I was very, very, very lucky that I live in Chicago, and Chicago has the oldest running Iranian film festival in the country. Wow. Mm-hmm. So I got to see films. And, um- Mm-hmm … a lot of films. They, it was, it, that, for years it was the entire month of October. Um, every weekend there were two new films, and they were also at that point able to bring people in from Iran.

[00:54:06] So directors, , actors, cinematographers, , meeting the audience. You know, it was, , it was phenomenal. Mm-hmm. It meant I saw a lot, uh, that- Mm-hmm … that otherwise didn’t, didn’t necessarily get distributed. I mean, uh, so that was also just an opportunity that, that I was- Mm-hmm … I was placed to be able to take advantage of.

[00:54:23] Yeah. But this was the, the place i- in that sense cinema, um, Iranian cinema, uh, there was a certain opening there for a kind of coded critique. Mm-hmm. And, and you could see that happening, and directors started making use of that. And it, and it was sort of pushed, I would say, and this is one of the things I talk about, precisely by the use of hijab.

[00:54:45] Mm-hmm. The imposition of hijab. Mm-hmm. So, this was when hijab was being severely imposed on society, but also in cinema. And it was even more firmly in cinema because there was a, a rule, no, no touching of, of physical touching of unrelated men and women in public. Mm-hmm. Um, at the time that was strongly enforced on the street and institutions, but that was also on screen.

[00:55:05] Like, there was one famous, uh, actor and actress couple who were married, and they were allowed to, like, hold hands or, you know- Mm-hmm … touch each other because, oh, they’re really married. Mm-hmm. But otherwise- Mm-hmm … in including in intimate household scenes, uh, spouses couldn’t touch, right? Mm-hmm. They had to keep a distance.

[00:55:26] Mm-hmm. And women had to wear a hijab, cover their hair, wear, like, essentially out- outside street clothing- Mm-hmm … all the time, including when they might be at home only with their kids on screen, like small children, when that’s not required, only with other women. So this, anybody, any Iranian seeing, seeing this image Of a woman.

[00:55:47] There’s a, there’s a famous early Milani film where, where the, the sort of heroine throws herself into bed. I mean, she’s, she’s talking with, I think, her sister, and so another young woman in the room. She throws herself down. Mm-hmm. She’s fully dressed, but that’s not- Mm-hmm … it’s, it’s not like she’s throwing herself down on the covers frustrated.

[00:56:03] She’s going to bed. But it’s just like, and, and this, this kind of like, like just you … So even if you’re really following the story of the film, you’re just, you’re just, as a viewer, just like, “Ah!” You know? Yeah. It’s a disruption. Mm-hmm. It’s an interruption in the cognitive processing. So what directors started doing was, was playing with this, right?

[00:56:21] . And everybody knows it, because you know that they can’t take off the scarf and the, the overcoat. But then the, you know, anybody, normal person would now that they’re inside. So how does this get managed? And there, and there’s some brilliant quick things. I mean, the woman director- Mm-hmm … um, Banietemad does, does some great things where, , intimate family scenes or a, a woman coming home from outside, she’s coming home, she’s putting down packages, she’s talking to her teenage son.

[00:56:46] She’s, you know, she’s sort of – hanging her bag. Then she starts, she, her hand goes to her scarf to start pulling it off, and she goes around the corner, right? . But so, but everybody who’s watching sort of holds their breath because how far will it go, right? Mm-hmm. We know what’s going on.

[00:57:03] It’s a, it’s, it’s not invisible, because we know that the director can’t, where the red line is, but how far will they push it? . So this became, I mean, in that sense, already the fourth wall was cracked, right? Mm-hmm. We’re all, we’re all engaged in, in watching the cinematography, not just the story, because we have to, because if, if the director doesn’t do something conscious this way, then it’s really gonna be an interruption.

[00:57:28] And this- Mm-hmm … starting with the issue of the, of the hijab, it, it really pushed this kind of bringing the audience in, and this scorn of sort of almost coded conversations about, between the audience, the viewing audience, and what was going on onscreen of what is this really about, right? Is this, is this really just a family story, or is- Mm

[00:57:47] this something about, about where we are in terms of family relations, gender relations- Mm-hmm … um, pressures on women, uh, to, to conform to certain kind of norms, whatever. And this is male directors as well as women. Uh, as well as large, larger questions. I mean- Mm-hmm … Kiarostami often was looking at these sort of existential life questions.

[00:58:06] Um- Mm … Makhmalbaf does some really remarkable things with his own political history and the ref- Mm-hmm … reflexivity of that and sort of retelling things. So there’s a, a little bit like- Mm … The Battle of Algiers film in which, in which- Mm-hmm … which actual scenes are recreated, sometimes with people who were actually involved, uh, but they’re recreations.

[00:58:26] Uh, he does- Mm … something of, of like this with, um-

[00:58:29] Nahid: Golo Goldoon or

[00:58:30] Norma: It was, yeah … yeah, exactly. With, with The GolA Goloon.

[00:58:32] Nahid: It’s called something else in

[00:58:33] Norma: Exactly, … uh, Moment of Innocence.

[00:58:35] Nahid: Moment of innocence, yeah

[00:58:36] Norma: So this, this, where, where there’s a, there’s a kind of critique of, of political self- Mm-hmm … and political self-transformation, and like, oh, what I, what, you know, what I- Mm-hmm

[00:58:45] who I was, a young idiot back then, and then where I am now, and how I see all that, and who else was part of that- Mm-hmm … uh, that appears in cinema that it, it, there wasn’t any room anywhere else to be working that through. And because cinema is a sort of public, you know, forum, um, it gave, it gave the entire audience, the national audience, an opportunity to work through it, and these films were- Mm-hmm

[00:59:08] phenomenally popular, right? Mm-hmm. People did see them. They were taking them on the basis that the directors were offering them. Uh- Mm-hmm … so it was a, it, it was, it was fascinating. You, you got a vision- Mm … kind of, of, of an enunciation of what was going on in Iran, and a very self-conscious one. Not all films, obviously, but

[00:59:26] Any of them.

[00:59:27] Why It’s Called a Wave. Uh- Mm-hmm … that was not happening anywhere else at the time

[00:59:32] Nahid: True, and there, there seems to be a real sort of revival of really great Iranian cinema these past few years with, uh, you know, films both by Panahi, um, but also some younger filmmakers, um, that are now making the film festival circuit. So now is actually a great time to plug into some of these film festivals and watch some really good Iranian films, given that, um, we are in a state of flux with everything that’s been happening over the last, you know, four or five years, ,, and I think some of that is reflected in the, in the cinema beautifully. We’re almost out of time. I just wanna say that, you know, you also have an, uh, interesting discussion of Shariati’s Fatimah’s Fatimah, because- I was actually thinking of your writing in that chapter again, and you write about that in, in your chapter on, on Woman, Life, Freedom when…

[01:00:20] when the discussions about Marjane Satrapi’s work were happening because, you know, there were people who, uh, in her, her very sad and premature passing,

[01:00:32] there were, of course, many who were celebrating her incredible work, the graphic novels, Persepolis, which shot her into stardom most school kids even in the US, many of them at least engage with Persepolis and even in, in university.

[01:00:45] So it’s probably one of the most read pieces of literature, , about post-revolutionary Iran. Of course, her story starts, , a little bit before that, but leading up to the revolution and onward. And, you know, uh, in the wake of her death, there were so many who celebrated her, but there were also so many who, uh, you know, criticized her, uh, arguing that her work in some ways was Orientalist in, in the way that it depicted the, you know, Islamists in post-revolutionary Iran and onward.

[01:01:13] And, , I found myself thinking back to this discussion, uh, that you have of Shariati’s work, which is that, , his, his insistence on Fatima , as a role model is confusing and perplexing, in part because he only highlights her, , more domestic roles within the prophet’s household.

[01:01:33] But at the same time, it seems that, , his insistence is… and if this is, if I, if I understand it correctly, the way that you interpret it is that, you know, it’s simply an invitation to Iranian women to be themselves. In other words, to be, unencumbered by these debates and these, uh, inscriptions by others, whether it’s, , Westernizing inscriptions or otherwise Orientalizing or whatso- you know, Marjane Satrapi, in some ways, she was just herself and she was telling her reality as it was.

[01:02:05] And, , personally, I also refuse to see her as somebody who was Orientalizing Iranians because I think at the end of the day, she was claiming her right to tell her story the way that she had witnessed and experienced it from both the viewpoint of the child, but then going through adolescence and onward.

[01:02:25] And I wonder if that resonates with you at all in your, discussion of Shariati.

[01:02:32] Norma: Very much actually, and, and I’ll, I’ll try to be quick. But, um, yeah, I, I, I totally agree with you about Satrapi, and I will say in a, in a certain way her work inspired me. I can’t draw. And, and, um, you know, uh, uh, she’s a, she’s a bestseller in all sorts of ways. But, but the, the sort of the, the accuracy and the honesty of what she does, and its approachability- Mm-hmm

[01:02:52] its accessibility. You’re right. Mm-hmm. It gets taught at schools. Mm-hmm. That I used to… I’ve taught it in classes and said, you know, the, the, sort of shame on us scholars that, that this is still, in my opinion, one of the most insightful- Mm. Mm … honest representations of this period- Mm. Mm … of experience- Mm-hmm

[01:03:10] by a woman. And all that is specific, and she never makes a larger claim. It’s like- Mm-hmm … and I think exactly that, this is what she experienced. She’s clear about her class background, her family background. Mm-hmm. She makes fun of herself, uh, quite often enough. I mean, it’s a- Mm-hmm … she’s got that. But it’s also like this is what it was like at that time, and, and that…

[01:03:29] She doesn’t say it’s e- endless. I mean, that was, that’s one of the issues- Mm-hmm … with Eating Lolita in Tehran. It’s- Mm-hmm … I think it’s probably accurate for that moment of that teaching experience, but it’s sort of been presented, including by the author, as- Uh-huh … as e- endless. This i- this is- Mm-hmm … the situation, and that, you know, She knows that, that it’s not, but anyway. Um, so, so Satrapi’s work is really important, and I think it’s very worthwhile, and it … but it is exactly what you said, and actually never thought of it that way. It’s a kind of … But that model. Mm-hmm. It’s what is your own story, right? Mm-hmm. It’s wh- those c- in- admitting the contradictions- Mm-hmm

[01:04:02] the difficulties, the struggles, the, the, the mistakes, but your own story, her own story. Mm-hmm. And, you know, the part of the reason that I in- interpreted, and I do interpret Shariati the way I did, is that I also was able to interview some of his students, his women students. Mm-hmm. And so i- and he made room for women literally in his speeches.

[01:04:21] Mm-hmm. And in his home, and in a very kind of clean way. You know, it’s not like he was targeting them. I mean, you know- Mm-hmm … you’ll wonder about that. But no, really, they were very emphatic about this. He- Mm … he invited them in in a time when this was not necessarily the case, right? Mm-hmm. This is ’60s and ’70s.

[01:04:37] Yep. This is just the incipient beginning of a feminist movement in the West. I mean- Mm-hmm … where, where it’s just habitual that, that women are sort of in the back making the coffee, so to speak. Mm-hmm. So, so and their, their narratives of that experience of having him as a mentor, and listening to him, and arguing with him, right, which he was open to.

[01:04:54] . Uh, and then what they did after. You know, this becomes a very important sort of subset of a generation that not just the ones who are revolutionary in the street, but actually make a difference in terms of societal infrastructure, setting up programs. I mean, often privately, not necessarily through the state at all because-

[01:05:10] you know, he dies before the revolution, and his, his sort of faction, this sort of left Islamist faction, is really pushed out and persecuted, et cetera, after sort of clerical consolidation. . But it seemed to me … And that his version of Fatima is very different from how the clerical state held up Fatima.

[01:05:28] Mm-hmm. Which really was as a purely domestic model, go back in the house. Mm-hmm. That’s what they meant. But Shariati seems to mean she’s out there doing her thing. Mm-hmm. And he really seems to mean that. And then pushed on the what does that mean, he doesn’t answer. And h- I know his, his women students were frustrated by this.

[01:05:50] Mm-hmm. But as a teacher, in a sense, at some point I realized, wow, as a man, he’s not telling them what to do. Mm-hmm. He’s not saying, “Go out and do this.” He’s saying, “Be yourself.” Mm-hmm. “But be active.” And the, and the, and the, and the symbols he holds up, including Western symbols that he specifically doesn’t say, it’s not just an anti-West diatribe.

[01:06:12] It’s an anti-Shah’s version of the West, which he identifies as Bond girls- Mm-hmm … and their equivalent. Uh, that these are not the models that why aren’t we seeing. And he basically references Angela Davis and other active women in the West accomplishing things. Mm-hmm. As how … You know, find a way to do that.

[01:06:32] Fatima finds a way to be herself, to be there. Mm-hmm. To be what she needs to do and be who she needs to be. That’s who you should … Not that she’s- Mm … daddy’s daughter and husband’s wife, and if he say, says she’s not that, she is herself. So you have to figure that out, right? Mm-hmm. But this is both individual and generational.

[01:06:53] And, and for that, and, and that even the frustration with that message … but they did it. . So you see the outcome in a sense almost, don’t listen to what I say, what I do, you know? The, okay, the message, but the message, it, it, it accomplished, I think, what he was trying to get at.

[01:07:11] Mm. And that that’s led to where we are now. I mean, you see that- Mm … uh, growing over time in, in a population of women, half the country, who are literate, in the street, right? In public life, active in the home, right? Do not let themselves be shut up. Mm-hmm. Mm. Uh, know what their rights are, claim them up to the inch that it’s allowed- Mm

[01:07:36] and, and an inch beyond, right? Mm-hmm. Consistently over time, which means that the, the barrier keeps moving forward. Um- Mm … they’re still suppressed. They’re still second-class citizens in Iran. Mm-hmm. But who they understand themselves to be is, is that as an imposition, not as a, as an internalization. Let’s put it that way.

[01:07:53] Nahid: Yeah, you’ve put that really so beautifully. Um, Norma Jean, thank you so much. Uh, you know, usually what I do is ask our authors to talk a little bit about their own trajectory and how they came to the subject. We sort of jumped right into the book, , which we, you know, was wonderful. But I wonder if you can just give us sort of a minute or two of how you’ve come to this subject.

[01:08:14] This is something that our listeners are oftentimes interested in also understanding. You know, what brought you to studying Iran, , to basically writing your book?

[01:08:25] Norma: , So it’s, it’s very gratifying that, that, that it’s sort of in a sense claimed by, for all sorts of different disciplines. I mean- Mm-hmm … you know, gender and women’s studies. It’s, it’s, I’m a political theorist, it’s political science. Anthropology, which is clearly some of the method. But Cambridge put on the back, you know, there’s usually a little thing at the top of the back page about which discipline- Mm-hmm

[01:08:42] and they put sociology. I don’t know who decided that. Oh. But anyway, okay. You know, sort of, all right, it’s very interdisciplinary. I mean, it’s multi-method. Mm-hmm. And that was of necessity because, because I, I, I was trained as a political theorist and a feminist theorist to read texts and then films. Films were intermediate texts.

[01:08:58] Mm-hmm. Um, you know, you can, you can view them, and then you can often see them again, like a text- Mm-hmm … and not like real life, which is happening all the time- Mm-hmm … and, and changing every moment. Uh, but, but I didn’t have background training. Mm-hmm. And I, and initially I went to Iran because my husband’s Iranian, born in Iran.

[01:09:15] His parents were there. Um, he did his field work there, and he wanted me to see the place, so it was a family visit. Mm-hmm. I knew zero, less than zero. I mean, I knew what a, a, somebody who reads the newspaper and pays attention knows, but I didn’t know any details, and that was fine. I just, that’s also why I paid attention to things like tarof and whatnot.

[01:09:34] I had to

[01:09:34] Nahid: Mm-hmm. Learn from scratch

[01:09:37] Norma: Right. Not just by family and by friends, but we traveled. We traveled to the south, to Khuzestan. Mm-hmm. A lot of people I was meeting in Tehran had never been. Uh, there was- Mm-hmm … front lines of the war, but he’d, he’d worked there, and so I’d, I’d seen places, but I also was just like, okay, and I was welcomed.

[01:09:53] I mean, I was just welcomed everywhere.

[01:09:56] Nahid: That’s got it

[01:09:56] Norma: Unusual and, you know, there’s some funny stories that didn’t make it to the book about, about that, but always- Mm … this incredible, again, hospitality that was just widespread. Mm-hmm. That was, that, that I benefited from. I mean, I, I really- Mm-hmm … and in some ways, because I was such a foreigner, I benefited.

[01:10:10] Because- Mm … the fact that I was so clueless, but I seemed well-intentioned and then made these obvious mistakes along the way, but was well-intentioned, like, the, the, the kind of level of tolerance was, was remarkable, let’s say. … But I also then was, ma- was making these visits in the, in the 1990s, and that was the period of the, the reform movement and the beginning of opening up and democratization.

[01:10:30] Mm. And because I study democracy and the political theorist, Hannah Arendt, and these notions of, like, sort of popular democracy, not necessarily the state, um, so I had never focused very much on the state, but more on-

[01:10:44] Nahid: You’re a scholar of Hannah Arendt, and I’m sorry- Right … Hannah Arendt has not come up in this conversation.

[01:10:48] Norma: Right. Well, that’s a,

[01:10:49] Nahid: And you write about her in the book

[01:10:50] Norma: necessarily you don’t have to know a lot about Hannah Arendt to read the book or whatever. But, but she’s focused on how power works between people, right? And, and power is almost a kind of empowerment. It’s something collective. So, so I studied all this in the text, and then I’m there in Iran, and at some point I realize this is happening right in front of me.

[01:11:07] Uh-huh. So, like, Arendtian transformations, they’re happening right in front of me, and I need to be able to better understand this. Mm-hmm. And that means I have to start reading, I have to start studying, I have to start catching up to a level that, you know, just was nobody else that I was encountering had to because everybody else either, even if they- Mm

[01:11:23] weren’t scholars, they- … you know, were Iranian. . Uh, or they were scholars. And, you know, the level of ignorance was, I had was truly astounding. – I mean, in that sense, right? But that meant that I had both the blessings and the burden- burdens of ignorance. And- … the burden was I didn’t know anything.

[01:11:39] I was, like, scrambling for years, like, reading all over the place. I mean- … you know, religious history, uh, social histories, women’s, you know, anthropology- … studies. I mean, just, you know, because I didn’t know. . Um, but at the same time, it meant that I didn’t come with preconceptions.

[01:11:55] . And, and, and for a long time I was just very aware of that, that challenge. But, uh, at some point people also started saying to me, “That’s the strength that you bring.” Yes. . “You bring fresh eyes.” . So I read things, right? Like read Shariati. At some point I realized, okay, this is an important point, and people were saying, um, you have to read him and some of these other Islamist reformers- Mm-hmm

[01:12:16] who write about women. They’re sort of similar. And I was like, I read them, but with no context. And I was like, “No, they’re not.” . One is using a kind of, oh, talking about women to do a very conventional

[01:12:27] Nahid: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[01:12:27] Norma: modernizing version of patriarchy. And then here’s this guy, like Shariati, what’s going on with this, you know?

[01:12:34] . So I, I read freshly, and then I, I also had to really, you know, do a lot of extra work to, to pr- to learn the context. Um- … you know, what w- what school, you know, he was working in. I mean, what the significance was at the time, who his students were, why that mattered, all that sort of thing. And this is a long project.

[01:12:52] This book took a long time. I mean, it kept me interested the whole time, but- Mm-hmm … but even after the fieldwork, I mean, just, you know, putting it together, um, filling in all this contextual understanding was, was- Mm-hmm … a major project. So this was not a fast, you know- No … oh, got it.

[01:13:07] But, but it, meant that, that I, , in that Arendtian perspective, I mean, for quite a while I thought, ha, you know, I’ve written my Arendt book, you know, and, and, and this is all new. And then it- … started becoming very clear that she was deeply in there in terms of structuring how I was thinking, how I was thinking about power-

[01:13:22] how I was noting these transformations, um, you know, about how I approached the whole, the whole larger question of, of- … of democratization. And, and so- Mm-hmm … she feeds through that. And, and then, you know, it’s, it’s a combination of, of access, family access- Mm-hmm … and curiosity. Part of that intellectual curiosity, but part of it just curiosity, right?

[01:13:44] Mm-hmm. What’s that about?

[01:13:46] Nahid: Mm-hmm. So important

[01:13:47] Norma: And yeah. And then it was so exciting because every time I went, it, it had changed. … Through much of that period for the better, right? Mm-hmm. Um, hijab being less enforced every time. Again, like the kid who grows up. You know, you d- you could see it. Mm-hmm.

[01:14:01] And then small changes. Mm. And small changes told you bigger things. So that’s the chapter- Mm … on sabzi, right? What does it mean- Yes … if suddenly now prepared herbs are available?

[01:14:10] And a certain kind of preparation, and what does that tell you about domestic expectations and, and- Mm … time and women’s workforce participation?

[01:14:17] I mean, thinking through those things. And yeah, those are the, the sort of how curiosity and scholarship and how, you know, I hope that I’ve been able to put them together in a way that isn’t just laden, but also is- Mm … is, is, is accessible and intriguing, but also maybe tells us things that are also not, not just about, uh, the, the, the small details, but are, are bigger questions as well.

[01:14:42] Nahid: 100%. You have done that, and it’s really, truly a beautiful, deep, um, textured, capacious book. And, um, I’ve enjoyed it so much. And thank you so much for, you know, coming on this podcast to talk about your book. I think this is going to be a really helpful, discussion , for everybody who’s listening in.

[01:15:03] Especially at this, uh, you know, sort of, uh, point in time when so many of the threads that you , discuss in your book seem to be, coming together, uh, in this moment of uncertainty and flux and development. So thank you so much, Norma John, uh, for your time. It’s been such a pleasure.

[01:15:22] Norma: I, I just have to say, I mean, um, thank you, Nahid John, a- and, uh, your questions and your interest and, and, and your energy. I mean, it, it, it’s just been delightful to give me a chance to speak about this work.

[01:15:33] Nahid: Thank you so much, Norma Claire Moruzzi is professor of, gender and women’s studies, international studies, and political science at the University of Illinois, Chicago. . See you all , next time. Take care