Circling around the really Real in Iran:
Ethnography of Muharram laments among Shi'i volunteer militants in the Middle East,
Focaal Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 2020, 2020 (88): 76–88
Download here: https://doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2019.032107 Open Access
Lamenting the real and crying for the really Real:
Searching for silences and mourning martyrdom amongst Iranian volunteer militants
Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2018, 29 (3): 282-297
Download here: https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12271
Tales of pleasures of violence and combat resilience among Iraqi Shi’i combatants fighting ISIS
Ethnography, 2018, 20 (4): 560-577
Download here: https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138118781639 Open Access
Pursuing the allure of combat:
an ethnography of violence amongst Iraqi Shi’I combatants fighting ISIS
Critical Studies on Terrorism, 2019, 12 (2): 210-227
Download here: https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2018.1498216 Open Access
The Pain of Others: Framing War Photography in Iran
Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 2018, 84 (3): 480-507
Download here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2017.1415367 Open Access
Framing the war in the postwar era:
Exploring the counter-narratives in frames of an Iranian war photographer thirty years after the ceasefire with Iraq
Media, War & Conflicts, 2018, 12 (4): 392 - 410
Download here https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635218789437 Open Access
Militancy and Martyrs’ Ghostly Whispers:
Disbelieving History and Challenges of Inordinate Knowledge in Iran
Social Anthropology, 2023, 31 (2): 19-38
Download here https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2022.101703 Open Access
Abstract:
Iranian Shi'i believers claim that capturing sorrow and lamentation in their fullest sense falls beyond language and reason. They constantly refer to their inability to articulate in order to explain martyrdom and highlight a form of unsaid that explains all that appears impalpable for them. I undertake a journey among Iranian Shi'i youth to trace the unarticulated and the sense of wonder generated via religious experiences. By way of an ethnography of Muharram lamentation ceremonies, this article highlights how the unarticulated and the unsaid are socially and politically used in service of Shi'i militancy. I explore those uncharted terrains in the darkness of the Lacanian Real and in terms of how the Real is authenticated in order to address how realities are crafted and religious subjectivities are enacted in the realm of militancy.
Abstract:
Martyrdom, sacrifice, and the dedication of one's life to fight for a higher cause are central themes of Shi'i militancy. I recount my journey among Iranian Shi'i youth who fought or enlisted to fight in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria, to trace their ineffable experiences and silences, which they used to justify desires for martyrdom. I explore by way of an ethnography of mourning and the lamentation ceremonies of Muharram how individuals’ ineffable experiences and perplexities emerge as explanations of their own commitment to the cause. I call on the Lacanian Real to discuss how people craft the unarticulated, the unsaid, and networks to navigate their subjectivity while they encounter the divine. I broaden the Lacanian Real through an exploration of Shi'i mystical notions, in order to address how Lacan's work can be applied in non-European traditions of the unsaid and the unarticulated.
Abstract:
I explore the slipperiness of violence, its destructive and reproductive emergence, by way of textures. Through tales of an ethnography undertaken in combat zones of Shi’i combatants fighting ISIS, I address the textures of violence, that is, those capacities that can be accessed not via meanings but rather through the moments in which meanings are reimagined and nothing exists except the very act that refers to itself. These moments and acts highlight the borders between pleasure and fun to seek out not only the inner workings of violence but also how one speaks anthropologically of an action that conveys no meaning except itself. My pursuit of the mode of engagement with violence among combatants challenged me to think differently about pleasure and fun at the frontlines by encouraging me to traverse understandings of Islamic militancy and combat motivations within the limitations of ideology and religiosity.
Abstract:
The social sciences speak of violence through its meaning, performances, manifestations, and representations; however, the inner workings of violence are less explored. In order to suggest a different mode of seeing violence, I explore the inner workings of violence through the pleasures and fun among Shi’i volunteer combatants. I apply Walter Benjamin’s motion of pure means to explain how violence becomes self-referential and non-representational via combat-zone ethnography amongst Iraqi Shi’i militants who fought against ISIS in Iraq. I address the fine line between pleasure and fun in order to highlight the inner workings of violence during combat and to encourage a fresh bottom-up anthropological perspective in assessing the parameters of the persistence and resilience of volunteer combatants. My approach advocates moving beyond recruitment and ideological interpolation by questioning the allure of combat through an ontological framework that includes combatants’ perspectives and narratives.
Abstract:
War photographs have remained essential to the propaganda machinery of the Iranian state since the inception of the war with Iraq. These photographs contribute to the visual culture of martyrdom and are celebrated within a dominant meaning-making regime. However, there are rare counter-narratives that unsettle the master narrative of the Iranian state and I turn to that of a war photographer whose work is side-lined by the state. I explore this counter-narrative to discover the workings of the state-sanctioned narrative through modes of reception of the photographs by Iranians both inside and outside Iran. I strive to trace the reception of the pain of others through the politics of frame and the ethnography of the visual culture of martyrdom after almost three decades since the war.
Abstract:
The battle between Iran and Iraq ended with a ceasefire being signed in 1988 but the war continued for most Iranians and their leadership. Even today after three decades, the war continues for Iranians who live in the borderlands as they struggle with the landmines and leftovers of the battles. Mehdi Monem, a celebrated Iranian war photographer, frames the pain of Iranians in the borderlands as the counter-narrative that challenges the mainstream frames of propaganda. He challenges the master narrative of the Islamic Republic of Iran that generates meanings for the frames of the war through notions of martyrdom and sacrifice. Hence, I follow his work in the context of the visual culture of martyrdom via an ethnography that explains how Iranians receive the pain of others 30 years after the war at home and abroad.
Abstract:
The so-called Iranian revolutionary youth's aspirations for martyrdom are not based merely on Islamist doctrines or Islamic ideologies. They readily place all fallen combatants in a ‘martyrdom box’, linking them to Islamic sacrality and claiming they feel martyrs via martyrs’ ghostly whispers. Through ethnographic journeys in Iran, Lebanon and Iraq, I unpack how they craft the ‘martyrdom box’ and communicate with the ghostly whispers. I argue that the Iranian revolutionary youth's perceptions of martyrdom and militant subjectivities emerge in relation to disbelieving histories that contest the state's narratives and their mystical relationships with martyrs. This article takes Iranian revolutionary youth as exemplars to explain how individuals implicated in political violence craft acts of ‘knowing’ and render death and dead ‘knowable’. In other words, instead of asking what is known, I proceed by unpacking how what is known becomes real and how the act of knowing contributes to the emergence of reality.