Mothering the Protest: Gender Performativity as a Communication Mechanism in the Iraqi Protest Movement

Abstract

The chapter focuses on an unprecedented approach of protesting in Iraq which is mothering the protest. It argues that traditional gender performance, including mothering, has identified an original form of women’s activism post 2003. While the main line of argument expands on the available literature on the politics of motherhood, it also builds on the ‘performance turn’ in gender communication studies. The body of the female protester, the mother, will be focused on as the locus of the intersection of gender and political discourses. The chapter employs a multiplicity of feminist, political, and critical theories in analysis to read the Iraqi October protests as primarily a socially transformative revolution. The first section provides a contextual reading of the Iraqi October 2019 protests to show how gender and agency are expressed in this social movement and overlap with the communicative and political acts performed by female activists like Um Muhanned, an Iraqi bereaved mother who lost her only son during the protests. The second section illustrates how women redefined the protest’s narrative and language, nurturing a communicative climate where the public is engaged. Finally, the chapter provides a linguistic and cultural analysis of Um Muhanned’s activism in mothering the protest by drawing on her gender performance and communicative acts.