Self, Nature and Technology
Section editor: Dr. Gitanjaly Chhabra
Guernica
Pablo Picasso, 1937
Dr. Gitanjaly Chhabra, Assistant Professor
ACSS Department, UCW
Beyond the Human, Beyond War
War is not a natural condition of life; it is a produced and sustained violence. It kills—operating as a collective dis/ease (Ferrando, 2026) that moves across bodies, technologies, ecologies, and histories. War, then, calls us to rethink it not as an inevitable rupture between nations, but as a systemic force woven through political structures, digital infrastructures, and everyday life.
Within Self, Nature, and Technology, these three articles and artistic works are urgent meditations on what it means to remain human amid rupture. Each author/creator traces how power moves not only through weapons, but through infrastructures—through internet shutdowns, mediated narratives, and the severing of communication. Here, technology becomes both instrument of control and fragile thread of connection. Grief travels across borders and bodies, reshaping memory and revealing how the self is never isolated but entangled with land, history, and digital worlds. Together, these articles ask us to rethink “war,” and to witness how resistance, mourning, and hope persist within and beyond technological silence.
This space supports academic freedom and open dialogue without implied endorsement.
Mehrnoush Shahbandi
ACSS Department, UCW
A Nation’s Glory Out of Grief
Internet access slowed and then vanished. Mobile connections, messaging apps, and even landlines were cut. No digital communications with the world! The whole country was in a communication blackout for days, as the authorities carried out the biggest massacres in decades of Amnesty’s research. This was Iran, just a week after the New Year!
The world was in complete shock after witnessing a tragedy beyond description in the past couple of months in Iran. At first, it didn’t appear as striking as it really was, but after a few days, when news spread, the full depth of the tragedy became clear.
As Euronews reported, on January 8th and 9th, people came to the streets nationwide after a call by the exiled crown prince for a mass demonstration. They were protesting against the regime, calling for major political change! The return of the Pahlavi dynasty! Chanting the name of Reza Pahlavi. People were clearly sending their message. But the authorities did not mean to hear them; instead, they opened fire, using live ammunition, killing tens of thousands of people, many of them young, according to Amnesty International on January 26th. UN experts said,” Iran’s death toll is rising, and there could be investigations into ‘crimes against humanity’.” Thousands of protesters were arrested. Families looked for their loved ones in hospitals and detention centres. The whole country was in mourning. And still is.
On the fortieth day after this brutal killing, as a ceremonial mourning tradition in Iran, in all cities, families returned to the graves of their children, brought birthday cakes and candles for those who could never see another birthday. Photos that showed their still-unlived lives awaiting them. Mothers knelt on the cold winter grave soil, screaming in pain and crying their children’s names. Fathers stood like a mountain broken in pieces from within, and then they danced. A heartbreaking ceremonial mourning dance. A dance not of a celebration but a movement of sorrow and anger.
When grief transforms to movement, when one dances on the grave of their lost loved one, it creates the anger that has no name! It defines a new level of sorrow for the world to witness. The anger that certainly cannot be tamed by bullets or prisons. Young Iranians portrayed bravery at a greater depth.
Despite the continuous arrests, killings, and repression, in February, thousands of students from major universities were back on the streets and university campuses again, demanding fundamental change, facing violence more intense than before.
Iran has a history that goes back thousands of years to the glory of ancient Persia, one of the world’s greatest civilizations. The land of poetry, literature, and architecture, where the first human rights were born and practiced. The name “Persia” still symbolizes Persepolis, the exquisite rugs, the Silk Road, and a culture that valued knowledge as much as conquest.
In the 20th century, the Pahlavi dynasty brought the fragrance of Persia back to Iran. They built universities, modern hospitals, cultural centres, and stadiums. The country soared toward rapid infrastructure development. Industry boomed with new factories and high-rise buildings. Women entered universities and were granted the right to vote before women in Switzerland, and actively participated in society. The country was speeding toward modernity with confidence and prosperity.
But the contemporary history of Iran unfolded an unpleasant new chapter! In 1979, the Islamic Republic came to power with the promise of justice, free public services, and independence. However, in 1999, 2009, 2017, 2019, 2022, after the death of Mahsa Amini, and several times since, people have been protesting on the streets and the regime suppressing them brutally, each time more severely than before, which has clearly proven that the state power was against the public will.
The current stream of Iranian people on the streets is not sitting back. Iran, which is grieving for its young brave men and women, is not going to be silenced this time. It is on the world's humanity to step in and support them, value this bravery, and help stop this genocide.
As we all believe that “Iran will bloom once again right from the place where it was broken. The day will come when this sorrow leaves and never returns. Good days will rise when we plant flowers in place of those who are no longer with us. Soon we’ll gather together, sharing stories again and laughing like the old times, and close the door to these horrendous days “(words adapted from an epic poem that has become widely recited by Iranians across the world).
When War Travels with You:
Living Between Two Worlds
Tannaz Sahrapour, Academic Affairs
ACSS Department, UCW
When we hear the word war, we often imagine explosions, smoke, and fire—sirens, collapsing buildings, and visible violence. But war is not always loud.
Sometimes it appears in quieter forms—an internet shutdown, the censorship of reality, or the gradual silencing of people’s voices.
War can also unfold through narratives—through what is reported and what is left unsaid. When voices are filtered, simplified, or ignored, another form of violence occurs: the quiet disappearance of people’s realities and what they are asking for.
In this sense, war is not only an event. It can shape our bodies, our memories, and the way we imagine the future. For migrants, this war does not stay far away. It travels with us.
I live in a country where life is stable and predictable. Streets are calm and routines continue as usual. Yet my mind often returns to a place where uncertainty is constant.
War, for me, has become the feeling of not knowing—what happens when the internet disappears, what silence hides, and whether friends and loved ones are safe.
When communication disappears, imagination fills the silence. And sometimes that imagination reflects reality more than we hope. When the silence finally breaks, we realize our fears were not unfounded. Many lives had already been taken—ordinary people whose stories ended before they could be fully told.
In moments like these, the body reacts before the mind does. The nervous system has not yet learned the difference between here and there. A simple notification can make your heart race. The body may be safe, but the mind remains on alert.
In such a state, even the simplest daily acts become charged with guilt. Even eating or sleeping can feel strange. Life continues, yet part of you remains somewhere else.
In these moments, one reaches for the smallest signs of belonging. Sometimes it is the scent of cinnamon, or the smell of cardamom rising from a cup of tea. For a brief moment, distance fades. In those moments I realize that sometimes all I needed was a taste of home.
Not to escape, but to remember that home is not only a place. It is a memory carried in the body.
War, in this sense, does not only affect people. It touches the air we breathe, the land we live on, and the future we try to imagine.
Imagine that something important happens in your life—something you have waited for for a long time.
You want to share the news with your family. But the connection is gone. No call goes through. No message arrives. The distance suddenly feels much larger.
And yet, something continues.
In those moments, state-imposed silence disrupts connection but cannot erase the will to speak.
During the prolonged internet shutdown, voices did not disappear; they simply lost their channel.
From far away, many of us tried to carry those voices and keep them heard.
Even grief has begun to transform.
Families who have lost their children gather not only to mourn, but to dance—not because the pain is smaller, but because dignity replaces despair. In those moments, a mother may say that her child is not only a victim, but a hero.
In the end, one choice remains: to stand on the side of life.
Hope is not naïve, nor a denial of suffering—it is a quiet form of resistance.
War may disrupt connection, but it cannot extinguish the human desire to live.
In recent months, Iranians around the world have gathered week after week, showing the power of solidarity.
Perhaps this is one lesson our movement offers others: rights do not defend themselves.
They require courage, persistence, and people willing to raise their voices together.
Dr. Mozhgan Pourmoradnasseri, Assistant Professor
ACSS Department, UCW
The Weight of a Breath Between War
When the dictator died, I exhaled. I was happy, of course I was happy, but the feeling was strange, tangled. Looking back at forty-seven years of what we endured as a nation, what my country became, and the countless beautiful souls no longer with us, tears came before I could name them. Now, four days later, the missiles are still falling. My mother is somewhere beneath them, boiling water for tea in a kitchen I cannot reach. The regime has sundered everything: internet, phones, all lines to the outside. I do not know if my family is safe, like all my fellow citizens. I do not know how long this will last. Nothing is certain except the paralyzing limbo unfolding in real time, and the helplessness of being able to do nothing but wait.
War, they say, is a dis/ease that moves across bodies. But what do we call it when war becomes the condition of possibility for freedom? What do we call it when violence from outside breaks open a violence that was already consuming us from within?
For decades, we lived inside a system that mistook itself for permanence. Generations rose up, again and again, asking only to be heard, empty-handed. Each time, with all the peaceful ways we tried, the response was prisons, bullets, suppression. Hundreds of thousands were killed. The young burned their symbols of oppression. The workers struck. The students refused. And still, the system would not listen.
It took war to shatter what decades of collective resistance could not move.
This is the cruelty at the heart of this moment: that liberation might arrive not through our own hands, but through a chaos we did not choose. That we are still grieving the forty thousand recently killed, and now we add more bodies to the count, without knowing how many, or when it will stop. That the price of hope is measured in rubble and severance and the impossibility of knowing whether those we love are still breathing.
And yet, here is the bitter irony: I recognize the necessity of the rupture even as I grieve its cost. I see in this devastation the first real opening toward a future where we might shape our own destiny. It is the brutality of a life-saving surgery, the jagged, terrifying cut that is only endured because the alternative is a slow, certain death. War is a produced and sustained violence, yes. But so was the system it is destroying. The regime was its own kind of war, a malignancy so normalized it became the air we breathed. We shouted into that void for decades. It never answered.
So here is the paradox I cannot resolve: the thing which destroys might also be the thing that opens. War, the very condition we are asked to move beyond, becomes, against all logic, the threshold to a future where moving beyond war might finally be possible.
I do not know what comes next. I know only that this moment is unbearable and necessary at once. That I am afraid and hopeful in the same breath. That I wish we could dismantle tyranny ourselves, without paying this price. That freedom should not require catastrophe as its precondition.
But perhaps this is what it means to live at the threshold: to hold the contradiction without resolution. To say, yes, this is terrible, and also, yes, this might be the opening we have waited for. To grieve what war takes even as we recognize what it breaks open.
May all beings, human and more-than-human, be free from inner and outer war.
I am choosing to hope. Not because the path is clear, but because the alternative, to remain trapped inside the logic that says violence is all we deserve, is a kind of death we have already survived too long.
War may have opened the door. But only we can walk through it.
I stand at that threshold now, strapped into a rollercoaster of fear and hope, waiting for the momentum to take us forward, terrified of the height, yet desperate for the horizon.
An Iranian, in exile, holding my breath.
Siavash Rokhsari, Assistant Professor
ACSS Department, UCW
A sharp turn!
I probably shouldn’t break the tradition of letting the image speak for itself, but I thought a brief note might help illustrate the idea behind this painting especially for those who may not have gone through a similar experience.
The inspiration came from an early morning SkyTrain commute, where people were holding tight on the grab poles at a sharp turn. To me, this echoed the experience of many immigrants like myself, caught between two worlds, holding on as they struggle to find balance.
The contrasting yellow and black, colours commonly associated with danger in both human environments such as warning signs and in nature, as seen in venomous creatures like wasps, create a strong sense of tension and unease. At the same time, the wavering, strained poles evoke instability, uncertainty, and disorientation.
The yellow crossing straps will also remind us of caution tapes, mirroring a feeling of fragility and an impending disaster, like the cracked glass in the photo as if it could shatter at any moment.
The twisted, almost disfigured fingers further reveal the torture of holding on for too long, a quiet sign of struggle beneath the surface. Each hand carries its own story, showing how desperately it struggles to hold on and survive. They may come together in a single frame, but I invite you to look at each one individually and try to guess its story, rather than seeing them only as a whole.
This work speaks to those of us who follow the news of war and massacre back home, yet still show up each day, moving through routines, putting on a smile while falling apart inside. It is about holding on through a sharp turn in our journey, like the one just before the Stadium–Chinatown!
