An Analysis of Imam Khomeini's Political Discourse in the Islamic Revolution

The Islamic Revolution of Iran is a cultural and intellectual revolution and is the outcome of discursive struggles and hegemony of one discourse against other discourses. The main objective of the present paper is to find out why Imam Khomeini's political discourse, out of all existing discourses, could become hegemonic on the threshold of the revolution. The problem of this paper has been analyzed within the framework of discourse analysis of Laclau and Mauffe. The hypothesis of the present paper is: the discourse of Imam Khomeini became hegemonic because of its capability to employ methods of rejection and topicalization, role playing of the political actors, validity, and accessibility.