Iranian Americans: The-Making-Of

An exciting, new exhibit opened at UCLA's Fowler Museum over the weekend: Document: Iranian Americans in Los Angeles. It's based around photographs of and by Iranians in LA, and what makes it really interesting is the focus on "the second generation." Since the 90s Bozorgmehr, Mahdi, and others have been calling for further understanding, documentation, and analysis on the second generation, but over the years very few have gone there. On the other hand, I can see this starting to change as second generation Iranian Americans start studying, documenting, and representing themselves, and in doing so, construct their "selves" in idiosyncratically second-generation ways, which are at times contiguous with, and other times distinct from, their parents' generation. All this is part of the ongoing process of making and remaking Iranian American-ness that's happening today in unique ways.



Multi-vocality is a strong theme in the work of involved members of the second generation representing Iranian American-ness. The show at Fowler is likely a great example of this. And that's why I'm particularly proud of my friend and fellow anthropology doctoral student, Amy Malek, for producing and curating this show, and also deeply disappointed about my own absence from LA and therefore the event. Amy and others I've talked to are stressing the need to include a wide range of different voices when it comes to representation, casting aside simple caricatures (which often get easy attention), and making space for the range of variation among Iranian Americans in LA. That's what makes this more than the simple documentation of a bounded group or population; it's the making of, rethinking of, and extending of a "community's" boundaries to include a varied and dynamic new generation.

I can't help but see this as part and parcel of a wider shift in which the Internet has played an important role. It was the many North American-based Iranian bloggers I interviewed online back in 2006 who turned me on to it first. Since then I've kept seeing how the Internet offers unique ways to represent Iranian Americans by adding nuance, humanity, and accuracy to important public debates concerning Iranians in America and beyond. Above all, they allow the voices of many (some previously unheard) a space to come out and engage. But the Internet's in-built multi-vocality is one thing; reflexively curating and purposefully bringing together different voices is another. This additional layer of consciously co-ordinating multi-vocality as included in community rather that dividing it is the value added by a younger generation with the right capacities and resources.

It goes to show that the public existence of varied voices among Iranian Americans is not, in itself, necessarily something that makes Iranian Americans in general or the second generation in particular see themselves as part of a varied community. It's curating these voices - both online and offline - in styles that create and recreate Iranian American subjectivities, which cultivates our senses of community; not the voices that are ultimately important, but the conversations they are able to be a part of.

The "crisis of representation," with which so many Anthropologists struggle(d), suggests foregrounding multi-vocality as the only way to properly write about people and cultures. The postmodern/linguistic/literary turn that was largely responsible for this within academia stressed that there's no-one with sufficient authority to represent the 'truth' about people of a certain background, group, or community. Problematizing all representations was embraced wholeheartedly, leaving no representation as more "real" than another.

But in the real world (if we can agree there still is such thing at least rhetorically speaking :)) what does this do for organization, mobilization, and people's sense of "community" other than make it more fragmented, insecure, and uncertain? More than a need to just simply gaze across a range of diversity and point out that it exists, there seems a desire to frame what it means to be Iranian and American within that diversity. And photography exhibits, blogs, and other creative spaces seem to be a part of how all this is taking shape as part of a search for identity and a sense of community in an increasingly multi-vocal and uncertain world.

But what do I know, I haven't seen the exhibit. It's open till August 22nd, so feel free to tell me what you think once you have.