Iran between “non-Recognition” and “Universalization from Above” (The Struggle for Recognition and the Call for Participation in the Movement of “Universalization from Below”)

This paper seeks to provide a deconstructive account of a familiar term in Iranian terminology, i.e. “ghereshmari” (non-recognition), in order to demonstrate that in the absence of a phenomenological revelation and subsequent emphasis on the implications of this concept in our current historical situation, surrendering to the Eurocentric notion of universalism seems inevitable. By appropriating Derrida’s enigmatic notion of “to come” in a wholly different context, this paper argues that non-recognition is maintained by a logic of auto-immunization: similar to the self-destructive process in which a body’s immune system reacts against its own cells, non-recognition, which is always threatened by its own internal logic, contains its own resources by which it can defend itself in the face of its peril and thereby maintain its status as that which is “to come.” My appropriation of the term “to come,” which succumbs neither to non-recognition nor to the claims of universalization from above, can be called “universalization from below.”