Persophilia Persian Culture on the Global Scene By Hamid Dabashi (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2015. 285 pages.)

Abstract

Academic investigation of the mutual influences of the West and the East
has been the subject of few studies during the past decades. In this category,
Hamid Dabashi’s work on the mutual effects of the Persianate Orient and the
West is impressive. The book traces evidences of the West’s Persophilia
throughout world history from Biblical and ancient texts to contemporary
texts under the influence of the Romanticism, Transcendentalism, mysticism,
fascism, and pan-Islamism approaches. It provides thoughtful commentary
on the roots of western Persophilia, its outcome for the West and the Persianaite
world, and the overall picture of Persophilic knowledge production
and transfer.
As such, Dabashi’s work contributes to the socio-historical hermeneutics
of Persian and western culture by mapping their inter-related texts. He considers
Persophilia a sub-category of Orientalism, through which he challenges
colonial-based Orientalism. By relying on Jürgen Habermas’ theory of bourgeois
public space, Dabashi criticizes Raymond Schwab and Edward Said’s
views as introducing a one-directional influence of the West upon the East. His
work suggests that there is a cyclic relation of influences between them. To
further this point, Dabashi expands Habermas’ public space theory beyond
“bourgeois” and shifts it from a limited national level into a transnational scene
that emphasizes the role of Persophilia in the circulation and production of
knowledge worldwide. The book deems the emergence of Persophilia during
the eighteenth century and its continuation to the present time as an influential ...