"They sentenced us to thirty years of boredom, trying to change the system from within" (pace Leonard Cohen) Simple-minded Web 2.0 gurus latched on to the summer of discontent in Iran as the "Twitter revolution". But such technological determinism belies the long-existing political, cultural and sexual frustration, the sheer libidinal energy of a youthful population finding no outlets for its creativity and desires. It offers thin explanation that does not recognise Iran's repeated loss of political structure and practice and the need in each generation to build them anew, nor the manner in which politics becomes transmuted into forms of communication. Nor does it acknowledge...>>
Social Networking in Iran
Facebook updates, Twitter "tweets", cellphone camera photos and video and SMS instant messages were ubiquitous in the media coverage of this summer's post-presidential election crisis in Iran. But is the medium ever the message? Inaugurating our new regular online-only feature Social Text invited pieces from scholars of Iran, new media, and visual culture, and asked them to think through the contradictory promise of technology. Annabelle Sreberny places new technologies in the context of prior political uses of small media in Iran. Hamid Dabashi explores the sociological and religious resonances of "social networking," proposing that it was not Facebook that saved the Iranian civil rights movement, but the movement that saved Facebook. Nicholas Mirzoeff reads the politics of the circulation and archivization of death as spectacle on the internet. And Elijah Saxon closes with a cautionary note about the enthusiastic embrace of technologies built for surveillance more than social activism.
A rather peculiar reference to a prominent nineteenth century philosopher made Mir Hossein Mousavi's letter to Ayatollah Montazeri of some urgent interest. More than three months into the post-electoral crisis of June 2009, the chief oppositional candidate, who had cried foul soon after the officially declared victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had written a letter to the aging Ayatollah soliciting his help and support for his idea to channel and lead what was now dubbed as the Green Movement in a purposeful direction. "The late Molla Mohsen Faiz Kashani," Mousavi reminded the Ayatollah of the prominent seventeenth century Shi'i philosopher (1598-1680), "in his Olfatnameh/Book of Affinities, considers the ultimate purpose of religious duties to be the attainment of social empathy and...>>
During the events in Iran this summer (2009), I saw a young person wearing a T-shirt featuring the old Gil Scott-Heron line: "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" (1971). The couplet concludes: "the revolution will be live." Or on YouTube. As I don't speak Farsi and I am in no sense an expert on Iran, I will refrain from comment as to whether this was a new revolution, the continuation of a debate about the meaning of Iran's 1979 revolution, or a counter-revolution. Perhaps that multiplicity of options defines a revolutionary moment.I'd like to think instead about what it was that we saw, or more exactly, what was it that we thought we saw? What can this moment tell us...>>
We first met at Evil Genius camp where we came to pitch our tents, huddle around the campfire, and hatch secret plots to use technology for world liberation. The year was 2002, when global justice activism was still at a fevered pitch, when anything seemed possible and everything was urgent. I met Blaine on the first day of camp. Sunburned, young, and whip smart, he and I quickly bonded while discussing the finer points of secure communication. Five years later, we would both leave our tech collectives. I started graduate school, and Blaine became the lead architect of Twitter. I recently asked my friend the awkward question I have been avoiding: How do you reconcile your prior life building secure...>>
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