Eerie Captures of Violence and Memetic Rhythmicality of Resistance during the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ Movement

This article adopts media-theoretical and somatechnics-focused approaches, as well as a post-cinematic framework to unpack the mediated, intimate, affective, memetic, and rhythmic ways in which the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ revolts and their violent suppression unfolded on- and off-screen. In this article, I ask the following questions: How can we understand violence in the hyper-mediated era of bodies capturing their own deaths online? What kinds of affects emerge from these mediated entanglements? And how can the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ feminist revolts complicate our understanding of the affective, post-cinematic, and somatechnical ways in which bodies and technologies emerge and converge, sometimes in violent ways? Through a conceptual analysis of Instagram and YouTube videos depicting marginalised subjects who were killed onscreen in Iran, or who posthumously appear joyous and alive through their mediated presence, I investigate the eerie affects of violence and mobilise the notion of memetic rhythmicality to unpack the novel ways in which resistance to structural violence are being enacted. To demonstrate the implications of the mediated capture of violence, as well as the new forms of resistance – for processes of feminist, political, and somatechnical becomings – I draw on somatechnical and hauntological theories ( Derrida 19931994 ; Mulvey 2006 ; Sullivan and Murray 2011; del Pilar Blanco and Peeren 2013 ; Cielemeçka 2015 ; Carstens 2020 ; and Geerts 2021 ), Mark Fisher’s (2016) notion of ‘the eerie,’ the Deleuzoguattarian (19801987) concept of a Body without Organs, and Steven Shaviro’s (2023) ‘rhythm image.’