On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution (PDF)

On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution: Power and Resistance Today is the first comparative analysis of two central political events that have altered our world forever: the Arab uprisings which started in Tunisia, and the Iranian revolution in 1979. Adib-Moghaddam demonstrates how contemporary forms of protest are changing our understanding about the way power and resistance function. In a theoretical tour de force which is substantiated with a range of primary material, he argues that acts of protest in Tehran to Cairo can be entirely linked to the same act in New York, London, Madrid and Athens. Breaking through the east/west, north/south divide, Adib-Moghaddam shows how the Arab revolts promise to shift the discourse away from the idea that Arabs and Muslims are peculiar, that "Middle Eastern Studies" cannot be linked to political theory, that the dynamics of rebellion "there" are fundamentally different from the politics of revolt "here". Adib-Moghaddam argues that the dialectics of power and resistance are truly universal and that they are unfolding within a globalised political context that is increasingly interconnected. In order to illuminate this argument theoretically, the study is organised around conceptual terms that feed into forms of power and resistance, such as revolution, radicalism, dissent, knowledge, neighbour and reform. These terms and concepts are discussed and deconstructed via an empirical discussion of pivotal events beyond the non-western world, demonstrating that for a long time, and without realising it, we have been living in the end times of unitary categories such as "west" and "east."