The categorization of “Iran’s handicrafts” at the intersection of “Westernism discourse” with “Orientalism discourse” in the Qajar period

This article intends to research the categorization and separation of “handicraft of Iran” in relation to the “Westernism” and “Orientalism” discourses in the Qajar discursive atmosphere by discourse analysis method and answers the questions of how “Handicrafts” is categorized at this intersection in the Qajar period, and how did these applied works changed into functional objects in the service of articulating those discourses, and the subject of the “artisan artist” was emerged? The results show that in this period, during Iran’s confrontation with the West under the Westernism discourse, the hegemonic structure of the Orientalism discourse and its actors in Iran such as Murdoch Smith, the actions of Royal discourse subjects (such as Shah) and their cultural and economic decisions to move west, led to the categorization of Iran’s handicrafts based on the “material of the work”, which still dominates this field. In this discursive atmosphere, the works of handicrafts that were previously used in the context of the lives of kings, courts, religious rites and people, turned into objects with an identity function (representing Iranian identity) in the discourse of modernity -for which everything was the object of study- and they served and articulated the Orientalism discourse, and during this process, a rupture appears in the concept of the “artisan” subject and shifts to the “artisan artist” subject.