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Article Excerpt
The mass migration of Iranians abroad following the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979 and the mobilization of mass media in the transnational networks established by these flows have challenged traditional approaches to immigration and national identity. In particular, rather than signifying a movement away from the nation, Iranians abroad have been forceful in constructing representations of Iran and Iranian identity through various media including satellite television, film, and most recently, the internet.
Iranians in the United States, like many immigrant groups, have been active in using media to create a sense of community, share information, react to events in Iran, and articulate their identities and particular experiences in a new country. Weekly papers and monthly magazines have been commonplace in the Iranian diaspora. In places with large Iranian communities, television programming for this specific group also emerged in the 1980s. Iranians in Los Angeles have been particularly active in this form of media, and, by the mid-1980s, were broadcasting many programs about Iranian news, culture, and entertainment. Many of the youth who grew up in Iran watching these satellite television programs are now active in a medium of their own--the internet. Iranian weblogs and websites are an important development in the relationship between media and Iranian immigration.
The history of Iranian Americans' use of media provides an important context within which to understand the novel effects of the internet on the Iranian transnational sphere. This article examines the internet as a source of literary production, and as such, is primarily concerned with the forms of expression fostered through Iranian websites such as Iranian.com and weblogs. Through a discussion of the media specificity of the internet and the personal memoirs, essays, and short stories on these sites, I argue that the internet genre has been critical in promoting forms of self expression, which are increasingly being articulated online. In particular, websites such as Iranian.com have functioned as a kind of virtual community, one that has served the needs of Iranian immigrants dealing with feelings of displacement and longing and, at the same time, allowed for the public expression of feelings that have generally been seen as belonging to the private realm.
The internet genre has many features that distinguish it from other forms of publication. A survey of Iranian websites and weblogs makes one acutely aware of the contested nature of this unique terrain, and in particular, the anxieties around the questions of authority and representation. I will examine the expression of these concerns, as seen through letters posted on an Iranian website, and contextualize them within the broader cultural politics of representation in the Iranian transnational public sphere.
Iranians in the United States
Representations of Iranian culture by Iranians in immigrant settings are not homogenous. The narratives of various groups of Iranian immigrants are related to many factors, including time of migration, socioeconomic class in Iran, political orientation, religion, and experiences in the new country. The identification as "exilic" among Iranians in Los Angeles, for example, emphasizes political narratives of displacement and suggests an involuntary migration; these individuals thus distinguish themselves from later waves of refugees or immigrants seeking economic opportunities abroad. The time of migration (in relation to the Revolution) also functions as a classifying device; it implies motivations for migration and, by extension, socioeconomic class (or cultural status) in Iran.
To understand the unique formation of Iranian communities in the United States that produce these narratives, it is necessary to first consider the historical context of Iranian immigration to the United States. Briefly, three distinct waves of migration characterize Iranian immigration to the United States. (1) The first, beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, comprised primarily of students studying abroad. (2) The next major wave of immigration closely followed the Revolution. It comprised Iranians fleeing political and religious persecution: elites and members of the ruling class, Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, and ethnic minorities (this wave also included a relatively greater number of families as opposed to individuals). (3) In 1998, Iranian immigrants were one of the top twenty new groups of immigrants to the United States and, by 1990, reached a population of 285,000. (4) The largest concentration of Iranian immigrants from this wave resides in Southern California. (5) The third wave of Iranian immigration has continued throughout the past two decades and includes an increasing number of refugees as well as graduate students from Iran who settle in the United States upon completion of their graduate degrees. (6) According to the 2000 United States Census, 338,266 people identified as having "Iranian" ancestry or being of "Iranian" ethnic origin (what is generally referred to as the "Iranian American population"). (7)
Iranian Media in the United States
Iranian immigrant communities have used media to create social networks, report community and Iranian news, and represent "Iranian culture." Weekly papers and community magazines have been popular in Iranian immigrant communities in Toronto and Los Angeles since the 1980s, as have local television shows on community channels. These productions were initially all in Persian and were created for the Iranian immigrant community. In the last two decades, satellite television programming by Iranians in Los Angeles became a powerful presence in the landscape of Iranian transnational media. According to Hamid Naficy, since 1981, over eighty regularly scheduled programs have been broadcast in Los Angeles ("Identity Politics" 52). Currently, there are over twenty satellite channels directed at Iranians, and all the US-based channels have twenty-four-hour programming. (8) These programs, also primarily in Persian, include educational, entertainment, and talk shows; an overwhelming majority exclusively deal with historical or political issues. A popular format for these shows is a person (usually a middle-aged Iranian man) sitting behind a desk delivering a monologue about the history of the Persian Empire, current political problems in Iran, Islam (specifically, a critique of interpretations of Islam by the current regime), possibilities for an Iranian revolution, or pre-Islamic revolution history. The host often takes phone calls from viewers, answering their questions or listening to their responses.
Based on William Safran's definition of diaspora, these shows can be described as having diasporic elements in the sense that they maintain a "memory, vision, or myth about their original homeland," express a commitment to the restoration of the homeland, and articulate a collective identity in relation to it (83-84). What differentiates diasporic populations from immigrants, then, is that their "sense of identity is centrally defined by collective histories of displacement and violent loss [that] cannot be 'cured' by merging into a new national community" (Clifford 307). In his analysis of Iranian satellite television, Naficy describes these productions and the identities of their producers as "exilic"--a position that is liminal and constantly in flux. He argues that when Iranian exiles in Los Angeles define themselves in relation to a construct of the homeland, they are unable to engage in a politics of representation or attain a personal sense of stability. The goal, therefore, is to "finally get on with the process of living, which moves them gradually--but not inexorably nor permanently nor totally nor undirectionally--out of liminality and into ethnicity" (Naficy, The Making 195).
A key aspect of Iranian immigration is precisely this unique position of "facing two ways at once" as a particular formation in the transnational Iranian public sphere. Instead of treating Iranian representation, identification, and media production from Los Angeles as an incomplete project of "becoming," it is useful to examine these social formations on their own terms--as transnational productions. (9) Based on Homi Bhabha's notion of hybridity, I argue that Iranian transnational subjects should be considered as unique historical and cultural formations that problematize the notion of authenticity by not being rooted in an original or essential home (Bhabha 338-67). (10) The notion of an "Iranian American identity" is deeply embedded in the performance of collective memory and experience facilitated by new forms of media. The vast expansion of literary production enabled by Iranian websites and weblogs has not only created a unique space for the articulation of cultural identities, but also allowed for a simultaneous and interactive participation in the production of collective memory and an "imagined community," as articulated by Benedict Anderson. The very meaning of "Iranian-ness" cannot be considered separate from the transnational circuits that continually refashion it in the context of broader social and political forces. In representations of Iranian identity, culture, and history, the awareness of this transnational sphere, facilitated by media and the movement of people between its various nodes, is built into these articulations of identification. In this sense, the signifier of "Iran" is always-already transnational, shaped by the history of migration, the political stakes Iranian immigrants have maintained in the nation, and the cultural and literary production of hybrid Iranian identities in television, film, and, increasingly, online and in literary form. Within this context, Iranian American identity is performed through the mobilization of history and memory, and constitutes a "transnational Iran," at the same time as being a product of transnational circuits.
Hybridity is not the blending of two "fully formed and mutually exclusive communities" but an intermixture of distinct cultural forms (Gilroy 19). These forms themselves are marked by their "doubleness" and in this way embody the very...
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