Visual Culture, Religion, and Politics in the Modern Iranian Public Sphere: The resemiotization of Twelver Shiite Culture in the Mobilization of Protest

To contest the results of the Iranian presidential election in 2009, mobilizestreet protest, and document the regime’s responses protesters disseminatedposters, photographs, and films on social media platforms. In this article I discusshow their use of signs associated with Twelver Shiite visual, material and performativeculture were used to mobilize opposition against authorities who claim tobe acting as guardians of a society based on the creed. By giving attention to signs’coexisting discursive contexts and modality, the study seeks to advance the conceptualizationof ‘recontextualization’ and ‘resemiotization’ in the semiotic studyof cultural codes, and to connect the study of Twelver Shiite visual, material andperformative culture to the sphere of public discourse in modern Iran.