In Presence of the Secret of Motherland

In this book, the author argues that "Iranianity" was not invented in the context of the so-called "colonial modernization" of a peripheral country. Rather, Iranian national identity existed as a remembrance in the Persian literary tradition long before the formation of the modern nation-state in Iran in the early twentieth century. The author uses a post-structural literary theoretical framework, inspired by Michail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, along with writings of theorists such as Michel Foucault, Benedict Anderson, and Étienne Balibar to offer a re-reading of the main trends in classic (canonical) and modern Persian literature, demonstrating the deep indigenous roots of Iranian national identity.