100. Fragments of Utopia in Farangestan with Vahid Vahdat
Original Drawing by Tori Haynes
“...both of them [Occidentalist gaze and Orientalist gaze] are part of the same thread...the similarity is that both use the Other to generate the image that they want from the self or the future of the self...and there is that Utopian aspect to it, but the Utopias are different…”
Vahid Vahdat
This week's episode invites you to look back to the 19th century with four Persian travelers making their way through a modernized Europe. In their travel diaries, we see Europe from an Occidentalist gaze, which charges these Western spaces with eroticism, magic, and wonder. What can we learn about Persian utopia from these "farangi," or foreign, narratives?
Join us, for this discussion with Vahid Vahdat, assistant professor of architecture and interior design at The School of Design and Construction, Washington State University and author of the recently (2017) published Occidentalist Perceptions of European Architecture in Nineteeth-Century Persian Travel Diaries: Travels in Farangi Space.
Timestamp Outline
0:45 Introducing Vahid Vahdat, Assistant Professor at Washington State University School of Design and Construction
1:00 What does the West look like from a Persianate Perspective? This episode focuses on the travelogoes of Persians to Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. These travelors would often incorporate their own imaginings of Persianate Utopia in their writings.
2:00 Occidentalist Perceptions of European Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Persian Travel Diaries: Travels in Farangi Space (Book; Open Access Link [forthcoming])
2:20 Farangi [definition from Wikipedia]: “is a Persian and Southeast Asian word that originally referred to the Franks (the major Germanic tribe) and later came to refer to Europeans in general.”
3:30 Farangi as a Star Trek Reference
4:20 Occidentalist perceptions of European Architecture in the 19th Century...in conversation with Orientalist perceptions (See Orientalism and Edward Said’s work)
4:20 “I take it you are in some sort of a diaglogue with Orientalist perceptions...The gaze runs both ways...Edward Said taught us a lot about how the gaze runs this way, which is to say how the West saw the East in a figure that it wanted to see it as...and by inversion defined itself as opposite to that or Other to that....What are you referring to by saying Occidentalist here?” VP
5:15 “This [work] has been influenced by Said’s Orientalism and how he discusses Europeans attempt to indentify themselves as the center of rationality and reason...they projected their perceptions onto the Orientals as these mythical beings, mystical creatures and very poetic and of course unrational and thereby they created their image of self...and [Said’s] work is based off of power relationships... this kind of discourse of Orientalism [implies] different types of Imperialism and the colonizing of other countries....That’s the reason why he’s rightly skeptical that there is a symmetrical approach on the other side because the power structures were central for him...I may have been a bit reductionist...but I said, ‘hey, let’s not consider the power relationships…’ [what else can we look at and learn?]” VV
7:00 Projected fantasies of the West
7:20 “...Whether its natural or not, it was certainly naturalized in the 19th century in the colonial economy of the world when the West produced itself as the flagship of modernity and enlightenment then it produced its Others through this Orientalist gaze...as you looked at this reversed gaze in that same economy, which is this colonial economy (whether or not we account for the asymmetry of power) as you looked at this reverse gaze...describe it for us....what did you find in this gaze towards the West?” VP
8:50 “...I don’t want to suggest that its a static image…at the time I’m looking at, [the Farangi] was this advanced Other that are progressed and, sometimes in a self-Orientalizing way, many people describe a phenomenological time in which they are ahead of us…and we are their past and need to catch up...they are disciplined, organized, materialistic, depicted erotically...” VV
9:40 Persian miniature
10:06 “...architecture, spaces that these [Persian Travelors] describe have features in them that come from their perceptions of what progress means…they described [Western] buildings as being extremely high, multifloor buildings...that’s what it meant for them to be modern...” VV
10:45 Pastoral descriptions of gardens
11:15 “...both of them [Occidentalist gaze and Orientalist gaze] are part of the same thread...the similarity is that both use the Other to generate the image that they want from the self or the future of the self...and there is that Utopian aspect to it, but the Utopias are different…” VV
12:15 “Describe this Persianate Utopia that is constructed from this Occidentalist gaze.” VP
12:30 “...its somewhat fragmented and collage-like...and dynamic [based off of four different accounts]...one of the central things is order...it might be because they had this critical stance towards the State of Iran at the time right after the Perso-Russian war that ended in 1813...that’s what they lacked…Their version of Utopia seems to be very influenced by this background of the war...” VV
17:45 safarnama
22:00 “What were they critical of? And who was their audience?” VP
25:00 “They were catering to this audience, especially the royalty who were looking to reverse engineer the progress that they saw in Europe.” VV
25:50 Houri - heavenly maidens who accompany the faithful to paradise
26:00 “...the spatial equivalent of eroticism...they would explain [Western] spaces as if there were no border between private and public spaces, even inside residences…” VV
27:15 Andaruni - inward looking, the private quarters specifically for women to move about freely vs. Biruni - the public quarters for men and a space where business is conducted and guests are received
28:00 “...there was nothing for them that suggested there was any kind of division between men and women...While they totally collapsed any type of division of spaces based on gender, when it came to socio-economic classes, they do the reverse...they are very fast to pick up on the fact that lower classes cannot mingle easily with upper classes…” VV
28:30 Utopia and fantasy linked with access to women
32:20 Discussion of the book cover image
33:26 Naser al-Din Shah Qajar
37:15 Discussion of the inevitability of cultural bias
40:00 Utopian speculations
41:22 “How is my own biography always at play in how I teach?” VP
