Transformation of Sub-Discourses of Women’s Socio-Political Activism after the Islamic Revolution: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Selected Activists

Abstract

This study, grounded in the framework of critical discourse analysis and employing a hybrid model of Norman Fairclough alongside the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, examines the transformation of sub-discourses of women’s socio-political activism in Iran following the Islamic Revolution. The research data consist of a corpus of spoken and written texts from six prominent female activists, including Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, Nasrin Sotoudeh, Narges Mohammadi, Masoumeh Ebtekar, Sedigheh Vasmaghi, and Azar Mansouri, collected through their interviews, speeches, articles, statements, and public interventions. At the micro and meso levels, Fairclough’s three-dimensional model is used to analyze linguistic, syntactic, and rhetorical patterns, as well as strategies for representing women’s activism, the body, power, and law. At the macro and structural levels, drawing on Laclau and Mouffe, the study examines the logic of constructing the identity of the “woman activist,” the articulation of central signifiers, the demarcation of dominant and competing discourses, and the configuration of discursive shifts in relation to prevailing political-ideological hegemony. The findings indicate that women’s activism after the Islamic Revolution has shifted from a predominantly institutional and top-down discourse toward a plurality of sub-discourses, including: a reformist and participatory sub-discourse, a legalistic and justice-oriented sub-discourse, a civil resistance sub-discourse that exposes structures of power, and a religious critique sub-discourse involving reinterpretation of jurisprudence. Despite their internal tensions, these sub-discourses are interconnected at a deeper level through a shared logic of “recognition of women’s agency” and “the right to the body and presence in the public sphere,” thereby challenging the hegemony of the revolutionary patriarchal discourse. It can be concluded that the transformation of women’s socio-political activism in Iran can be understood as a multi-layered process of subject formation, everyday resistance, and the redefinition of the boundaries of political legitimacy, in which women activists not only seek to influence formal policies but also, through the rearticulation of discourses, reshape the field of power and expand new possibilities for female agency.