Theorizing at Rowan: Naveed Mansoori, "Organs Without Parties: The Crowd and the Leader in the Iranian Revolution"

​The Department of Philosophy and World Religions is pleased to announce the return of our Theorizing at Rowan lecture series for Spring 2022.

​Our final event this Spring will be Wednesday April 13, at 5 pm.  Naveed Mansoori (Political Science, Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies, Princeton University), will present a a talk entitled “Organs without Parties: The Crowd and the Leader in the Iranian Revolution.”  The event will be held in a hybrid format, in person in Business Hall, Room 121 and online via Zoom (registration required, see below).

​Dr. Mansoori has provided the following abstract for his presentation: “This talk introduces the concept of the party organ without a party for research on the relation between crowds and leaders. Section I attends to the problem that crowds are fundamentally ambiguous; their relationship to media; and finally, how they become a people. Section II examines the lectures of Ahmad Fardid, the spokesmen of the 1980-1983 Cultural Revolution, when the Islamic Republic sought to ‘Islamicize’ media and schools. Fardid affirmed the fundamental ambiguity of a revolution embodied by crowds as a problem for leadership; second, Fardid conceived ‘mass media’ as a ‘technology of the people’. Media contended with the state as a guide. Section III examines the fate of the morning newspaper Ayandegan, which the Islamic Republic shut down in August 1979. It demonstrates that the paper transformed from a politically neutral media source after it received pushback for its coverage of the mass demonstrations on International Women’s Day in 1979. By May 1979, Ayandegan declared that absent a mass political party, its role was to be the organ of a future party. The article suggests that when parties have lost appeal, media fills their absence as organs without parties.”

​This event is co-sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Department of Political Science and Economics, the International Studies Program, and the College of Communications.

​Registration is required to attend this event online.

​Series Info:

​Theorizing at Rowan is a series of public, work in progress lectures covering a range of topics of relevance to scholars in philosophy, religion studies, and other related disciplines. The goal of the series is to promote scholarly exchange involving the Department of Philosophy and World Religions, the university, and interested scholars throughout the region. Speakers will include members of the department as well as faculty from other departments at Rowan and from other institutions.

​All Theorizing at Rowan events are free and open to the public.

​For more information, visit http://go.rowan.edu/theorizing.