فصلنامه مطالعات تاریخ فرهنگی
پیاپی 58 (زمستان 1402)

Iraj Afshar is mostly known as an Iranologist, Manuscript expert and bibliographer; However, a large part of his Iranological and manuscript studies activities is also included under historiographical activity. Like every capable, serious and active history researcher and historian, he used his preferred methods in historical research, and along with his other legacy, he influenced many colleagues of the same generation and subsequent generations in terms of methodology. They learned a lot from him; including how to research human history to achieve a better understanding of the past. For this reason, it is very important to know his methods and tendencies in historiography and historical research. In this article, has been tried to achieve a better understanding of these methods and to give an answer to the question of how Iraj Afshar tried to better understand the reality of Iran's past.

Cultural history is one of the types and branches of historical knowledge that was gradually formed and expanded during the 20th century. Cultural history specifically refers to becoming “culture” a subject in history or having a culturalist approach to history. The emergence and evolution of cultural history took place during different stages. Today, the dominant form of this type of historical knowledge is “New Cultural History” (NCH), which emerged during the 1980s and soon became one of the most prosperous research fields in history, but despite having the attribute “new”, this kind of knowledge of history was based on classical contexts and foundations, without being aware of which, knowledge of new cultural history will not be possible; With this description, in this article, without entering into the controversies related to the description and explanation of the concept of new cultural history, we are looking for an answer to the main question, which are the most important fields and classical foundations of new cultural history? Based on the findings of the research, the classical foundations of modern cultural history can be identified both from the epistemological and methodological aspects; from the aspect of epistemology, the new cultural history is based on the basic distinction that was established in the 19th century between natural sciences and the spiritual / cultural sciences. From the methodological point of view, the new cultural history is based on interpretative-hermeneutic methods that were theorized by cultural science theoreticians from the end of the 18th century and throughout 19th century. Also, great cultural historians in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, such as Burckhardt, Huizinga, Weber and others, wrote classic works in cultural history, which all provided a historical background for the emergence of new cultural history.

There are many photos from the Qajar period, some of which belong to women, especially the women of the Naseri harem. Regardless of the type of women's clothing, the body and face of some of them raises question. Fatness of the body and especially the features of the face raises questions that do not require simple and superficial answers, but a deeper analysis with regard to the cultural history or the history of the visual culture of Iran; Therefore, we can ask: What is the difference between the representation of women in the paintings and photographs of the Qajar period, and what was the function of the hair behind the lips on the face of these women? That this feature is merely an aesthetic issue or a kind of facial makeup and can be generalized to all women or a sexual issue and belongs to nobles, is the chapter of disagreement with previous research and the reason for the necessity of conducting this research; Therefore, the issue should be formulated in the field of sexuality. This research is qualitative and fundamental, and its approach is descriptive-analytical and used in a critical way. The methodology goes back to the concept of “Gene-analysis” and the opinions of Foucault and Lacan, which organizes the theoretical foundations of research in a “psychoanalytic” approach in terms of social and unconsciousness. One of the major differences between the faces of women represented in paintings and photography of this period is the pseudo-mustache, which in a patriarchal society can be considered a “mask” to overcome “lack” and of course signifying the presence of masculine power for some women in the harem, under the concept of “Symbolic male” in front of other women, men and the congregation at the edge or base of the pyramid, under the title of “symbolic female”.

Cultural history is one of the nascent branches of historical sciences that looks at cultural issues from the perspective of history. In this model, which was established after the collapse of political history authority and the emergence of new historical and philosophical approaches, culture as a social heritage is the main subject of a historiographical approach; Among these, one of the most important and ironically neglected fields of study is art historiography, which has a history of more than two centuries in recording the artistic heritage of the world, including Iran; Accordingly, this article is based on the case study of four works of art historiography (two in world art and two in Islamic art) with the aim of identifying the importance of these works to the categories of cultural history in the writing of art history, and to Determine the extent of these historians' attention to the context and cultural contexts of art in Iran and the neglected cases. The article is organized with a qualitative and descriptive-analytical approach and the findings indicate that these works were not the same in regard to cultural categories in the analysis of Iranian art; In terms of quantity, due to the focus of the two books by Gombrich and Gardner on world history, a small volume is devoted to Iranian art in these two collections.  This finding is especially important because Ernst Gombrich himself is one of the pioneers of writing the cultural history of art, but it seems that his approach has been influenced by the very small and limited amount of his attention to the history of Iranian art. The most manifestations of cultural elements are also evident in the book of Islamic Art (Irwin), which can be analyzed by considering the intellectual trends and observing the cultural and social context of Islamic societies in the writing of art history by this historian.

Criticizing the cultural structure of “marriage” in the traditional linguistic sphere and providing a new definition of it was the concern of a number of modernist writers of Iran during the Qajar era. These authors recognized new writing formats as an efficient tool for this purpose. The focal issue of the upcoming research, which is written with the approach of cultural history and focusing on “language” as a tool for cultural change and modernization, is the analysis of the attempt of these modernists to break into olden cultural structures based on marriage and the foundational criticism of these structures by focusing on “the right to choose”. By writing works in emerging literary formats, modern writers introduced into critical literature the issue of marriage and emphasizing the choice as a “right”; In this context, the “translation” factor had a central contribution; sphere of thought of Iran, influenced by the life of modernists in modern environments such as Europe, Caucasus and Istanbul, was exposed to the translation/localization of the works of prominent figures in the field of critical literature to make it easier to pass this difficult path through the translation. The results of the analysis of the content of these texts indicate that the critical representation of traditional marriage has been one of the main aspects of this critical attitude. Trying to break into the accepted authority of the family as a cultural unit in the classic model of marriage, criticizing structures such as honor/shame and cultural units that dominate the category of choice such as relatives and criticizing the dominance of the financial/status attitude over this right, are among the most important components of this activity. The second aspect of this approach is looking at the positive function and proposing an alternative cultural model emerging from modernity based on the right to choose and emphasizing the individual's role in marriage.

The psychohistorical approach to the study of history is an interdisciplinary approach that was born in the middle of the 20th century in America and despite the difficulties and limitations it faced, it gradually managed to take a codified form. Of course, this birth led to many controversies, both theoretically and methodologically, among historians, psychologists, social scientists, and humanities and experimental scientists in general; One of these controversies is related to the link between the psychological matter and the cultural matter; A problem that appears on the way to build a bridge between individual behavior and collective behavior, or to put it better, a bridge between life history, which is more focused on psychological matters, and cultural history, which is more focused on cultural and social contexts. It is the undeniable role of universality that makes people share fundamental experiences despite their cultural differences in contexts and times. As this rule helps us in understanding the subject, it also helps in understanding the past. Based on this, the present article tries to discuss a methodological perspective for the study of cultural history by exploring the psychohistorical approach (not as a complete and alternative approach to other approaches, but as a complementary approach that can bring new insights to the study of history). In this context, an attempt is made to use the conceptual possibilities of psychoanalysis, sociology, and philosophy by focusing on critical history in order to be able to talk about a methodological perspective about a historical understanding of culture. In this framework, the ontology of the subject and having an epistemological perspective about the mechanisms of psychological action finds a close relationship with historical mechanisms and dynamism. This intersection has been deeply considered by psychologists such as Freud, sociologists such as Durkheim, and philosophers such as Nietzsche; With these words, the present article tries to show how the historiography model of approaches based on psychohistory can be expanded and developed, and presents a methodological perspective that can go beyond the duality of micro-macro matter and propose a form of cultural history that In order to be critical, it should be based on an ontological understanding of the subject and the subject's experience.