Necrogeographies
War, Mourning, and the Aesthetics of Allegory in Gohar Dashti's Photographs
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3574144 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sareh Z Afshar (0000-0001-6949-0464, Princeton University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 1-24 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-18 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Interventions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369801x.2025.2529218 |
| OpenAlex | W4414336488 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
Iranian artist Gohar Dashti has stories to tell: of the Iran–Iraq War and its afterlife for her generation, in Today’s Life and War (2008), of bodies and of how bodies collect to create narrative spaces and relay tales of relationships in a constrained world, in Iran, Untitled (2013). These photographic series elucidate how in postrevolutionary Iran, the ubiquitous dissemination of images of martyrs and religious figures has played into the public/private divide, prioritizing certain social practices and affects as a result. The series also highlight the ambiguous nature through which these images operate, i.e., how a self-surveilling opto-architectural order has been imposed by the state upon the everyday practices of Iranians—a “necropticon” that functions through the overmarked nature of martyrdom. The same affects conjured up in “the sociality of mourning,” however, facilitate the formation of alternative modes of collectivity, as mourning and war offer valuable lessons in holding space together, generating rehearsal spaces—the allegorical mosque and battlefield—to practice collective political protest on the street. This model is long familiar to Iranians, as is abiding with the dead, and it is through their coupling that revolutionary counter-moods are born and bred
Allegory · Photography · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Turkey's Politics and Society
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Imagining Warfare, Imagining Welfare
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When everywhere is Karbala
Discipline and Punish
Memory, Mourning, Memorializing
The Deep Time of the Dead
How Native Is a "Native" Anthropologist
| Highly cited | No |
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