majid sarvand; Mohammadjafar Jameh bozorgi
Abstract
This article examines Aramesh Doostdar’s critical concept of “religious culture” and proposes Daryush Shayegan’s later intellectual framework as a viable response ...
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This article examines Aramesh Doostdar’s critical concept of “religious culture” and proposes Daryush Shayegan’s later intellectual framework as a viable response to the cultural and identity deadlocks Doostdar identifies. Doostdar argues that the permanent dominance and hegemony of religious culture lead to inevitable cultural stagnation and the impossibility of independence, individuality, subjectivity, and human resistance. In his view, culture is a closed, static, homogeneous entity devoid of dynamism, in which the individual is dissolved and rendered incapable of innovation or agency. This conceptualization leaves no conceivable path for progress or escape.
The article addresses two central questions: First, what are the identity-related consequences of Doostdar’s notion of religious culture? Second, can Shayegan’s reflections on intercultural relations and the connection between tradition and modernity offer a solution to these impasses? The analysis argues that the outcome of Doostdar’s rigid framework is best understood as an identity crisis or even an “absence of identity.” In contrast, the article suggests that Shayegan’s framework—which emphasizes a world characterized by a rhizomatic and fractured ontology—provides resources to overcome these deadlocks. Shayegan contends that no single culture can meet the needs of contemporary human beings. Modern individuals possess fragmented forms of consciousness and are multi-identified. They are therefore capable of moving freely between diverse cultural spaces and modes of being, actively choosing from various possibilities, and ultimately rediscovering and reconstructing their own identity.
