The Ideological Frame of The Islamic Capitalist State of Iran
I recived this photo recently which was widely distributed on the net and was taken from the point of conjunction between Azadi boulevard and Nvvab boulevard in central Tehran. Facing north the foto also demonstrates the Tohid tunnel which has made news headlines since every night after 10pm many car crashes happen inside it due to the high speed.
This foto convined me that there is an ideological project currently underway in terms of representing the capital Tehran and its development. It includes flaunting with the newly built infrastructure (such as Tohid tonnel and Navvab boulivard) while putting natural scenes like Alborz mountains at the background. The result is a new vision whereby the supposedly exceptional power of the authority is represented through creating a frame of man-made and natural properties of the new Iran. This is a picture which attempts to rival reginal and global powers.
Many people shared this photo and the foto in the last post of this weblog which I deeply regret promoting. Clearly many people like me easily fell into the pleasure of this ideological trap. To correct the mistake I made, I’d like to explain why on the resistive front against the Islamic Capitalist state of Iran, we should criticise and avoid this sort of representation. The foto is take form above from the point of bird-view and aims at creating a meta-individual picture of the scene. However, this point of view is not a collective angle since the people who built it and who enliven it everyday are absent. The Navvab boulivard which was built during the so-called reconstruction period (Sazandegi) is in fact one of the main features of the growth of speculative capital through construction industry which was encouraged by the neo-liberal state of post-war Rafsanjani government. The whole project (like many other towers in Tehran) was built by exploiting the lowest social classes. The workers on the site included migrant workers from impoverished provinces like Kurdistan and Ilam combined with illigal Afghan migrant workers. This construction site, buildings and the tunnel, which were built in less than 5 years, are entirely erected by severe exploitation through liberalization of economy and especially the work force. Everyone on the site including the educated civil engineers worked on temporary contracts which had to be renewed every 3 months and no one benefited from any health insurance, bonuses and retirement plans as they were all associated with permanent employment.
What we see here is the picture of neo-liberal state of Islamic republic building up its infrastructure on severe and inhumane exploitations. We cannot be proud of it until the representation includes everyone who worked on the site, until we bring all the unnameable workers into visibility.
Second, the point where the picture is taken is in a junction which played a crucial role in the 2009 uprising. The junction (which we do not see here, the camera is positioned on it) conjoined the main stream of protesters in Azadi boulivard to the important vein of the city Navvab boulivard which like Vali-Asr St on the north-south direction connects the western part of the city to the central. I have seen many photos which demonstrate protesters on this wonderful junction.It was a quite different scene than this photo which only shows us cars. This current ideological frame is based on the absence of conscious and demanding people of the republic. What we see is obidient cars, capital being produced and transffered smoothly in the city.
What cannot be neglected is the inclusion of nature and the way mountains are captured in this foto. The omnipresence of white mountains embracing everything signifies something here. It is protecting the city hence the capital. In other words, the ideological signification is based on demonstrating how the production and distribution of the capital is supported by god-given and exalted powers which the nature represents. The final impression that the foto intends to make is that the power which rules today’s Tehran is beyond the control of man. It is metaphysical and protected by unknown sources.
On the resistive front it is absolutely necessary to create another frame of today’s Tehran whereby whoever is ideologically ignored will be brought to the visibility. The Islamic Capitalist state attempts to create a vision to feed the nationalist project through crashing working classes and enlarging the middle class fantasies about their place in the globalised world of capitalism. This picture intends to rival Dubaie and GCC states. The ideological picture serves the regional competition about who is more developed and powerful. The Tehran vision is cleverly framed since it includes spiritual powers behind the capital, hence endowing a ritualistic meaning to the all movements for and by the capital.
