Ashura Studies in the Contemporary Iran: A Discursive Analysis

Ashura Studies in the Contemporary IranAshura has been an attractive topic for various researchers since the beginning of time. It is this attraction that has caused an enormous amount of literature to be formed on this topic. Literature has different strains and approaches, and in the present day, more researchers have studied it and created various works. Undoubtedly, these works are related to the existing historical and social contexts. The present paper analyzes Iranian society from 1961 to 2011 with a qualitative approach and discourse analysis. It examines the Ashura research discourses of this historical period. The main issue of this research is the discovery of essential discourses in Ashura studies in the mentioned historical period. The research method here is qualitative, using Laclau and Mouffe's discourse analysis method. The research results show that the top three discourses of this fifty-year period, which have been flowing either during the same period or at the same time, are: revolutionary, reformative, and emotional discourse. The review of the Ashura literature pictures the influence of the socio-political situation, indicating the challenge of tradition and modernity on these approaches and discourses. Also, the results of the research show an active but hidden discourse. Historians and researchers neglect moral discourse, but this research has addressed it, a discourse that tries to highlight the moral teachings of Ashura and conveys them to society, formulating the society's ethics based on that.