https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9276-8150
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Abstract
This study proposes an alternative analytical framework for the interpretation of the arrest of an Iranian teenage female social media star by regime authorities in May 2018. I argue that the regime’s reaction to the youngster’s dancing was a product of a complicated historical dialectic with the West, rather than an objection to dance as a performative category. While the Iranian regime may have inherited the predominantly negative perceptions of the solo female dancing body from the Pahlavi era, dancing is not a crime in post-revolutionary Iran. However, dance is ‘meaning in motion’, and it can be inscribed and re-inscribed with political, cultural and social markers – depending on the motives of the spectator. This paper argues that it was the meaning ascribed to the teen’s dancing by hardline authorities that led to her arrest, and not the act of dancing itself. By historicising and framing the arrest within the discourse of ‘Westoxication’, this study interprets the arrest as a form of state-centric cultural resistance. The site of cultural contestation, the youngster’s dancing body, became the discursive and ideological terrain on which the regime repudiated Western cultural norms in defence of its own post-revolutionary standards of decency and cultural authenticity.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 “The Reaction to the Detention of Maedeh Hojabri.” Iranwire, July 9, 2018. https://iranwire.com/fa/features/26776
2 Golkar, “Student Activism, Social Media,” 62.
3 Hanna, “Dance and Sexuality: Many Moves,” 214.
4 Meftahi, Gender and Dance in Modern Iran, 5–6.
5 Brownlee and Ghiabi, “Passive, Silent and Revolutionary,” 301.
6 Ibid., 312.
7 For example, see Jason Rezaian, “What the Arrest of an 18-year-old Instagram Star Says about Iran’s Backward Leaders,” July 12, 2018,
8 Akbarzadeh, “Do Iranian Dancers Need Saving,” 453–70.
9 Brownlee and Ghiabi, “Passive, Silent and Revolutionary.”
10 Said, Orientalism.
11 Siapera, Cultural Diversity and Global Media, 124.
12 Dox, “Dancing around Orientalism,” 53.
13 Jarmakani, Imagining Arab Womanhood.
14 Mabro, Veiled Half-Truths.
15 Dox, “Dancing around Orientalism,” 53.
16 Mabro, Veiled Half-Truths, 118.
17 Lewis, Gendering Orientalism, 173.
18 Thornton, Orientalists: Painter-Travellers: 1828–1908, 172.
19 Maira, “Belly Dancing: Arab Face,” 332.
20 Ibid., 323.
21 See Antony, “It’s Not Religious but It’s Spiritual,” 63–81.
22 Shay, Dancing Across Borders, 128.
23 Stellar, “From ‘Evil-Inciting’ Dance,” 235.
24 Saberi, “What It’s Like to Be a Dancer.”
25 Shay, “Dance and Non-Dance,” 61–2.
26 Gholami, Dance in Iran: Past and Present, 6.
27 Ibid.
28 Shay, Dangerous Lives of Public Performers, 78–89.
29 Shay, “Foreword,” xiii–xiv.
30 Ibid., xv.
31 Meftahi, Gender and Dance in Modern Iran, 42.
32 Meftahi, “Dancing Angels and Princesses,” 21.
33 Meftahi, Gender and Dance in Modern Iran, 42.
34 Ibid., 61, 81.
35 Ibid., 61.
36 Ibid., 80.
37 Ibid., 1, 7.
38 Hanna, “Dance and Sexuality: Many Moves,” 213.
39 Stellar, “From ‘Evil-Inciting’ Dance,” 231, 237–238.
40 Meftahi, Gender and Dance in Modern Iran, 165.
41 Ibid., 10–11.
42 “Iranians Behind Tehran Version of ‘Happy’ Sentenced,” The Independent, September 18, 2014, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iranians-behind-tehran-version-happy-sentenced-six-months-prison-and-91-lashes-9741014.html
43 “Iran Women Dance in Support of Arrested Instagram Teen,” July 9, 2018,
44 “The Reaction to the Detention of Maedeh Hojabri,” Iranwire, July 9, 2018, https://iranwire.com/fa/features/26776
45 Reed, “Politics and Poetics of Dance,” 503–32.
46 Desmond, “Introduction,” 1–2.
47 Desmond, “Embodying Difference,” 50–1.
48 Ibid., 31.
49 Duncombe, Cultural Resistance Reader, 35.
50 Dabashi, Post-Orientalism: Knowledge and Power, 258.
51 See Tazmini, Revolution and Reform in Russia and Iran, 216, 248, 264.
52 Bill, Politics of Iran: Groups, Class, and Modernization, 74.
53 Term adapted from Fazeli, Politics of Culture in Iran, 197.
54 Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West, 68–9.
55 Mohammadi, Political Islam in Post-Revolutionary Iran, 62–3.
56 Āl-e Ahmad, Occidentosis, 27.
57 Ibid, 73.
58 Algar, Religion and State in Iran.
59 Quoted in Akbar and Saeed, Contemporary Approaches to the Qurʾan, 14.
60 Mirsepassi, Transnationalism in Iranian Political Thought, 50.
61 Āl-e Ahmad, Occidentosis.
62 Martin, Creating an Islamic State.
63 Bayat, “Islamism and Social Movement Theory,” 904.
64 Farhi, “Cultural Policies in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” 2.
65 “The Issue of the Confession of Maedeh Hojabri,” Ionline, July 13, 2018, http://www.ion.ir/news/384227/
66 “Maedeh Hojabri,” July 24, 2018, https://www.eghtesadonline.com/n/1RPq
67 “Iranian Teens’ Televised Confessions for Social Media Postings Prompt Strong Outcry Centre for Human Rights in Iran.” July 11, 2018,
68 July 9, 2018, Twitter entry under handle @fazelmaybodi.
69 “Why Don’t You Bring Murders to Television,” ISNA, July 10, 2018, https://www.isna.ir/news/97041910014/
70 July 7, 2018, Twitter entry under handle @ehsanbodaghi.
71 July 7, 2018, Twitter entry under handle @ehsanbodaghi.
72 July 8, 2018, Twitter entry under handle @najafi_tehrani.
73 ISNA, July 10, 2018, https://www.isna.ir/news/97041910552/
74 “The Warning of FATA Police [Cyber-Police],” Hamshahrionline, July 10, 2018, http://www.hamshahrionline.ir/news/415346/
75 “Explanation for the Arrest of Maedeh Hojabri,” Entekhab, July 15, 2018, http://entekhab.ir/fa/news/419048
76 Ibid.
77 “Explanation for the Arrest of Maedeh Hojabri,” Entekhab, July 15, 2018, http://entekhab.ir/fa/news/419048
78 Ibid.
78 Ibid.
80 “FATA: If Maedeh Hojabri’s File Was in Our Hands We Would Certainly Chase It,” Tasnim, July 13, 2018, https://tn.ai/1775078
81 Ibid.
82 Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
Additional information
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Ghoncheh Tazmini
Ghoncheh Tazmini is a visiting fellow at the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics. She is the author of Khatami’s Iran: The Islamic Republic and the Turbulent Path to Reform (I. B. Tauris, 2007, 2009), and Revolution and Reform in Russia and Iran: Politics and Modernisation in Revolutionary States (I. B. Tauris, 2012). Formerly an Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and a British Academy grantee, her research and publications are positioned at the nexus of modern Iranian history, comparative politics and global history.