This work looks at the 2009 Iranian show-trials through modern discourses of biopolitics,
sovereignty, and history. I argue that, understood as a theatrical phenomenon, the show
trials are situated within the Foucauldian mode of biopower. The latter entails a shift
from a politics of death to the preservation of the bios. The show-trials also perform a
particularly modern narrative of state sovereignty and teleological history. To consider
them in this way requires a rethinking of Michel Foucault’s theory so as to include
juridico-philosophical discourse within a biopolitical framework. I propose that, as a
performative act, the confessions transform the very thing they are confessing. Through
the work of Jean Baudrillard and Jacque Derrida, I argue that the confessions make
possible a reconceptualization of the political space of sovereignty as simulacrum and
that of the political time of history as hauntology. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/3511 |
| Date | 26 August 2011 |
| Creators | Shohadaei, Setareh |
| Contributors | Walker, R. B. J. |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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