Objective: Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s theoretical framework, this
study examines the role of the cassette tape in the Islamic Revolution of
Iran as an aesthetic-political object. The central research question is: ‘How
did sound and the cassette tape, within the context of the Islamic Revolution,
redistribute the sensible by disrupting the police order governing the
distribution of sound and speech, thereby facilitating the emergence of political
subjectivity and the formation of a new configuration of politics?’
This question is situated within a broader conceptual necessity: understanding
the Islamic Revolution cannot be adequately explained merely by reference
to classical theories of revolution; rather, the ontological layer of
sensory, auditory, and perceptual transformations must also be examined.
This dimension has received comparatively limited attention in existing
scholarship.
Methodology: Adopting an analytical-theoretical approach and drawing on
the foundational concepts of Jacques Rancière’s thought, including the redistribution
of the sensible, the police order, and politics, this study analyzes
the position of cassette-tape media in the transformations associated with
the Islamic Revolution.
Findings: The cassette tape functioned as an apparatus for the redistribution
of the sensible: “A phenomenon capable of shifting the boundary between
legitimate and inaudible voices and enabling political action by bodies
and subjects whom the Pahlavi police order had relegated to marginal
positions.” It enabled these subjects to move from the status of silent bodies
to that of subjects endowed with logos. The findings indicate that this transition
constituted the political moment in the Rancièrian sense: a moment
in which the police order governing the distribution of sound was disrupted
and equal participation in the political field became possible. Unheard
discourses became legitimate political speech. This new discourse carried
a form of aesthetics of revolutionary speech that, through a different language,
constructed a new order of hearing and understanding and brought
the lived experience of suffering, resistance, and faith into the public sphere.
Conclusion: An examination of the role of cassette tapes demonstrates
that this medium generated a political moment in the Rancièrian sense: a
moment in which the police order governing the distribution of sound was
disrupted and, through the redistribution of the sensible, transformed the
possibilities for political agency. This perceptual and auditory transformation
played a key role in the formation of a new configuration of politics
during the Islamic Revolution of Iran.