Devotion, Mourning, and Ritual in Contemporary Shi‘i Tehran

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.