The Islamic Revolution Approach

The Islamic Revolution Approach

A Sociological Analysis of Generational and Cultural Crisis in Iran after the Islamic Revolution (with Emphasis on the Poems of Ahmad Azizi)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Salman Karami 1
Mostafa , Akbariyan 2
Aliyeh Shakerbeygi 2
1 PhD Student, Department of Sociology, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
The present study aims to provide a sociological analysis of the generational and cultural crisis in Iran after the Islamic Revolution, focusing on the poems of Ahmad Azizi. His poetry reflects the troubled mental structures in both the language and content of his works. The main research question asks how Azizi’s poems represent the social, cultural, and value-based experiences of a generation confronted, in the midst of post-revolutionary transformations, with crises of identity, generational rift, the conflict between tradition and modernity, moral despair, and cultural domination. The hypothesis of this research is that Ahmad Azizi’s poetry, through its symbolic, paradoxical, and satirical language, embodies a form of collective awareness of the contemporary social and cultural crises in Iran. The research method is qualitative, based on interpretive content analysis with the framework of genetic structuralism. Data were purposively collected from selected verses and lines of Azizi’s works and analyzed through three stages of open, axial, and selective coding. Findings reveal that Azizi’s poetry not only mirrors the social conditions of the post-revolutionary era but also functions as a resistant discourse against cultural domination and the collapse of meaning.
Introduction
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 marked a watershed moment in Iran’s social and cultural history, producing profound transformations in identity, values, and intergenerational relations. These transformations generated tensions that scholars have described as a “generational and cultural crisis,” manifested in struggles over tradition, modernity, spirituality, and social cohesion. Literature—particularly poetry—has long served as a mirror of Iranian collective experience and as a platform for resistance against cultural domination. Among contemporary poets, Ahmad Azizi occupies a unique position. His works deploy symbolic, paradoxical, and satirical language to capture the lived experiences of a generation shaped by revolution, war, reconstruction, and cultural uncertainty. This study focuses on Azizi’s poetry as both a literary artifact and a sociological document, aiming to reveal how his texts embody collective awareness of post-revolutionary crises. By adopting Lucien Goldmann’s theory of genetic structuralism, the research investigates the dialectical relationship between the poet’s individual worldview and the social structures of his time, demonstrating how Azizi’s artistic expression reflects the cultural ruptures, identity dilemmas, and generational divides of contemporary Iran.
Materials and Methods
This study employed a qualitative research design, grounded in interpretive content analysis and guided by Goldmann’s genetic structuralism. The data consisted of purposively selected verses and passages from Ahmad Azizi’s major collections, particularly Shenasname-ye Roya (The Identity of a Dream) and Ghatl-e Bid (The Killing of the Willow). Selection criteria focused on poems that explicitly or symbolically engage with social, cultural, and historical themes relevant to the post-revolutionary experience. The analytical process followed three stages of coding:
1.   Open coding – extracting initial concepts directly from the text without pre-imposed categories.
2.   Axial coding – clustering concepts into thematic categories based on semantic and symbolic connections.
3.   Selective coding – synthesizing central themes that reflect the underlying mental structures of a generation in crisis.
To strengthen validity, the study employed triangulation by integrating sociological theory, cultural studies, and literary criticism. Goldmann’s concept of “structural homology” provided a framework to interpret parallels between the internal structures of Azizi’s poetry and the broader social structures of post-revolutionary Iran.
Discussion
The analysis yielded five interrelated themes that illuminate the generational and cultural crises articulated in Azizi’s poetry:
1.   Crisis of Identity and Generational Isolation
Azizi repeatedly portrays figures caught in existential solitude, reflecting the alienation of post-revolutionary youth confronted with conflicting traditions and modern realities. His symbolic imagery of exile, fragmented selfhood, and “yellow hues of sorrow” captures the absence of stable identity and the erosion of intergenerational trust.
2.   Generational Gap and Historical Disorientation
The poems highlight a sense of rupture between the revolutionary generation, imbued with ideological commitment, and subsequent cohorts shaped by globalized media, consumer culture, and skepticism. Azizi’s use of paradoxical time markers—“two hours” and “two centuries”—exposes the simultaneity of immediacy and estrangement, dramatizing the perception of being “left behind by history.”
3.   Tradition versus Modernity Azizi stages a critical dialogue between hollowed-out tradition and commodified modernity. In his verses, the sacred becomes trivialized, while modern consumer culture emerges as a “monster of consumption.” This dual critique resonates with Max Weber’s concept of disenchantment and with critical theory’s analysis of cultural commodification.
4.   Social Despair and Moral Disintegration Through satirical and mystical language, Azizi portrays a society in moral decline, where once-sacred institutions are reduced to parody and spiritual rituals lose their transformative depth. These depictions resonate with Durkheim’s notion of anomie, revealing a collapse of shared ethical frameworks and collective hope.
5.   Critique of Cultural Domination and Alienation Azizi’s most radical contribution lies in his unveiling of cultural domination through irony and grotesque imagery. By juxtaposing national icons such as Cyrus the Great with imagery of degradation, he exposes the manipulation of history and memory for ideological control. His poems thus function as resistant discourses that challenge official narratives and reclaim cultural meaning.
Taken together, these themes suggest that Azizi’s poetry should not be reduced to mystical reverie or ornamental rhetoric; rather, it constitutes a sociological text that encodes the collective anxieties, ruptures, and resistances of an era. Genetic structuralism proves particularly apt for this analysis, as it uncovers the structural homologies between poetic language and social crisis.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates that Ahmad Azizi’s poetry serves as a symbolic repository of the generational and cultural crises that emerged in Iran after the Islamic Revolution. Through a qualitative, interpretive analysis grounded in genetic structuralism, the research identified five thematic dimensions—identity crisis, generational disjunction, tension between tradition and modernity, moral despair, and critique of cultural domination. These dimensions reveal the dialectical interplay between the poet’s worldview and the collective consciousness of a society grappling with rapid historical transformations. By foregrounding the sociological dimensions of Azizi’s verse, the study underscores the capacity of literature to document, critique, and resist cultural breakdown. More broadly, the findings highlight the value of interdisciplinary approaches that bridge sociology, cultural studies, and literary criticism in the study of modern Iranian literature. Ahmad Azizi emerges not merely as a mystical poet but as a cultural critic whose language of paradox, satire, and symbolism transforms poetry into an archive of resistance and collective memory.
Keywords
Ahmad Azizi
generational crisis
cultural rupture
genetic structuralism
social poetry
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