A Creative, Egalitarian Future is Already Here: On the Rising Intellectuals of the Iranian Left

A new generation of Iranian leftists, coming of age during and after the Reform era in the late 1990s and early 2000s, have clearly turned away from Iranian Left’s traditional Russo-Marxist origins. While adhering to the fundamental tenets of Marxist-enabled theory, they prefer more lucid, flexible, creative, and identity-oriented engagements. Reading Gramsci, Althusser, Marcuse, Fanon, Butler, Zizek, Hardt & Negri, Badiou, and Laclau & Mouffe, the rising young, post-revolutionary leftist intellectuals have turned to new social movements oriented activism through which they construct a pluralistic and egalitarian social imaginary. With their creative use of technology media and alternative, "invisible" self-organization, they disregard every limitation imposed on the by the State.