The legacy of subalternity and Gramsci’s national–popular: populist discourse in the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Shabnam J. Holliday

Third World Quarterly, 2016, vol. 37, issue 5, 917-933

Abstract: Drawing on Laclau’s concept of populist discourse and Gramsci’s ‘national–popular collective will’, and using the case of Iran, this article puts forward the idea of the legacy of subalternity in the context of post-revolution governments. The concept of ‘national–popular collective will’ facilitates an understanding of how the popular subject is constructed and the meanings embedded in that process. It is argued that Islamic Republic elites articulate a populist discourse that constructs the ‘self’ (the Islamic Republic) as synonymous with ‘the people’. Embedded in this discursive construction is a legacy of subalternity that goes back to the 1979 Revolution’s populist discourse.

Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2015.1113872

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