Hauntologies of the Present: Notes on Politics of Friendship in Férydoun Rahnéma’s Modernism

University of Toronto

Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Lecture Series in collaboration with The Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation

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Hauntologies of the Present: Notes on Politics of Friendship in Férydoun Rahnéma’s Modernism

Maziyar Faridi

Clemson University

Friday, 16 September 2022, 1:00 P.M. Eastern Time (Canada and the US)

Registration: https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwpc-ygpzIoHtJF2MTO7ROtBkrphuEQdqmF 

Bio

Maziyar Faridi is a comparative literature scholar and an Assistant Professor of English and Global Cinema at Clemson University. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Northwestern University in 2020. His current book project, Rhythms of Relation: Decolonizing Identity in Iranian Modernism, theorizes a critique of sovereignty and identity at the intersection of Iranian and global modernism in the twentieth century. The previous iteration of his book project has received the 2020-2021 Charles Bernheimer Prize for best dissertation from the American Comparative Literature Association. Dr. Faridi is an alumnus of the Paris Program in Critical Theory, a joint program between Northwestern University and Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle (Paris III). His research interests include critiques of sovereignty in continental philosophy, film theory, semiotics and psychoanalysis, and critical theory from the Global South.

Abstract: What does it mean to cohabit the present with specters? What are the ethico-political implications of such haunting? Férydoun Rahnéma’s many specters have haunted generations of filmmakers and poets in modern and contemporary Iran. Focusing on Sīyāvash dar Takht-e Jamshīd (Siavash in Persepolis, 1965), this lecture theorizes a notion of friendship-as-haunting at the understudied nexus between Rahnéma’s poetry, his theoretical writings on cinema, and his films.