Arash Davari

“Revolutionary Reconstruction” engages the archive of the 1979 revolution in Iran to theorize the agency of a non-teleological collective subject. It argues that this revolutionary subject emerged through acts of narration. Popular culture produced in Iran and abroad between 1968 and 1981 attempted to craft an emerging collective subject by transforming the individuals that would comprise it. This dissertation presents the narratives of subjectivity found therein as open-ended sites of counter-discipline. In light of its findings, the project provides a new account of the late modern state as the effect of disciplined, yet self-determined, social practice.