#Asef Bayat | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thedeathofmahsaaminion16sep · 1 year

Text

The death of Mahsa Amini on 16 September 2022, while in police custody for wearing an “improper” hijab, has triggered what has become the most severe and sustained political upheaval ever faced by the Islamist regime in Iran. Waves of protests, led mostly by women, broke out immediately, sending some two-million people into the streets of 160 cities and small towns, inspiring extraordinary international support.1 The Twitter hashtag #MahsaAmini broke the world record of 284 million tweets, and the UN Human Rights Commission voted on November 24 to investigate the regime’s deadly repression, which has claimed five-hundred lives and put thousands of people under arrest and eleven hundred on trial. The regime’s suppression and the opponents’ exhaustion are likely to slow down the protests, but unlikely to end the uprising. For political life in Iran has embarked on an uncharted and irreversible course.

How do we make sense of this extraordinary political happening? This is neither a “feminist revolution” per se, nor simply the revolt of Generation Z, nor merely a protest against the mandatory hijab. This is a movement to reclaim life, a struggle to liberate free and dignified existence from an internal colonization. As the primary objects of this colonization, women have become the major protagonists of the liberation movement.

About the Author

Asef Bayat is professor of sociology, and Catherine and Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His latest books include Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring (2021).

View all work by Asef Bayat

Since its establishment in 1979 Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s, the Islamic Republic has been a battlefield between hardline Islamists who wished to enforce theocracy in the form of clerical rule (velayat-e faqih), and those who believed in popular will and emphasized the republican tenets of the constitution. This ideological battle has produced decades of political and cultural strife within state institutions, during elections, and in the streets in daily life. The hardline Islamists in the nonelected institutions of the velayat-e faqih have been determined to enforce their “divine values” in political, social, and cultural domains. Only popular resistance from below and the reformists’ electoral victories could curb the hardliners’ drive for total subjugation of the state, society, and culture.

For two decades after the 1990s, elections gave most Iranians hope that a reformist path could gradually democratize the system. The 1997 election of the moderate Mohammad Khatami as president, following a notable social and cultural openness, was seen as a hopeful sign. But the hardliners saw the reform project as an existential threat to clerical rule, and they fought back fiercely. They sabotaged Khatami’s government, suppressed the student movement, shut down the critical press, and detained activists. After 2005, they went on banning reformist parties, meddling in the polls, and barring rival candidates from participating in the elections. The Green Movement—protesting the fraud against the reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in the 2009 presidential election—was the popular response to such a counterreform onslaught.

The Green revolt and the subsequent nationwide uprisings in 2017 and 2019 against socioeconomic ills and authoritarian rule profoundly challenged the Islamist regime but failed to alter it. The uprisings caused not a revolution but the fear of revolution—a fear that was compounded by the revolutionary uprisings against the allied regimes in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, which Iran helped to quell.2 Against such critical challenges, one would expect the Islamist regime to reinvent itself through a series of reforms to restore hegemony. But instead, the hardliners tightened their grip on political power in a bid to ensure their unrestrained hold over power after the supreme leader expires. Thus, once they took over the presidency in 2021 and the parliament in 2022 through rigged elections—specifically, through the arbitrary vetoing of credible rival candidates—the hardliners moved to subjugate a defiant people once again. Extending the “morality police” into the streets and institutions to enforce the “proper hijab” has been only one measure—but it was the one that unleashed a nationwide uprising in which women came to occupy a central place.

Women did not rise up suddenly to spearhead a revolt after Mahsa Amini’s death. Rather, it was the culmination of years of steady struggles against a systemic misogyny that the postrevolution regime established. When that regime abolished the relatively liberal Family Protection Laws of 1967, women overnight lost their right to initiate divorce, to assume child custody, to become judges, and to travel abroad without the permission of a male guardian. Polygamy came back, sex segregation was imposed, and all women were forced to wear the hijab in public. Social control and discriminatory quotas in education and employment compelled many women to stay at home, take early retirement, or work in informal or family businesses.

A segment of Muslim women did support the Islamic state, but others fought back. They took to the streets to protest the mandatory hijab, organized collective campaigns, and lobbied “liberal clerics” to secure a women-centered reinterpretation of religious texts. But when the regime extended its repression, women resorted to the “art of presence”—by which I mean the ability to assert collective will in spite of all odds, by circumventing constraints, utilizing what exists, and discovering new spaces within which to make themselves heard, seen, felt, and realized. Simply, women refused to exit public life, not through collective protests but through such ordinary things as pursuing higher education, working outside the home, engaging in the arts, music, and filmmaking, or practicing sports. The hardship of sweating under a long dress and veil did not deter many women from jogging, cycling, or playing basketball. And in the courts, they battled against discriminatory judgments on matters of divorce, child custody, inheritance, work, and access to public spaces. “Why do we have to get permission from Edareh-e Amaken [morality police] to get a hotel room, whereas men do not need such authorization?” a woman wrote in rage to the women’s magazine Zanan in 1988.3 Then, scores of unmarried women began to leave their family homes to live on their own. By 2010, one in three women between the ages of 20 and 35 had their own household. Many of them undertook what came to be known as “white marriage” (ezdevaj-e sefid), that is, moving in with their partners without formally marrying. These seemingly mundane desires and demands, however, were deemed to redefine the status of women under the Islamic Republic. Each step forward would establish a trench for a further advance against the patriarchy. The effect could snowball.

While many women, including my mother, wore the hijab voluntarily, for others it represented a coercive moralizing that had to be subverted. Those women began to push back their headscarves, allowing some of their hair to show in public. Over the years, headscarves gradually inched back further and further until finally they fell to the shoulders. Officials felt, time and again, paralyzed by this steady spread of bad-hijabi among millions of women who had to endure daily humiliation and punishment. With the initial jail penalty between ten days and two months, showing inches of hair had ignited decades of daily street battles between defiant women and multiple morality enforcers such as Sarallah(wrath of Allah), Amre beh Ma’ruf va Nahye az Monker(command good and forbid wrong), and Edareh Amaken(management of public places). According to a police report during the crackdown on bad-hijabis in 2013, some 3.6 million women were stopped and humiliated in the streets and issued formal citations. Of these, 180,000 were detained. But despite such treatment, women did not relent and eventually demanded an end to the mandatory hijab. Thus, over the years and through daily struggles, women established new norms in private and public life and taught them to their children, who have taken the mantle of their elders to push the struggle forward. The hardliners now want to halt that forward march.

This is the story of women’s “non-movement”—the collective and connective actions of non-collective actors who pursue not a politics of protest but of redress, through direct actions. Its aim is not a deliberate defiance of authorities but to establish alternative norms and life-making practices—practices that are necessary for a desired and dignified life but are denied to women. It is a slow but steady process of incremental claim-making that ultimately challenges the patriarchal-political authority.4 And now, that very “non-movement,” impelled by the murder of one of its own, Mahsa Amini, has given rise to an extraordinary political upheaval in which woman and her dignity, indeed human dignity, has become a rallying point.

Reclaiming Life

Today, the uprising is no longer limited to the mandatory hijab and women’s rights. It has grown to include wider concerns and constituencies—young people, students and teachers, middle-class families and workers, residents of some rural and poor communities, and those religious and ethnic minorities (Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, and Baluchis) who, like women, feel like second-class citizens and seem to identify with “Woman, Life, Freedom.” For these diverse constituencies, Mahsa Amini and her death embody the suffering that they have endured in their own lives—in their stolen youth, suppressed joy, and constant insecurity; in their poverty, debt, and drought; in their loss of land and livelihoods.

The thousands of tweets describing why people are protesting point time and again to the longing for a humble normal life denied to them by a regime of clerical and military patriarchs. For these dissenters, the regime appears like a colonial entity—with its alien thinking, feeling, and ruling—that has little to do with the lives and worldviews of the majority. This alien entity, they feel, has usurped the country and its resources, and continues to subjugate its people and their mode of living. “Woman, Life, Freedom” is a movement of liberation from this internal colonization. It is a movement to reclaim life. Its language is secular, wholly devoid of religion. Its peculiarity lies in its feminist facet.

But the feminism of the movement is not antagonistic to men. Rather, it embraces the subaltern, humiliated, and suffering men. Nor is this feminism reducible to the control of one’s body and the forced hijab—many traditional veiled women also identify with “Woman, Life, Freedom.” The feminism of the movement, rather, is antisystem; it challenges the systemic control of everyday life and the women at its core. It is precisely this antisystemic feminism that promises to liberate not only women but also the oppressed men—the marginalized, the minorities, and those who are demeaned and emasculatedby their failure to provide for their families due to economic misfortune. “Woman, Life, Freedom,” then, signifies a paradigm shift in Iranian subjectivity—recognition that the liberation of women may also bring the liberation of all other oppressed, excluded, and dejected people. This makes “Woman, Life, Freedom” an extraordinary movement.

Movement or Moment

Extraordinary yes, but is this a movement or a passing moment? Postrevolution Iran has witnessed numerous waves of nationwide protests. But this current episode seems fundamentally different. The Green revolt of 2009 was a powerful prodemocracy drive for an accountable government. It was largely a movement of the urban middle class and other discontented citizens. Almost a decade later, in the protests of 2017, tens of thousands of Iranian workers, students, farmers, middle-class poor, creditors, and women took to the streets in more than 85 cities for ten days before the government’s crackdown halted the rebellion.5 Some observers at the time considered the events a prelude to revolution. They were not. For although connected and concurrent, the protests were mostly concerned with sectoral claims—delayed wages for workers, drought for farmers, lost savings for creditors, and jobs for the young. As such, theirs was not a collective action of a united movement but connective actions of parallel concerns—a simultaneity of disparate protest actions that only the new information technologies could facilitate.A larger uprising in December 2019, which was triggered by a 200 percent rise in the price of gasoline, did see a measure of collective action, as different protesting groups—in particular the urban poor and the middle-class poor as well as the educated unemployed and underemployed—displayed a good degree of unity. Their central grievances concerned not only cost-of-living issues but also the absence of any prospects for the future. The protesters came largely from the marginalized areas of the cities and the provinces and followed radical tactics such as setting banks and government offices on fire and chanting antiregime slogans.

The current uprising has gone substantially further in message, size, and make-up. It has taken on a qualitatively different character and dynamics. This uprising has brought together the urban middle class, the middle-class poor, slum dwellers, and different ethnicities, including Kurds, Fars, Lors, Azeri Turks, and Baluchis—all under the banner of “Woman, Life, Freedom.” A collective claim has been created—one that has united diverse social groups to not only feel and share it, but also to act on it. With the emergence of the “people,” a super-collective in which differences of class, gender, ethnicity, and religion temporarily disappear in favor of a greater good, the uprising has assumed a revolutionary character. The abolition of the morality police and the mandatory hijab will no longer suffice. For the first time, a nationwide protest movement has called for a regime change and structural socioeconomic transformation.

Does all this mean that Iran is on the verge of another revolution? At this point in time, Iran is far from a “revolutionary situation,” meaning a condition of “dual power,” where an organized revolutionary force backed by millions would come to confront a crumbling government and divided security forces. What we are witnessing today, however, is the rise of a revolutionary movement—with its own protest repertoires, language, and identity—that may open Iranian society to a “revolutionary course.”

In the first three months after Mahsa Amini’s death, two-million Iranians from all walks of life staged some 1,200 protest actions that spilled over 160 cities and small towns. Friday prayer sermons in the poor province of Sistan and Baluchistan, as well as funerals and burials for victims of the regime’s crackdown in Kurdistan, have brought the most diverse crowds into the streets. University and high-school students have staged sit-ins, defied the mandatory hijab and sex segregation, and performed other courageous acts of resistance, while lawyers, professors, teachers, doctors, artists, and athletes expressed public support and sometimes joined the dissent.6 In cities and small towns, political graffiti decorated building walls before being repainted by municipality agents. The evening chants from balconies and rooftops in the residential neighborhoods continued to reverberate in the dark sky of the cities.

Security forces were frustrated by a mode of protest that combined street showdowns and guerrilla tactics—the sudden and simultaneous outbreak of multiple evening demonstrations in different urban quarters able to disappear, regroup, and reappear again. The fearlessness of these street rebels, many of them young women, overwhelmed the authorities. A revealing video of a security agent showed his astonishment about backstreet young protesters who “are no longer afraid of us” and the neighbors who “attack us with a barrage of rocks, chairs, benches, flowerpots,” or anything heavy from their windows or balconies.7

The disproportionate presence of the young—women and men, university and high school students—in the streets of the uprising has led some to interpret it as the revolt of Generation Z against a regime that is woefully out of touch. But this view overlooks the dissidence of older generations, the parents and families that have raised, if not politicized, these children and mostly share their sentiments. A leaked government survey from November 2022 found that 84 percent of Iranians expressed a positive view of the uprising.8 If the regime allowed peaceful public protests, we would likely see more older people on the streets. But it has not. The extraordinary presence of youth in the street protests has largely to do with the “youth affordances”—that is, energy, agility, education, dreams of a better future, and relative freedom from family responsibilities—which make the young more inclined to street politics and radical activism. But these extraordinary young people cannot cause a political breakthrough on their own. The breakthrough comes only when ordinary people—parents, children, workers, shopkeepers, professionals, and the like—join in to bring the spectacular protests into the social mainstream.

Although some workers have joined the protests through demonstrations and labor strikes, a widespread labor showdown has yet to materialize. This may not be easy, because the neoliberal restructuring of the 2000s has fragmented the working class, undermined workers’ job security (including in the oil sector), and diminished much of their collective power. In their place, teachers have emerged as a potentially powerful dissenting force with a good degree of organization and protest experience. On 14 February 2023, twenty civil and professional associations, led by the teachers’ syndicate, issued a joint “charter of minimum demands” that included the release of all political prisoners, free speech and assembly, abolition of the death penalty, and “complete gender equality.”9 Shopkeepers and bazaar merchants have also joined the opposition. In fact, they surprised the authorities when at least 70 percent of them, according to a leaked official report, went on strike in Tehran and 21 provinces on 15 November 2022 to mark the 2019 uprising.10 Not surprisingly, security forces have increasingly been threatening to shut down their businesses.

The Regime’s Response

The regime is acutely aware and apprehensive of the power of the social mainstream. It has made every effort to prevent mass congregations on the scale of Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring when protesters could see, feel, and show the rulers the enormity of their social power. Protesters in the Arab Spring fully utilized existing cultural resources, such as religious rituals and funeral processions, to sustain mass protests. Most critical were the Friday prayers, with their fixed times and places, from which the largest rallies and demonstrations originated. But Friday prayer is not part of the current culture of Iran’s Shia Muslims (unlike the Sunni Baluchies). Most Iranian Muslims rarely even pray at noon, whether on Fridays or any day. In Iran, the Friday prayer sermons are the invented ritual of the Islamist regime and thus the theater of the regime’s power. Consequently, protesters would have to turn to other cultural and religious spaces such as funerals and mourning ceremonies or the Shia rituals of Moharram and Ramadan.

But the clerical regime would not hesitate to prohibit even the most revered cultural and religious traditions if it deemed them a threat to the “system.” During the Green revolt of 2009, the ruling hardliners banned funerals and prevented families from holding mourning ceremonies for their loved ones. On occasion, authorities even prohibited Shia rituals. This is not surprising. Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founding father, had already decreed that the supreme faqih held “absolute authority” to disregard any precept or law, including the constitution or religious obligations such as daily prayers “in the interest of the state.”11 Iran’s clerical rulers would not hesitate to prohibit these cultural and religious rituals, precisely because of their exclusive claim on them. Under this perverse authority, the regime would delegitimize and discard values and practices from which it derives its own legitimacy. For it views itself as the sole legitimate body able to determine what is sacred and what is sin, what is authentic, what is fake, what is right, and what is wrong.

For the regime agents,mass demonstrations of spectacular scale would sound the call of revolution. They do not wish to hear it but cannot help feeling it. For a hum and whisper of revolution is already in the air. It can be heard and felt in homes, at private gatherings, and in the streets; in the rich body of art, literature, poetry, and music borne of the uprising; and in the media and intellectual debates about the meaning of the current moment, organization and strategy, the question of violence, and the way forward.12 The regime has responded with denial, ridicule, anger, appeasement, and widespread violence.

The daily Keyhan, close to the office of the supreme leader, has charged the protesters with wanting to establish “forced de-veiling” and warned that the “Islamic revolution will not go away. . . . So, be angry and die of your fury.”13 The commanders of the key security forces—the military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij militia, and the police—issued a joint statement on 5 October 2022 declaring their loyalty to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And the hardline parliament passed an emergency bill on 9 October 2022 “adjusting” the salaries of civil servants, including 700,000 pensioners who in late 2017 had turned out in force during a wave of protests. Newly employed teachers were to receive more secure contracts, sugarcane workers their unpaid wages, and poor families a 50 percent increase in the basic-needs subsidy. Meanwhile, the speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, confirmed that he was prepared to implement “any reform and change for public interest,” including “change in the system of governance” if the protesters abandoned demands for “regime change.”14

Appeasing the population with “salary adjustments” and fiscal measures has gone hand-in-hand with a brutal repression of the protesters. This includes beating, killing, mass detention, torture, execution, drone surveillance, and marking the businesses and homes of dissenters. The regime’s clampdown has reportedly left 525 dead, including 71 minors, 1,100 on trial, and some 30,000 detained. The security forces and Basij militia have lost 68 members in the unrest.15 The regime blames “hooligans” for causing disorder, the internet for misleading the youth, and the Western governments for plotting to topple the government.

A Revolutionary Course

The regime’s suppression and the protesters’ pauseare likely to diminish the protests. But this does not mean the end of the movement. It means the end of a cycle of protest before a trigger ignites a new one. We have seen these cycles at least since 2017. What is distinct about this time is that it has set Iranian society on a “revolutionary course,” meaning that a large part of society continues to think, imagine, talk, and act in terms of a different future. Here, people’s judgment about public matters is often shaped by a lingering echo of “revolution” and a brewing belief that “they [the regime] will go.” So, any trouble or crisis—for instance, a water shortage—is considered a failure of the regime, and any show of discontent—say, over delayed wages—a revolutionary act. In such a mindset, the status quo is temporary and change only a matter of time. Consequently, intermittent periods of calm and contention could continue to possibly evolve into a revolutionary situation. We have witnessed such a revolutionary course before—in Poland, for instance, after martial law was declared and the Solidarity movement outlawed in 1982 until the military regime agreed to negotiate a transition to a new order in 1988. More recently, Sudan experienced a similar course after the dictator Omar al-Bashir declared a state of emergency and dissolved the national and regional governments in February 2019 until the military signed an agreement on the transition to civilian democratic rule with the opposition Forces of Freedom and Change after seven months.

Only radical political reform and meaningful improvement in people’s lives can disrupt a revolutionary course. For instance, holding a referendum about the form of government, changing the constitution to be more inclusive, or implementing serious social programs can dissuade people from seeking regime change. Otherwise, one should expect either a state of perpetual crisis and ungovernability or a possible move toward a revolutionary situation. But a revolutionary situation is unlikely until the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement grows into a credible alternative, a practical substitute, to the incumbent regime. A credible alternative means no less than a leadership organization and a strategic vision capable of garnering popular confidence. It means a collective force, a tangible entity, that is able to embody a coalition of diverse dissenting groups and constituencies and to articulate what kind of future it wants.

There are, of course, local leaders and ad hoc collectives that communicate ideas and coordinate actions in the neighborhoods, workplaces, and universities. Thanks to their horizontal, networked, and fluid character, their operations are less prone to police repression than a conventional movement organization would be. This kind of decentralized networked activism is also more versatile, allows for multiple voices and ideas, and can use digital media to mobilize larger crowds in less time. But networked movements can also suffer from weaker commitment, unruly decisionmaking, and tenuous structure and sustainability. For instance, who will address a wrongdoing, such as violence, committed in the name of the movement? As a result, movements tend to deploy a hybrid structure by linking the decentralized and fluid activism to a central body. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement has yet to take up this consideration.

Civil society and imprisoned activists who currently enjoy wide recognition and respect for their extraordinary commitment and political intelligence may eventually form a kind of moral-intellectual leadership. But that too needs to be part of a broader national leadership organization. For a leadership organization—in the vein of Polish Solidarity, South Africa’s ANC, or Sudan’s Forces of Freedom and Change—is not just about articulating a strategic vision and coordinating actions. It also signals responsibility, representation, popular trust, and tactical unity.

This is perhaps the most challenging task ahead for “Woman, Life, Freedom,” but remains acutely indispensable. Because, first, a political breakthrough is unlikely without a broad-based organized opposition. Second, a negotiated transition to a new political order is impossible in the absence of a leadership organization. Who is the incumbent supposed to negotiate with if there is no representation from the opposition? And third, if political collapse occurs and there is no credible organized alternative to an incumbent regime, other organized, entrenched, and opportunistic forces—for example, the military, political parties, sectarian groups, or religious organizations—will move in to shape the course and outcome of a transition. Such forces could claim to represent the opposition and make unwanted deals or might simply fill the power vacuum when authority collapses. Hannah Arendt was correct in observing that the collapse of authority and power becomes a revolution “only when there are people willing and capable of picking up the power, of moving into and penetrating, so to speak, the power vacuum.”16 In other words, if the revolutionary movement is unwilling or unable to pick up the power, others will. This, in fact, is the story of most of the Arab Spring uprisings—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, for instance. In these experiences, the protagonists, those who had initiated and carried the uprisings forward, remained mostly marginal to the process of critical decisionmaking while the free-riders, counterrevolutionaries, and custodians of the status quo moved to the center.17

No one knows where exactly the uprising in Iran will lead. Thus far, the ruling circle remains united even though signs of doubt and discord have appeared within the lower ranks.18 The traditional leaders and grand ayatollahs have mostly stayed silent. But reformist groups have increasingly been voicing their dissent, urging the rulers to undertake serious reforms to restore calm. None of them say that they want a regime change, but they seem to see themselves mediating a transition should such a time arrive. Former president Mohammad Khatami has admitted that the reformist path which he championed has reached a dead end, yet finds the remedy for the current crisis in amending and enforcing the constitution. But a growing number of reformist figures, led by former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, are calling for a referendum and a new constitution. The hardline rulers, however, remain defiant and show no sign of revisiting their policies let alone undertaking serious reforms. Resting on the support of their “people on the stage,” they aim to hold on to power through pacification, control, and coercion.19

NOTES

1. Azam Khatam, “Street Politics and Hijab in the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ Movement,” Naqd-e Eqtesad-e Siyasi, 12 November 2022, in Persian.

2. Danny Postel, “Iran’s Role in the Shifting Political Landscape of the Middle East,” New Politics, 7 July 2021, https://newpol.org/the-other-regional-counter-revolution-irans-role-in-the-shifting-political-landscape-of-the-middle-east/.

3. A woman’s letter to Zanan, no. 35 (June 1988), 26.

4. For a detailed discussion of “non-movements,” see Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013). For an elaboration of how “non-movements” may merge into larger movements and revolutions, see Asef Bayat, Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021).

5. Asef Bayat, “The Fire That Fueled the Iran Protests,” Atlantic, 27 January 2018, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/iran-protest-mashaad-green-class-labor-economy/551690.

6. Miriam Berger, “Students in Iran Are Risking Everything to Rise Up Against the Government,” Washington Post, 5 January 2023; Deepa Parent and Anna Kelly, “Iranian Schoolgirl ‘Beaten to Death’ for Refusing to Sing Pro-Regime Anthem,” Guardian, 18 October 2022; Celine Alkhaldi and Adam Pourahmadi, “Iranian Teachers Call for Nationwide Strike in Protest over Deaths and Detention of Students,” CNN, 21 October 2022.

7. Video clip circulated on social media of the speech of a security agent, Syed Pouyan Hosseinpour, at the 31 October 2022 funeral ceremony of a Basij member killed during the protests.

8. According to a leaked confidential bulletin of Fars News Agency and a government survey, reported on the Radio Farda website, 30 November 2022, www.radiofarda.com/a/black-reward-files/32155427.html.

9. Radio Farda, 15 February 2023; www.radiofarda.com/a/the-minimum-demands-of-independent-organizations-in-iran-were-announced/32272456.html

10. Reported in a leaked audio of a security official, Qasem Ghoreishi, speaking to a group of journalists from the Pars News Agency, close to the Revolutionary Guards. Reported also on the Khabar Nameh Gooyawebsite on 29 December 2022.

11. Asghar Schirazi, The Constitution of Iran: Politics and the State in the Islamic Republic (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998).

12. For a discussion on poetry, see www.radiozamaneh.com/742605/.

13. Keyhan, editorial, 6 October 2022.

14. Khabarbaan, 23 October 2022, https://36300290.khabarban.com/.

15. Iranian Organization of Human Rights, Hrana, www.hra-news.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Mahsa-Amini-82-Days-Protest-HRA.pdf; https://twitter.com/hra_news/status/1617296099148025857/photo/1. The number of 30,000 detainees is based on a leaked official document reported in Rouydad 24, 28 January, www.rouydad24.ir/fa/news/330219/%D9%87%D8%B2%DB%8C%D9%86%D9%87-%D9%87%D8%B1-%D8%B2%D9%86%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86%DB%8C-%D8%AF%D8%B1-%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86-%DA%86%D9%82%D8%AF%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AA.

16. Hannah Arendt, “The Lecture: Thoughts on Poverty, Misery and the Great Revolutions of History,” New England Review,June 2017, 12, available athttps://lithub.com/never-before-published-hannah-arendt-on-what-freedom-and-revolution-really-mean/.

17. This predicament resulted partly from the “refo-lutionary” character of the Arab Spring. “Refo-lution” refers to the revolutionary movements that emerge to compel the incumbent regimes to reform themselves on behalf of revolution, without picking up the power or intervening effectively in shaping the outcome. See Asef Bayat, Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017).

2 notes · View notes

gravitysworm · 5 years

Text

后冷战年代的八九六四

原载端传媒，此为未编辑版本。

网飞脱口秀节目《爱国者有话说》年初的一集中，摄制组询问两个在美的中国年轻人，中国历史书上是否有六四天安门。显然，他们略作迟疑后摇头表示书上没提过。主持人哈桑一脸难以置信地评论到，这就像你问美国高中生历史书上是否有911，他们困惑地回答说：“911？是JayZ发布专辑《蓝图》的日子吗？”

这短短的一幕，代表了三十年来六四在民主社会主导性的媒介镜像。它往往不独立出现，而是作为当前社会问题的参照系而存在。运气好的时候，六四尚且被看成一场人道主义灾难，运气不好时，它就只是个用来嘲讽中国的笑料。当然，并非只有六四遭到了这般待遇。将威权国家的群众抗争与革命他者化，作为己国民主的反面对照，构成了欧美社会常用的精神胜利法之一。

在1989后的前二十年，这种冷战思维主导下的精神胜利法尚可被威权国家的行动者策略性地利用，来为资源匮乏的民主运动提供些许活动空间。然而，过去十年全球政治的变迁，文化代际的更替，已经让支撑境外八九六四论述的这套二元话语失去了大量群众基础。纪念方式的固步自封，加上媒体和商业力量的推动，也使六四在抗争版图上显得越发孤立、无关紧要。在三十周年的今天，当脱缰的世界把后冷战的自由主义共识远远甩下，我们需要新的力量和批判，新的盟友和想象，把被围困的六四论述和时代光谱重新对接起来。

六四话语的主流与边缘悖论

三十年来，境外的八九六四记忆，呈现出一种诡异的两重性。一方面来说，坦克人的形象在民主社会早已深入人心。它出现在大学讲堂、纪录片和历史博物馆里，闪现在街头文化衫、网络meme和宣传片中。一个出生成长在欧美社会的普通人，即便对当年事件的来龙去脉知之甚少，也不太可能从未见过坦克人的影像。中国以外的社会，帮助保存了大量关于广场的记忆，提供了讨论六四的宝贵空间，也慷慨接纳了八九一代的流亡者。

但是另一方面，六四在中国境外被唤起的方式又是既肤浅又建制化的。肤浅表现在它往往是为了服务其他的中国议题：媒体审查，人权侵害，中国威胁，民族主义等等，其中尤其常见的就是用于解释中国的互联网审查。在这类文章中，六四仅仅是一种维基百科式的脚注，来说明各种精妙的审查机制。这也导致大多数普通人对六四的印象，反反复复也就只有那张坦克人的照片而已。六四话语的建制化，则表现在它与民主国家政治精英之间的联系，要大大强于它和民间社会，包括社会组织、高等院校、抗议团体等之间的关系。

这样一种主流和边缘并存的两重性，看似矛盾实则一脉相承。它的主流为虚，边缘是实，主流只是边缘的一种扭曲映射而已。诸多围绕六四的讨论，并不真正在乎历史的淡忘与记忆的流亡，而只是为了构建一种后冷战时期的民主例外论，最终也只是为了美国等国的国内政治或外交政策服务。也就是说，针对六四的讨论和纪念，越来越只剩下工具价值。只有它能够和主流建制派议程结合的时候，它才会被人搬上台面。

建制派议程旗下当然包括不同的意识形态分支。在保守主义一侧，它是孤立主义、文明冲突甚至白人至上，坚信只有特定的基督教民主可以让社会免于独裁的困境。在中间派和精神灯塔主义看来，它是“贫穷的文化”的又一例证：中国社会本质上懦弱奴性，丛林法则，缺乏民主文化的教养。是这样一群精神贫困的人民造就了独裁的政府。进步派眼中的中国相对更为积极，但这种关注也大多带着福音主义的色彩，相信民主的力量终究会感化到政治落后地区，福泽全世界。不管六四与哪种建制主义结盟，这种合流带来的都是系统性的种族主义，对自下而上抗争本身的忽视，和对中国行动者的实质性孤立。

这成了横亘在中国所有反体制人士，特别是流亡行动者和��民面前的最大悖论。在弥漫着历史终结论的政治气氛下，反中被等同于亲欧美，纪念六四等同于承认欧美政府的合法性，并没有一条反对所有建制力量的道路。因此，他们也往往选择把西方政府和政党，而非与前者竞争博弈的公民社会看成天然的盟友。对自己所在国的其他社运和社会问题，他们鲜少关心，更不用说介入。异议者的身份，反而限制了他们参与本地的政治。自由主义移民融合的逻辑简单粗暴：政治移民应当对接受他们的民主社会感到感激，任何对后者的批判都是忘恩负义。

与境外建制精英的结盟也许是无可奈何，或是出于策略性的考量。但这却使以六四为代表的人权议题始终困囿于一个极端狭小的论述语境里，远离自由主义社会的主流议题。民主运动是中国极权主义的罪证，帮助新移民寻求政治庇护的材料，却鲜少成为其他国家、领域行动者汲取灵感的源泉。它是一个逐步内卷的场域，国际移民的扩张和数字媒体的普及，反而让其在众声喧哗中更加边缘。

纪念与抗争主体的消失

除了建制话语的围剿，对六四的纪念本身，也在加速使其成为一段死掉的历史，既没法和中国当前的思潮与运动形成呼应，更没法与其他地区的社运产生任何积极的联系。

社会运动之所以重要，除了自身改变社会的可能，更重要的是其生产出的经验，可以给后来的运动以启发。事实上，现代社会运动的诞生，也恰恰在于游行、罢工等模式化抗议形式的出现，扩展了运动所能波及的范围和影响的人群。抗议经验一旦成为体系，就可以更快地形成可资借鉴的理论和实践纲领。八九年的运动自身也是学习、积累、创新的产物，是孔浩烽所说的“中国特色的抗议”：它与文革和红卫兵一代有着藕断丝连的联系，它的结社、占领、搭台、请愿、绝食等剧码是传统现代风格的混搭。它充斥着自我矛盾的口号，阶级政治的张力，跨越国境的网络。这些本都可以成为后来的运动研习和反思的素材。

但六四并未发挥这样的正面作用。恰恰相反，它象征着当代历史的断裂，一个被履带碾碎的幻梦。如果说从学术层面，这种对断裂的认知在一定程度上揭示了镇压与其后改革间动力循环的吊诡，它却也不经意间将六四作为当代史上重要社会运动的价值给一并抹去了。正是因为它是一场失败的，以血腥收场的民主运动，它的抗争过程与经验被理直气壮地省略。值得讨论的问题似乎只剩下国家的暴虐，与遇难者的正义。高层的权斗，都看上去比群众抗争中的智慧更��吸引观众的注意。

围绕六四的种种纪念，复制着这种去动员（demobilization）的逻辑。支联会主导的烛光纪念，尽管每年都在试图吸收新元素，其骨子里的保守色彩是一成不变的。过去几年，香港社会对支联会的批评不在少数，但多是从本土意识形态出发嘲讽其大中华主义，鲜有从左翼视角出发反对其议程的声音。事实上，烛光纪念中体现的良心和团结，与欧美建制精英的精神胜利法是一脉相承的。它所宣传的是中国极权主义的无孔不入，和少数被脸谱化的异议者；它所包含的出于本能的恐共情绪，要远远大过对社会运动价值的认同感；它弱化历史的抗争色彩，将“中国”和“中国人”他者化，来反衬出香港社会的民主、香港人的坚持，特别是支联会三十年如一日在推动民主中国上的莫大作用。这其中当然不乏真诚的情绪，香港在六四前后扮演的作用确实值得一书。但只要烛光纪念继续弱化普通人在社会变迁中所能扮演的角色，它就只会是记忆维系、运动学习的绊脚石。

最终，记忆的政治进入一种恶性循环，越是强调人民不会忘记，真正的抗争主体就愈发消失在历史的尽头。对于六四的纪念，构成了一道阻断之后运动间学习和反思的屏障。它将80年代的政治参与看作一道罕见的光亮。这道亮光不是为了照亮之后的历史，而是反衬之后三十年的黑暗与平庸，和大多数中国人的顺从、恐惧和冷漠。去年的中国MeToo发生后，有分析家惊讶地表示这是六四以后最令人振奋的社会运动。这与其说是评论者对中国行动者的激赏，不如说是无知带来的傲慢。他们不能放下中国人被洗脑的预设，看不到后续行动者对一九八九的超越，更别说理解六四以后中国抗争政治的复杂图景。

六四，乃至整个中国社会运动历史复杂性的遗失，可谓是中国官方和民主社会的共谋。如果说中方负责掩盖历史，民主社会则负责简化历史，他们的通力合作保证了这个话题永远都只能和一小撮人联系起来。

六四与进步社运间的沟壑

限制六四想象的当然不只是建制精英和纪念仪式，更是与普通人日常生活关系更大的各种商业和媒体力量。上月，莱卡相机委托巴西代理公司制作了短片广告The Hunt，讲述了外国摄影师在威权和战乱国家的遭遇。视频中的三个故事，无一例外都泛滥着男权主义和白人救世主的情结：来自文明世界的白人男性，拯救着第三世界被有色人种暴政所蹂躏的弱者。在主线天安门清场中，唯一的焦点是中国军人的野蛮，学生、工人和市民的抗争彻底缺席，核心的群众运动被当作了模糊的背景版。不了解背景的观众，大概要以为当年现场只有欧美记者在记录，是他们与各类邪恶政权的搏斗，才保证了记忆的延续和历史的真相。

这样的叙事，套用在任何与欧美社会密切相关的运动上，一定会遭到集体抵制。即使刨除其中的种族主义色彩，将政治抗争商业化的做法也常能引发社运团体的不满。2017年，百事因为在广告中浪漫化Black Lives Matter，洗白警察暴力而引发争议，最后被迫撤回视频。今年初，吉列的超级碗广告以Metoo为主题批判主流的男性气质，引发保守派抵制的同时，也被进步派批评是消费严肃的社会运动。

相比百事和吉列的自由派小清新气质，莱卡广告不仅粗暴地商业化了流血抗争，而且几乎每一秒内容都准确踩中了种族主义和性别歧视的“雷区”。这样的广告居然出现在2019年，也正是因为六四并不被欧美社会的媒体精英认为是当代进步运动的一部分。恰恰相反，它和那些发生在中东的民主抗争、拉美的土地抗议、非洲的族群冲突等，一并被归为「原始的叛乱」。这些运动所争取的民主、土地、食物、免于恐惧的自由⋯⋯被认为是西方社会早已经拥有的。后者国土上发生的种族、女权、环保、劳工、移民的运动，才是更加「高等文明进步」的后物质主义斗争，才适用于更高的道德标准。在广告策划者看来，那些连选票都没见过的抗议者们，大概没有资格进行更具批判性的讨论。

可惜的是，中文社交媒体上用户对莱卡的反应，只有辱华和反华两个极端，缺乏任何对资本、种族和性别的反思。尽管这些讨论不能代表公共舆论，却能反映出关注六四这部分网民群体的平均价值观。他们眼中的民主单薄而伪善，已经和当前的时代产生了严重的裂痕。

从直接的后果来说，中国用户越是不在乎政治抗争的媒体呈现形式，六四就越是远离当今与阶级种族性别交织着的社会运动。欧美的商业和媒体力量，就越是可以肆无忌惮地复制建制精英的冷战话语，把六四等政治抗争的草根内核彻底掏空。就这样，网民们得以与商业力量联手，把六四议题逼进更边缘的境地。

时代精神与八九历史的反向重建

如果说八九历史与主流进步社运间的隔离是从来有之，在主流左右式微，激进左右崛起的当下，这种隔离又被进一步拉大了。当1989年的Tear down this wall变成了2016年的Build the wall，当自由民主国家在危机前自顾不暇，对政治精英来说，那些国境线外历史的“利用价值”就开始大幅贬值。而对崛起的民粹左右翼来说，它们的当务之急是本国的建制派，更不需要将别人的痛苦纳入进来。

激进右翼支持文化冲突和种族隔离，反对政治正确。其意识形态决定了他们不仅不会关心中国的社运和民主化，甚至会向往当局的全面法西斯化。但理应国际主义的激进左翼对中国的远离，则来源于1989的冲击。历史学者Max Elbaum在去年再版的书籍《革命在即》中，分析过从文革到八九六四等一系列事件对美国激进左翼的毁灭性打击。六四镇压之后，左翼不再能够只把苏联失败的社会主义实验看作一个例外，而是必须面对这条道路整体上无法走通的可能性。从90年代冷战废墟中走出来的新一代人，要么彻底脱离了左派成为保守主义者，要么拥抱模糊的“民主社会主义”概念，极少数坚持下来的人，也变得更加本土主义，鲜有关心国境线外的历史沉浮。

从此，中国在左翼社会运动场域中成了一个尴尬的存在。激进左翼往往避免触碰中国民主运动的话题：为中国政权背书当然道德上不正义，但批评中国又会被添油加醋成支持资本主义民主。于是，保持沉默成了一种妥协的结果，人权议题继续被建制精英所垄断。相比关心中国，在巴勒斯坦、委内瑞拉、巴西等问题上发声站队，才是欧美左翼定义自身的最常用方式。

相似的尴尬也存在于学术圈。正如骆斯航的总结，1989年的天鹅绒革命导致了学术界自由主义霸权的确立，马克思主义被整合进了建制学术体制，成为诸多政治理论流派中的一员。不愿意直面失败的左派学者们，也往往回避讨论中国社会主义的问题，更别说严肃地评价六四。一直以来，从激进左翼视角出发分析中国八九的学者寥寥无几。少数的另类观点，也流于大而化之的浮皮潦草。比如女权运动家、学者Silvia Federici早在上世纪末就评价到，六四是中国反市场改革、反资本主义斗争的开始，而不单是一场民主运动，她更是希望将六四案例融合进她目前对共有概念（Commons）所做的理论思考里。这种乐观主义当然挑战了主流论述，但也只是学术左翼为了反对而反对的一厢情愿。Craig Calhoun就曾经批评以汤普森为代表的马克思主义史学家夸大了劳工阶级的激进性，认为他们笔下萌芽的阶级意识，仅仅是起于草根的保守思潮对工业化的本能反应。普通人并非天生的变革先锋，反而更容易成为民粹右翼的后备军。

把历史的解释框架一百八十度对调，并不是打破单调论述的最好方式。如果说建制派、主流媒体和自由派知识分子将一场社会各阶层卷入，波及全国各大城市的大规模社会运动，凝练成一场单纯的精英学生争取民主运动，那目前零星的左翼观点也同样在反对前者的过程中，将话语窄化到了单维的层面，不仅没有提供更多的分析深度，而且也缺乏对大规模群众运动局限性的反思。

六四之所以能被自由主义话语所完全劫持，本就说明了它自由主义的底色。1989年的革命潮毕竟不同于1968和1979，不管后人如何将激进性的成分赋予它，它都不可能超出那个时代所能具备的历史想象，它充其量最大程度地利用了已有的群众自发性。借用社会学家Asef Bayat的说法，1989后世界上只剩下有“运动（Movement）”，却没有“改变（Change）”的革命。社会运动丧失了激进的想象作为脏器，唯余激进的形式作为骨架。当年的六四面临着相似的历史困境，时代打碎了其激进的尝试。因此，它的价值不在于已经提供了什么，而在于暴露出那些尚未实现，却对当前运动至关重要的构想与目标。对民主运动有限的格局进行批判、解构、重塑，是将其与现实抗争勾连的最有效方式。只有这样反向的记忆方式，八九才能继续存活在行动者如今更艰难，也更广泛的日常斗争中。

新的联盟和想象

在可以预见的将来，面对右翼民粹的反扑，欧美本土政治的失序，六四将处在一个越发尴尬与边缘的地位。在中国境内，它依然是每年一度的互联网维护日，键盘抵抗日，公共知识分子抒情日。在国际舞台上，它是标准化的媒体和外交辞令，一种必须履行的国际人权上的“政治正确”，但也如同谷歌的每日Doddle般稍纵即逝。这成了一种循环往复的共谋：所有人都认为这个国家短期内即使有什么改变，也只是往更糟糕的方向发展。大家心照不宣地重复着这个越发鸡肋的纪念仪式，把心底的那份绝望努力掩藏起来。

三十年了又如何？到了第三十一年，关注又会渐渐褪去，等待下一个逢五和逢十。当年的抗议者和独裁者会老去，情感维系着的愤怒终究是老人们的抱团取暖。这是已经发生在墨西哥特拉特洛尔科��杀上的遗忘过程，尽管有着学者和诗人的记录，尽管有着民主转型后更开放的政治气氛，围绕屠杀的大众记忆也早已支离破碎。这个世界每天都在发生着大大小小的灾难，日历上挤满了对平民的屠杀纪念日，用良知、道义、普世价值来申明纪念的意义，并谴责普通人的沉默和反对，越发成为无力的辩词。“失忆共和国”当然来源于对真相的恐惧，但它绝不仅仅是恐惧。“失忆”可以是一种对更批判论述的呼唤。

把遗忘归结于普通人的不作为，是行动者所能做的最坏的决定。大众是联合的对象，精英的“好意”才需要被谨慎对待。今年伊斯兰革命四十周年纪念日当天，特朗普发推谴责伊朗政权制造了“四十年的腐败，镇压、恐怖和失败”，并未经授权使用了2017年末伊朗摄影师Yalda Moayeri拍摄的著名照片：德黑兰大学抗议现场一名举起拳头的女性。Moayeri随后愤怒地表示，这张照片是献给伊朗人民的，而特朗普盗用了她的作品为自己的政治议程服务。她乐于见到这张照片成为自由的象征，但绝不希望它是美国外交政策的筹码。Moayeri的表态代表着新一代威权国家的行动者需要学习的不卑不亢：在利用建制力量的同时，坚决拒绝自己被反向利用。为了打破记忆和动员的瓶颈，新一代人需要有独立于建制力量，重新搭建运动联盟的勇气。

当然，这种瓶颈指向的也可能是一种积极的断裂。未来的革命，大概会完全超越当前的策略构想和理论预言，以目前的行动者所意想不到的方式展开。它既可能继承，也可能完全抛弃掉1989的遗产。但不管怎样，如果这真的是一场基于“改变”的革命，它一定会打破国界和运动之间的隔阂。而必然会被另一个未来甩下的我们可以做的，是移除那些维护着隔阂的既得利益，不论他们习惯戴着威权还是民主的假面。

文章发布后，引发了不同方面的争议，大部分争议我预料到了，还有一些则没有。我并未预料到香港读者的愤怒，因为香港既不是文章的出发点也不是重点。绝大部分评论都把我对一个组织的批判偷换成了我对整个香港、香港人的批判。我感到遗憾的是，这种偷换概念完全扭曲了文章的出发点，似乎本文是为了用欧美左派的理论和话语来分裂反极权的共识，博取注意力。

促使我写这篇文章的恰恰是对团结的思考。自由主义霸权衰落，民粹兴起的当下，六四尽管依然被用作民主社会精神胜利法的素材，这种之前屡试不爽的手段越发呈现出其可笑的面目。对当年的参与者和运动家来说，维持既有的，以国别和种族为界限的，与民主社会政治精英联手反共的记忆手段，其实是把自己工具化，剥夺了自身的能动性。

在极权与霸权的双重绞杀下，我们如何挖掘自由主义危机中潜藏的动员机遇，从而创造一种真正的国际团结？这是我比较观察了大陆，香港和欧美的运动后存有的疑问，而1989勿宁说是思考这个问题的案例之一。

除了号召大家看到中国土地上发生的更广泛的斗争，期望行动者与国际上的运动进行更全面、有机的对话，我并不能、也没有资格列出具体的方案。作为自称进步/激进的运动中国别、种族、性别歧视的受害者，我也常常对团结与国际主义感到失望，人们似乎总是习惯于通过划界来组织运动��不同地区和群体记忆的建构也往往呈现出相互冲突的关系。但失望并不构成退回到过去冷战思路的理由，一切终究会烟消云散，团结并不是乌托邦，而是必须要去反复争取与积极构建的现实。伊格尔顿所说的“去乐观主义的希望”，也许是行动者在今后很长一段时间内需要努力维护的心态。

我接受对这种愿景不切实际的批评，但那些价值上不认同国际主义，反以割裂和种族主义为荣的声音，我只能表示无从对话。不过也感谢它们表明了态度，得以让大家今后在寻求盟友的时候多个心眼，少绕一些弯路。

74 notes · View notes

freakscircus · 5 years

Text

my 2020 dissertation reading list (NOT including comps books yikes), some books i am hoping to get read before i go to the field.

The Urban Underground Inside the Cuban Revolution, Julia Sweig Aldabonazo! Armando Hart Insurrection and Revolution: Armed Struggle in Cuba 1952-1959, Gladys Marel Garcia Perez

Spanish Language La Resistencia Civica en la Guerra de liberacion de Cuba, Jose Maria Cuesta Braniella (Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1997) La Lucha en Las Villas, Julio Chaviano (Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1990). Semillas de Fuego vol 1&2: Compilacion Sobre la Lucha Clandestina en la Capital, Dolores Nieves (Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1989, 1990) Gente del Llano, Enrique Oltuski La Lucha Estudiantil Contra Batista, Jose Antonio Echeverria Combatientes de la clandestinidad. Ezel Dominguez Lucha Clandestina del Movimiento 26 de Julio en Jiguani, Sergio Frometa Suarez Diario de la Guerra 1956-1957, Pedro Alvarez Tabio Mas Alla de los Codigos, Luis Buch Bajando del Escambray, Enrique Rodriguez Lopez La Sierra y El Llano, Edmundo Desnoes

Spanish Language Publications Bohemia Periodico Revolucionario Prensa Libre Bulletin de la Junta de Liberacion Cubana Carta Semanal El Cubano Libre Resistencia Civica Revolucion Vanguardia Obrera

Insurrectionary Period Revolution Within the Revolution, Michelle Chase Women and the Cuban Insurrection, Lorraine Bayard de Volo The Cuban Insurrection 1952-1959, Ramon Bonachea and Marta San Martin Castroism: Theory and Praxtice, Theodore Draper. Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution, Joseph Hansen. A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution, Steve Cushion. Castro and the Cuban Labor Movement, Efren Cordoba Financing Castro’s Revolution 1956-1958, Alfred Padula The Cuban Revolutionary War 1953-1958, Louis A. Perez Jr Revolutionary Politics and the Cuban Working Class, Maurice Zeitlin

Theory On Disobedience, Erich Fromm The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson Urban Social Movements in the Third World, Frans Schurrman Weapons of the Weak, James C. Scott Social Theory and the Urban Question, Peter Saunders Everyday forms of Resistance, Stavis Kalivas Gentlemanly Terrorists, Derba Ghosh The Urban Question by Manuel Castells Peasant Wars of the 20th Century by Eric Wolf On Collective Memory, by Maurice Halbwachs Life as Politics by Asef Bayat The Sociology of Terrorism by Stephen Vertigans The Social Movements Reader, Jeff Goodwin

Misc A Guide to Cuban Collections in the United States, Louis A. Perez Jr On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture, Louis A. Perez Jr. The Structure of Cuban History: Meanings and Purpose of the Past, Louis A. Perez Jr. American State Department documents The Cuban Rebellion: Internal Organization and Strategy 1952-1959 Nelson P. Valdes (University of New Mexico Dissertation 1978)

4 notes · View notes

sujadaam-blog · 6 years

Text

Post-Islamism atau Pos Islamisme, Selayang Pandang

Sudah pernah melihat bagaimana orang yang memakai kaos oblong, celana jeans, gayanya gaul tapi status-statusnya dalam media sosial islami? Atau sudah pernah lihat seorang profesional bergaya ala barat dalam fashion tapi ternyata eh ternyata dia soleh betul. Atau sudah pernah liat tokoh Fakhri dalam Ayat Ayat Cinta 1 dan 2? Soleh, tampan, pinter, pendidikan tinggi tapi tetap moderat. Nah pasti sudah pernah kan liat yang model-model gitu. Satu lagi nih tau Ust Hanan Attaki? Kenapa doi ga make jubah ala arab atau pakistan? Dan lebih milih make style ala' barat saat doi ceramah? Atau sudah pernah liat islam diruang publik?

Nah semua yang disebutkan atau ditanyain diatas yang kemudian para pembaca semua jawab itu sedikit dari apa yang kita sebut dengan Fenomena Pos-Islamisme.

Apatuch Fenomena Posislamisme? Perasaan ga asing banget deh ya. Nah simak dibawah ini.

Posislamisme adalah istilah yang pertama kali banget dipake sama Ilmuwan Asal Iran, namanya Asef Bayat. Asef atau selanjutnya mang asep (dalam ejaan sunda) ini meneliti fenomena bergesernya gaya keislaman di iran yang asalnya sangat Islamisme sejak Ayatullah Khomaeni mempimpin Revolusi Iran melawan Syah Reza Pahlevi. Nah sebelum beranjak ke Posislamisme kita bahas dulu Islamismenya yak. Oke, Islamisme adalah suatu tafsir atas ajaran agama yang menolak kebudayaan barat yang mencampuri ajaran hingga kebudayaan islam, ya lebih mirip gerakan pemurnian lah ya. Nah sejarahnya islamisme ini muncul akibat dominasi Imperialisme Barat (perancis, inggris dkk) ke Jazirah Arab sehingga atas datangnya mereka membuat negara-negara arab ini mengalami proses percampuran budaya antara Arab dan Eropa, hal inilah yang membuat para pemikir islam resah karena budaya eropa dianggap membuat umat muslim meninggalkan ajarannya. Maka lahirlah gerakan Islamisme dengan berbagai Versi dan Tokoh, sebut saja Rasyid Ridha, Jamaludin Al Afghani, Abul A'la Al Maududdi, Hassan Al Banna, Taqiyyudin, Ayatollah Khomaeni dan sebagainya. Namun yang perlu jadi catatan adalah mereka mempunyai pandangan, tafsir dan metode sendiri-sendiri terkait dengan Islam.

Kebangkitan awal tafsir islamisme ini sangatlah ketat, mereka memurnikan hal-hal yang berbau barat baik dari versi sunni atau syiah keduanya sangat ketat terhadap peradaban barat dan cenderung eksklusif terhadap ruang publik atau domain publik lainnya.

Nah kalau mau tau soal islamisme lebih lanjut, baca buku aja ya haha

Oke lanjut, selanjutnya Mang Asep dalam bukunya yang berjudul Posislamisme menemukan suatu fenomena yang unik di Iran dan negara arab saat itu. Kenapa eh kenapa anak muda saat ini tampil ala eropa tapi juga tetep agamis? Ada percampuran budaya disitu. Dan terus bagaimana partisipasi muslim dalam dunia profesional dan ruang publik mulai meningkat dan meninggalkan wacana perubahan lewat jalur politik yang ketat menuju perubahan melalui ruang-ruang publik.

Ariel Heryanto menggambarkan dengan baik Posislamisme yang terjadi di Indonesia, dengan melakukan penelitian terhadap Film Ayat-Ayat Cinta dan masyarakat islam indonesia, Ariel menuliskan bahwa "Muslim Generasi Baru menemukan cara untuk mendamaikan hal yang bersifat tradisional dengan budaya populer dan Menjadi Modern sama pentingnya dengan menjadi muslim" artinya mereka mendamaikan kebudayaan barat dengan kebudayaan timur dan bahkan hari ini kita melihat berbagai fenomenanya.

Jadi kesalehan posislamisme ga perlu kan pake jubah besar kemana mana buat laki-laki? Atau dengan celana cingkrang kemana mana atau ga perlu kan melihara jenggot panjang-panjang, cukup sedikit aja yang penting ada, cukup pake baju yang penting nutup aurat apapun bajunya.

Kesimpulannya, Muslim Posislamis lebih substansial dan tidak kaku!

1 note · View note

cloudtales · 3 years

Text

How have the uprisings of the Arab Spring shaped the path of revolutions?

Iranian-American scholar Asef Bayat, author of ‘Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring’, on the evolution of revolutions and their impact on everyday lives Source: OpenDemocracy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/how-have-the-uprisings-of-the-arab-spring-shaped-the-path-of-revolutions/

View On WordPress

0 notes

selfportraitsofcolor · 6 years

Photo

Ghazel, b. 1966 Better Not See, still from 'Me' Iran (2000–03) Triptych video installation with color, black and white, and sound [Source]

Art Asia Pacific says:

The works of Iranian performance artist Ghazel reflect the artist’s dry humor. From early in her career, she has insouciantly focused on the depiction of Iranian women both in Iran and abroad—revealing intricacies and tensions within this contested discourse.

Ghazel’s first encounter with happenings and performance art was in post-revolutionary Iran. In the early 1990s, the country was invigorated with “a new form of post-Islamist thinking combined with neoliberal policies,” as sociologist Asef Bayat has pointed out. This, along with the somewhat relaxed cultural policies of the time, inspired cultural centers in various neighborhoods to interact with a range of social and economic classes. While studying at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes, Ghazel, returning home to Tehran, was flabbergasted by the elitist veneer the art scene had developed during her years abroad. Addressing this disparity among social groups through performance has become one of the hallmarks of Ghazel’s work.

#Ghazel #performance #performance art #video #video art #woman artist #iran #west asia #mena #2000s

8 notes · View notes

indizombie · 2 years

Quote

Morality police and security forces have humiliated, threatened and arrested millions of women in the streets and in state institutions. According to a police report in 2006, during the eight months of the assault on “bad hijabis” [women wearing loose headscarves], 1.3 million women were stopped in the streets and given formal citations. The following year, during a three-day crackdown, more than 150,000 women were detained. Such assaults reminded Iranians of the images of the Israeli army humiliating Palestinians. But the resistance and the quiet encroachment or non-movement of Iranian women continued. In the process, they have established new norms in society and new realities on the ground, like public presence and the hijab as a matter of choice rather than compulsion. And now, that very non-movement, mediated through the murder of one of those women, Mahsa Amini, has given rise to an extraordinary political uprising in which women and their dignity, indeed human dignity at large, have gained a prominent place. But this uprising is not merely about the “woman question.” The encompassing character of this protest movement has gone beyond women. It has embraced many other deprived, rejected and oppressed social, religious and ethnic groups and classes. There is a feeling that the emancipation of women opens the way for the emancipation of all, including men and the deprived. In other words, the protesters now seem to share a common pain and an understanding of a greater good that unites all protesters. It seems that “Woman, Life, Freedom” represents that universal good.

Asef Bayat, ‘A New Iran Has Been Born — A Global Iran’, New Lines

#New Lines #Asef Bayat #Iran #Morality police #security forces #Woman Life Freedom

5 notes · View notes

fursasaida · 7 years

Note

'#half the time revolutions don't end up really addressing the stuff they set out to change anyway' - Explain this!

Oh, I just meant that quite often, revolutions succeed in expelling whoever was in power from power and putting people from different walks of life into power, but they fail to really change what power is–the structure of it, its operation, its sources, and who and what it acts upon. This can happen in any number of ways, including counterrevolution if it’s quick enough, but often as not it’s because changing what power is, what it does, and how it’s justified is a lot harder than changing the roles of who holds it. You can look at a huge number of revolutions through history and find that while they may have changed the course of history in any number of ways, the signal issues that motivated any given revolution–the bases for it–aren’t really solved by the revolution itself. So since that was a tag on a post about the necessity of smaller-scale, more direct-impact activism and work, and how such work is valid even if it’s not placed in the context of a full-scale revolution, my point was that addressing outcomes and issues in and of themselves is a smart thing to do because even when revolutions do occur, often they affect those outcomes less than you’d expect.

People’s ideas about what power looks like, who can exercise it, what justifies that exercise, and the forms in which it functions are incredibly deeply held and intertwined with daily life. Therefore they are very hard to change. It takes massive efforts in social re-education and investment from significant parts of the population to make it happen. To take a really innocuous, minor example, here in the US we all know what the emergency alert system sounds like. It’s a very specific sound that has been inculcated into all of us for generations and fiercely protected by FEMA and the FCC so that its significance can’t be diluted or misrepresented. If, tomorrow, we had a revolution here, that sound would still cause at least most of us to stop in our tracks and pay attention. Even if the new government announced a new system that didn’t rely on sound at all, or used different sounds, that deep habit of obedience is still there in us, the population. That is state power in action.

This is just a kind of parable, but I hope the point is clear: that same continuity applies for things like which lives we value, what we consider to be success or failure, what we consider to be a crime or an appropriate punishment. If the US had a socialist or communist revolution tomorrow and we switched to a universal basic income, there would be huge resistance from people who have been indoctrinated all their lives to believe they can’t be successful without hard work in a competitive marketplace, and that success is measured by comparison against others who are less successful; that resistance would probably be expressed in all kinds of ways that might, in combination, cause said UBI to fail and the capitalist market economy to persist despite a revolution premised on its abolition. (I keep thinking about the history of revolutionary land reform in many Arab countries as another example, but I’m betting that would require a lot more explanation.) These people might not even feel resistive about it in a consciously political or ideological way; I’m not talking about libertarians or ancaps here, but your “average hard-working American” who may even consider themselves a non-political person.

State intervention (in education, for example) and very large social movements sustained over time are basically the only things that can deliberately change social ideas about power and its expression. (Social change also occurs more spontaneously than this, but you can almost always find social-movement activism behind any major cultural and social change in exercises of power; #TimesUp is a great example, as are temperance, decriminalization of marijuana, and the recent loss of power by “gatekeepers” in the media.) I’m not saying a revolution can never succeed in this way, and indeed some of them are born of social movements that do exactly this, or install state policies to accomplish it it after seizing power. But a revolution itself is not a guarantee of succeeding on this level, which is why, as the post that tag of mine comes from says, it’s also at least as valid to focus in analysis and in practice on this level itself without requiring that it be part of a larger revolution. “We argue that in order to be historically significant, social change need not just be about large, transformational events recognizable as revolutionary, but can equally be about relatively localized everyday attempts to marginally improve the day-to-day drudgery of life.” I was referring to kind of the flipside of that, which is that “transformational events recognizable as revolutionary” are actually not always so transformational, and so we need to be looking further than such moments.

I also highly recommend reading Asef Bayat, who has written a lot about social movements and how very small, individualized actions at the margins of society can create change. Happily, @vi0lentquiche just happened to send me a link (thank you!) to a pdf of the relevant book here, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, because I also tagged that same post “quiet encroachment” in reference to his work. Check it out here! I especially recommend Chapter 3, “The Quiet Encroachment of the Ordinary.” I think that chapter has a lot of relevance for anyone anywhere, even though the book is obviously focused on the Middle East.

#politics #revolution #everyday life #bayat #quiet encroachment #power #Anonymous

11 notes · View notes

adeirwansyah · 5 years

Text

ESAI FILM: Ada Apa dengan Ahok dan Hanum?

JURNALRuang Film | Esai

Ada Apa dengan Ahok dan Hanum?

Oleh Ade Irwansyah

17 Desember 2018, Durasi: 10 menit Di tengah kecamuk persaingan dua kandidat pemilihan presiden (pilpres) dan masing-masing pendukungnya, hadir film A Man Called Ahok (Putrama Tuta) dan Hanum & Rangga: Faith in the City (Benni Setiawan) pada awal November 2018. Walau kontennya tak sama sekali menyinggung pilpres dan pileg (pemilihan legislatif) 2019, kedua film tersebut seperti ditakdirkan untuk terlibat dalam keriuhan tahun politik. Film A Man Called Ahok diasosiasikan sebagai film bagi pendukung Jokowi (akrab disebut kecebong atau cebong di lini masa media sosial), sedangkan film Hanum & Rangga bagi pendukung Prabowo (biasa dipanggil kampret). Itu sebabnya, perbincangan soal dua film ini, terutama di dunia maya, tak menyinggung konten maupun estetikanya, tapi perpanjangan dari adu mulut (jari?) saling menjagokan pujaan dan menjatuhkan lawan masing-masing. Hal yang lantas ramai diperdebatkan adalah soal jumlah penonton dan mobilisasi penonton oleh masing-masing pihak. Tulisan ini tak berniat menambah keriuhan soal itu. Namun, yang hendak saya bincangkan mengenai bagaimana dua film itu hadir dan apa yang direpresentasikan setiap film. Persoalan politik jelas tak terhindarkan dalam perbincangan ini, tapi saya janji akan melampaui debat cebong versus kampret yang tak bermutu.

Rasa Antagonistis Film A Man Called Ahok

Film A Man Called Ahok diangkat dari buku berjudul sama karya Rudi Valinka (pemilik akun Twitter @kurawa). Buku itu bukan sebuah biografi politik yang ditulis dengan metodologi riset yang ketat, tapi sebuah reportase yang dilaporkan lewat Twitter lalu dibukukan. Fokus buku dan filmnya bukan seputar bagaimana Basuki Tjahaja Purnama atau Ahok membangun karier politik dari bawah, tapi pada nilai moral yang menjadi akar sikap anti-korupsinya. Setengah durasi film ini pun tak bicara soal Ahok, tapi ayahnya, Kim Nam (dimainkan Deni Sumargo ketika muda dan di masa tua oleh Chew Kin Wah), yang sejak muda tak bisa dibeli oleh birokrat korup. Sifat ini menurun ke anaknya, Ahok (Daniel Mananta).

Film berakhir saat Ahok terpilih jadi bupati Belitung. Seakan ingin menghindari kontroversi, filmnya tak menyinggung dua hal yang mengiringi nasib Ahok dalam dua tahun terakhir: soal kasus penistaan agama yang menyeretnya ke bui serta biduk rumah tangganya yang berujung perpisahan. Bahkan, saking menghindari persoalan pribadi Ahok itu, kisah cinta yang biasa jadi bumbu cerita pun absen dalam narasi film ini. Kendati tanpa Al-Maidah: 51 (Ahok dituduh menghina ayat Alquran ini) dan Veronica Tan (istri yang ia ceraikan), sosok Ahok dan ayahnya dalam A Man Called Ahok tetap layak dibincangkan. Semasa rezim Orde Baru, film semacam ini mustahil bisa dibuat. Bahkan, ada warga keturunan Tionghoa jadi bupati pun tak terbayangkan. Kita tahu, pada masa Orde Baru, warga etnis Tionghoa tak mendapat tempat di kancah politik lokal dan nasional. Mereka dibolehkan berkiprah di sektor ekonomi. Namun, keberadaan mereka seringkali jadi sapi perahan pejabat korup. Ada upeti yang harus dibayarkan untuk setiap konsesi bisnis yang mereka dapat. Muak akan praktek itu, Kim Nam meminta Ahok untuk kelak menjadi pejabat (bupati) agar bisa memberantasnya. Permintaan itu tentu saja melampaui zamannya. Buat saya, ada dua tafsir di baliknya. Pertama, meminta Ahok untuk menjadi bupati lahir dari ekspresi kemarahan pada praktik yang koruptif, bukan hasil permenungan mendalam tentang strateginya. Kedua, Kim Nam berharap di masa depan, Indonesia memberi kesempatan bagi warga etnis Tionghoa untuk berperan di politik. Kesempatan berpolitik praktis bagi warga etnis Tionghoa nyatanya baru terbuka pasca-1998. Ahok adalah produk dari era baru politik bagi etnis Tionghoa, termasuk juga filmnya. Seperti dicatat Ariel Heryanto dalam Identitas dan Kenikmatan (2015), warga etnis Tionghoa tak pernah diakui perannya di jagat film nasional. Sejarah resmi perfilman nasional dimulai pada 1949, saat Usmar Ismail melakukan syuting film Darah dan Doa. Padahal, film di Nusantara telah dibuat sejak awal 1920-an oleh orang Eropa dan warga etnis Tionghoa. Namun, film-film yang mereka bikin dianggap tak mencirikan semangat kebangsaan. Sejarah resmi itu hingga kini diaminkan dan tak ada yang coba menggugatnya. Pada masa Orde Baru, lagi-lagi warga etnis Tionghoa yang berkiprah di bidang film dicap sebagai pedagang. Film diposisikan sama dengan komoditas lain, seperti cengkeh, mobil, hasil tambang, dan sebagainya. Hanya satu-dua orang etnis Tionghoa yang berada di depan dan balik layar sebagai pemain atau sutradara pada masa Orde Baru. Salah satu yang menonjol adalah Teguh Karya alias Steve Liem atau Liem Tjoan Hok. Namun, ia tidak pernah dianggap sebagai sutradara karena latar belakang etnisnya. Film-filmnya juga tak secara khusus merepresentasikan etnis Tionghoa. Yang menarik, film-film yang narasinya berlatar tentang etnis Tionghoa pada era pasca-Orde Baru kebanyakan justru tidak dibuat oleh sutradara berlatar etnis sama. Sebut saja Ca Bau Kan (2002) yang dibuat Nia DiNata dan Gie (2005) karya Riri Riza. Film A Man Called Ahok pun digarap Putrama Tuta. Walau begitu, ada pula sutradara-sutradara dari etnis Tionghoa yang kiprahnya mencuat, seperti Edwin (Babi Buta yang Ingin Terbang, Posesif, Aruna dan Lidahnya) dan Ernest Prakasa (Ngenest, Cek Toko Sebelah, Susah Sinyal). Namun, baik Ernest maupun Edwin serta film-film tentang warga etnis Tionghoa yang mereka buat butuh ruang diskusi lain di luar tulisan ini. Saat para sutradara yang bukan dari etnis Tionghoa menggarap film tentang etnis Tionghoa, maka penggambaran ideal sosok Tionghoa muncul dalam narasi film mereka. Seolah, film tersebut dibuat sekaligus sebagai permintaan maaf bangsa ini karena telah puluhan tahun berlaku tak adil kepada warga etnis Tionghoa. Cacat mereka tak tampak di layar.

Hal itulah yang membedakan, misalnya, film A Man Called Ahok dengan film-film garapan Ernest. Di film-filmnya, Ernest seperti tidak ada beban untuk berani mengolok-olok ke-Tionghoa-annya. Sementara Riri dalam Gie atau Tuta dalam film A Man Called Ahok ogah lancang menyentil itu. Maka, Ahok, Kim Nam, dan Soe Hok Gie dalam layar lebar tampak setali tiga uang: sosok ideal yang layak jadi panutan. Mereka nyaris tanpa cela dan terlalu sempurna sebagai manusia. Sampai di sini, pencapaian film A Man Called Ahok tidak beranjak dari yang sudah disajikan Gie sekitar dua belas tahun lalu. Hal ini sedikit banyak juga menggambarkan sikap kita terhadap warga etnis Tionghoa. Dua puluh tahun setelah reformasi rupanya kita masih berjarak dengan saudara-saudara kita itu. Keengganan menggambarkan sisi kontroversi subjek yang difilmkan adalah cerminan sikap itu. Sikap semacam ini, menurut hemat saya, tak elok. Sebab, kita seolah menutup pintu untuk berdialog secara terbuka. Pada akhirnya, sikap tersebut berkontribusi untuk melahirkan situasi saat ini: Ahok dipuja pemujanya dan sangat tak disukai pembencinya. Film A Man Called Ahok berada di kubu pemujanya. Maka, sosok Ahok yang muncul serba baik. Pilihan kreatif ini membuat filmnya jadi terasa antagonistis bagi pembencinya. Film A Man Called Ahok pun jadi film untuk kalangan sendiri (baca: Ahokers). Lantas, bagaimana dengan film Hanum & Rangga: Faith in the City? Film Hanum & Rangga Tak Buka Pintu Dialog Bagi kebanyakan orang, terutama mereka yang larut dalam keriuhan media konvensional dan media sosial, rupanya baru mengenal nama Hanum Salsabiela Rais saat muncul hiruk pikuk kabar pemukulan terhadap aktivis Ratna Sarumpaet—kabar yang ternyata hoaks. Hanum sendiri mengikuti garis partai Partai Amanat Nasional (PAN) dan ayahnya, Amien Rais, dengan berada di kubu capres Prabowo. Padahal, bagi penikmat film Indonesia, nama Hanum adalah sebuah franchise, persis James Bond atau Harry Potter. Hanum Rais menulis buku setengah fiksi berdasarkan kisah hidupnya saat tinggal di Eropa dan Amerika Serikat. Kisah itu lantas difilmkan jadi empat film panjang, yakni 99 Cahaya di Langit Eropa I dan II (2013, 2014) serta Bulan Terbelah di Langit Amerika I dan II (2015, 2016). Sementara Hanum & Rangga: Faith and the City merupakan sekuel terbaru dari film-film terdahulu. Hanum Rais selalu diperankan Acha Septriasa, sedangkan suaminya, Rangga, semula dimainkan Abimana Aryasatya, tapi di film teranyar digantikan Rio Dewanto. Untuk ukuran film Indonesia, franchise film-film Hanum terbilang laris. Film pertamanya saja ditonton 1,1 juta orang dan menjadi film terlaris nomor dua pada 2013. Buku Ariel Heryanto, Identitas dan Kenikmatan, bisa menjadi teman yang baik untuk memahami film-film Hanum. Di buku itu, Ariel meminjam konsep post-islamisme yang digagas Asef Bayat (1996). Bayat menganalisis kondisi sosial-politik di Timur Tengah pada pertengahan 1990-an. Menurut Ariel, apa yang terjadi pada kecenderungan konsumsi budaya populer islami di Iran, Mesir, dan banyak negara Timur Tengah lain juga paralel dengan yang terjadi di Indonesia sejak 1990-an sampai era 2000-an. Kita tahu pada 1990-an kelas menengah muslim mulai bangkit. Di saat bersamaan, sikap rezim Orde Baru terhadap Islam politik juga melunak. Sikap antagonistis yang berlangsung pada era 1970-an dan 1980-an berganti dengan sikap akomodatif. Islam politik diberi tempat, antara lain lewat pendirian Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia (ICMI). Pada dekade itu pula Soeharto melakukan ibadah haji, yang kemudian dianggap menandai perubahan kebijakan rezim terhadap Islam politik. Di masyarakat, pendakwah pun kian popular. KH Zainuddin MZ dilabeli dai sejuta umat. Majelis-majelis dakwah tumbuh subur di kantor maupun kampus sekuler. Seminar keislaman berlangsung di hotel, alih-alih di masjid. Berjilbab tak lagi dianggap simbol radikalisme ekstrem kanan. Jilbab juga bisa dikawinkan dengan mode. Gaya hidup islami kian diakomodir dengan kehadiran bank syariah. Di jagat sastra lahir generasi penulis baru, misal komunitas penulis Forum Lingkar Pena (FLP), yang membedakan dari karya sastra Danarto, Kuntowijoyo atau Abdul Hadi WM. Di jagat budaya pop, musik nasyid—yang tadinya dilabeli musik kalangan sendiri—merambah ranah arus utama. Meskipun sebagai komprominya, nasyid jadi ditambahkan alat musik pengiring. Selain nasyid yang dibawakan Raihan dan Snada, ada pula solois Opick. Lagu-lagu selawat dipopulerkan Haddad Alwi. Di televisi, sinetron religi hadir selama Ramadan dan juga bulan-bulan setelahnya. Di saat itu, film islami (religi) tinggal menunggu waktu. Penantian itu berakhir pada 2008 dengan dirilisnya film Ayat-ayat Cinta karya Hanung Bramantyo, yang berdasarkan novel Habiburrahman El Shirazy, eksponen Forum Lingkar Pena. Film tersebut menandai perubahan tema Islam yang diangkat ke layar lebar. Seperti dicatat Eric Sasono (Kompas, 4 April 2008), film islami biasanya tidak mengambil cinta sebagai tema utama. Sebab, tema cinta tunduk pada hal yang substansial dalam pandangan Islam. Ini terlihat pada film-film islami pra-1998, seperti Titian Serambut Dibelah Tujuh dan Nada dan Dakwah, yang menempatkan persoalan cinta tokoh-tokohnya hanya cerita sampingan. Dalam Ayat-ayat Cinta (AAC), persoalan cinta dirayakan sambil diberi pemecahan islami, seperti taaruf dan poligami. Eric lalu menyimpulkan bahwa tokoh utama AAC, Fahri yang apolitis, adalah si Boy baru yang tersandera persoalan cinta. Tema begini masih berlanjut dengan Ketika Cinta Bertasbih I dan II hingga dua jilid Surga yang Tak Dirindukan. Lantas bagaimana dengan franchise film-film Hanum? Film-film Hanum mencoba melangkah dari cinta sebagai tema utama. Yang dirambah adalah persoalan besar umat Islam di tingkat global pasca-tragedi 11 September 2001 atau 9/11. Latar Eropa dan Amerika membawa tokoh-tokoh filmnya terseret persoalan Islam versus Barat, isu terorisme serta islamofobia pasca-9/11. Itulah yang tercermin dari masing-masing dua jilid film 99 Cahaya di Langit Eropa dan Bulan Terbelah di Langit Amerika. Di empat film pertamanya, Hanum terjebak dalam tesis benturan peradaban Huntington lantaran ia seolah mengamini tesis itu. Yang tampak di layar justru adalah Barat yang kebanyakan menaruh curiga kepada Islam dan menempatkan Islam sebagai lawan. Hanum dan tokoh lainnya menjadi korban dan akhirnya keluar sebagai pemenang dalam benturan peradaban ini. Kritik utama saya kepada film-film Hanum ialah filmnya tak hendak membuka dialog tentang Barat versus Islam, tapi justru menyiram api konflik semakin berkobar. Filmnya tampak ditujukan bagi umat Islam di negeri sendiri sambil bilang, "Begini lho, sikap orang Barat pada Islam." Adapun tema film kelima, Hanum & Rangga, sedikit bergeser. Persoalan global umat muslim berkelindan dengan persoalan pribadi (baca: cinta dan perkawinan) Hanum. Kendati demikian, dalam Hanum & Rangga, karakter Hanum masih harus berhadapan dengan stigma buruk terhadap Islam. Pihak Barat kali ini diwakili media yang mengeksploitasi isu terorisme dan Islam demi rating tinggi. Hanum kemudian berusaha mendobrak. Ia datang dengan konsep acara Punk'd yang ramah muslim. Acara yang ia percaya bisa mendatangkan rating sekaligus tak memojokkan Islam dan umat Islam. Jadi, kira-kira bayangkan Ashton Kutcher membawa wanita bercadar untuk mengerjai orang. Pada saat bersamaan, Hanum dibelit persoalan rumah tangga, yakni harus memilih antara karier atau keluarga. Lagi-lagi film Hanum yang terbaru ini juga tak hendak membuka dialog. Barat, diwakili medianya, digambarkan memusuhi Islam. Kita bisa mendengar tokohnya berkata sambil setengah berteriak, "The world would be a better place without Islam." Hanum melawan omongan itu. Ia membuktikan Islam memberi rahmat pada seluruh alam. Yang disayangkan semua disampaikan serba verbal lewat dialog perdebatan ketimbang bahasa gambar. Di sini filmnya melanggar kaidah "show don't tell." Namun, saya lantas berpikir, pilihan kreatif itu dilakukan dengan sadar karena target penontonnya. Film ini tampaknya menyasar umat Islam berpendidikan menengah ke bawah yang sudah menanam kecurigaan buruk pada Barat. Di sini Hanum & Rangga tidak memberi sumbangsih apa pun, kecuali memberi tontonan untuk kalangan sendiri. Jadi, mana yang Anda pilih, Jokowi atau Prabowo, eh film A Man Called Ahok atau film Hanum & Rangga? (*)

Ade Irwansyah, wartawan. Bukunya, “Seandainya Saya Kritikus Film” diterbitkan penerbit indie di Yogyakarta, Homerian Pustaka pada 2009.

Link asli: https://jurnalruang.com/read/1545046604-ada-apa-dengan-ahok-dan-hanum

#film filmkritik kritikfilm amancalledahok hanumdanrangga

0 notes