Dr. Reza Najafzadeh in an interview with Public Relations Office:
Academic men, parallel academies and romantic renewal
Dr. Reza Najafzadeh is an assistant professor of political science at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science of Shahid Beheshti University. He has authored numerous works in the form of books and articles, among which we can mention "Romantic Modernity and Royal Sciences" and "Metaphysics of Power: An Introduction to Spinoza's Political Philosophy". Dr. Najafzadeh has also been known for translating the works of political thinkers such as Foucault and Spinoza. Among his translated works, we can refer to the Persian translations of "The Birth of Politics" by Foucault and "Labor of Dionysus" by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Dr. Najafzadeh has also received several awards in Iran for the Persian translation of "Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire" by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. Below you can read part of our interview with him:
• Let me talk about your research topics. The first question is, what is the reason for choosing your research topics around thinkers such as Spinoza, Foucault and Agamben? Is this a matter of personal interest or preference or help to better understand the situation in Iran today or anything else?
That’s a very fundamental question. If I want to refer to one point and axis as the center of connection of all these thinkers that you mentioned, it is the issue of "power". All these thinkers, including Spinoza, Negri, Agamben and Foucault, are philosophers of power. From a point of view, we can exclude Spinoza from this movement, because he is considered one of the veterans of the new thought, along with great men such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, James Harrington and Algernon Sidney. These were the scholars who founded the modern authoritarian, republican or liberal traditions. In particular, Spinoza has many familiar effects for us who come from the East and refer to the thought of Western philosophers. As I have stated in "Metaphysics of Power", the history of the evolution of thought has a rhizomatic and networked nature, and Spinoza stands at one of the intersections of the connection between the West and the East and the connection between the old and the new of Europe and the Islamic world. In fact, one of the reasons for my interest in him is that it seems that a part of our ancient traditions can be indirectly found in the works of this philosopher. Of course, I do not make any ambitious claim that these great men have directly studied our texts and have taken anything, but from the perspective of the comparative history of thought, we come to the conclusion that our intellectual traditions are connected with the European intellectual traditions of the 12th and 13th centuries AD, and the Enlightenment and Renaissance periods are also slowly affected by them. Spinoza is one of the people who makes this network connection between the old and the new in two different cultural-civilization areas. In this era, it is as if the Jewish traditions meet with the Platonic traditions of Europe and the traditions outside of Europe. Descartes becomes a mediator here, and Spinoza gives an understanding of moral action and politics that is completely different from the understanding of authoritarian thinkers and even liberal thinkers. The main element that connects Spinoza's metaphysics to his political philosophy is power. Power is a concept that we encounter in the new political philosophy (in the sense that it has been raised in critical currents since the 1960s). New critical currents are based on power, which look at humans and society, and the concept they use of power is a biological one. This revival of power and politics is also one of the issues that can lead us to the conclusion that we can establish a connection between a part of the Enlightenment traditions and the current alive traditions of political thought. Spinoza brings a huge moral force into critical and genealogical currents. Through Spinoza, historical thinking and genealogy pass to the level of political philosophy.
• When we look at your authored and translated works, we see a relative plurality. As an expert in this field, how do you evaluate the situation of translation, especially the translation of humanities works in Iran in general, and the translation of political and social sciences works in particular? In your opinion, what paths have been taken and what paths have not been taken yet?
In recent years, many texts have been translated, and a new generation that has emerged from various disciplines, including political science academies, social science research institutes, and academies of cultural studies, international relations, and urban studies, are contributing to translate and introduce numerous texts in the multifield space of humanities. I am going to point out the contribution of those outside the university. It seems that nowadays the contribution of independent translators to this field has increased and even exceeded that of academic translators. You can pick up many books and see if their translators were academic or not. For example, the book that I have in my hand now, titled "Universities in the Middle Ages", is a book about the formation of universities in Italy, France, England, and Germany in the context of power relations. This is a book about the critical evolution of the university institution in the Middle Ages and the tensions between religious, political and economic mechanisms. This book was translated by a non-academic figure. This is the service that non-academics provide to the university. This is only one of the topics, and a large number of translators who are working independently, both in the fields of Islamic and Arabic thought and European studies, help to introduce these texts in Iran and reach Persian-speaking readers. We have competent translators in the fields of French, English, German, etc., who help these ideas to be seen in Iran. Whether these texts are read or not is another story, and it is related to the urgency of science production, and acceleration of science reception, and it should be looked at from the perspective of the pathology of scientific development in Iran. All in all, we should examine the contributions of academic translators and see if they have been able to compete with non-academic translators who are supported or not supported by organizations. In my opinion, there should be a connection between the university and outside the university. Some of our graduates become effective resources outside the university. Organizations can establish the link between these two formal and informal arenas. The students themselves have also taken steps to establish this link, and an example of that is the presence of independent translators in student circles in the university. In fact, there should be a link between students and, so to speak, non-academic academies or "parallel academies" (the title these people have chosen to introduce themselves). These independent academies do not get permission from the Ministry of Science and conduct workshops or lectures, and they have always been active both before and after Covid-19 pandemic. Of course, in the era of Covid-19 pandemic, these independent institutions have become less prosperous. I intend to emphasize this point that an academic person should make an equal effort with non-academic currents. What factors can cause imbalance requires a full discussion.
• What is your assessment of the process and product of modernity in Iran? The title of one of your authored books is "Romantic Modernity and Royal Sciences". What do you mean by "romantic modernity" and how does a comprehensive understanding of it help to better understand the process of modernity in Iran and what lessons does it have for Iran today?
It is a very fundamental question. Before the re-thinking currents in the field of national studies or identity studies (I mean the currents defined by greats like Ernst Gellner, Hobsbawm or Benedict Anderson), there were two dominant approaches to modernity and nationalism. One was an approach that emphasized an ethno-cultural nation and sought authenticity based on soil, blood, and morals, and the other emphasized a political or civil nation, in which the elements of political expediency and the expediency of the state were the basic determinants, and of course, the social contract and natural right were considered important elements. It seems that in Iran, the initiators of state modernity stood in the middle of these two: on the one hand, they wanted to establish the state, and they were committed to the new social conditions and the global custom of establishing the state, and on the other hand, they needed a series of authenticities to make them the bases of the state’s expediency. I think the expression "romantic modernity" covers this issue, in the sense of a kind of authoritarian modernity program that relies on history, cultural authenticity, linguistic authenticity and racial authenticity (blood element). Note that the element of blood also stands in this middle and intends to bring Iranology as a collection of linguistic and cultural knowledge to help the establishment of the state. As I said, we are in the middle of two models of state. In this period, the effort is to connect the national-cultural state with the civil-political state. The reason for using the description "romantic" is that historical or linguistic and cultural authenticities become more prominent and get more value.