Abstract:
The movement that shook Iran from September 2022 to March 2023 carries with it major anthropological and sociological innovations. Women, for the first time, are the promoters of the movement, not just a supplement to men. The movement combines two types of demands: existential (the appropriation of women’s bodies by themselves through the rejection of the compulsory veil) and political (the end of the dictatorship and the establishment of political pluralism). The movement also creates for the first time the conditions for an inclusive ethnicity that proclaims the unity of Iran while respecting its ethnic and religious diversity. The movement targeted the theocratic state which had become hyper-repressive and totalitarian. Without organization and leadership, the movement has not been able to overthrow the Islamic state, but it has revealed its major crisis and illegitimacy.