ABSTRACT
Posters can be used as "political advertising" by the powerful; they work to control the symbolic world, to reinforce and replicate the conditions under which they maintain hegemony. Yet images can also be employed by the disenfranchised as 'tactical attempts to disrupt, however momentarily, the strategies of those in power': they can provide a voice, a means of resistance; they can function as political weapons. In addition to the ontological function inherent in historicisations of conflict, the socio-political commemoration of massacres, wars and the deaths of martyrs in various forms are often employed to encourage resistance, protest and participation in political or military action. Ashura and the martyrdom of Hussein are interpreted by many Shi'ites as a symbol of passionate and heroic struggle against injustice and tyranny, as well as resistance against oppression. The Iranian revolutionary aesthetic was, however, similar to revolutionary culture and anti-imperialist, national liberation rhetoric around the world.
