Hussein Alatas and the Captive Mind: Intellectual Imperialism in Iran

Seyed Hossein Alatas is one of the few postcolonial thinkers who draws our attention to the idea of "mental captivity and intellectual imperialism." While many thought that decolonization was complete with the disintegration of Western colonies, he pointed to the issue of mental captivity and the presence of a captive mind—"an uncritical and imitative mind dominated by an external source, whose thinking is deflected from an independent perspective "—perpetuating the dominance of Eurocentric paradigms and intellectual imperialism. This article attempts to map out the reception of the captive mind in Iran. To map this out, I will discuss how Alatas’ concept of ‘the captive mind’ traveled to Iran and then how it is received in Iran of the post-1979 Revolution. This article highlights how discourses such as Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s Gharbzadegi and Samad Behrangi’s Amrikazadegi shape the reception of Alatas’ captive mind in Iran. The writings of these thinkers lead us to the themes of intellectual imperialism and academic corruption in the context of Iranian education. Then this article will use the concept of the captive mind as an analytical tool to explore the causes of academic corruption.