The Promise of Violence - (Political Ethnography) by Younes Saramifar (Hardcover)

About the Book

The promise of violence inspires revolutionaries in Iran to see themselves as the hegemony and inflict violence against their compatriots when the Islamic Republic calls for it. The book is a political anthropology of the Islamic Republic of Iran utilising the 'collective' memory of Iran-Iraq War to mobilise revolutionaries in doing violence.

Book Synopsis

Revolutionaries in Iran choose to identify memories of the Iran-Iraq War as their 'collective' memory to mark the war era as the temporal reference in history - the time of times, or sometimes even a time beyond time. Can a sole event and its violence truly become - for some - the all-encompassing, constituting element of history and memory? This book pursues this question and follows revolutionaries in the maze of 'collective' memory to offer a temporal account of the breakdown of happenings - as well as the mending of happenings through the force of remembrance.

From the Back Cover

Revolutionary youth in Iran are promised the violence that opens the pathway to martyrdom, salvation, futures, the 'true' fulfilment of Iranian citizenship, and the return of Messiah/Mahdi. The promise turns violence into the conduit of a set of felt relationships, where past, present, and future find meanings and continuity. The promise of violence is the Islamic Republic's yardstick with which to measure the citizenship and commitment of revolutionaries, inducing in them an improved way of being and instilling in them the substance to stand apart from the rest of Iranians, who oppose Islamism and militancy.

This book is an ethnography of revolutionaries and Shia militancy, and depicts violence becoming the promissory something that is passed around among revolutionaries to bolster their commitments to Shi'ism, armed 'resistance', and the notion of citizenship per the Islamic Republic. Revolutionaries' political sensibilities, regardless of their age, social class, and generation, are configured in different scales by doing violence in the name of the state that claims to be the place-holder for the Messiah and his last war. The promise of violence is a political anthropology of the Islamic Republic of Iran utilising the 'collective' memory of Iran-Iraq War framed by Shi'ism, Shia Islamism, and its culture of martyrdom to articulate the promise and reticulate revolutionaries in doing violence.

About the Author

Younes Saramifar is an Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam