Speakers on “Panel 3: Resistance and Transformation in Iran” will be presenting their work from 2:00-3:20pm in Allard 122.
Mozhgan Fazli (SFU) and Parsa Alirezaei (SFU) | “Not So Green: Paradigm Shift in the Iranian Political Resistance Discourse and the Political Economy of Protest in Iran from 2009 to 2022”
Protests and uprisings have been a recurring theme in the Iranian political resistance discourse, especially since the so-called Green Movement of 2009. In this article, we trace the development of a dialectical challenge by the Kurdish women’s movement and its interaction with broader discourses of political resistance in Iran from the 2009 Green Movement to the 2022 social rupture triggered by the murder of Jina (Mahsa) Amini. We argue from three propositions: (1) The function and structure of the Iranian public sphere is contingent on the reproduction of the base structure of Iranian society, particularly intra-state core-periphery relations where national margins emerge; (2) The Iranian public sphere structurally marginalizes discourses and voices that are fundamentally associated with class, nationality, and gender as nodes of concern in the social system, which constitutes elements of epistemic injustice; and (3) The Iranian political resistance discourse is a contest over “legitimate resistance by the different interlocutors, including status quo supporters (regime remainers) and the Kurdish women’s movement.
We’ve observed changes in the language of resistance in the Iranian political resistance discourse specific to the legitimacy of reform and the diffusion and reasons for resistance. We consider the transformation of the Iranian political resistance discourse to be a symptom of the prolonged internal contradictions of the Iranian state’s political-economic social structure that gradually surfaced in the 2010s, punctuated by the 2017-2018 protests and the 2019 “Bloody Aban uprising, as well as the most recent uprising of 2022, under the slogan of “Woman, Life, Freedom.
Baktash Gourdarzi (UVic) | “The Persian Cossack Brigade and Russian Imperialism in Qajar Iran”
The Persian Cossack Brigade established in 1878 and commanded by Tsarist Russian officers was an effective tool of St Petersburg for pursing Russia’s imperialist ambitions in Qajar Iran. Directed and controlled by Russian authorities, the Brigade was the most powerful military force in Iran until 1917. Furthermore, it possessed a large spy network throughout the country, enjoyed a profound influence on the Shah and his ministers, and even facilitated Russia’s economic dominance in Iran. Nevertheless, what makes the case of Persian Cossack Brigade in the history of Russian imperialism in Qajar Iran so unique is the fact its establishment was not the result of a deliberate policy by St Petersburg. On the contrary, the Brigade was established at the request of the Persians themselves, who wanted to learn the techniques of a modern army.
Using first hand Persian, Russian, and English sources, this paper demonstrates how this request was a result of Persian elites’ decades long admiration for Tsarist Russia. Following Iran’s crushing defeats in both Russo-Persian Wars in the early nineteenth century, many Persians were deeply impressed by Russia’s successful transformation into a major European power over a short period of time and started seeing Russia as the best model of reform for Iran to emulate. In other words, Iranians saw modernity through Russia and not other European powers
Hoornaz Keshavarzian (SFU) | “Bodies that Rebel: From a Nonmovement to a Revolution”
This paper aims to theorize the current Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. I argue how the ‘nonmovement’ (Bayat, 2013) evolves into an intersectional feminist revolutionary uprising that predominantly centers around performative gestures of defiance. Through multimodal discourse analysis, I study the online footage, including images, videos and graffities circulated on Instagram to show how the desire-oriented revolutionary bodies, rebel against the prevailing hegemonic decency. In doing so, I offer a genealogy of women’s resistance and solidarity building to shed light on the historical struggles faced by women in Iran. Iranian women’s resistance against a backdrop of the authoritarian regime driven by “political Islam (Bayat, 2013), differs conceptually and performatively when compared to the Eurocentric justice-seeking sociopolitical movements. The distinction can be traced in repressive apparatuses exerted by the patriarchal state, leaving no room for mass mobilization, leadership, and collective protest. Under such oppressive and undemocratic circumstances, fights for gender equity, choice and agency will appear alternatively. “Mundane daily practices and “everyday resistance (Bayat, 2013) frame the kind of activism pursued by women in Iran. The current research endeavors to contribute to transnational feminist activism literature by nuancing the feminist knowledge production when it comes to the justice-seeking practices in the Middle East.
Maral Sahebjame (UW) | “A social nonmovement: White marriage in Iran”
In 2014, a Tehran-based women’s magazine published a report on “white marriage (local term for cohabitation) and was temporarily banned for its alleged promotion of white marriage as the office of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei condemned it for being contradictory to Islamic values. Since then, academics across the country have held town halls, clerics have made official comments, and health officials have expressed their concerns for the rise in white marriages. As new generations of Iranians re-articulate their desires and expectations in intimate partner relationships, they force state and legal actors to re-think contemporary forms of marriage and re-examine the legal code and system. Using data from ethnographic fieldwork in Iran, this talk examines white marriage through the lens of academics, psychologists, clerical actors, legal actors, and those who are engaged in white marriages. In so doing, it finds that through their everyday practices and their “power of presence, those engaged in white marriages rewrite gender and marriage norms while participating in a social non-movement that effects social change.