-A series of protests and civil unrest began in Iran on September 16, 2022, as a response to the death of Mahsa Amini, after she was arrested by the morality police for wearing an improper hijab in violation of Iran’s mandatory hijab laws.
-I believe that what we are observing in Iran, is one of the most significant and subversive feminist movements of our times, one I would go as far as calling a fourth wave feminism, one that is in praise of the ethics of life. Of a feminine erotic ethics.
-This subversive feminist revolt is the scene of the return of the repressed. We know from Freud that the repression of femininity is a remarkable feature of the psychic life of human beings, equally applicable to both sexes. We are observing the return of the repressed female body that refuses to be covered symbolically, and that says: face the fetishistic/phobic cause of your desire, and look at me, in my ordinariness, in my hunger for an ethics of woman, life, and freedom. It is a hospitable invitation toward cohabitation for it does not exclude, it is in praise of an ethics of life, an ethics of the erotic. They want to live, they are not apologetic for their hunger, they do not feel mad, bad, or sad; this return of femininity, the return of the repressed is not here in a hysterical manner, it is not here in a voyeuristic, exhibitionistic way, it is not here in the name of need but that of desire.
-I do not believe we have seen anything like this subversive feminist movement before. It has disturbed us in a revolutionary, magical, carnivalesque manner. The people who have taken to the streets are mourning together, celebrating together, and they want to dance, sing, and live. We are observing the magical resurrection of the witches.
-And then, a few months later,
This happened;
-The mass poisoning of Iranian schoolgirls in a series of chemical attacks, when students in dozens of schools in Iran were reportedly poisoned in an undetermined manner by unidentified perpetrators. These events started in November 2022 and reports of thousands of students being poisoned in ongoing assaults have occurred in the following months. Mostly poisoning early adolescent girls, in schools which due to segregation laws only have girls as students.
-Poison, the etymology of the word takes us to drinking magic potions.
-All the fantasies that were circling around since the mass poisoning of schoolgirls were associated with how the poisoning harms the female body; the body, I must remind, of an adolescent girl. The very symbol of the becoming of sexuality, of the re-birth of sexuality, of all the excitements and fears of it. And fantasies are, after all is said and done, what matter the most to a psychoanalyst. The fantasies predominately were that the poison will target the female genitals. It was said that after the poisoning, these girls will not be able to have children or they will have multiple births, it will affect their menstruation, they will not be able to enjoy sex (reminiscent of female genital mutilation practices). Can there be a more direct violence, not only on the female body but on that of feminine sexuality? Or even more concretely on the female sexual organ which, when all is said and done, can become the ultimate site of terror, at least within the Freudian discourse.
- Is there a more terrifying being than that of the phallic woman? Very well represented in the witches with their big noses, long messy hair and broomsticks. With their unpredictable seductions and spells. Is the poisoning of this new feminine uprising, of the resurrection of the witches with a clear radical ethics of the erotic, not a response to that very terror of castration on the part of the fragile, weak figure without any potency left? In the face of powerlessness and fragility, people become their most violent selves. Impotence is always, inevitably the mise en scène of such atrocities. Is the rise of this new feminine erotic heroine not the most terrifying object after all? We know very well that such a terror is not specific to this geography. These new heirs of the witches who were here all along but have come back in a way that we cannot ignore. Putting their hair down, this powerful heritage of the erotic, lineage of the feminine.
-Well try as you may, but your violence is a clear sign of your weakness, you have no potency, no magic potion just violence at your disposal that you bring to SCHOOLS, to school girls in schools,
It is too late now, they have said it:
Abracadabra;
-Several folk etymologies of Abracadabra are associated with: “I will create as I speak,” “I create like the word,” these very derivatives of the life drive, signifiers of psychoanalysis.
-Abracadabra has a new etymology, it is Woman, Life, Freedom.
-So buckle up the witches are here and here to stay;
-THEY are the ones with magic potions, for they are erotic, they are a singular collectivity, in search of difference and not that of sameness. They are in the hunt for pleasure, this hunt of theirs is haunting you.
-The spell is on you, so buckle up, there will be turbulence …
-Abracadabra
-The real magic potion is embodied within the undeniable eroticness, life orientedness of these girls, and their newly awakened bodies. You have no magic, no dream, no passion, and that is why you have to use poison, you use violence for you have no power, but they even have the antidote to your poison and violence, they are marching toward the ethics of the erotic and there is no stopping them now, certainly they will have unsteadiness, distraction, for this kind of becoming has its own set of troubles and disturbances we know that. But their bodies are pulsing with libidinality, their dreams with desire.
Pink, green, and blue hair colors, short and long hair, veiled and unveiled, they are all just really breathtakingly beautiful. You want to take the wind out of their inspirations and imaginations, control them, poison them, and … but your attempts are futile. They are in search of the ethics of life, they are comrades of eros … they are magical … they believe in the ethics of nonviolence.
-They are certainly disturbing your sleep.
-So wake up, for your dreams have failed into a nightmare;
—wake up.