Theory & Event

Abstract:

This article examines contestation over the popular voice in revolutionary Iran. It reconstructs a perceptual politics of sound centered upon the impossibility of hearing universal silence in the oratory of Ali Shariati, the “ideologue” of the 1979 Revolution that culminated with the overthrow of the Pahlavi State. As such, it demonstrates the emergence of a collectivity that shared a silence independent of the state, applying Shariati’s perceptual politics of sound to listen to the cry, Allah-u Akbar or “God is Great.” The article argues that during legitimation crises, political subjects are constituted through different experiences of shared silences.