معناشناسی مفهوم انقلاب در ادبیات نمایشی دهۀ 1360 ایران؛ یک بررسی تاریخ مفهومی

The Revolution Concept in Iranian Drama of the 1980s: A Conceptual History Approach

Abstract

One of the most salient concepts in contemporary Iranian history, which garnered extensive application across political, social, religious, and artistic spheres, thereby acquiring multiple semantic strata and consequently attaining a foundational significance, is the notion of "revolution." Although the presence of this concept in Iranian dramatic literature was first evident in the plays of the Qajar era, this article aims to explicate this fundamental and consequential concept within the revolutionary plays of the 1980s, a period significantly influenced by the event of the Islamic Revolution of Iran.

Based on the author's findings, over seventy dramatic works penned during this decade demonstrably employed the concept of revolution, owing to their ideological affiliations – encompassing various Marxist and Islamist orientations – with the Islamic Revolution (1979). However, the crux of the matter lies in the fact that due to the diverse intellectual inclinations of the playwrights, as well as the varied applications and connotations of this concept within their plays, this frequently utilized and historically charged concept did not manifest a singular meaning in the works of the playwrights of the 1980s. Instead, it accrued class-based, historical (ancient or contemporary), religious, and transnational connotations. This phenomenon suggests that within the corpus of revolutionary plays, both synonymous and contradictory meanings of the concept of revolution existed, occasionally leading to discordance among the revolutionary plays themselves. Consequently, while we may refer to a current of revolutionary plays wherein a fundamental concept such as revolution served as the primary subject matter, this does not imply that these works uniformly represented a singular meaning of the Islamic Revolution.

To elucidate the aforementioned issue, the author, drawing upon Reinhart Koselleck's theory of conceptual history, endeavors to critically examine the concept of revolution within the domain of dramatic literature of the 1980s and specifically within the purview of the revolutionary plays of this period. According to this theorist, comprehending the historical semantics of fundamental concepts necessitates not only a reliance on the knowledge of historical semantics but also the application of both diachronic and synchronic approaches. This dual methodology allows for a fundamental concept such as revolution to be explained and critically analyzed both within its historical trajectory and in relation to the diverse definitions of that concept held by political leaders and intellectuals of that era. The ultimate aim is to historically substantiate the semantic layers of the concept in question within the current of revolutionary plays. The research findings suggest that the meaning of revolution, from the beginning to the end of the 1980s, underwent transformations influenced by Marxism and Islamism, leading to the semantic dominance of an "older" understanding, which either eliminated or assimilated other meanings. Furthermore, the trajectory of this "older" meaning of revolution ultimately originates from the contemporary context of the playwrights and extends to encompass other historical and ideological domains, including contemporary history, ancient history, and significant religious events.

Keywords

Revolution, Conceptual History, the 1980s, diachronic, synchronic