Memories, piety and formation of civil religions: Do revolutionary youth sing along with the memory machine in Iran?

Abstract

Memories of wars and constantly living with them become the measure of citizenhood, revolutionary commitments and piety remembering, where an incessant state-sponsored memory machine frames memory as a civil religion. This article argues that memories, remembering and mnemonic acts become the forces that hold a civil religion together, and then explains how mnemonic subjects/remembering individuals contribute to a civil religion through consumption of memories. I ground my argument in anthropological explorations of how the Iranian state choreographs a memory machine that collects, publishes and circulates memories of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). The memory machine tries to inspire postwar generations with an Islamic model of piety, invent a militarized civil religion and inculcate the revolutionary youth into it. However, the Iranian revolutionary youth use memories of the war as ‘wiggle rooms’ to reshape the state-choreographed civil religion without expressing either dissent or absolute compliance. Ethnographically, I highlight that the revolutionary youth’s compliance may seem blind obedience but on the contrary, their compliance is an agentive attempt to resist subtly, find individuated sovereignty and craft mnemonic subjectivities under authoritarian conditions.