The Cartography of Gender in Liberal and Conservative E-diasporic Communities

This research paper traces the complicity between liberal and conservative narratives around women’s rights debate as they get articulated by Iranian diasporic communities in cyberspace. My research is grounded in a theoretical framework that registers subjects-actors as deeply embedded in a transnational, hyper-connected network of discursive communities in which systems of gender representation are constantly negotiated and circulated. My research investigates the extent to which both liberal and conservative male elites with neo-liberal and liberationist political agenda inform diasporic narratives and imageries around the figure of the Iranian “woman,” especially her role in Iran’s social and political transformation. These diasporic narratives, in turn, reinforce transnational politics around the visual representation of the “third world woman.”