The Promise of Violence: Collective Memory and the Making of Revolutionaries in Iran

Global Talk! with assistant professor Younes Saramifar, University of Amstadam

In this talk assistant professor Younes Saramifar, Faculty of Humanities, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam will introduce his recently published book The Promise of Violence: Collective Memory and the Making of Revolutionaries in Iran (Manchester University Press, 2026).

The Promise of Violence examines how Iranian revolutionaries are shaped by collective memory, especially narratives of the Iran–Iraq War and state‑produced ideals of martyrdom. Younes Saramifar’s ethnography shows how these memories create a “futurepast,” a temporal world in which revolutionaries interpret their lives through messianic hope, nationalism, and the expectation of sacrifice. As martyrdom becomes unstable and contested, violence emerges as the remaining framework through which political meaning is made. The book reveals how Shi‘i militants navigate identity, agency, and state power, exposing the ethical, historical, and emotional complexities behind revolutionary subjectivity in contemporary Iran.

Read more about the book.

Bio

Assistant professor Younes Saramifar is an interdisciplinary scholar researching narratives of domination and the political storytelling of religious populism. Saramifar writes: “I play interdisciplinarity by practicing ethnography and yoyoing between humanities and social sciences to rediscover the familiar in unfamiliar ways.

I approach my research through objects and bodies configured through history and collective memory. I follow these questions through approaches of Material Religion, Visual Studies, Intersectional Feminism, Critical Race Theory, and Speculative Realism. I begin with the mundane affairs of everyday life and end up in the weirdest and lesser-explored corners of existence.

Please be aware of the madness before coming closer! I earned my first PhD (2016) in Cultural Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics then I embarked on a second PhD (2020. Cum Laude) in Cultural Anthropology in the Netherlands to prove my worth to the ‘Lilly White Academia’. I worked and collaborated internationally (in Australia, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, India, the Netherlands & Sweden)”

Read more about Younes Saramifar.