Abstract

This article discusses the relationship between politics and experience in contemporary Iran through an analysis of two forms of temporality in the postelection protests of 2009. Street demonstrations were citations of words, images and actions of the 1979 revolution. Citations actualized the revolution but also disavowed its past as currently configured. This temporality unfolded in parallel to that of video production. Videos were the "here and now" of experience while also its mediated repetition. These two temporalities define the conditions for politics in Iran: once the revolution has already happened and messianism consumed, the expectations of a time to come have the structure of a constitutive indistinction.