Reconstruction 6.4 (2006)


Return to Contents»


My Life in the Panopticon: Blogging from Iran / Esther Herman

<1> The Panopticon is a prison that was developed in the 19th century. All of the cells face inward toward a tower. Guards sit in the tower where they can see everything that is happening within the cells. The prisoners cannot see the guards. They do not even know if a guard is in the tower or not. The prisoners feel watched whether they are being watched or not. As such, they internalize the notion of being watched and become their own guards.

<2> So what? I am sure you have heard this all before. Foucault (Discipline & Punish (1975), Panopticism) wrote extensively on the Panopticon. The Panopticon has been a subject for philosophers, politicians, architects, artists, and others for a long while. In contemporary society, the Panopticon is the credit check, the surveillance camera, Google, listening devices, the blog.

<3> I live in a Panopticon. My blog--View from Iran--is an open diary from someone living in a Panopticon. I have internalized the reader who is my guard. I know that reader is sometimes my mother, sometimes a friend, sometimes a stranger, and sometimes a guard. I could call that guard a monitor or a spy or a thug or a simple bureaucrat collecting information. I don't know exactly who he is, but I know that sometimes he is busy with my blog.

<4> How do I know this? I know. Just as I know that I may be followed or watched or listened to because I live in Iran. Well, not only because I live in Iran, but because I am from an enemy state. I may live in a spoke of the axis of evil, but I am a citizen of the Great Satan. I am an American in a country without that many Americans. Every one of us, at one time or another, is a suspect. Most of us, I suspect, soon bore the people who suspect us.

<5> I know because after a short time of writing anonymously, my husband, who I will call Keivan, had parts of his posts quoted to him by strangers. The strangers were making a point to him. He got it. This made him decide to quit posting.

<6> I keep writing because I am a neutral player. No one really cares about me because I have no vested interest in Iran. I am like a temp: I may enjoy my work and my colleagues, but in the end I don't really care what happens to the company I temp for.

<7> I am also empathetic in a way that makes me aware of how my posts appear to others. I am always writing for an audience. I self-censor, but I do not lie. It used to embarrass me to self-censor, but it no longer does. I am learning that there are many ways to communicate. I am learning a bit of what most Iranian women are brought up knowing: that restraint does not equal passivity.

<8> The most virulent criticism of self-censorship comes from people who have no idea what it is like to have information that could endanger their life or, in some ways worse, someone else's. By writing this, I do not mean to say that I have that type of information. I mean to say, that I have learned what it is like for others to have that information. It is an intellectual exercise to measure the good of the many against the reality of the intimate. I imagine that the reality is that only a sociopath is capable of acting for the good of the many.

<9> Everything I just wrote plays into the existing picture of Iran. The reality is that Iran is more complex than that. It can also feel so frigging free. Whatever oppression Iran has, its leaders do not have the will for relentlessness. In the Soviet Union, people lost their positions when a relative emigrated. If that were true in Iran, no one would have a job. The fact of the huge Iranian diaspora keeps this country from sliding into isolation. Everyone has a relative somewhere else. I met a nomadic family living in a tent in the mountains with relatives in Germany. I've met government officials with nephews in Seattle and military officers who regularly speak to their sisters in Sweden. This is Iran.

Plausible Deniability

<10> The illusion of anonymity is important for my blog. It is plausible deniability. I know that my identity is known in the sense that it is 99% suspected. I use anonymity to protect the people I meet, not to protect me. I hide their identities much deeper than I hide my own.

<11> In a sense, I am the opposite of the tell-all blogger who hides her own identity at the expense of the identity of others. I am the plausible deniability blogger, not the anonymous blogger. I offer the people who meet me and confide in me deniability. I offer myself plausible deniability: in other words, no one will believe me if I deny my identity, but they may accept that denial anyway. It makes everyone happier to believe the denial.

The Thirteenth Warrior

<12> The Thirteenth Warrior (1999), which I saw three times on bus trips in Iran, is one of the best movies I have ever seen about dealing with culture shock and the process of learning a language. You've got this refined Arab prince confronted with a new culture with strange and repellant customs (blowing noses into the same bowl of water used to wash faces), a new language, and unexpected situations. I mean these tall Nordic guys he has to deal with can't even pronounce his name: they call him Bin (simply "son") rather than learning his name. Eventually Bin learns the language and learns to take another point of view.

<13> I am not the Thirteenth Warrior, but I certainly know what he feels like. I know the physicality of learning to function in and understand a new culture. I know the strangeness and familiarity of the day the new language becomes one that is easily understood. I know the moments when cultural misunderstandings turn into cultural understandings. These are all processes with sudden leaps of understanding. It's a bit like the growth of children: they may grow gradually all the time, but one morning they wake up suddenly and noticeably taller.

<14> The blog is a forum for the process. I see View from Iran as a series of understandings and misunderstandings; interpretations and misinterpretations. I do not keep it in order to report indisputable facts. I am neither a journalist nor a researcher. I am, however, a keen observer and a good learner. I share my blog with people in order to learn.

<15> It's easy to misunderstand The Thirteenth Warrior, to see it as a film that pits the sophisticated Arab against the barbaric Viking. Because we see the Viking from the point of view of the Arab Prince, we see them as he sees them: first, as strange and barbaric. Later as masters of leadership and management (didn't you note how each member of the 12 warriors is capable of leading when the time comes to lead? Didn't you notice that they function as a team seamlessly?). We end the film, through his eyes, in respect for these Vikings.

<16> Discussions about The Thirteenth Warrior quickly become discussions about accuracy, language, and costume. The Internet has provided nitpickers with a forum. The internet is nitpicker heaven.

<17> The whole point of the film is different, though. It is about the way we learn to see a new culture: it has absolutely nothing to do with historical accuracy. It isn't even about warfare even though it is full of battles. The Thirteen Warrior is about me and the fictional Ibn Fadlan and many others like me who observe and participate in strange cultures. We are people who remain foreigners long after we learn to speak and function and respect a new culture.

The Blog Keeps Us Foreign

<18> The blog is the tool of the observer, not the participant. When I was young I took photographs of everything. Soon I realized that despite the fact that I took good photographs and despite the fact that I loved photography, the camera was preventing me from participating in my own life. I had to have it with me at all times just in case there was perfect light on an imperfect subject. I put the camera away. Since then, my photographs are of stationary settings that I can choose to visit with a camera or casual family photos.

<19> Now it's my blog. I use it as a way to keep my distance from the culture I am immersed in. Just like the camera allowed me to hold on to my shyness and insecurity, the blog allows me to hold on to my American identity. I don't want to get used to things in Iran even though I am getting used to things. At the same time, I do not want to get disgusted with things. I don't want to fall into the passive-aggressive behavior that pervades this culture. The blog keeps me sharp. It keeps me from catching the Iranian's depression and keeps me from losing myself in their problems.

<20> But it also keeps me foreign.

Fierce Identity

<21> My grandparents were immigrants to America. They became Americans with a fierceness that only immigrants can experience. I wrestled with this fierceness like every other liberal of my age only to be eventually conquered by it.

<22> I have reversed the immigration process. I have come to a strange country, confronted a strange culture, learned a strange language, and come to a visceral understanding of my grandparents and great-grandparents.

<23> Through this process, I have been conquered by their fierce identities.

 

More information on Iranian Bloggers:

http://blogsbyiranians.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Blogs



ISSN: 1547-4348. All material contained within this site is copyrighted by the identified author. If no author is identified in relation to content, that content is © Reconstruction, 2002-2016.