Preempting the past: How the future space unfolds in political discourse of Iran

Abstract

This paper is to analyse 180 speeches of the Iranian Supreme Leader (SL), Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, from 2005 to 2013 which are concentrated upon characterising the threats of doshman [enemy] and depicting the future space of Iran. Adopting the Proximisation Theory, the investigation of the Iranian Supreme Leader’s speeches reveals that doshman poses futuristic spatial-axiological threats to the central values, programmes and policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). Furthermore, the future space of Iran is figured in multifarious policies to preempt the construed spatial-axiological threats of doshman. In this regard, I indicated that the Supreme Leader resorts to the characterisation of the pre-revolutionary states of affairs (the past) to analogously characterise the opposite futures space of the IRI. Therefore, the SL programmes to mould the futures based on the present time values and programmes in order to abort the re-birth of the past. It was also indicated that the future space in this discourse serves to preempt the reification of the construed threats in the future.