Dariush Ashouri on role of language in Iran’s underdevelopment
By Mokhtar Nouri
Professor of Political Science
at Razi University
The book “Dariush Ashouri’s Account of Development and Underdevelopment in Iran,” authored by Mokhtar Nouri, faculty member of the Department of Political Science at Razi University of Kermanshah, was written with the help of the Iranian non-governmental institution “Pooyesh Fekri Tose’e” (meaning: Intellectual Movement of Development) and published by Shargh Newspaper Publishing House.
The book is dedicated to exploring the philosophy of a thinker who has devoted several decades of his life to reflecting upon the “troubled soul of Iran” and its intellectual, political, social, and cultural transformations. A well-known Iranian intellectual such as Dariush Ashouri, who, over the course of the recent decades, has traversed diverse intellectual, political, and cultural ascents and descents.
Ashouri commenced his intellectual endeavors, from the period of adolescence, in the proximity of a politician such as Khalil Maleki, and, with passage through diverse political and social actions on the stage of history, he now abides in the domain of language, or, in the words of Martin Heidegger, the “house of Being”. Ashouri, in the manner of many contemporary Iranian intellectuals, is a man of the arena of modernity and its struggle with tradition. According to Ashouri, we Iranians entered the orbit of global issues from the 19th century onward. Therefore, Ashouri seeks to ascertain who we are and what has transpired for us Iranians over the past two centuries.
With concentration upon modernity and its boundaries and contours, Ashouri intends to demonstrate how the West attained progress and subsequently, as a world-consuming discourse, embarked upon incursions into other cultures and nations, including Iranian society. Ashouri is an intellectual who observed the bipolar atmosphere dominant during the Cold War era and the ideological conflicts between capitalism and socialism, and their development-oriented outlooks. On the other hand, he is familiar with the literature and works of the field of development, in its conventional sense. Yet he rather quickly abandoned these conventional spaces of development sociology and began seeking his lost piece in the linguistic and cultural realms.
As is known, development possesses diverse political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions, yet Ashouri, who from youth was inclined toward development in the Third World and Iran, reoriented himself from the economic and political aspects of development toward its cultural and social dimensions. In other words, although modernization and development constitute Ashouri’s principal concern, he considers their pathway not through economic metrics but through language and culture.
By passing beyond the models and indices of the development field, Ashouri, in his works, has placed emphasis upon a more significant theoretical model. In fact, if we consider the principal crisis to be the underdevelopment of Iranian society in the contemporary period, the roots of the crisis, in Ashouri’s view, reside in the linguistic and cultural sphere, and he regards himself as a researcher in pursuit of “language-therapy” and “culture-therapy.”
The adoption of this type of linguistic and cultural approach to development has drawn him, on the one hand, toward understanding Western modernity, and, on the other hand, toward recognizing the historical, identity-based, linguistic, and cultural corridors of Iran and Eastern lands. Therefore, in his desired model, he links all aspects of modern life to language and believes that it is through exploring and reflecting within the linguistic space that one can grasp, at the very root of the matter, the fundamental differences between modern and traditional mentalities and between developed and underdeveloped worlds.
It is from this perspective that Ashouri regards the Persian language as one of the fundamental factors that must receive special attention in order to attain comprehensive development. He believes that it may be possible, through imitation, to achieve accomplishments in industry and technology, yet for authentic modernization and being able to genuinely generate something new, the principal task is reflection upon the self and upon mental structures, through which reflection upon the Persian language, as the instrument of the formation of thought and the creation of new concepts, acquires undeniable importance.
As a result, Ashouri consistently regards himself as a seeker within the cultural arena, and his thought concerning culture becomes connected with science, literature, art, philosophy, and language. With regard to such concern, namely, the linguistic and cultural dimension of development, Ashouri turns toward mentality, historical legacy, ancient structures, and our Iranian bottlenecks in confrontation with Western modernity. This matter, as his principal issue, has also become material for the production of diverse scholarly works. In Ashouri’s own words, the further he has progressed, the more prominent the cultural dimension of development has become for him.
Ashouri believes that his understanding of issues has been profoundly altered as a result of living in the Western world. He maintains that the discourse of “Westoxication” (or, “Occidentosis”) — which, in the pre-Islamic Revolution period, influenced him as well, in the manner of a multitude of Iranian intellectuals, and which required many years for him to cleanse its sediments from his mind — was indicative of a type of indigenous pathology that arose from our Third-World resentment and obstructed our understanding of diverse issues.
In Ashouri’s view, Westoxication and the dialogue surrounding it constitute the discourse of a particular period in the history of our modern Iranian intellectual life. In Ashouri’s perspective, Westoxication is a negative concept and bespeaks a pathological condition in our life and culture, and the portmanteau with “intoxication” itself signifies precisely this pathological nature of the phenomenon. Nevertheless, Ashouri, by passing beyond these types of intellectual resentments, has discovered other aspects in confronting modernity, and, in his own expression, has identified a “linguistic abyss” that has created a chasm between us and the foundations of modernity, a chasm that is, with great difficulty, fillable.
In formulating this type of linguistic gap, Ashouri invokes the “language of the adult” in contrast to the “language of the child”. In his view, the adult human speaks with expansive words, prepared for the expression of innumerable concepts, whereas the child’s language is crude and limited. Consequently, Ashouri states that the language of us Iranians today is an incomplete, childish, and deficient language, with which we cannot articulate profound concepts. This is not the language in whose use our predecessors displayed virtuosity in poetry and prose and manifested genius. They expressed their concepts and thoughts with a mature, refined, and complete language, whereas the language we employ is the language of children who wish to speak with the concepts of other complete and mature adults: with the language of Western civilization.
Within this framework, Ashouri divides languages into two categories, “developed” and “underdeveloped,” and believes that underdeveloped languages, just as underdeveloped countries follow developed countries in their economic, social, and political systems, likewise become followers of developed languages in their regularities and capacities. It is observed that Ashouri associates the gap between us and the modern world with a linguistic gap and speaks of the globalization of modern Western civilization through a “linguistic revolution,” and believes that this world-consuming model has also entangled us within itself.
Thus, in the essay “The Troubled Soul of Iran,” he regards the modern world as a world that does not release us with its instruments and techniques, and we are compelled to clarify our position toward it. In any case, Ashouri’s intellectual turn is evident, and he has arrived, through a passage beyond prior political and ideological issues, at a new outlook in confronting the modern Western world, in which, in this transition, the linguistic element has acquired great importance for him.
Examining the thought of a thinker who has devoted several decades of his life to intellectual labor, and considering how he regards issues such as modernization, development, and progress in human life, can undoubtedly be compelling.
Dariush Ashouri, language, and development
As stated, Ashouri’s principal issue is understanding development and progress in the Western world and comprehending Iran’s underdevelopment. For understanding this gap between us and the modern Western world, he has concentrated on the linguistic and cultural dimensions of development. For this reason, it is first necessary to elucidate, to the extent possible, Ashouri’s principal issue, namely, the relationship between language and development.
In Ashouri’s view, engagement with language and its issues is always exhilarating, and this exhilaration arises from the fact that every person senses an intrinsic and authentic belonging to his or her language, and one’s language is one’s “world,” and the length, breadth, and depth of one’s “world” correspond to the length, breadth, and depth of one’s language, and every manipulation and transformation in language manipulates and transforms one’s world.
From Ashouri’s perspective, our relationship with our language in everyday life resembles our relationship with our hands and feet. As long as our hands and feet perform their natural functions, we do not sense their existence; rather, they immediately connect us with the external world and accomplish what we desire. They do not need our attention toward their operation, and it is when the hand ceases to function, or the foot stops moving, that we become aware of their existence. At that point, we contemplate remedy and only then become conscious of their presence and importance.
From Ashouri’s view, the condition of the relationship between human beings and language is the same. Language becomes an issue and attains “self-awareness” when it ceases to “function,” at the point where it can no longer continue its natural operation. Therefore, Ashouri states that our linguistic sensitivities arise from the fact that we Iranians, in confronting the new civilization, whether from the material or the spiritual aspect, have encountered things that were not located within our historical-cultural experience, and, as a result, our language was “silent” regarding them. Then, when we attempt to express these things in our own language, we observe that our language exhibits numerous deficiencies and obscurities in expressing such matters, and, in this tension and effort, in many places it unravels.
Consequently, Ashouri believes that as long as we have not adequately provided the linguistic and intellectual means for dialogue with the new civilization, and have not correctly assimilated what must be assimilated, whether in philosophy, or in science, or in other domains, we cannot escape the vicious circle of the “Third World”. In Ashouri’s view, we have become “broken-tongued,” and all this self-awareness that we today possess regarding language, and all this effort that is expended in its regard, signifies nothing other than that our language has struck a stone somewhere and has halted in its movement.
In other words, the disarray of our world has caused the disarray of our language, and the reconstruction, and perhaps the upheaval, of this world, and the severe ascents and descents of these transformations, inevitably generate severe ascents and descents in language.
Therefore, Ashouri, from a phenomenological standpoint, according to which language is regarded as the existential infrastructure of the human being and the possibility of the manifestation of the human world, through humans building a relation with Being as a whole, asks how the modern world has arisen from within modern “language,” and what the modern human has done with language, and how linguistic tools have been prepared, or how modern languages, as “open” languages, have been fashioned and cultivated, and from within ancient “natural” languages have been grown and transformed into a “natural language”.
The posing of such outlooks and questions regarding language by Ashouri leads us to the articulation of the view that the central core of Ashouri’s intellectual discourse concerning the development of the Western world and our Iran’s underdevelopment is grounded in the relationship between language and development. Consequently, according to Ashouri, careful reflection upon language and modernity provides a key to understanding many points and responding to difficult questions with which the developing world is confronted.
From his perspective, in the discussion of the confrontation between tradition and modernity, reflection upon language elucidates essential points, especially in a society such as contemporary Iran, where the discussion of tradition and modernity has become an intellectual obsession for religious intellectuals as well as secular intellectuals.
As a result, in Ashouri’s view, we now stand before a “historical gap” and seek to fill it. It is evident that this gap between the West and us is the same unfilled gap of development that has occupied an intellectual such as Ashouri.
In this sense, at present, science and language have been constituted and have grown with great weight in other linguistic and cultural realms, and we, by virtue of the relation and connection that we have established with those realms, desire their science and language. Our language must newly adorn and refine itself so that it becomes efficient for the great task that we place upon its shoulders. And if our language is deficient and obscure in expressing what constitutes the subject or substance of science, this means that we still lack a genuine relation with science or with the substance and essence of its language. And if such a desire exists within us, and truly exists, the desire for science cannot, for us, be separated from the desire for its language and effort in its pursuit.
In general terms, Ashouri seeks to ascertain what occurs when we come into contact with the new world and its scientific foundations. That is, to what extent can non-Western peoples, peoples who were once designated as “Eastern” and later became “Third World,” assimilate it? And why can they not assimilate it in its entirety? What obstacles operate in this interval? What motivation or need within us has caused the posing of the issue of the “language of science”? What relation has arisen between us and modern science that has rendered the posing of the issue of its language necessary for us?
It appears that understanding Ashouri’s account of development and our Iranian underdevelopment requires the discovery of appropriate answers to these questions.
Dariush Ashouri, linguistic modernization
In response to the aforementioned questions, the claim of the present account is that, in Ashouri’s view, among various causes and factors, linguistic and cultural obstacles constitute the most significant barriers for us Iranians in attaining development and progress. In other words, the intellectual thread connecting Ashouri’s views regarding our Iranian underdevelopment is embedded in language and culture, which he has articulated under the theory of the “open language”.
Ashouri believes that, in the modern world, a “linguistic revolution” has taken shape parallel to other revolutions, and that this linguistic revolution, on the basis of modern linguistic sciences, has created a linguistic industry and technology that has granted the leading languages of modernity, such as English, French, and German, the possibility of limitless development, a possibility that has been an unquestionable necessity for the relentless progress of the natural sciences and technology over the past two centuries.
Therefore, for Ashouri, the issue is why underdeveloped worlds inevitably become crumbs-eaters and ration-dependents of the leading languages of the modern world. In fact, he seeks to understand how they, namely, Westerners, were able, through linguistic development and the creation of an open language, to provide the grounds for their own development and their dominance over the non-Western world, while we remained trapped within our closed and limited language and fell outside the orbit of development.
The result is that, in Ashouri’s view, the expansion of language and the empowerment of it, so that it can fulfill its new tasks, constitutes an unavoidable and extremely important part of any economic, scientific, and cultural “development policy”. Hence, all countries that pursue programs of economic, social, and cultural growth, and seek to respond to the issues posed for them by confrontation with modern civilization and culture, have only two paths before them: one is to select one of the European languages, especially English, as their scientific and educational language, or to reorganize and cultivate anew their indigenous and national language so that it can function efficiently as a scientific and educational language.
Of course, Ashouri believes that this is an exceedingly difficult, delicate, and time-consuming endeavor, and that, for it, the barriers of psychological resistance, fear, and long-standing conservatism must first be broken. Since language bears a direct relation to the depths of the psyche and the personality and psychological characteristics of each society and each individual, from the standpoint of social and individual psychology, many issues exist along this path.
It appears that, among the two aforementioned paths, Ashouri prefers and proposes the second path, namely, the modernization and reconstruction of the national language, that is, the Persian language. Thus, Ashouri believes that, in order to mobilize the Persian language toward expressing what we demand from it today, namely, modern scientific, philosophical, artistic, and technical expression, and everything that arises from this form of life in all domains of social existence, not for issuing dogmatic and eternal judgments, but for obtaining theoretical guiding lines, we must examine how the Persian language is, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, how its particular capacities have been cultivated within its own historical context, from what it was nourished, which substances within it have been more nurtured and which have remained uncultivated, and, in other words, what its potential capacities are for expansion and cultivation in the direction of new and contemporary needs.
From Ashouri’s perspective, the posing of such a question itself requires possessing a modern outlook toward history and language, and a traditional or tradition-worshipping mind, which has not encountered the essence of modern thought and has not benefited from it, is incapable of posing it because it is so dazzled and enamored with tradition and so unified with it that it cannot create a separation between itself and tradition and place tradition before itself as an object and examine it.
Conclusion
As stated, the present discussion, on the basis of the “theory of the open language,” has concentrated upon the relationship between language and development in Ashouri’s thought. The findings of the present discussion indicate that Ashouri perceives a close relationship between language and development, and the establishment of such a relationship has guided him toward the formulation of the theory of the “open language”.
From Ashouri’s perspective, every world possesses its own language and constructs its own language, and the technological and modern world, just as it has constructed technology, has also treated its language in a technological manner. Therefore, in Ashouri’s view, we Iranians, with the language that we have at our disposal, cannot contend with modern philosophy and science, and, consequently, with development and progress.
Ashouri believes that his linguistic studies concerning the English language, and to some extent French and German, demonstrate that a significant linguistic turn has occurred in those languages, and that this very turn has facilitated their process of development and transformation. In the languages leading modernity in Europe, there exists a linguistic word-production factory that operates continuously in order to respond to their needs in the natural sciences, the human sciences, technology, and all material and spiritual domains of modern life.
This is while we Iranians remain deprived of this type of linguistic turn and transformation, and, as a result, have been unable to have a voice in the process of development. In Ashouri’s expression, the Persian language has, over centuries, become polluted and exceedingly darkened. This darkness prevents us from entering the space of the modern world and the modern mind, whose language is transparent and luminous. One of Descartes’ points is precisely this: linguistic transparency. Words are like opaque glass that we hold before our eyes, through which the light of objects does not pass. We must construct a language that possesses complete transparency.
From this perspective, the present discussion, with concentration upon development and its various dimensions, has examined Ashouri’s works and thoughts in the light of the linguistic transformation he envisions. Whether we agree with Ashouri or oppose his thoughts and views, we can in no way disregard the extensive knowledge and perspectives of this intellectual concerning the reasons and roots of development and underdevelopment.