Right after the cut: subjectivity and the Real in Iran’s 2025–2026 uprising

Abstract This article explores how Iranians in the diaspora make sense of their encounter with the 2025–2026 uprising and the subsequent massacre through eight in‑depth interviews, analysed via Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis within a Lacanian psychoanalytic frame. The diaspora position, rather than being a diminished version of proximate experience, has its own singularity in encountering the massacre through an interruption inflicted by the state, that is, the blackout, followed by a flood of images, videos, and estimated figures. This article reads the Lacanian cut as the rupture of the massacre itself, posited at the breaks in participants’ speech, in an interval when the inscription of the event was in process and had not been sealed by the Other. Combining Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis with a Lacanian frame allows the participants’ experiences to be held along the points at which their accounts reach an impasse. Keywords: Iran; diaspora; Lacan; Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis; trauma; state violence