Power Punishment & Execution in Iran: An analysis of Foucault’s Discipline and Punishment applied to modern Iran

Karaj, Iran. - Feb 25, 2014. The condemned man breaks free of his
restraints and attempts to escape. The man is finally beaten into
submission by a gang of guards, and hanged.

Iran leads the world in per capita executions, and is one of the few countries which continues to publicly hang condemned individuals, creating a spectacle of terror in the street.

These executions carry political significance beyond the administration of supposed justice. They are in essence an abstraction of the political and judicial climate in Iran, in which a population is controlled through sheer violence and terror.

Michel Foucault’s analysis of 18th century punishment from his work Discipline and Punishment, and the ritual of the public execution in particular, evoke eerie parallels with modern day Iran.

“It is a ceremonial by which a momentarily injured sovereignty is reconstituted. It restores that sovereignty by manifesting it at its most spectacular. The public execution, however hasty and everyday, belongs to a whole series of great rituals in which power is eclipsed and restored… Its aim is not so much to re-establish a balance as to bring into play, as its extreme point, the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength.” (Michel Foucault)

Foucault also analyzes the role that the crowd plays in the execution, which provides an interesting explanation for why many Iranians choose to attend such a horrific spectacle.

“If the crowd gathered round the scaffold, it was not simply to witness the sufferings of the condemned man or to excite the anger of the executioner: it was also to hear an individual who had nothing more to lose curse the judges, the laws, the government and religion.” (Michel Foucault)

In the video (see below) the tension from the crowd can be heard throughout the man’s pleading, and it finally erupts in restrained jubilation when he briefly escapes. For many Iranians who do attend such an event, it is to glimpse the momentary defiance of the condemned man, and use the opportunity to express their own frustration with the regime.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Hamid Yazdan Panah, "Attorney by day, Revolutionary at night", February 27, 2014

Video of the execution (Warning: Graphic and Disturbing Content):

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