Sometimes academic disciplines talk past each other & miss relevant conversations in adjacent fields.

This thread is for the Middle East & Iranian Studies folks who may have missed this new publication ( @AIS_1967 @MESA_1966): https://twitter.com/ElleniZeleke/status/1346446957934505986

I was fortunate to receive an invitation from @ellenizeleke to contribute an essay discussing @adomgetachew’s brilliant book, Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination.

https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/article-abstract/40/3/627/167483/On-Inexactitude-in-Decolonization

Among other points, the symposium raises methodological questions about focusing research on anticolonial statesmen, captured beautifully in @robbieshilliam’s contribution. My contribution tries to build on that insight via Iran.

I draw a parallel between the focus on statesmen in diplomatic history and an inclination for positivism. Statesmen give historians of decolonization tangible archival material to examine, but what do we miss along the way?

Adding to Getachew’s pathbreaking description of "anticolonial worldmaking" as inclusion & exclusion, I ask if it’s possible to understand "anticolonial worldmaking" as both a matter of exactitude & inexactitude, statesmen & popular masses, and if archives in Iran can help do so?

These questions arise from an historical reconstruction of Pahlavi Iran’s prominent but under-examined role in the declaration of the New International Economic Order, the last gasp of a previous era of decolonization (for all intents & purposes).

Here, I build on @rohamalvandi’s research, which corrects against crude characterizations of the shah as simply a US client (pushed for years by New Left partisans). The historical reality, Alvandi rightly claims, is more complicated.

Using Getachew’s call for exactitude, however, I part from Alvandi’s formulation of “Pahlavi Third Worldism.” @timothynunan’s characterization of the first decade of the IRI in a recent article for World History offers a useful point of contrast, and complements theorizing ACW.

For those interested in these topics: this essay is, to my knowledge, one of the few attempts to (a) reconstruct Pahlavi Iran’s diplomatic discourse in the 6th Special Session of the UNGA & (b) to connect Getachew’s framework to pre and post-rev Iran.

Anyways, thanks to @naghmehs, @arangkeshavarzian, & Hamed Yousefi for reading an early draft & caught errors, and @urorientalist for editing the writing for clarity & for suggesting the opening Borges fragment.

And many many thanks to @ellenizeleke and @adomgetachew for creating the space to think history & theory across the global south. I never thought the field of political theory would offer space for that when I started.