Among significant concepts in contemporary Iranian history—one that has extensive application across political, social, religious, and other domains, and consequently has acquired multiple layers of semantic meaning—is the concept of "revolution." Although this concept first appeared in plays during the Qajar era, the present article examines this as a foundational, trend-setting concept within the plays of the 1360s (1980s) decade, works profoundly shaped by the Islamic Revolution of Iran.
According to the author's findings, more than seventy plays written during this decade employed the concept of revolution, explicitly or in language free of a historical interpretation, owing to their ideological affiliation with various offshoots of Marxism or with Islamist currents linked to the Islamic Revolution (1357/1979). To avoid a generic ideological reading, however, this study focuses on only fourteen plays whose treatment of the concept was semantically clearer and unambiguous. These fourteen plays were published with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance or of newly established institutions such as the Howzeh-ye Honari (Arts Bureau) and the Jahad-e Daneshgahi (Academic Jihad Organization), a fact that may itself indicate a meaningful relationship between these works and the revolutionary thought and practices governing the state and its institutional apparatus during that period.
The article's central problem, however, is that—owing to the diverse intellectual orientations of the playwrights and to the varied uses and connotations attached to this historically laden, frequently recurring concept—revolution was not employed with a single, stable meaning across the plays during the aforementioned period. Rather, it acquired class-based, religious, historical (contemporary or older), and even transnational connotations. This suggests that, within the trending popularity of revolutionary drama, synonymous yet mutually contradictory meanings of revolution coexisted. More precisely, although revolution served as the subject matter of many plays during this time, playwrights did not represent a single, unified meaning of the concept; on closer scrutiny, the meanings attributed to revolution in different plays stood in tension and contradiction with one another. At the same time, it becomes evident that as this time frame (approximately a decade) approaches its end, such instances of semantic synonymy and contradiction gradually diminish, until a single meaning grounded in Islamic ideology comes to prevail over competing approaches.
To elucidate this problem, the author is guided by two central research questions: What is the meaning of the concept of revolution in the plays of the 1360s (1980s) decade? And what interpretations did playwrights offer of this concept in their works?
To answer these questions, the study draws on Reinhart Koselleck's theory of conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte), subjecting the revolutionary concept of "revolution" to critical examination within the domain of dramatic literature of the 1360s (1980s), restricted to plays produced in this period. According to this framework, grasping the historical meaning of foundational concepts requires that the researcher, beyond relying on historical semantic knowledge, adopt both diachronic and synchronic approaches, so that a foundational, multilayered concept such as revolution can be examined within its own historical trajectory and in relation to other contemporaneous concepts. The concept must then be critically analyzed so that the definitions attributed to it by the political leadership and intellectuals of the period can be revealed, allowing the semantic layers and the contestation over meaning to be explained historically and with reasoned argumentation as they unfolded within the revolutionary plays.
On this basis, the research method requires that analysis of the concept take into account the transformation of social structures, the formation of new institutions of surveillance and power, the views of political leaders and intellectuals whose ideas influenced society and shaped policies and laws, foundational documents such as the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and, more broadly, the semantic and social field of the 1360s (1980s) decade as a whole. Accordingly, the concept of revolution is analyzed both diachronically and synchronically, with careful attention paid to its political and social contexts.
Among the anticipated findings is that the meaning of revolution, from the beginning to the end of the decade, underwent transformation shaped by Marxist and Islamist orientations. Semantically, the older, pre-existing conception of revolution either recedes entirely or is transformed, giving way to newer meanings extending into other historical and doctrinal domains—including contemporary history, ancient history, and significant religious events. Furthermore, as a foundational concept within the dramatic literature of the 1360s, revolution was subject to sustained semantic and historical contestation across the plays. In this contest over meaning, narrower conceptions—for instance, those emphasizing the actions of the clergy or those centered on ordinary people—either disappeared or were absorbed into broader meanings capable of claiming wider semantic territory.
Ultimately, although revolutionary playwriting of the 1360s (1980s) decade took revolution as its central subject, it was not confined to this thematic role; rather, it simultaneously sought to reconstruct the concept of revolution—ideologically—across both the private and public spheres, thereby sustaining its synchronic dominance over time.