Abstract – Article: Joy and Corporeality versus Mourning and Death-Orientation
Forty-six years after the rise of political Islam in Iran, the relationship between society and religion has emerged as a central axis of sociopolitical tension. The Women, Life, Freedom movement represents a pivotal moment in this conflict—a symbolic political rupture through which younger generations directly challenge the religious state and its cultural hegemony.
The 2022 protest movement revealed a stark cultural antagonism between the state’s value system—rooted in martyrdom, mourning, piety, hijab, and corporeal control—and a secular, life-affirming culture increasingly embraced by the broader society. For over four decades, the Islamic Republic sought to normalize a religious public culture defined by grief, gendered discipline, and the glorification of death.
Yet in engagement with the global contemporary, new generations have cultivated an alternative cultural paradigm centered on joy, embodiment, and worldly experience. While the movement did not achieve political regime change, it marked a profound cultural, moral, and symbolic victory by legitimizing resistance to imposed religiosity and articulating a counter-hegemonic vision grounded in life, freedom, and bodily agency.
Keywords
Social movements, Mahsa movement (Woman, Life, Freedom), joy, corporeality, cultural resistance, Generation Z (Gen Z)
