The promise of violence

Collective memory and the making of revolutionaries in Iran

Younes Saramifar

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781526179982
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526179975
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History

'Through a caring and courageous ethnographical endeavor, The promise of violence offers an intricate analysis of a revolutionary temporality that unfolds and finds meaning simultaneously in the past, present, and future. In that very sense, the book advances an anthropology of history through which it situates revolutionaries in perpetual yearning for the realization of messianic futures and global justice. Saramifar has produced a remarkable piece of scholarship that is going to be the subject of conversation for many years to come in anthropology, memory, and Iranian studies.'

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Princeton, the author of The Long War on Iran: New Events, Old Questions

'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.'

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

The promise of violence is a captivating read. Younes Saramifar's profoundly researched book adds much needed nuance to our understanding of transnational Shi'i militants, their motivations, goals, worldviews, and cultural production. The study's portrayal of fighters and their allies, spanning the Iran-Iraq War to the Iranian intervention in Syrian, is neither apologetic nor clichéd. Rather, it is historically informed, sophisticated, and ethical. It gives voice to a range of Shi'i revolutionaries, crossing generations and including those based far from Tehran, ethnic minorities, and Afghans, whose perspectives are rarely given such careful attention.
Amir Moosavi, Rutgers University, the author of Dust that Never Settles

Away from hackneyed diasporic accounts and unencumbered by epistemological coloniality, Saramifar offers deep immersion in the opaque lives of IRGC revolutionaries awaiting martyrdom. Rather than use ready-made categories designed for a different moral universe, he takes us on a tour of the 'futurepast' - and, from his own situated vantage, lays bare the Persian racism that structures the mistreatment of Afghan combatants within that same revolutionary world. Astutely theorised and deeply personal, this is an important book.

Professor Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, author of Antisémitisme et islamophobie: Une histoire croisée

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Gratitude
• Introduction
• 1 Futurepast
• 2 The pilgrimage to the past
• 3 Seeing in the futurepast
• 4 Reading the futurepast
• 5 Futures and the promise of violence
• 6 Future
• Index