Warring Souls

Varzi Roxanne Varzi

Description

With the first Fulbright grant for research in Iran to be awarded since the Iranian revolution in 1979, Roxanne Varzi returned to the country her family left before the Iran-Iraq war. Drawing on ethnographic research she conducted in Tehran between 1991 and 2000, she provides an eloquent account of the beliefs and experiences of young, middle-class, urban Iranians. As the first generation to have come of age entirely in the period since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran, twenty-something Iranians comprise a vital index of the success of the nation's Islamic Revolution. Varzi describes how, since 1979, the Iranian state has attempted to produce and enforce an Islamic public sphere by governing behavior and by manipulating images-particularly images related to religious martyrdom and the bloody war with Iraq during the 1980s-through films, murals, and television shows. Yet many of the young Iranians Varzi studied quietly resist the government's conflation of religious faith and political identity.Highlighting trends that belie the government's claim that Islamic values have taken hold-including rising rates of suicide, drug use, and sex outside of marriage-Varzi argues that by concentrating on images and the performance of proper behavior, the government's campaign to produce model Islamic citizens has affected only the appearance of religious orthodoxy, and that the strictly religious public sphere is partly a mirage masking a profound crisis of faith among many Iranians. Warring Souls is a powerful account of contemporary Iran made more vivid by Varzi's inclusion of excerpts from the diaries she maintained during her research and from journal entries written by Iranian university students with whom she formed a study group.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Cultural studies
• Biological anthropology
• Middle East

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822388036
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

          

Warring

Souls

Youth, Media, and Martyrdom in Post-Revolution Iran

           

Duke University Press

Durham and London 

©  Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Designed by Rebecca Giménez Typeset in Quadraat by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Parts of chapter  originally appeared as ‘‘Ghost in the Machine: The Cinema of the Iranian Sacred Defense,’’ inNew Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation, and Identity, edited by Richard Tapper (London: I. B. Tauris Publishers, . Reprinted with permission).

To those who have been caught, displaced,

and have died in the wicked webs of war,

and to those who in the face of adversity

seek truth and reconciliation.

Contents

Acknowledgments, ix

Prologue: The Journey, xiii

  . Divination: An Archeology of the Unknown, 

  . The Image and the Hidden Master, 

  . Mystic States: Martyrdom and the Making of the Islamic Republic, 

  . Shooting Soldiers, Shooting Film: The Cinema of the Iranian Sacred Defense, 

   . Visionary States: Inhabiting the City, Inhabiting the Mind, 

  . Shifting Subjects: Public Law and Private Selves, 

  . Majnun’s Mask: Sex, Suicide, and Semiotic Malfunctioning, 

  . The Ghost in the Machine: (Just War?) Remainders and Reminders of War, 

  . Reforming Religious Identity in Post-Khatami Iran, 

  . Mehdi’s Climb, 

Epilogue, 

Notes, 

Works Cited, 

Index, 

              

I would not have been able to complete my fieldwork in Iran with- out the help and trust of my family, friends, and colleagues, and it is impossible to name the many people there whom I encoun- tered over the past ten years. But above all I would like to thank my family in Iran, who took me in and accepted me as an in- sider and graciously excused the mistakes I made as an outsider. I would especially like to thank Amir, Nazanin, Kati, Rosa, Ali, Reza, Sheedeh, Mansur, Naser, Ferry, Mahin, Erika, Fakri, Mah- moud, and Zari Varzi for patiently and diligently helping me to become proficient in Persian, for speaking honestly about life in Iran, and for accepting me despite the twenty years that I was out of the country. Also in Iran, for their invaluable help with my re- search I would like to thank Golnush, Peygha, Mahssa, Pouya, Meh- rad, and Aideen for including me in their group of friends; Mehdi in Shiraz; Ahura Farokhmanesh, Nader and Suri Davoodi, Amir Nikpey, Fatima Jahanshaii, Siamak Namazi, Reza Shahran, Golam Reza, Mahsa Shekarloo, Violet Pakzad, Sohrab Mahdavi, Ahmad Kiarostami, Persheng Sadegh-Vaziri, Kaveh Ehsani, Sima Mir- Hosseini, Ursala Pakzad, Mrs. Jahanshaii, Ibrahim Hatamikia, Kamal Tabrizi, Parviz Kalantari, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samira Makhmalbaf, Seiffolah Samadian, and Mr. Mohammad Avini and his colleagues at Rivayat-e Fath, the Farabi Film Center (Mr. Atti-