The Construction of Social Identity by Collective Memory of Iranian Baha’is in Novels: “The Cradle of the Beast” and “Utab’s Memories”

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between collective memory and social identity in the Iranian Baha’i community through the study of their literary works of recent decades. Utab’s Memories by Rouhieh Fanaian and The Cradle of the Beast by Omid Fallahazad are the only Persian novels penned by Baha’i authors with Baha’i characters after Iran’s 1979 Revolution. Therefore, they will serve as the primary sources for this study. A comparative analysis of these novels yields an understanding of the relationship between collective memory and social identity in the Baha’i community. This article draws on Ross Poole’s notion of memory as a socially constructed capacity in order to explain how the act of retelling memories enables the protagonists of both novels to define and redefine themselves in relation to other members of their Baha’i community as well as the members of the Muslim community. It also draws on Maurice Halbwachs’s collective memory argument, which suggests individual memory presupposes a social framework. Stuart Hall’s notion of a constantly transforming aspect of cultural identity is harnassed in order to better examine stages of transformation and construction in the Baha’i community’s social identity as reflected in these novels.