This talk by Sara Hassani, professor of political science at Providence College, examines the political significance of self-immolation among women and girls in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Through extensive interviews with survivors, healthcare workers, civil society, and community members, the analysis challenges dominant Western liberal frameworks that limit recognition of political self-destruction to acts performed at government building or accompanied by manifestos and collective movements. These self-immolations – frequently mischaracterized as mere psychopathology – emerge as an embodied and affective language of protest against state-sanctioned gender-based violence, oppression, and coercive control. The acts function symbolically to expose injustice, shame perpetrators, articulate resistance, and foster solidarity through shared cultural understanding. In so doing, they call for a broader re-imagining of the role of embodied strategies, symbolisms, and affect in their relationship to contentious politics.
Sara Hassani completed her Ph.D. in Political Science at The New School for Social Research where she was a Prize and ACLS/Mellon Fellow. Her work in political theory explores themes of political violence, state, policing, and resistance. She is currently working on a manuscript based on her APSA award-winning dissertation, which examines the elevated rate of self-immolation among young women in Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Grounded in historical research and interviews with survivors and their caretakers and communities, it sheds light on the multidimensional operation of police power enacted on women’s bodies and the unconventional political agency they exercise under and against that police power.
