Visual Culture, Religion, and Politics in the Modern Iranian Public Sphere: The resemiotization of Twelver Shiite Culture in the Mobilization of Protest

Abstract

To contest the results of the Iranian presidential election in 2009, mobilize
street protest, and document the regime’s responses protesters disseminated
posters, photographs, and films on social media platforms. In this article I discuss
how their use of signs associated with Twelver Shiite visual, material and performative
culture were used to mobilize opposition against authorities who claim to
be acting as guardians of a society based on the creed. By giving attention to signs’
coexisting discursive contexts and modality, the study seeks to advance the conceptualization
of ‘recontextualization’ and ‘resemiotization’ in the semiotic study
of cultural codes, and to connect the study of Twelver Shiite visual, material and
performative culture to the sphere of public discourse in modern Iran.