Woman, Life, Freedom: Revolting space invaders in Iran

Abstract

The death of the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, Jina (Mahsa) Amini, on 16 September 2022 while in the custody of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s notorious morality police, led to nationwide mobilisations in Iran. Women were at the forefront of these protests, leading a movement that emphasised opposition to the production of space and place as gendered by the state apparatuses of the Iranian regime. This article argues that the state systematically and institutionally unmarks the female body in public space in order to make it as invisible as possible. In marking 20 years since the publication of Space Invaders by Nirmal Puwar, the concepts of invisibility, outsiderness, being ‘out of place’ and ‘space invaders’ are revisited in this article, within the political geographies of Iran. Furthering the concept, we also pair together ‘space invaders’ with the acts of invading space as political acts of intervention. Shedding light on the bodies ‘out of place’ within the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran, we discuss how this mobilisation created a new generation of ‘space invaders’ who no longer negotiate with those in power, but exercise their right to choose what to wear when occupying public spaces. Through protest, activism, performances and other mundane acts of everyday resistance, we show how space invaders negate the authority of the state apparatuses, defying conventions and boundaries, and create new codes for a politically and culturally constructed version of ‘woman’ in Iran.