About the Lecture

Title: 'Jin Jian Azadi / Woman Life Freedom: A social vision for human dignity and human rights'

Description: The government’s murder of Jina Amini in September 2022 rocketed Iranian society into a revolutionary moment where woman has emerged as a symbol of resistance at the intersection of all forms of discrimination. In this paradigm shift, the past and current protest movements are linked together through the celebrated slogan of “Jin Jian Azadi”. A new horizon of change has now opened in front of us.

In her lecture, Parvin Ardalan will describe the current revolutionary moment in Iran. How and why did the government’s murder of Jina take us to this particular point? She will try to unpack the radical potential and meaning of Jin, Jian, Azadi (Woman, Life, Freedom). She will insist on the entangled relation of the three elements of this slogan and as such will argue that this slogan by linking the everyday and material necessities of life to the abstract notion of ‘rights’ opens a new horizon of feminist politics for Iran, in specific and the human rights discourse in general. In other words, in its insistence on life, this slogan ties material necessities to everyday needs. As such this slogan provides a concrete meaning to the generic and abstract notion of ‘human dignity’. Jin, Jian, Azadi aims at life in its totality and for this it is a radical and transformative slogan.