Decontextualize

Quantification (or statisticalization) is a set of scientific practices that transforms text statements into numerical ones, depersonalizing and decontextualizing them[…]

In the early years of the Islamic Revolution, the Iranian government tried to control publishers through punitive policies, and then, as they were sure of having purged the publishing sector, gradually left it to its own devices. At first, fearing the repressive state apparatus, the author, the publisher and the audience turned to uncritical, mass-market books. Gradually, there was born an audience that preferred simple, ahistorical, and decontextualized narratives to socio-historical complexities and contradictions. Later, as the political atmosphere gradually opened up, the audiences raised in that historical timeframe remained the audience of the same uncritical works.