Representation of the West in Imam Khomeini’s Discourse and the Continuation of Its Impact on Iran’s Foreign Policy

Abstract

Since the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, when Iran became the center of Islamic political movement in the Islamic world, the West led by the US portrayed a hostile image of Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Theorists and leaders of the Islamic Revolution such as Imam Khomeini, in order to counterbalance this move, portrayed the West as their other and the enemy. Ever since, such an image of the West formed Iran’s foreign policy. In this article, using Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analyses method and the post-colonial theoretical model, authors explore Imam Khomeini’s political discourse. The main question in this research is how the West as the other is represented in Imam Khomeini’s discourse, and how such a representation is affected Iran’s post-revolutionary foreign policy. Based on the hypothesis of this research؛ Imam Khomeini began to draw a boundary between the "us" of Iran and "the other" of the West and proceeded to produce an image of the West, which featured signs such as imperialist, exploiter, devil, tyranny, arrogant, and tyrannical, an image that has become the dominant attitude in our foreign policy. It has shaped the way that political activists are confronted with the outside world.

Keywords

• imam khomeini
• the west
• otherness
• representation
• post colonial