aesthetic constitutionalism in Qajar age

This essay, as its title signifies, deals with the relationship between two terms and fields in Qajar age: on one hand, the term “constitutionalism” which often used in the field of contemporary “politics” of Iran, and the field of “aesthetics” on the other hand.“aesthetics”, in Kant 's view, means a system of a priori forms which defines what would expose itself to sensible experience.In our method, “aesthetics”, in its broad sense, refers to the distribution of the sensible that determines a mode of articulation between forms of action, production, perception, and thought. This general definition extends aesthetics beyond the strict realm of art to include the conceptual coordinates and modes of visibility operative in the political domain. These a priori forms are not anymore the condition of truth and legitimacy of statements (in Kantian way). But they are historical conditions that make some formations visible. In other words, these a priori forms denote the relation between saying, listening, and seeing, and determine what is visible and what is invisible in a certain period. There is thus an ‘aesthetics’ at the core of politics.“aesthetic constitutionalism” is an aesthetic revolution which occur in Qajar age before political constitutionalism, through pictorial practices that perform by photos and images. It ruptures the relation of King-form with the tradition, and exposes a new definition of the relationship between the visible and the stateable, sayable and seeable. We follow philosophical insights which Michel Foucault and Jacque Ranciere introduce to historiography. They provide theoretical framework to think politics as a priori condition for aesthetic experience. Especially “Politics of Aesthetics: the distribution of the sensible” by Ranciere and “Archeology of Knowledge” by Foucault are our basic resources. From this point of view, we can survey the entry of photography to Iran and conversions it afford as political practices. Photographes, by their pictorial practices, multiplies the body of king and thus undo his oneness and originality. On the other hand, camera' s eyes are indifference to reign's hierarchy, unlike painter-tradition' s eyes which read the relation between the king and his around as relation of the head and body, and try to paint him as an original and disembodied. By the pictorial practices we refer to that kinds of acts that images perform.How do images act?They say nothing, but they do something. In other words, if these images do something, they do that not through what they say or represent. Photography multiplied and reproduces the king's body, and allows no difference between his body and the things around. This is a kind of aesthetic equality which photography performs for the first time, and thus challenges the relationship between the king and tradition based on his divinity and excellency. We call these pictorial practices“aesthetic constitutionalism”since they faced the king with limits of his power, hence he discovers that “my” power is limited and it is conditioned with“the other”. Thus the aesthetic constitutionalism had happened before what historiographies called “constitutionalist revolution”, and plays a mediator role for it, and you might say, predicates it.