Peyman Vahabzadeh

Ph.D. (Simon Fraser University, 2000)
Associate Professor

Peyman Vahabzadeh was born and raised in Iran. He immigrated to Canada in 1989 and feels at home in coastal British Columbia.

Dr. Vahabzadeh received his BA in Sociology and Anthropology and his PhD in Sociology from Simon Fraser University (2000). Vahabzadeh’s dissertation, which was supported by a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and supervised by Dr. Ian Angus, was awarded the SFU Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation Medal for Academic Excellence in the Faculty of Arts (2001). Between 2001 and 2003, Dr. Vahabzadeh held a SSHRC-funded Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Political Science, University of Victoria (under the supervision of Dr. Warren Magnusson). Dr. Vahabzadeh has taught sociology, political science, CSPT, and humanities at SFU, UVic and Brock University (Ontario).

Dr. Vahabzadeh’s lifelong interest is in human (collective) action and social movements. He continues to study the generative power of social movements for societal renewal and the conditions under which individuals become actors, activists, or agents—in short, the historical individual. Dr. Vahabzadeh uses a rather unique approach to study this vast and complex area. His approach is called radical (or temporal) phenomenology, a recent extension of the long tradition of phenomenology and phenomenological sociology. Radical phenomenology places acting and thinking in epochal frames, showing that truth has a temporal character, conditioned by different eras offering different, and changing, possibilities for acting and thinking. Combined with his interest in Continental European thought in the nineteenth and twentieth century, phenomenology has become the guiding theory that informs the scholarly and non-scholarly works of Dr. Vahabzadeh.

His areas of research and teaching include: classical and contemporary social theory, social movements, phenomenology, exile, and Iranian Studies. Dr. Vahabzadeh teaches the core undergraduate and graduate theory courses in the Department. He is the author of Articulated Experiences: Toward A Radical Phenomenology of Contemporary Social Movements (State University of New York Press, 2003) and A Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy and the Fadai Discourse of National Liberation in Iran, 1971-1979 (Syracuse University Press, 2010), the guest editor of the special issue of West Coast Line on "Writing Rupture: Iranian Emigration Literature" (2003) and the co-guest editor of the special issue of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory on "Democracy, Religion, and the Politics of Fright" (2007). Dr. Vahabzadeh has also authored six books in Persian in poetry, fiction, literary criticism, and memoirs. He has been a regular commentator on Iranian affairs in Canadian media. Dr. Vahabzadeh is an advocate of democratic movements and human rights in Iran and a defender of non-violence and alternative social organization. His essays, poems, short stories, memoirs, literary criticisms, and interviews have appeared in English, Persian, German, and Kurdish.

Bookshelf

Publications

Books

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2010. A Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy and the Fadai Discourse of National Liberation in Iran, 1971-1979 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press).

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2003. Articulated Experiences: Toward A Radical Phenomenology of Contemporary Social Movements (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press).

Edited Journal Issues

Peyman Vahabzadeh (Guest Editor). 2003. West Coast Line. Special issue on “Writing Rupture: Iranian Emigration Literature.”

Geoffry W. Robbin & Peyman Vahabzadeh (Guest Editors). 2007. Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory. Special issue on “Democracy, Religion, and the Politics of Fright.”

Refereed Articles

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2011. “The Rise of Militant Left in Iran and the Theories of National Liberation.” Revolutionary History 10:3 (Spring 2011).

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2011. “Secularism and the Iranian Militant Left: Cultural Issues or Political Misconception?” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 31:1 (March 2011).

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2009. “Ultimate Referentiality: Radical Phenomenology and the New Interpretive Sociology.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 35:4 (May 2009). 447-65.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2008. “Where Will I Dwell? A Sociology of Literary Identity within Iranian Diaspora.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 28:3 (Fall 2008). 495-512.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2007. “The Conditions of Subalternity: Reflections on Subjectivity, Experience and Hegemony.” Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes 3:2 (Fall 2007). 93-113.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2007. “Measure and Democracy in the Age of Politics of Fright.” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 8:2 (Spring 2007). 8-27.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2007. “Mostafa Sho‘aiyan: The Maverick Theorist of the Revolution and the Failure of Frontal Politics in Iran.” Iranian Studies 40:3 (June 2007). 405-425.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2007. “Mustafa Shu‘a‘iyan and Fada`iyan-i Khalq: Frontal Politics, Stalinism, and the Role of Intellectuals in Iran.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 34:1 (April 2007). 43-61.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2006. “Reflections on A Diremptive Experience and Four Theses on Origins and Exile.” Journal for Interdisciplinary Crossroads 3:1 (April 2006). 163-181.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2005. “Of Hegemonies Yet to Be Broken: Rhetoric and Philosophy at the Age of Accomplished Metaphysics.” The European Legacy 10:4 (June 2005). 375-388.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2003. “Be-ing E-migration Poetry.” West Coast Line 39 (36/3, Spring 2003). 129-135.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2001. “A Critique of Ultimate Referentiality in the Social Movement Theory of Alberto Melucci.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 26:4 (December 2001). 611-633.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 1996. “Space, Identity, and Bilingual Poetry: Rethinking Iranian ‘Emigration Poetry’.” The Literary Review 40:1 (Fall 1996). 42-58.

Book Chapters

Peyman Vahabzadeh. forthcoming. “Civil Society in Iran: The Story of a Century-Long Struggle,” in Ramin Jahanbegloo (ed.), Civil Society and Democracy in Iran (2011).

Peyman Vahabzadeh. forthcoming. “Oblivion of Origins: Of Hegemonic Universals and Hybrid Civilizations,” in Andy Knight and Mojtaba Mahdavi (eds.), Towards “the Dignity of Difference”: Neither “the Clash of Civilizations” nor “the End of History” (Tokyo: United Nations University, 2011).

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2010. “Reflections on a Diremptive Experience and Four Theses on Origins and Exile,” in David Kettler (ed.), The Limits of Exile (Glienicke, Germany: Galda). 163-80. Reprint from an earlier journal paper.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2009. “On the Merits of Orientalism: A Heretical Essay in the Sociology of Knowledge,” in Sean P. Hier, Daniel Lett, & B. Singh Bolaria (eds.), Racism and Justice: Critical Dialogue on the Politics of Identity, Inequality, and Change (Halifax: Fernwood Press). 94-106.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2007. “Pishvazheh: Takandishi-ye Sho‘aiyan va barkhord-e chap-e a‘ini” [“Foreword: Sho‘aiyan’s Singular Thought and the Reaction of the Doctrinal Left”], in Cosroe Chaqueri (ed.), Mostafa Sho‘aiyan, Hasht nameh beh cherik’ha-ye Fadai khalq: Naqd-e yek manesh-e fekri [Mostafa Sho‘aiyan, Eight Letters to the People’s Fadai Guerrillas: Critique of An Approach] (Tehran: Nashr-e Ney). iv-xix.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2004. “The Space Between Voices: Nima Yushij and the ‘Receding Signified’,” in Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak & Kamran Talattof (eds.), Essays on Nima Yushij: Animating Modernism in Persian Poetry (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill). 193-219.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2001. “Technological Liberalism and the Anarchic Actor,” in Ian Angus (ed.), Anarcho-Modernism: Toward A New Critical Theory, In Honour of Jerry Zaslove (Vancouver: Talon Books). 341-350.

Review Essays

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2007. “Globalization and the New Modes of Activism.” Labour/Le Travail 59 (Spring 2007). 211-224.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2005. “The Secular Good in Denial: The Lesser Evil and the Politics of Fright.” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 6:2 (April 2005). 117-129.

Peyman Vahabzadeh. 2005. “Bizhan Jazani and the Problems of Historiography of the Iranian Left.” Iranian Studies 38:1 (March 2005). 167-178.