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

Abstract:
What does it mean to cohabit the present with specters? What are the ethico-political implica- tions of such haunting? Férydoun Rahnéma’s many specters have haunted generations of film- makers and poets in modern and contemporary Iran. Focusing on Siyavash dar Takht-e Jamshid (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.

Bio:

Maziyar Faridi is a comparative literature scholar and an Assistant Professor of En- glish and Global Cinema at Clemson Univer- sity. 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 sover- eignty and identity at the intersection of Iranian and global modernism in the twen- tieth century. The previous iteration of his book project has received the 2020-2021 Charles Bernheimer Prize for best disserta- tion from the American Comparative Litera- ture 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.