During the tumultuous events of the 1978-79 Iranian Revolution, previously suppressed oppositional organizations strove to instill an insurgent consciousness amongst the general populace through a variety of communicative media, including pamphlets, periodicals, audio-cassettes, and banners. Much of the scholarship regarding such political materials has focused on the Khomeinist camp due to their availability and popularity. While the eventual consolidation of state power under Ayatollah Khomeini demonstrates that Islamic-oriented groups most effectively mobilized the populace during the revolutionary era, recent material evidence— such as a new collection of political posters— reveals that various groups, like the Organization of the People’s Fada’i-e Khalq, were also significant instigators of dissent and fermenters of social action. Close examination of the visual ephemera of posters as social agents exposes complex ideological nuances of the 1979 Revolution.
Political posters act as testaments to the political realities in which particular organizations operated, not just visual embodiments of their ideologies. While previous studies of Iranian revolutionary poster art examine their visual content, identifying iconographic motifs and their cultural meanings/significance, these studies do not fully contextualize the poster medium’s specific physicality—its features as a thing, as an object—and modes of production. Working within a material cultural studies framework, this paper will investigate the social life of the Fada’i political poster.
First, this paper will examine the processes of conception and production, delineating the role of the poster object as an inexpensive and expedient communicative instrument aimed at conveying revolutionary zeal to the student population— their primary audience. Following the germinative stages, the Fada’iyan disseminated their posters in the public sphere. By defining the spatial and temporal dimensions of the posters, one can determine the organizational structure of the Fada’i as well as their program of visual propaganda. Finally, the paper will discuss the artistic form of the Fada’i poster, exposing the organization’s ideology. Examining representations of the fallen cadres reveals that the Fada’iyan strove to transform the image of the guerrilla (cherik) into a martyr symbolizing the redemption of the collective.
This line of research encourages the study of physicality and context in addition to the iconography of Iranian poster objects. Furthermore, such a study provides a model for the expansion of the discussion regarding the political landscape of the Revolution by focusing on the visual ephemera produced by Iranian leftist and secular forces.
