University of Tehran Published jointly with Iranian World Studies Association Journal of World Sociopolitical Studies 2588-3119 7 4 2023 10 01 Reflections on Cultural Imperialism: Iran’s Discourse of Misery (badbaxti) 713 740 96406 10.22059/wsps.2024.368829.1395 EN Navid Zarrinnal PhD in History,University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran Journal Article 2023 04 28 This article examines the theme of cultural imperialism through a case-study of change in nineteenth-century intellectual discourse. It analyzes an Iranian intellectual discourse, which is known, according to the Persian nomenclature, as the discourse of “misery” (<em>badbaxti</em>). The article shows that throughout the nineteenth-century, the perception of Iranian intellectuals changed, rather drastically, from self-confidence to self-immiseration. This argument is grounded in a close textual contrast between two representative texts. Mirza Saleh Shirazi’s<em> Safar-nāme</em> (1815), representing confidence, is contrasted with <em>Siyāḥat-nāme-ye Ebrāhim Beyk</em> or “The Travel Diary of Ibrahim Beg” (1895), which articulated the idea of an incomparable Iranian misery. The author of <em> Siyāḥat-nāme-ye Ebrāhim Beyk </em>captured this discursive transformation when he wrote: “there is no country on the face of the planet today more miserable than Iran.” The discourse of misery had profound consequences well into the present. Self-immiseration entered popular culture in the Pahlavi period (1925-1979) and intensified in the Islamic Republican period (1979-present). The discourse of misery has captivated modern Iranian consciousness, without necessarily corresponding to social reality.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> https://wsps.ut.ac.ir/article_96406_67d88332c3fc27c00ed03d460097db2b.pdf