Geopolitics of Inter-subaltern Colonialism and Gender: Challenging Methodological Dualism through the “Woman, Life, Freedom” Journey from Kurdistan to Iran

Abstract

By challenging postcolonial theory's “methodological dualism,” this article explores non-Western intersocietal encounters and interactions that facilitated the vanguard role of the Kurdish region of Iran (Rojhelat) in the country's “woman, life, freedom” revolutionary movement. The neglect of inter-subaltern interactions within the framework of methodological dualism has rendered it incapable of explaining the agential entanglement of “inter-subaltern colonialism” and gender in the non-Western nation-building process and its subsequent impact on the affected groups. Addressing this limitation, the author argues that Rojhelat's vanguard position arises from the strategic deployment of patriarchal gender norms in Iran's nation-building process characterized by “inter-subaltern colonialism” before and after the 1979 revolution. Anti-patriarchal tendencies within the left faction of the Kurdish national movement in Rojhelat emerged in response to this context, rendering it receptive to the slogan “woman, life, freedom,” which originally emerged through the Kurdish freedom movement in Turkey and Syria. Furthermore, the centrality of gender in the Islamic Republic of Iran's exceptionalist geopolitical discourses has made the slogan a powerful tool for expressing opposition to the state and mobilizing multiple oppressed groups.