Public Mourning and Decolonial Witnessing in Iran: The Witnessing Dead

When innocent blood is spilled in the Iranian world, mourning does not remain private. It becomes loud, collective and excessive, unfolding as a shared public outcry of grief, anger and refusal. This article argues that, in this context, mourning rituals are collective practices through which the testimony of the dead is made publicly present and sustained, preventing unjust death from receding into private loss or historical closure. Situated within an Iranian sociopolitical world where authority is evaluated through its relation to justice, these practices expose injustice and unsettle the legitimacy of authority. Guided by a decolonial framework, the article departs from readings that reduce Iranian experiences to geopolitics and ideology. Instead, it grounds its analysis in a sociocultural world where injustice is already known, named and publicly contested. I trace this structure across four ruptures, moments in which the injustice of authority becomes publicly visible: the epic of Siyāvash, the ritual mourning of Muharram, and two contemporary moments: the death of Jina Mahsa Amini and the January 2026 massacre. Drawing on lived and relational knowledge, historical narratives, ritual practices, poetry and publicly circulating materials, the article shows how collective mourning operates as decolonial witnessing by carrying the testimony of the dead across time. In doing so, mourning becomes not only a form of public protest but also an act of collective judgement that unsettles the legitimacy of authority.