Shahrokh Meskoob and the Predicaments of Intellectuals in Politics

Shahrokh Meskoob (1924-2005) occupies a special, and in many ways unique, place among the Iranian intellectuals of his generation. While the principal focus of his work was the study of Persian literary traditions, language, and cultural identity, he was also preoccupied for most of his life with fundamental questions about the relationship between culture and politics, Iran’s encounter with the West and modernity, and the place of ethics in politics. He explored these questions with candor, a keen awareness of Iran’s cultural traditions, and free from the ideological scaffolds that often dominated the discourse of Iranian intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s. This paper presents an analysis of Meskoob’s political views on the role of intellectuals—including himself—in relation to politics, from his early years as a Marxist and member of the Tudeh Party, on to his later rejection of Marxism as well as of the popular discourses of authenticity and gharbzadegi in prerevolutionary Iran, and finally his reflections on the Islamic Revolution.