Female corporeality and agency in the iranian uprisings. Pedagogical insights

Abstract

An image of a woman holding up a lock of cut hair during a demonstration in Iran has become an emblem of the struggle against patriarchal oppression. This contribution offers a pedagogical reading of Iranian women’s activism, interpreting women’s bodies as a symbolic space in which repression and self-determination confront one another. Through the theoretical lenses of Gramsci, Bourdieu, and Nussbaum, the paper examines how bodily gestures and the iconography of revolt function as devices of counter-narration. The methodology is grounded in visual, semiological, and hermeneutic analysis within a historical-political framework linking corporeality and subjectivation. The body is not a passive object of control, but an active subject bearing formative implications for gender issues beyond Iran.