Knowra Jalal Al-e-Ahmad Jalal Al-e-Ahmad Jalal Al-e-Ahmad (1923–1969) was an Iranian writer, translator, and social critic. His essay Gharbzadegi criticized Iran’s dependence on Western technology and culture.
Gharbzadegi : A critique of Westernization that describes cultural dependence on the West as a condition of alienation. Al-e-Ahmad’s best-known essay gave his critique its defining concept.
Pahlavi dynasty : The Iranian royal dynasty that ruled from 1925 until the 1979 revolution. Al-e-Ahmad wrote amid the dynasty’s state-led modernization and cultural policies.
Simone de Beauvoir : A French philosopher and writer whose works include The Second Sex and The Mandarins . Al-e-Ahmad translated de Beauvoir’s fiction into Persian.
Iranian Revolution : The 1979 upheaval that ended the Pahlavi monarchy and established the Islamic Republic of Iran. Revolutionary thinkers drew on debates about cultural dependence that Al-e-Ahmad had helped popularize.
Cultural imperialism : The extension of dominance through the spread or imposition of a society’s cultural values and institutions. Al-e-Ahmad’s account of Western dependence became a major Iranian critique of cultural power.
Westernization : The adoption of Western institutions, practices, technologies, or cultural forms by non-Western societies. It is the social change Al-e-Ahmad examined and challenged.
Iranian Constitutional Revolution : A movement from 1905 to 1911 that sought constitutional government and limits on royal power in Iran. It shaped the political legacy inherited by Al-e-Ahmad’s generation.
Albert Camus : A French writer and philosopher whose works explore absurdity, revolt, and moral responsibility. Al-e-Ahmad translated Camus, connecting Iranian readers with postwar French literature.
Iranian intellectuals : Writers, scholars, and public thinkers who shape debate in Iran’s cultural and political life. Al-e-Ahmad became a prominent model and point of dispute within this milieu.
Dependency theory : A framework explaining underdevelopment through unequal economic and political relations between rich and poor countries. Its analysis of dependence parallels, but does not duplicate, Al-e-Ahmad’s cultural critique.
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