“Cinemas on Fire: Walter Benjamin's Spielraum and the 1979 Revolution in Iran" with Ehsan Hanif

Patreon.com/everythingisideologyBuymeacoffee.com/everythingisideologyInstagram.com/everythingisideology Music: "Building Nests in the Ruins" By nihilore creative commons music projectShownotes: Welcome back to Everything is Ideology, I’m your host Dr. Lee Caplan. Today were joined by Ehsan Hanif a PhD candidate at Cornell University whose work explores the intersections of architecture, oil, and political life in Iran. We discuss his recently published essay, “Cinemas on Fire: Walter Benjamin's Spielraum and the 1979 Revolution in Iran.” We begin with Ehsan’s engagement with Walter Benjamin, using ideas like Spielraum—a “room for play” or possibility—to ask how different spaces open or limit collective action. From there, the conversation moves through a series of contrasts: cinema and theater, passivity and participation, privatized consumption and communal experience.As we move into the Iranian context, these questions reverberate on a new register. We discuss the rise of cinema, its association with modernization and Westernization, and why it became a target during the 1979 revolution. In contrast, we explore Ta’zieh, a form of traditional performance rooted in theological ethical-political commitments that embeds in everyday life, where performance, mourning, and collective participation blur together. Rather than simply representing politics, these spaces actively produce different kinds of social and political possibilities.  Throughout, the conversation returns to a central tension: how do people come to act together? And what kinds of spaces—cultural, architectural, and affective—make that action possible?Biography: Ehssan Hanif is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Architecture and Urban Development at Cornell University. His research, tentatively titled Domesticating Oil: Corporate Colonialism and Labor Negotiating Housing Policies in Iran (1929-1963), explores the history of oil and architectural modernity within Iranian domestic spaces, mapping it from Abadan to Tehran. In his work, he examines how the interplay between oil workers’ movements, international interests in Iran’s subsoil resources, and nationalist discourses reshaped housing projects across Iranian cities. Prior to his time at Cornell, he worked as an independent researcher and translator in Iran, translating several seminal texts into Persian, including Architecture and Modernity (Hilde Heynen), Benjamin for Architects (Brian Elliot), and The Story of Post-modernism (Charles Jenks). His work has been published in the Journal of Architectural Histories, Xorein, Middle East Critique, Sharestan, and British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, among other venues. His latest contribution, titled “An Island within an Island: The Establishment of an Oil Company Town in the ‘Desert’ Island of Abadan, Iran (1908–1930s),” is forthcoming in the Journal of Fabrications.