چکیده:
The present study examines narrative and social imagination in the historiography of the Qajar era. The fundamental question of this research is: what factor leads to different and sometimes contradictory understandings of historical events? It appears that addressing this question is feasible by focusing on the concept/theory of "narrative" in the thoughts of Hayden White and Paul Ric oeur. According to this theory, history is considered a refined memory in favor of constructing a collective past based on collective identity. Thus, memory is more related to the collective perception of historical events than to reality itself. Narrative, through the dual functions of "highlighting" certain events and "downplaying" or even omitting others, establishes a causal relationship among these events. Accordingly, it can be argued that narrative is the mechanism that determines the genre of history, whether tragic, victorious, epic, or satirical. This issue differentiates historiography from chronicles, which serve as mere records of events in historical calendars. Based on this theoretical framework, two narratives of modern Iranian history can be traced: one is the narrative of Iran’s historical decline in the social imagination of Iranians during the Qajar period, and the other is the narrative of stability and the formation of a modern state during the same historical period. Each of these narratives establishes different causal relationships among events in this timeframe, ultimately constructing different genres of decline and stability. A prime example of the first narrative can be found in the thoughts of Mirza Na’ini and his description of his historical context. The second narrative, which has been constructed in recent years, can be observed in the works of researchers such as Abbas Amanat and Naghmeh Sohrabi. This research is based on the premise that these two narratives are constructed and distinguished from each other through the primary mechanism of narrative, which involves both highlighting and overlooking specific historical events.
خلاصه ماشینی:
92 Transcendent Politics, Vol. 12, No. 46, 2024 Narrative and Social Imagination in the Historiography of the Qajar Era 1 Seyyed Reza Hosseini 1 , Mansour Mirahmadi 2 2 1 PhD, Department of Political Science, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran (Corresponding Author).
Research close to the theoretical framework and independent of content In recent years, studies have been published that, although they may not have directly referred to narrative theory, have dealt with a narrative re-reading of Iran's history during the Islamic period by paying close attention to its essential function, namely highlighting certain aspects of historical realities and downplaying others.
" Although Milani is an advocate of a narrative other than the meta-narrative existing regarding the Constitutional Revolution as a product of Western modernity, he sympathizes with the meta-narrative present in the social imagination of Iranians, which in that Qajar era is narrated with the centrality of Naser al-Din Shah's period, the era of tyranny and the decline of Iran.
In other words, decline and 2 Iran's backwardness has become a meta-narrative or a common perception in the social imagination of Iranians, which is the product of the mythos/plot and ّ the causal organization of certain historical events; something that, following White, can be said to be a refined memory inclined toward producing a tragic collective past.
Therefore, it can be said that in the social imagination of Iranians regarding the modern history of Iran, there is a selection of historical events that serves the construction of the narrative of decline and victory.
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