Attached to Paper Session
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Shi‘a tradition promises divine rewards, believed to aid believers in the afterlife, for mourning the martyrdom of Shi‘a holy figures, especially the third Shi‘a Imam, Hossein. Yet, the young participants of Shi‘a mourning rituals in Tehran rarely present divine rewards as their primary motivation for engaging in ritual practices. Instead, they emphasize how participating in rituals brings liveliness, material success, and internal peace to their daily lives, shifting the focus from spiritual to immediate, this-worldly benefits of mourning rituals. Given the historical centrality of the experience of suffering in Shi‘a mourning rituals (Ayoub 1978), how could we understand these young ritual participants’ emphasis on narratives of inner peace, liveliness, and success? In this paper, I draw on the interviews I have conducted with young ritual participants during my doctoral fieldwork in Tehran. I elucidate how my interlocutors’ narratives can be understood in their relation to two competing yet intertwining discursive resources: state-sponsored Islamist activism, which prescribes positive emotions as a prerequisite for realizing particular religious-political ambitions, and secular neoliberal productivism, which promotes the self-management of emotions as a means to maximizing material advantage. The latter has been popularized since the 1990s by a secular happiness industry sponsoring a wide range of self-help publications and public seminars on positive psychology, mindfulness, and alternative therapeutic spiritualities, among other topics. I argue that my interlocutors’ narratives of this-worldly benefits of mourning rituals allow them to employ and challenge both Islamist and neoliberal discursive resources simultaneously. While suggesting a nuanced engagement with both religious and secular discourses, my interlocutors’ narratives reveal how they navigate and reinterpret these discourses to defend their participation in rituals. My interlocutors use a productivist logic to resist secular criticisms that dismiss Shi‘a mourning rituals as irrational, melancholic, and anti-modern. Yet, their individualist interpretations challenge normative conceptions of these collective rituals. This innovative engagement with mourning rituals suggests a complex interplay between individual agency, the state, religious orthodoxy, and neoliberal logic, signifying the changing dynamics of Islamism in contemporary Iran.
Works Cited:
Ayoub, Mahmoud M. 1978. Redemptive Suffering in Islam: A Study of the Devotional Aspects of Ashura in Twelver Shi‘ism. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
Shi‘a tradition promises divine rewards for mourning the martyrdom of Shi‘a holy figures. Yet, the young participants of Shi‘a rituals in Tehran mostly emphasize how participating in rituals brings liveliness, success, and peace to their daily lives. Given the historical centrality of suffering in Shi‘a rituals, how could we understand these mourners’ emphasis on rituals’ worldly benefits? Drawing on my fieldwork in Tehran, I elucidate how my interlocutors’ narratives invoke two discursive resources: state-sponsored Islamist activism, which prescribes positive emotions as a prerequisite for realizing particular religious-political ambitions, and neoliberal productivism, which promotes the self-management of emotions as a means to maximizing material advantage. I argue that my interlocutors’ narratives allow them to employ and challenge both Islamist and neoliberal discourses; they use a productivist logic to resist secular criticisms that dismiss Shi‘a mourning rituals as irrational and anti-modern, yet their individualist interpretations challenge normative conceptions of these collective rituals.