The promise of violence

Collective memory and the making of revolutionaries in Iran

von Younes Saramifar

304 Seiten, Hardcover

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

"Younes Saramifar delivers a dazzling and intellectually fearless book. With a uniquely empathetic touch, this study traverses multiple disciplines to uncover the paradoxes of revolution through a close reading of one of the greatest examples: Iran. Both conceptually bold and deeply personal, this work of rare erudition will leave a lasting imprint on debates about the politics of memory, revolutions, and the Iranian experience in particular."

Prof. Dr. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, SOAS, the author of What is Iran? and Psycho-nationalism: Global Thought, Iranian Imaginations

Revolutionaries of the Islamic Republic commemorating wars and martyrs alongside the Islamic Republic of Iran does not constitute merely an act of engaging with the past and its 'collective' memory. Commemorations speak of a future that can only be brought into being by the force of violence. This violence is promised to revolutionaries whose 'collective' memory is aligned with the state, who envision the future just like the state and read the past just like the state. This promise of violence is a promise of martyrdom, the 'true' fulfilment of Iranian citizenship, and a socially just future in which the Messiah has returned. Therefore, violence becomes the conduit of a set of felt relationships, wherein the past, present, and future find meanings and continuity. This book ethnographically depicts violence becoming the promissory 'something' that is passed around among revolutionaries to bolster their commitments to Shi'ism, armed 'resistance', and the Islamic Republic's notion of citizenship. Revolutionaries' political sensibilities, regardless of their age, social class, and generation, are configured at different scales by their acts of violence in the name of the state; a state that claims to be the placeholder for the Messiah and his last war. The promise of violence is a political anthropology of how the Islamic Republic of Iran utilises the 'collective' memory of the Iran-Iraq War - framed by Shi'ism, Shia Islamism, and its culture of martyrdom - to articulate the promise of violence and recruit revolutionaries into doing violence.

• Reihe: Political Ethnography
• Themen: Philosophie und Religion Religion und Glaube Islam Einzelne Gruppen Schiiten
• ISBN: 9781526179982
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 14.07.2026
• Größe: 240 x 161 mm
• Verlag: Manchester University Press