Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran

Although Iran dominates today’s headlines and figures centrally on the geopolitical chessboard, the most dramatic development in Iran has gone virtually unnoticed: what one Iranian thinker calls a “liberal renaissance” taking place in the country. In Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran, Danny Postel charts the contours of this intellectual upheaval and ventures arguments about its potential implications for Western liberalism. Opening with a provocative critique of the Left’s general state of perplexity over Iran, and offering a critical reconsideration of Foucault’s engagement with the Iranian Revolution, the book concludes with an extended and illuminating dialogue between Postel and the eminent Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo.