A study on Constitutionalism Discourse and visual norms in Qajar era

This paper is an attempt to indicate how constitutionalism discourse is formed and what is its effect on Qajar pictorial rules, considering Lacla and Mouffe’s discourse theory. Laclau and Mouffe consider social relations as a discursive construction but this construction is never finished or complete. There are always other meaning potentials which can challenge and transform the structure of the discourse. They have constructed their theory by combining and modifying two major theoretical traditions, Marxism and structuralism. They created theoretical concepts like “articulation” , “nodal point”, ”floating signifier”, ”element”, “moment” “chains of equivalence”, ”chains of difference” and they mentioned that a discourse attempts to collect series of the signs in a relational net and fix meaning in a partial way, therefore it creates unified system of meaning. Each discourse establishes a totality in which sign is fix as a moment through its relations to other signs or as a fishing-net. This is done by the exclusion of all other possible meanings that the sings could have had.
According to this approach we will discuss three period of Iran’s history by considering and contemplating newspapers. Especially we will highlight the conflict between the government’s discourse and the opposition’s discourse in these periods: first Naseredin-Shah period that was the longest one under Qajar dynasty, second Mozafaredin-Shah period and third MohamadAli-Shah period. It seems that pre_constitutionalism is made by articulation of “law” and signifiers such as “reformation”, ”justice”, ”freedom” and this discourse threatened government’s discourse which was earlier made by articulation of “king” and signifiers like “king’s will”, “security”, ”convenience”, ” villein”, and “order”. Pictures of this period changed by two ways: king’s portrait becomes more natural and realistic and gradually ordinary people appear on paintings and photography.
In second period, constitutionalism established a hegemonic discourse. we can see “king” as a “master signifier” which is moved to the place of articulating of two antagonistic discourses .Some signifiers were added in the opposition discourse like “court of justice” and ”parliament”. We can also follow patriotic text in this period .In the pictures we will notice paintings of king’s body which is less important than the Naseredin-Shah period. For example Kamal-ol-Molk who was a famous court painter in that time said ”I painted portrait of Mozafaredin-Shah just for one time”. On the other hand, we can see an important change in Mozafaredin-Shah’s photos. Some of these photos show us that king has lost center of the pictures. If we don’t know Mozafaredin-Shah we can’t understand where is the king ‘s portrait in the pictures.
Discursive antagonism increased in Mohamad-ali-Shah period. The “king” and “the parliament” are two nodal points which struggle to fix their meanings. We can see two other important signifiers like “independence” and “nation” are added in the opposition’s discourse but government’s discourse is not changed at all. Thus because of that high antagonism which caused two discourses collide together, signs of violence such as gun, dead body and blood appeared on the pictures and postal cards.