Books by Hamid Dabashi

Edward Said (1935-2003) was a towering figure in post-colonial studies and the struggle for justice in his native Palestine, best known for his critique of orientalism in western portrayals of the Middle East. As a public intellectual, activist, and scholar, Said forever changed how we read the world around us and left an indelible mark on subsequent generations.Hamid Dabashi, himself a leading thinker and critical public voice, offers a unique collection of reminiscences, travelogues and essays that document his own close and long-standing scholarly, personal and political relationship with Said. In the process, they place the enduring significance of Edward Said's legacy in an unfolding context and locate his work within the moral imagination and environment of the time.

Declares the end of the nation state as a political proposition predicting the dissolution of the state as an organizing framer of politics.

Europe as we've known it is a dying myth, but colonial relations live on.

Brings together, in a sustained and engagingly written narrative, the leading revolutionaries who have shaped the ideological disposition of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. It provides particular attention to the larger, more enduring ramifications of this revolution for radical Islamic revivalism in the entire Muslim world.

Scores of books and articles have been published, addressing one or another aspect of the Islamic Revolution in Iran

From antiquity to the Enlightenment, Persian culture has been integral to European history. Interest in all things Persian shaped not just Western views but the self-image of Iranians to the present day. Hamid Dabashi maps the changing geography of these connections, showing that traffic in ideas about Persia did not travel on a one-way street.

From the origins of Muhammad's prophetic movement through the development of Islam's principal branches to the establishment of the Umayyad dynasty, the concept of authority has been central to Islamic civilization

Through a careful study of contemporary Iranian history in its political, literary, and artistic dimensions, Dabashi decouples the idea of Iran from its colonial linkage to the cliche notion of "the nation-state," and then demonstrates how an "aesthetic intuition of transcendence" has enabled it to be re-conceived as a powerful nation.

Humanism has mostly considered the question "e;What does it mean to be human?"e; from a Western perspective. Dabashi asks it anew from a non-European perspective, in a groundbreaking study of 1,400 years of Persian literary humanism. He presents the unfolding of this vast tradition as the creative and subversive subconscious of Islamic civilization.

Ayn al-Qudat is one of the great multidimensional geniuses of Islamic intellectual history and has even been described as the true father of descontructionism. This work aims to fill this gap with an analysis of this seminal 12th-century writer and thinker.

In this landmark book, Hamid Dabashi argues that the revolutionary uprisings from Morocco to Iran and from Syria to Yemen were driven by a 'delayed defiance' - a point of rebellion against domestic tyranny and globalized disempowerment alike - that signifies no less than the end of Postcolonialism.

Exposes the soul of Shi'ism as a religion of protest - successful only when in a warring position, and losing its legitimacy when in power. This book makes a case through a detailed discussion of the Shi'i doctrinal foundations, a panoramic view of its historical unfolding, and a varied investigation into its visual and performing arts.

Offers a sustained record of Hamid Dabashi's reflections over many years on the question of authority and the power to represent. Who gets to represent whom and by what authority? Dabashi's book is not as much a critique of colonial representation as it is of the manners and modes of fighting back and resisting it.

This book is a a critical examination of the role that immigrant intellectuals play in facilitating the global domination of American imperialism.*BR**BR*In his pioneering book about the relationship between race and colonialism, Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon explored the traumatic consequences of the sense of inferiority that colonised people felt. Brown Skin, White Masks picks up where Fanon left off, and extends Fanon's insights as they apply to today's world.*BR**BR*Dabashi shows how intellectuals who migrate to the West are often used by the imperial powers to misrepresent their home countries. Just as many Iraqi exiles were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, Dabashi demonstrates that this is a common phenomenon, and examines why and how so many immigrant intellectuals help to sustain imperialism.

The name of Mohsen Makhmalbaf is almost synonymous with the dramatic rise of Iranian cinema in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution. The author draws from his friendship with Makhmalbaf, as well as his direct involvement with Makhmalbaf's films and thought, to present us the tumultuous life and spectacular career of a great filmmaker.