Mapping Political Discourse of the Iranian Green Movement

• In Event: Discourse, Disasters, and Place

Abstract

Recognizing the creative political communication strategies initiated by the Iranian Green Movement in June 2009 following disputed Presidential election results is imperative in broadening current narrow conceptualizations of “Arab spring” protests. Our analyses map the character of this discourse as creative, in its strategies, and as transnational, in terms of language, distribution, and gendered expectations. Despite emphases in western media on the prominence of digital media in mobilizing activism, the Green Movement worked through a variety of communications approaches, as versatile as traditional sweet desserts concocted in commemoration of the Tragedy of Karbala inscribed with political statements in cinnamon powder, to graffiti on bus sides, street curbs and walls posting marg bar khamnei (death to Khamnei), and resistance slogans written on national currency. With this latter illustration of money stamped with anti-regime messages such as green victory signs, we consider how the material bill serves as a site for resistance against state-controlled artifacts, re-appropriated as symbolic currency in political protests.

Authors

• Karin Gwinn Wilkins, U of Texas - Austin

• Faegheh Shirazi, U of Texas - Austin