The Discourse of the Shiaa Political Jurisprudential Islam in Iran:Institutional Rupture or Epistemic Rupture (from Safavid Dynasty up to Islamic Revolution)?

The Discourse of the Shiaa Political Jurisprudential Islam in Iran in its miscellaneous history has tried to converge the concrete world of the Muslims to the political study of the sacred text. However, the salient point here traces back to the auto-position of knowledge/power regimes in this discourse, which epitomizes the association between constant principles with the variable concrete affairs. In fact, such interactions demonstrate the influence and penetration of the regime of knowledge in this discourse i.e. Shiaa political jurisprudence and its ensuing implications, in continuation, demolition, or reconfiguration of “Power Institutions” in Iran’s history in each era. Accordingly, the current survey aims to shed light on the “Institutional Rupture” in the history of this discourse, rather than “Epistemic Rupture” to attribute the historical changes of this discourse to encounter of regime of knowledge to the inadequacy of applied political institutions. To do so, this article has adopted the Vivien Schmidt’s discursive institutionalism as its method and genealogy/archeology of Foucault to retrieve the epistemic stability of the Discourse of the Shiaa Political Jurisprudential Islam up to the objectification of its nodal point, i.e. “guardianship of jurisconsult” from Safavid Dynasty up to Islamic Revolution.