From Streets to Cyberspaces: The Disembodiment of Social Protests in Iran. A Comparative Time-Perspective / Dalle strade allo spazio cyber: la disincarnazione delle proteste iraniane. Una prospettiva storica comparata

While recent protests against religious police in Iran have obtained world-wide attention due to their physical, embodied presence and visibility not only on the streets of Iranian cities and villages but also beyond the national borders, the recent evolution of 2022’s Women, Life, Freedom protests has turned the mobilization into dis-embodied forms of protest. This disembodiment represents the result of three major observable social facts related to contemporary social mobilization in the Iranian context. In the first place, Iran is a hyper-connected country, where the online has, since the end of the 1990’s, represented a wide spread and concrete opportunity for the young generations to express dissent and challenge Islamic governmental restrictions, such as mandatory veil- ing and gender segregation. Secondly, protests in Iran have been going hybrid (being both online and offline) since 2009’s Rahesabz Green Movement, although back then, techno- logical means were less sophisticated; nonetheless, the 2022’s protests rely on a pre-ex- isting significant experience of online mobilization. Third, the harsh, physical repression of the Women, Life, Freedom movement has made it almost impossible for protesters to maintain a continuity in their physical presence on the streets and in public places. From a comparative time-perspective, these three conditions characterize Women, Life, Freedom movement as a disembodied social movement.