Dancing in-between: interstitial feminist defiance in Iran’s public and digital spaces

Abstract

This paper conceptualises interstitial feminist defiance as a mode of activism that emerges between formal feminist mobilisations and everyday dissent. Drawing on a qualitative case study of the Ekbatan girls’ viral dance in Tehran–a public, unsanctioned act of joy and ­resistance–we trace how embodied gestures circulate across urban and digital terrains, amplifying feminist struggle under authoritarian rule. These fleeting, often decentralised acts are neither apolitical nor isolated: they are rooted in a longer genealogy of feminist resistance in Iran and shaped by cumulative histories of protest, surveillance and creative defiance. We show how interstitial defiance operates through spatial improvisation, digital choreography and affective resonance–mobilising ephemeral visibility to forge collective identity, sustain dissent and unsettle dominant epistemologies of activism and resistance. We argue that these performances make three contributions: first, to digital activism, by showing how platform logics of virality, remix and risk are tactically navigated to contest gendered surveillance; second, to social movement theory, by bridging micro-gestures and macro trajectories of struggle; and third, to feminist studies, by foregrounding techno-embodied politics–where joy, care and vulnerability become activist resources. We close by proposing a methodological lens for studying hybrid, networked resistance in which corporeal expression and algorithmic circulation are analytically inseparable.