The monarchy discourse and its relation to rival discourses in Iran (1953-78)

During the years 1953-78, various political discourses competed with each other in the socio-political atmosphere of Iran, among which the monarchy discourse was in the hegemonic position and the discourses of nationalism, Marxism and Islamism were considered as rival discourses. Studying the relationship between competing discourses and hegemonic discourse is one of the main goals of this research. The main question of the research is what are the floating and central signifers of the Monarchy discourse in the period of 1953-78 and what was the relationship between this discourse and the rival discourses? The findings show that the central signifer of the Monarchy discourse is king-centered, and its floating signifers, are Authoritarianism, Archaic Nationalism, Positive Nationalism, Great Civilization and Religious Superficiality. Some of the competing discourses were in agreement with some of the above-mentioned signifers, but they were also in conflict with some of them and were considered weakening of the mentioned signifers. This research has benefited from the theory of Laclau and Mouffe's discourse, and the research method is discourse analysis and the qualitative interpretive method and based on documentary and library data.