Revision 796476476 of "Peyman Vahabzadeh" on enwiki

{{Orphan|date=July 2017}}

{{infobox person
| image = Peyman Vahabzadeh.jpg
| image_size = 150px
| name = Peyman Vahabzadeh
| imagesize =     
| caption =  
| birth_date = 1961 (age 56)
| birth_place = [[Tehran]], [[Pahlavi dynasty|Iran]]
| religion  =
| nationality  = Iranian-Canadian
| alma_matter = [[Simon Fraser University]]
| doctoral_advisor = [[Ian Angus (philosopher)|Ian Angus]]
| school_of_thought = [[Phenomenology (philosophy|Phenomenology]], [[Postcolonialism]], [[Post-Marxism]]
| substantive_area = [[Iranian Studies]]
| occupation = Professor of Sociology, University of Victoria
| website =  [https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/sociology/people/faculty/vahabzadehpeyman.php Vahabzadeh UVic Homepage], [http://uvic.academia.edu/PeymanVahabzadeh Academia - Published Articles]
}}

'''Peyman Vahabzadeh''' (Persian: پیمان وهاب‌زاده) (born 1961) is Professor of Sociology at [[University of Victoria]], a writer and poet. He has written a total of 12 books in English and [[Persian language|Persian]]. He is a social theorist and phenomenologist by training, focusing on social movements and collective action, and teaches the core undergraduate and graduate courses in social theory in the Department.<ref>[https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/sociology/people/faculty/vahabzadehpeyman.php Peyman Vahabzadeh] UVic Homepage.</ref>  He is also a faculty participant in, and a former Director of, the Cultural, Social, and Political Thought (CSPT) Program at UVic.<ref>[https://www.uvic.ca/interdisciplinary/cspt/people/faculty/index.php CSPT]</ref>

==Background and Education==
Vahabzadeh was born in Tehran, Iran, to a middle-class family, from [[Persian people|Persian]] and [[Azerbaijanis|Azeri]] descent. His mother was an elementary school teacher and his father was a librarian and translator.<ref>[https://shahrgon.com/fa/2007/09/28/%D9%BE%D8%AF%D8%B1%D9%85%D8%8C-%D8%A7%D8%AD%D9%85%D8%AF-%D9%88%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%A8%E2%80%8C%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%87/ پدرم، احمد وهاب‌زاده]</ref> He participated in the 1979 Revolution, and later in 1979 he was admitted to study Geology at the [[Shahid Beheshti University|National University of Tehran]], a degree he could not finish.<ref>«فرهنگ انقلابی و انقلاب فرهنگی» آرش ۱۰۴ (اسفند ۱۳۸۸). صص۱۶۲-۱۶۴.</ref> He then served as a conscript soldier during the [[Iran-Iraq War]], on the western front.<ref>[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/unrest-in-iran-nothing-new-to-professor/article4276608/ Unrest in Iran nothing new to professor]</ref> He left Iran in 1987, and after living in [[Ankara, Turkey|Ankara]], he immigrated to Canada in 1989. Since then, he has been living in British Columbia, is married with a son, and currently resides in [[Victoria, British Columbia|Victoria]].

He studied at [[Simon Fraser University]] where, under the supervision and mentorship of [[Ian Angus (philosopher)|Dr. Ian Angus]], he received his PhD. He also studied closely with the Canadian anarchist and Professor Emiritus of English/Humanities, Dr. Jerry Zaslove. He received a [[Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council]] (SSHRC) of Canada Doctoral Fellowship, and his dissertation won him Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation Medal for Academic Excellence in the Faculty of Arts (2001). He then won a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship that enabled him to study with Dr. Warren Magnusson at Department of Political Science, University of Victoria.<ref>[https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/sociology/people/faculty/vahabzadehpeyman.php Peyman Vahabzadeh] UVic Homepage.</ref> At this time, he also met late Marxist historian Dr. [[Khosrow Shakeri Zand]] and was influenced by his work and his approach to historiography.

==Theory==
Vahabzadeh is theoretically and intellectually influenced by the post-Heideggerian philosophy of [[Reiner Schürmann]] as well as that of [[Jacques Derrida]], the political theory of [[Antonio Gramsci]] and [[Ernesto Laclau]], and recently, the thought of maverick Iranian communist Mostafa Shoaiyan. In his book, ''Articulated Experiences: Toward a Radical Phenomenology of Contemporary Social Movements'', Vahabzadeh offered a new theory, inspired by the radical phenomenology of Reiner Schürmann, for understanding social movements within our contemporary age in which metaphysical solidities and foundations are losing their normative grip over acting and thinking. He developed an epochal understanding of social movements by bringing together the thoughts of Schürmann, [[Martin Heidegger]], Laclau, Gramsci, [[Claude Lefort]], and [[Subcomandante Marcos]], the voice for [[Zapatista Army of National Liberation]]. He showed that liberal-democratic regimes have created universal epistemic frames that hegemonize the subjects' experiences, thus rendering them docile, rights-bearning subjects, to which Vahabzadeh contrasts the transgressive and an-archic actor who defies all boundaries and breaks away with the dominant epistemologies.<ref>Articulated Experiences: Toward A Radical Phenomenology of Contemporary Social Movements.</ref> He continued with this line of thought in a number of articles. These include an article that probes "hegemonic re-grounding" of the colonized subjects' experiences,<ref>Peyman Vahabzadeh, “The Conditions of Subalternity: Reflections on Subjectivity, Experience and Hegemony.” ''Socialist Studies/Études socialistes'' 3:2 (Fall 2007). 93-113.</ref> as well as another article that critically engages with the history and trends of [[Sociology]] to show that sociological thought has been permeated by "ultimate referentiality"—an epistemological error stemming from the projection of the sociological gaze unto facts that enables Sociology to offer a realm called (objective) "reality" that, apparently, exists outside of our worldviews and epistemologies. The solution, Vahabzadeh argues, is a "new interpretive sociology" or the "sociology of possibilities".<ref>Peyman Vahabzadeh, “Ultimate Referentiality: Radical Phenomenology and the New Interpretive Sociology.” ''Philosophy and Social Criticism'' 35:4 (May 2009). 447-65.</ref>

==Intellectual History of the Iranian Left==
Vahabzadeh's substantive area of research is the history of the Iranian Left and Iranian social movements since the 1960s, and his approach to these movements offer a combination of historical sociology, social history, and phenomenology. His book, ''A Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy, and the Fadai Period of National Liberation in Iran, 1971-1979'', offered the first (and the only) comprehensive and analytical work on the rise and demise of the [[Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas]] during their original mandate (1971-1979), a group of radicalized intellectuals and university students who, in the context of repressive measures of the Shah, staged urban guerrilla warfare against the regime, hoping to instigate a popular movement to overthrow the monarchy. Vahabzadeh carefully examines the various aspects of the organizational life and politics of the Fadai Guerrillas as well as their key theorists, [[Bijan Jazani]] and [[Masoud Ahmadzadeh]], in addition to the engagement of Mostafa Shoaiyan with them. Vahabzadeh concludes that the formation of the Fadai Guerrillas was characterized by a "constitutive paradox," a term he borrowed from Ian Angus.<ref>''A Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy, and the Fadai Period of National Liberation in Iran, 1971-1979''.</ref> He also dedicated several articles to his study of the Iranian Left and workers' movements.<ref>Peyman Vahabzadeh, “SAKA: Iran’s Grassroots Revolutionary Workers’ Organisation.” ''Revolutionary History'' 10:3 (Spring 2011). 348-359.</ref><ref>Peyman Vahabzadeh, “Mostafa Sho‘aiyan: The Maverick Theorist of the Revolution and the Failure of Frontal Politics in Iran.” ''Iranian Studies'' 40:3 (June 2007). 405-425.</ref> In addition, he published the political biography of the disappeared Iranian leftist activist, Parviz Sadri.<ref>[http://shahrgon.net/assets/books/32/flipbook/mobile/index.html#p=1 Parviz Sadri: A Political Biography.]</ref> In 2017, Vahabzadeh edited a multidisciplinary volume, ''Iran's Struggles for Social Justice: Economics, Agency, Justice, Activism'', in which he gathered 17 articles on the various aspects of social justice in Iran—a discourse that has been paradoxically disappearing from the Iranian public space despite the deteriorating conditions of the working class and the poor.<ref>[https://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319442266 Iran's Struggles for Social Justice: Economic, Agency, Justice, Activism.]</ref>

==Exile Studies==
After publishing a number of path-opening reflections on exile, outmigration,<ref>Peyman Vahabzadeh, “Reflections on A Diremptive Experience and Four Theses on Origins and Exile.” ''Journal for Interdisciplinary Crossroads'' 3:1 (April 2006). 163-181.</ref> and expatriate literature,<ref>Peyman Vahabzadeh, “Where Will I Dwell? A Sociology of Literary Identity within Iranian Diaspora.” ''Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East'' 28:3 (Fall 2008). 495-512.</ref> Vahabzadeh published ''Exilic Mediations: Essays on a Displaced Life'', in which he offered philosophical reflections on his personal lived-experience of exile, outmigration, origins, and displacement. He offers the view that exile is an ontological component of human existence, and while humans identify with their origins, they are constituted such that they can abandon their origins, just as their origins abandon them. The result is the emergence of a potentially "internationalist" actor, which he calls the "emigrant," one who "thinks with an accent" and brings the unfamiliar to the familiar.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books/p/pub-7974955517873553?id=hVJLIzKBQtMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=exilic+meditations&cd=1&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=exilic%20meditations&f=false Exilic Mediations: Essays on a Displaced Life.]</ref>

==Poetry, Fiction, and Memoirs==
Vahabzadeh is the writer of three books of short stories and three books of poetry in Persian. Although he wrote many poems, including an entire volume, in English, he has nonetheless published them only in Persian. He is also the author of a short memoir and a collection of literary criticism. His poetry and fiction have been anthologized and been translated into English, German, and Kurdish. He has published more than 50 articles and interviews on the Internet or in Persian media published in Iran and abroad.

==Bibliography==
Scholarly Works: 
*''Articulated Experiences: Toward A Radical Phenomenology of Contemporary Social Movements'' (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003).
*''A Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy, and the Fadai Period of National Liberation in Iran, 1971-1979'' (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010).
*''Exilic Meditations: Essays on a Displaced Life'' (London: H&S Media, 2013). 
*''Parviz Sadri: A Political Biography'' (Vancouver: Shahrgon Books, 2015). 
*''Iran’s Struggles for Social Justice: Economics, Agency, Justice, Activism''. Edited by P. Vahabzadeh (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017).

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/sociology/people/faculty/vahabzadehpeyman.php Peyman Vahabzadeh UVic Homepage]
*[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/unrest-in-iran-nothing-new-to-professor/article4276608/ Globe and Mail Article]
*[https://shahrgon.com/fa/2007/09/28/%D9%BE%D8%AF%D8%B1%D9%85%D8%8C-%D8%A7%D8%AD%D9%85%D8%AF-%D9%88%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%A8%E2%80%8C%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%87/ پدرم، احمد وهاب‌زاده]

[[Category:1961 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:University of Victoria faculty]]
[[Category:Iranian writers]]
[[Category:Iranian poets]]