ABSTRACT
This chapter is about rooftops in Iran as leftover spaces. Its starting point is the observation that, as a consequence of the ongoing processes of neo-liberal urban transformation, common residential rooftops in Iran are cast off as ‘wasted spaces’ in terms of planning and the values associated with it. The term ‘leftover space’ is therefore used to describe an indeterminate condition of being left out of the systems of spatial configuration and signification, which subsequently instigates exclusion from the orders of the visible and sensible. By analysing rooftop protests in Iran, this chapter argues that the Iranian residential rooftops’ contours are rendered ambiguous in everyday practice, specifically in terms of visibility and systems of control. My argument is that such practices sustainably disrupt the orders of the visible by having recourse to tactics of anonymity and inconspicuousness, in ways that enhance – rather than repudiate – the conditions of indeterminacy, insignificance, and non-visibility that the rooftop fosters, precisely on the account of its leftover spatiality. In the following, I will first outline the concept of leftover space as pertinent to the study of Iranian rooftops. Next, I will briefly explain the historic, social, and cultural bases for the application of this concept to residential rooftops in contemporary Iran, and I will explain how the proliferation of satellite dishes conflates the orders of the visible associated with leftover spaces. In the final section, I will provide an in-depth analysis of the ambiguous and confrontational trajectories of Iranian rooftops in everyday life, by focusing on the practice of shouting from rooftops at night as a form of civil protest, which is associated in Iran’s recent history with the Green movement.
