Journal of World Sociopolitical Studies

Abstract In the present paper, Murad’s memoir, The Last Girl, is scrutinized through the lens of Resistance Literature theories. First introduced by Kanafani (1966) and adapted by scholars such as Harlow (1987) and Sangari (1389 [2010 A. D.]), Resistance Literature has come to constitute pieces of writing that are written during or after a conflict by people experiencing life under the oppressive power. For Harlow and Sangari, what is of utmost importance is the accounts of war experience pictured by civilians from all walks of life. With the Syrian war with the ISIS escalating in 2011 and its consequent overflow into Iraq, the extremist terrorists brought the war to the doorsteps of ordinary people, massacring men and leaving women to deal with the aftermath. The Last Girl is Nadia Murad’s retelling of life under the ISIS as a Yazidi-Iraqi woman. At first glance, Murad pictures a sad, yet vivid image of the Yazidi genocide by the ISIS. However, in a deeper analysis of the text, one finds how being ripped apart from family, utterly displaced, terrorized and raped can also shape a rather stronger, resistant person. By applying Harlow and Sangari’s theories of Resistance to Murad’s memoir, what is manifested is the way in which being appointed to various kinds of terror in war-time can create a more resistant self in someone.

Abstract This article covers the emergence of resistance economy in the Islamic Republic of Iran within the context of international sanctions, arguing that this policy ought to be understood beyond the historical context in which it emerged. The article captures the historical, political, and economic context in which the first comprehensive economic discourse of the post-revolutionary establishment emerges, and seeks to account for its scope, concerns, and objectives. Rather than another word for protectionism, import-substitution industrialisation, economic diversification of a rentier state or a mere response to sanctions, resistance economy as espoused by Ayatollah Khamenei, is a comprehensive economic policy discourse affecting all levels of state and society in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rather than mitigating the impact of sanctions, resistance economy is an economic discourse that seeks to realise the revolutionary objective of economic independence, whilst transforming the economy of the Islamic Republic from a source of weakness to a source of strength in its pursuit of a new, more equitable international order.