8 - Performativity and Ritual Space in Postrevolutionary Tehran

Summary

When one speaks of performing the state and of performativity, what is being performed, by whom, where and how? If performativity can be understood in terms of bodily practices – of conformity, alterity or resistance – would not the state seek to inform or control performativity, or at least foster its own form of it? A full examination of the question would need to consider, among other things, the means, the materiality and the spatiality of a practice. Furthermore, if the modern subject may perform the state in countermanded terms, would not the state, in turn, seek to thwart such strategies? More accurately, perhaps, the default or prevailing mode of performativity may be the state's, which enjoins and (re)enacts the state itself, as well as enjoining the subject or citizen. Especially in polities that are premised nominally and constitutionally on faith and that associate concepts of citizenship within the practice of a faith, ritual spaces may function as forums for, and perhaps instruments of, civic performativity.

The individual subject may perform the state, whether in conformity or alterity, at what may be called a microlevel. Accordingly, the state, for its part, may inculcate its performance in the citizenry in countless individual instances at a more pervasive mesoor intermediate level. Finally, it is conceivable that the state may seek to rally, induce or compel a collective citizenry – and in some instances, non-citizens and other actors – to perform the state as a strategy of alterity of its own at a macrolevel. In so doing, the polity may integrate into a larger community despite doctrines, principles, practices or statuses that in some circumstances might exclude it.