Producing Territory, Resisting the State: Indigenous Discourses and Symbolism in Street Demonstrations in Iranian Kurdistan

Keywords: territory, demonstrations, embodiment, Indigenous discourse, alter-geopolitics, Kurds, Iran
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 16

Abstract

This paper investigates the Iranian Kurds’ production of territory during two rounds of street demonstrations in October 2014 and September 2017. Findings from semi-structured interviews and qualitative online data show that Kurdish demonstrators produced anti-colonial and alter-geopolitical territory by employing Indigenous discourses and symbolic practices as co-constructed, embodied tactics of resistance against state suppression. Situating the demonstrations within the context of the Iranian state’s securitization of space, the article submits that the demonstrators’ use of Indigenous discourses and symbolic practices enabled them to avoid confrontation with the security forces. The state’s oppressive power and its militarization of space, therefore, had the ironically productive effect of prompting demonstrators to articulate territory through alternative, discursive and symbolic tactics. Expanding on research that has worked with embodied Indigenous territorial movements, the article concludes by underlining the significance of dominated yet persistent Indigenous geopolitical imaginations—in this case, Kurdistan—that simultaneously inspire and are (re)produced by anti-colonial and alter-geopolitical territorial struggles.