Shohadaei, Setareh2011-08-262011-08-2620112011-08-26http://hdl.handle.net/1828/3511This work looks at the 2009 Iranian show-trials through modern discourses of biopolitics, sovereignty, and history. I argue that, understood as a theatrical phenomenon, the show trials are situated within the Foucauldian mode of biopower. The latter entails a shift from a politics of death to the preservation of the bios. The show-trials also perform a particularly modern narrative of state sovereignty and teleological history. To consider them in this way requires a rethinking of Michel Foucault’s theory so as to include juridico-philosophical discourse within a biopolitical framework. I propose that, as a performative act, the confessions transform the very thing they are confessing. Through the work of Jean Baudrillard and Jacque Derrida, I argue that the confessions make possible a reconceptualization of the political space of sovereignty as simulacrum and that of the political time of history as hauntology.enBiopoliticsConfessionIranGreen MovementShow-TrialSovereigntyHistorySimulacrumHauntologyPolitical TheatreThesisAvailable to the World Wide WebShohadaei, Setareh. "The Sovereign Confessions: International Relations and the Iranian Post-Elections Show-Trials." In Illumine: Journal of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society Graduate Students Association Vol 9, No 1 (2010): 108-132.