The Cultural Revolution and Problematic of Humanities, a Study on Interactions between Ideology and Knowledge in Post-Revolution Iran

This paper intends to re-examine Cultural revolution, as the most important academic event in postrevolutionary Iran, as well as its impacts on the course of humanities in Iranian universities. The Cultural Revolution was a political move which expanded over the time and changed universities’ situation, leading eventually to establishment of a formal body over the Ministry of Science, i.e. The Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, to control the Iranian academic life. The paper focuses on the questions of why and how the humanities problematized in the course of expansion and institutionalization of Cultural Revolution, as it helped to emerge ideas like “Islamization of humanities” and “producing Islamic humanities”; implying a kind of distrust toward academic humanities. Government’s decision to realize these ideas has marginalized their scientific aspect and made academics reluctant to help it. On the other hand, clerics’ participation in this game has created an image of confrontation between clergy and academy, as it has fueled the idea of conflict between ideology and knowledge. This situation has weakened the position of humanities in the academy and helped it’s expansion in the public sphere. This paper, through re-examining the documents of the Cultural Revolution and re-reading narratives of its actors as well as reviewing the consequences of this event, including projects like Islamization of humanities and production of the Islamic humanities, shows that the intervention of politics and ideology in the game of academic science, not only can secure the desired goals, but it can also lead to undesirable consequences.