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Carnival Nonmovements and the Repoliticization of Urban Space in Yazd, Iran
Abstract
While public spaces within the historic urban fabric of Yazd, Iran, have for centuries functioned as a venue for the Muharram mourning rituals, modern urban spaces in the newer parts of the city have in the past few decades hosted an unprecedented form of collective gathering—one that unlike mourning ceremonies are festive, spontaneous, amorphous, and lack organization. These events, that for example include gatherings in celebration of the sport achievements, can be categorized as what Asef Bayat refers to as nonmovements—a form of everyday resistance without recognizable leadership, organization, or ideology. Building upon an earlier quantitative study that I conducted on the participation of the resident of Yazd in such gathering, I shall articulate the result of the survey and ethnographic findings to suggest that urban settings can become a site for the ordinary actors of nonmovement to find their collective agency and channel the energies of resistance into an organized/politicized force for change. By deifying the sociopolitical order of the state, the urban subaltern creates a space in which 1) political authority of the state is withdrawn, 2) its moral authority is suspended, 3) and differences in class, gender, race in momentarily withdrawn. Such events thus qualify as a Bakhtinian Carnivals where the "official seriousness which is dogmatic and hostile to […] change” loses its symbolic authority. Looking back at the interviews with participants in carnival nonmovement occurring at the Shahid Karimi street of Yazd, which I conducted more than a decade ago, I conclude by showing how the public quality of streets allows the civic society to reclaim its right to the city through incremental but pervasive acts of carnival resistance. This carnival experience eventually enables the urban grassroots to mobilize by linking their non-collective struggles to broader social demands. The process in which carnival defiance from authoritative order allows nonmovements to build collective political capital can help understand political demonstrations such as the Green Movement of 2009, which as some argue, was the predecessor to the Arab Spring. It also repositions the political on the urban map by emphasizing the power of public space in building and maintaining a healthy civic society. A rereading of the “right to the city,” as articulated by Henri Lefebvre, brings urban spaces to the forefront of everyday struggles of the urban subaltern. Urban space is thus not a neutral backdrop to socioeconomic resistance, but an actor with power and agency.
Discipline
Architecture & Urban Planning
Geographic Area
Iran
Sub Area
None