I am extremly wary of such analysis, which in challenging stereotypical essentialising representations of the East, constructs an alternative essentialism 1 https://twitter.com/jadaliyya/status/1330956797746798593

2- where the nation is imagined as bringing together secular and religious, war and music, a general who projected the military force of the state beyond Iran's borders, and a musician who told the armed forces of the state to lower their guns and stop shooting protestors.

3Juxtaposing militarist and interventionist discourse with 'Iranian culture' is not reversing orientalist representations. It reproduces the same discourse which has been feeding into the growing securitisation rhetoric of the state and marginalisation of activists on the ground

4-Solidarity is not constructed with elites, but between peoples who confront austerity and violence. As academics we need to be cautious about producing accounts which romanticise the ongoing conflict and war in the region as part of the cultural production of a nation

@jadaliyya