Warring Souls: Youth, Media, and Martyrdom in Post-Revolutionary Iran.

Goldberg, Rose Carmen

WARRING SOULS: YOUTH, MEDIA, AND MARTYRDOM IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY IRAN Roxanne Varzi (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 290 pages.

In Warring Souls: Youth, Media, and Martyrdom in Post-Revolutionary Iran, Roxanne Varzi recounts her return to her birthplace as the first Fulbright scholar in post-revolutionary Iran. After the end of the Iran-Iraq war, images of martyrdom dominated Iranian media and the national consciousness. Varzi found the state's message--that national identity is achieved through one's willingness to die for one's country--pictured on billboards and ingrained in the Iranian youth's conceptions of selfhood. In exploring the ramifications of images of martyrdom in the media, Varzi finds Iranian youth driven to self-destruction through drug use and suicide.

According to Varzi, the religious state's post-war policies further aggravate Iranian youth's psychological trauma. With some religious practices mandated by law, the identities of Iranian youth are divided between public and private spheres that are often in conflict. Iranian youth are torn between contradictory rules, those set forth by the religious state and others exemplified at home. A high incidence of schizophrenia is one of the consequences of such conflicts of identity.

Near the conclusion, Varzi describes several measures taken by the government to address the rising rates of drug use, suicide and schizophrenia among its youth. Colorful coverings for women and more intermingling of the sexes are permitted. Varzi calls the effectiveness of such reforms into question by pointing to their superficiality. While these new policies focus on the external, Varzi calls for internal reform. Yet she leaves any explanation to the reader's imagination. We are left wondering what new policies could shake the deeply rooted religious and political foundations of the crises facing Iran's youth.

Warring Souls is at times muddled, yet the division among the poeticism of Rumi, Hegelian state theory and journal excerpts contributes to Varzi's achievement of a multi-dimensional picture of Iranian youth. In playing the role of observer, participant and academic, Varzi reveals the psychological, philosophical and political facets of the crisis, thereby setting the stage for comprehensive reform.