Reza Parchizadeh

Reza Parchizadeh is an Iranian scholar, poet, journalist (member of Global Journalism Network), human rights and political activist whose seminal writings on such issues as Iranian democracy and republicanism,  separatism,  cultural revolution, monologism, mysticism, literature, cinema, and media are standard stock in the area of discourse analysis. His conscientious opposition to the Islamic Republic has led to the banning of his writings in Iran and then his exile abroad.

Born on 16 June 1980 in Tehran, Iran, Parchizadeh is a graduate of University of Tehran in English Language and Literature. He is also a Ph.D. student and research assistant in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). As a student activist during the heyday of the Reform Movement in Iran, his participation in the Student Uprising of July 1999 led to his arrest and then expulsion from the Technical College of Shahid Shamsipour where he used to study Electronics. Later on, he was admitted to University of Tehran for a B.A. and then an M.A., where he studied for six years.

His approach to the study of literature, culture and politics has generally been discursive. For instance, in The Ideomythology of the Islamic Republic, he has produced a discursive study of the Islamic Revolution in Iran via an "ideomythological" approach. According to him, an ideomytholoical system is a system wherein "the myths purport to be the perpetuators of ideology, which means, through them, ideology is promoted to the level of mythology so that it could be perpetuated for practical reasons."

Also, in Legatration, War and Crisis Management in the Premises of the Islamic Republic, he has recognized a "crisis-creation-and-management" pattern in the discourse of the Islamic Republic: "[T]he Islamic Republic… is an 'extra-judicial' regime. From its central 'logocentric' principle, the 'Absolute Guardianship of the Jurist,' down to its less substantial elements and attitudes, the Islamic Republic is all in all extra-judicial… Therefore, such a regime that cannot squeeze itself into the tight attire of law is inevitably bound to make the best of the only expediency it finds in store, i.e., apocalyptic behavior: crisis creation and crisis management."

Being a staunch republican, Parchizadeh has many times entered public debates with the Iranian monarchist émigrés who aspire to a restoration of the monarchy under the former crown prince, Reza Pahlavi. Recently, he has exposed Reza Pahlavi’s trip to the Netherlands as being only a politically promotional visit, and not, as Pahlavi’s supporters had claimed and much publicized, a trip to speak before the Hague Tribunal against the violation of human rights in Iran.

In an influential article – which has garnered much debate  – under the title Monarchy Is Essentially Against Human Rights, he has argued that "Monarchy – whether absolute or constitutional – which is shaped around the concept of 'birthright' on the conventional level and metaphysical claims like the possession of the Farreh Izadi [Godly Glow] by the monarch on the mythoreligious level, in its essence emphasizes the segregation among the sons of man, and thus by nature breaches the [egalitarian] content of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Now, if today, in order not to disturb the so-called contemporary 'world order' by taking on the 'monarchic superpowers' not many point to this issue, it does not necessarily entail that we should also concede to a monarchy which is not even on the throne and intends to reinstall itself at any cost."