Resistant Ideology and Active Audience Concept: a Review of Reception Studies in Iranian Universities

Abstract

In this article, we studied student dissertations in cultural studies departments and articles of two important journals (Iranian Journal of Cultural Research and Quarterly Journal of Iranian Association for Cultural Studies & Communication). Our main questions are how the condition of reception possibility is assumed in Iranian cultural studies? How we can classify our audiences? In particular, how and who is the audience in Iran? This analysis shows that most of the Iranian cultural studies oriented to urban middle class of Tehran, instead of lower middle class or labor class. The result demonstrates that, most of scholars consider audience as an active subject that resists against text massages. Hence, they overlook the role of ideology and power in construction of subject and audience. As if, a type of optimistic cultural studies was adapted in an authoritarian political context. This approach on resistance is called resistance ideology by the authors; a situation in which we believe resistance is a sort of relieving and appeasing drug for critical cultural scholars.

Keywords

• active audience
• reception studies
• resistance
• ideology of resistance
• iranian cultural studies