Pahlavi’s Nationalism: A Lacanian Analysis

In the post-Constitutional Revolution, Iran has followed a variety of nationalist formulations resulting in various models of foreign policy. During Mohammad Reza Shah’s era, a particular version of nationalism shaped Iran’s domestic and foreign policies. This led to a struggle for power at the regional and international levels. This article, on the basis of a conceptual framework based on Jacque Lacan’s psychoanalytical approach and discourse analysis seeks to show how this ambitious foreign policy was constituted in the period between 1953 and 1978. The texts produced by the Shah could be regarded as a social event that within a cultural framework sought to shape Iranians’ subjectivity within his own desires. The construction of fantasies and acting upon them in foreign relations can be thus considered as his response to his own desires.