Abstract “… knowledge is not made understanding, it is made for cutting.” (Michel Foucault, 1984) “Within the interdependence of mutual (non-dominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being.” (Audre Lord, 1979) From Saqqez to Brooklyn, Santiago to Berlin, the mournful yet militant gesture of scissor-yielding women* lopping off locks of their own hair has wandered globally in the aftermath of the criminal killing of the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, Jina (Mahsa) Amini. Revived on the gravesites of numerous Iranian protestors killed in the women*-led protests that engulfed Iran, this supposedly traditional mourning rite has since been repeated in spaces ranging from domestic town squares to street rallies organized abroad by Iran’s diaspora population, to viral social media celebrity compilations, to concerts and awards ceremonies worldwide, and even to the EU Parliament floor. To some, the message carried by cutting seems straightforward: one of solidarity with Iranian women*. If this viral action does in fact bring about solidarity, what does this solidarity do? Does it help center non-normative bodies and desires on a global scale, which is arguably at the root of this revolutionary, leaderless uprising’s core slogan, “Woman*, Life, Liberty”? Can it help us ascertain obscure or occluded genealogies of feminist, queer, and liberationist thought and practice? (How) Do the anti-colonial, anti-capitalist struggles of the Global South labor, gender, and justice movements make room for the differences of Iranian women* and queer people beyond their gender/sexuality? Or is this solidarity the self-aggrandization of networks of neoliberal feminism coupled with celebrity activism, and merely posturing as such? And if this is the case, how can models of retro-speculation be leveraged to help preserve this leaderless movement, prevent its cooptation, and use it to continue imagining the inhabitable futures it promised? By employing José Muñoz’s (2009) methodology of associative thinking that leads to the construction of new and random archives, this paper attends to these questions by putting this gesture in conversation with Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964) to explore how cutting—when read as an act concerned with the disruption of memory and the obsolescence of history—can help us cut down on some of the discontents that continue to weigh transnational feminist and queer solidarities down.