Embodying Revolution

Abstract

Abstract This essay considers the 2022–23 feminist uprising in Iran through a transnational feminist lens, as part of a global revolt against patriarchal, homophobic, and transphobic state violence. After first placing the Women, Life, Freedom movement in the context of modern Iranian history, the essay analyzes the dramatic changes in revolutionary politics and consciousness that have resulted in the shift of gender and sexual liberation from the periphery to the center of the freedom struggle in Iran. These novel developments have also opened up new possibilities for diasporic and transnational feminist solidarities that can cut against Iran’s relative isolation from other social movements in the global South. The essay focuses on Iranian iterations of the Chilean feminist song “A Rapist in Your Path” as examples of how affective desires for revolution are transmitted across borders and embodied at the same time, rendering these performances situated acts of resistance as well as sites of South-South solidarity.