“Whether rulers or the ruled, when they feel power slipping away, they are tempted to replace it with violence. Resisting this temptation has always been difficult for them.”
—Hannah Arendt
At first glance, the guillotine and death by cannon may seem unrelated, apart from their shared function as instruments of execution. Yet, from a historical and comparative perspective, they both serve as symbols of power’s violent assertion. The guillotine was a product of revolutionary France, wielded in the name of liberty and justice. Designed as a “humane” execution device, it became an emblem of terror during the Reign of Terror, where even its architects, like Robespierre, fell to its blade. Victor Hugo, lamenting its presence, hoped that France would one day rid itself of this “shameful device.”
In contrast, in 19th-century Iran, execution methods were brutal, arbitrary, and public spectacles meant to instill terror. The infamous bast before the cannon involved tying the condemned to the mouth of a cannon and firing, a punishment employed under the Qajar dynasty against dissidents and criminals alike. The central execution ground in Tehran, Maidan-e Paghapogh (later Maidan-e E’dam and finally Maidan-e Mohammadiyeh), served as a grim stage where beheadings and hangings were performed for public edification. Executions were not only punishments but also performances—ritualized displays of state power meant to terrify and subjugate.
The Spectacle of Violence
In both revolutionary France and Qajar Iran, execution was not merely about punishment; it was a performance staged for the masses. Public executions functioned as both a demonstration of state authority and a means of reinforcing obedience. Michel Foucault describes such spectacles as essential to the theater of power, where the crowd is not merely a witness but a participant in the cycle of violence. The infamous tricoteuses of the French Revolution, knitting at the foot of the guillotine, exemplify how violence, when repeated, loses its shock value and becomes a mundane part of public life.
In Iran, where no formal prison system existed, executions were swift, brutal, and often discretionary. British intelligence reports from the time document executions by cannon, beheadings, and dismemberments as routine state responses to dissent. Lacking a structured legal system, punishment was often carried out impulsively—justice was immediate, public, and designed to maximize fear. The absence of a judiciary or penal system meant that punishment was an act of power rather than a process of law.
Even after the Constitutional Revolution, the shift from monarchy to a parliamentary system did little to curb public executions. The performative nature of punishment persisted, reinforcing the idea that fear, more than law, maintains order. The infamous execution of Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri—a cleric who opposed the constitutional movement—was not just an act of political retribution but a public event, culminating in his son urinating on his corpse, an ultimate act of humiliation meant to further solidify the new order.
Violence as an Endless Repetition
History reveals that revolutions often devour their own children, and the same forces that promise liberation frequently resort to the very violence they sought to abolish. As Slajov Žižek argues, modern states operate on a “politics of fear,” where the terror of execution is not merely about punishment but about ownership—reducing people to objects of state power. Susan Sontag, in Regarding the Pain of Others, suggests that images of suffering serve a dual function: they demand empathy while simultaneously commodifying pain as spectacle.
The guillotine, which emerged from the ideals of justice, ultimately became a tool of indiscriminate killing. The same fate befell Iran’s public executions, where terror was wielded arbitrarily, reinforcing state control rather than legal order. Even today, execution remains a form of mass entertainment—broadcasted, circulated, and consumed—demonstrating that the machinery of death continues, now with the added spectacle of media and digital dissemination.
Victor Hugo once declared that society had rid itself of kings and priests—now, it must rid itself of executioners. Yet, as history has shown, the spectacle of execution is not easily erased. The guillotine may have left France, but the logic of terror remains, ensuring that, across time and space, the machinery of death continues its work.
Aidin Bagheri & Taha Radmanesh
For the full text, refer to the book “Entertainment in Public” Project.
