City as Stage: Performative Body and the Authoritarian City

In light of the ongoing Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran – ignited by death in custody of Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Jina Amini for ‘improper hijab’ in September 2022 — performance as act of resistance has become a semiotic way of protest in the face of the authoritarian city. Enacting the factual moments of oppression, suffering and even joy, Iranian urban women rebel against a city that tends to control the public body — and create a novel space of theatrical disobedience. In this paper, we aim to critically explore and theorise these moments of performative resistance in the public urban spaces through the lenses of feminist geographies, ‘the right to the city’ and politics of space. In this context, the authoritarian city is produced by a) entities associated with a politico-ideological power fuelled by religious fanaticism and b) autocratic urban forms.