Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses various ways in which political campaigners and activists have sought to use the past as a store of resources for counter-hegemonic purposes. It considers explicitly political uses of past-talk to imagine identities, persuade and proclaim, demarcate space, resist, recruit, coerce and empower in the context of contested spaces, through an analysis of Lebanese, Iranian and Palestinian posters commemorating martyrdom. The book explores how artists utilise forms of past-talk to engage in practical, ethical discussions, effect socio-political change and disrupt the status quo. It argues that archives do not necessarily have to function as a 'system of discursive production' in which hegemonic power is produced and articulated. The book also explores how and Martyrdom why posters project 'a portable image' of a desired world, and the role they have in current political strategies and future imaginations.