Michel Foucault The Orientalist - Rosemarie S PDF

The South Central Modern Language Association
Michel Foucault the Orientalist: On Revolutionary Iran and the "Spirit of Islam"
Author(s): Rosemarie Scullion
Source: South Central Review, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Summer, 1995), pp. 16-40
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of The South Central Modern Language
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Michel Foucault the Orientalist: On
Revolutionary
Iran and the
"Spirit
of Islam"'
Rosemarie Scullion
University oflowa
Uta Liebmann Schaub has observed that a
meeting
of East and
West occurs in the
writings
of Michel Foucault
where,
she
asserts,
a
strong
undercurrent of Buddhist
thought
is detectable.
Although
he
never
explicitly acknowledged
its
influence,
Foucault
appears
to have
been seduced
by
a radical otherness in Eastern
philosophy,
consistently drawing upon
its
premises
in his historical
critique
of
modern Western
subjectivity. Surprisingly,
in her
analysis
of
Foucault's "oriental
subtext,"
Schaub makes no mention of a cluster
of
writings published
between
September
1978 and
May
1979 in
which Foucault encountered what is
arguably
Western civilization's
most
enduring
and
menacing
Oriental other: the
world
of Islam.
Claire Briere and Pierre Blanchat's Iran: La Revolution au nom de
Dieu
(1979)
includes one such
text,
an interview with Foucault
entitled
"L'Esprit
d'un monde sans
esprit"'3
in which he commented
extensively upon
the
politico-religious
fervor that
erupted
in
opposition
to the Shah of Iran in the late 1970s. In this interview and
numerous other
writings
on the
subject,
Foucault extolled the virtues
of Iran's
revolutionary "spirit," remaining,
I shall
argue, singularly
uncritical in his
appraisal
of the
emancipatory potential
and of the
new
subjectivity
it was to bestow
upon
the Iranian
people.4
Given
Foucault's intellectual
preoccupation
with
questions
of
power
and
moralizing
discourses of
corporal constraint,
the
largely unqualified
enthusiasm he
expressed
for the Islamic revolution in Iran is
perplexing
indeed. His ardor is even more
baffling
when one
considers that much of the
repressive machinery
set in motion
immediately following
the Shah's
departure
in
February
1979 was
directly applied-much
like the
disciplinary regimen
he
reproves
in
Surveiller
et
punir (1975)-to
the
body
and soul of the Iranian
populace, introducing
levels of coercion unfathomable even under
the Shah's ruthless
reign.
Judging
from statements made in that interview and in his
numerous articles
published
in the fall of 1978 and the
spring
of
1979 in both the French
press
and the Italian
daily
Corriere
Della
Sera,5
when he cast his Western intellectual
gaze upon
what for
many progressive
observers was a
dumbfounding
event in the
history
of modem national liberation
movements,
Foucault
produced
an Orientalist discourse-albeit one of
decidedly
Leftist inflection-that
Rosemarie Scullion 17
was blind to the
reactionary trajectory
of the revolution and deaf to the voices
of
resistance-particularly
those of women-that could be
faintly
heard over the din of
revolutionary upheaval
in the fall of 1978. This dissent became even more
clamorous
during
a brief moment in the
spring
of 1979 when the Islamic
regime
was
gaining
its foothold on this new
landscape
of
postcolonial struggle.
In his seminal work Orientalism
(1978),
Edward Said
acknowledged
an
important
intellectual debt to
Foucault, stating
that the
type
of
inquiry
in which the French
philosopher engaged
in L
'Archdologie
du savoir
(1969)6
and Surveiller et Punir
contributed
conceptually
to
identifying
discursive formations and
practices
that
ultimately
secured modern Western domination of its oriental
Other.7 Broadly
defining
Orientalism as "the
corporate
institution for
dealing
with the Orient ...
by
making
statements about
it, authorizing
views of
it, describing it, by teaching
it,
settling it, ruling
over it: in short ... as a Western
style
for
dominating, structuring
and
having authority
over the
Orient,"'
Said
brings
into critical relief the
imagery
and
lexicology
that have
shaped
Western
knowledge
of Middle Eastern societies.
Chief
among
these constructs are notions of a
vast, homogeneous
culture infused
with irrational
religiosity
and
mysticism,
exotic
yet penetrable femininity,
irrepressible emotion,
voracious sexual
appetite,
and a brute will to
especially
savage political despotism.
The result is an
ethnographic composite
of
"civilizationally
inferior" societies that for centuries has both fascinated and
repelled
Occidentals.
Although
the
type
of discursive
othering practiced
on the
Arab world
generated similarly self-serving ideological
and
iconographic
constructs
in the West's colonial ventures in
Africa, Asia,
and Latin
America,
Said
largely
limits his discussion to the Islamic Middle
East, abandoning pretenses
of
analytical
objectivity
and
forthrightly acknowledging
that his interest in
deconstructing
Orientalist codes stemmed from his own
experience
as an "Oriental
subject"9
raised
and educated under Western
eyes.
Ironically,
Said's Orientalism
appeared
in 1978 in the latter
part
of which Michel
Foucault travelled to Iran on two
separate
occasions.
There,
as
special
correspondent
for both Le Nouvel Observateur and Corriere
Della
Sera,
he
witnessed the
popular uprising
in its
mobilizing stages.
In the late summer of
1978,
two
catastrophes-one political,
the other natural--drew the
attention
of the
international
press
to Iran where
increasingly
bold
opposition
to the Pahlavi
dynasty
was
gathering
momentum. The first involved the 8
September
1978
slaughter by
the Shah's
military
forces of 250
anti-government protesters
in Teheran's Jaleh
Square,'o
a
spectacular display
of the
regime's prowess
that came to be known as
Black
Friday.
A week
later,
a massive
earthquake
claimed the lives of fifteen
thousand
people
in
Tabas,
a
city
in the Northeast
region
of the
country,
that
quickly
became the site of intense
political rivalry pitting
the
opposition's
swift and
conspicuously
more
compassionate
efforts at disaster relief
against
the
monarchy's
lethargic, devil-may-care response
to the
calamity.
In
reporting
these
events, Foucault takes care to
provide
basic
knowledge
of Iran's
history
and culture. He
informs
his Western
readership,
for
instance, that Iran is
not, as
many believe, an Arab
country;
that the Shi'ite Islam
practiced there is
18 South Central Review
distinct from the Sunni variant
predominating
in most other Muslim
societies,
and
that the
population
had been
living
for some time under a brutal
dictatorship
that
was
rapidly becoming delegitimized.
Yet in classic Orientalist
form,
in
relating
the
high
drama of Iran's
revolutionary moment,
Foucault fails to take into account
crucial social and historical circumstances that contributed
decisively
to
generating
the mass
revolt, performing,
I would
argue,
a
reading
of the event that is more
revealing
of his own
post-humanist political
desires and anti-authoritarian reflexes
than of the movement's
complexities, contradictions, and,
most
importantly,
of its
potential
eventualities.
In both
quantity
and informational
scope,
Foucault's Italian
reporting
on the
Iranian
crisis-presented
under the
running
head "Michel Foucault: 'Taccuino
Persiano'"
("Michel
Foucault: 'Persian
Notebook"')--far
exceeded his contributions to
the French
press coverage
of the crisis. Between 28
September
1978 and 13
February 1979,
Corriere
Della
Sera featured nine
generally lengthy
articles
by
Foucault."
Only
one of these
pieces
found its
way
into Le Nouvel
Observateur
where its Italian
title
"Ritorno al Profeta?"
("Return
to the
Prophet?")
was rendered
in French as the more wistful
query
"A
quoi
revent les Iraniens?"
("What
are
Iranians
Dreaming of?").
With the
exception
of two
essays-a
14
April
1979
"Open
Letter" to the new
regime's (provisional)
Prime
Minister,
Mehdi
Bazargan, printed
in Le Nouvel Observateur and a somewhat
defiantly sanguine
article entitled
"Inutile de se
soulever?"
("Is
It Useless to
Revolt?")
carried on 11
May
1979 in Le
Monde-Foucault had little else to
say
about the Iranian matter in the French
press
where,
on more than one
occasion,
his
relatively sparse commentary
elicited
fiery
responses
from readers.'2
The first two articles in the Italian
daily--"L'esercito, quando
la terra trema"
("The Army:
When the Earth
Quakes")
and "Lo Sci" ha cento
anni
di ritardo"
("The
Shah is A Hundred Years Behind the
Times")-set
the
political
tone and
established the
interpretive
framework for the series of
reports
to follow. The first
installment describes the
turmoil
wrought by
the Tabas
earthquake
and ever-
expanding anti-government demonstrations,
the
public
furor
sparked by
the Shah's
8
September imposition
of martial
law,
and the Jaleh
Square
massacre that came on
its heels.
Recognizing
that the
military
was the
linchpin
of the
monarchy's
survival,
Foucault devotes much of this
introductory
discussion to the
army's organizational
structure and its function in modem Iranian
history.
In
sharp
contrast to the valiant
patriotic
role
played by
national armies in Latin America's wars of
independence,
Foucault rather
snidely notes,
"the Iranian
army
has never liberated a
thing,"
insisting
that it had contributed
precious
little to the construction of modem Iran's
nation
state, and,
since the late nineteenth
century,
had
consistently yielded
to the
imperial
aims of
foreign powers seeking
to
plunder
the
country's
wealth.
Offering
a more
penetrating
cultural and historical
critique,
the second
article,
"Lo SciA ha
cento anni di
ritardo," opens
with a
summary
of the clichds
circulating
in the
Western
press
since the
uprising began, glaringly
Eurocentric notions Foucault is
obviously
intent on
dispelling:
Setting
out I was told in
every possible
tone: "Iran is
going through
a crisis
of
modernization;
an
arrogant, clumsy,
authoritarian ruler is
trying
to
compete
with
industrialized
nations,
his
sights
fixed on the
year 2000;
but traditional
society
cannot and does not want to
conform; feeling violated,
it resists
change,
falls
back
on its
past, and,
in the name of
millenary religions,
asks to be sheltered
by a
retrograde clergy.
.. ." And how often have I heard the most
sophisticated analysts
seriously asking
themselves which form of
government
will be able in the
future
to reconcile
impenetrable
Iran with its
necessary
modernization: a
liberal
monarchy,
a
parliamentary system,
an
energetic presidency?13
Challenging
the notion that
Western-style
industrialization is an
imperative
for all
human
societies,
Foucault contends that it was the
antiquated
form of
modernity
the
Shah had introduced in the
early
1960s that his
subjects
were
rejecting
en
masse.
The
knee-jerk
anti-modern stance and
totalizing
rhetoric Foucault
adopts
in these
early writings
are recurrent features of the
spirited
defense of the revolution he
mounted in the
European press during
the six-month
period preceding
the Shah's
abdication of
power. Ironically,
it is also these
aspects
of Foucault's
"specific"
intellectual intervention into the
meanings produced
in the Western media on Iran's
popular uprising
that reveal the Orientalist drift of his own
oppositional
discourse.
Foucault's assertion that the Iranian monarch was "a hundred
years
behind the
times" and the
argument
he makes in
supporting
that claim are formulated in
condescending
terms that detract from what
appears
to be his
great respect
for the
Iranian
people
and their
struggle against
the Shah's
dictatorship. Despite
his
ringing
counter-cultural endorsement of the anti-Shah rebellion-no doubt his
thorn
in the side of Western
policy
makers
striving
to contain the revolution's
destabilizing geopolitical
effects-Foucault's statements on the
uprising
are not
entirely
free of the ethnocentrism and
self-referentiality
he
impugns
in the
mainstream
press.
Foucault
explains
that his
insight
into the sources of the Shah's travails first came
in a minor detail of
everyday
life he observed while
visiting
Teheran's
bazaar
soon
after his arrival. The
shopkeepers
and merchants-whose conservative
opposition
to the
regime's program
of cultural liberalization was fierce-were
just reopening
for business after
eight days
of
anti-government
strikes.
Browsing through
the
merchandise,
the
philosopher-journalist
noticed rows of oversized
sewing
machines
that,
in his
mind,
were telltale
signs
of the
pathetically
obsolete modernization the
monarchy,
in all its
petroleum-driven
grandiosity,
had
brought
to the Iranian
people.
[In
the
bazaar,
there
were]
incredible
sewing
machines on
display,
like the ones
you
find in 19th
century newspaper
advertisements.
[They were]
enormous and
ornate,
decorated in
clinging
vines
blossoming
with
flowers,
gaudy replicas
of old
Persian
miniatures.
These outmoded Western
imitations,
marked with
signs
of an
antiquated orient,
all carried the
insignia
"made in South Korea.""
Foucault views these cumbersome
contraptions
as
pale imitations of
what, by
diacritical
implication, is
presented as the more efficient and
sleekly-designed
Western
thing. Bearing
all the
signs
of an oriental
backwardness, the machines
offer Iranian consumers an
aesthetically impoverished
reflection of their cultural
heritage
in the form of
garish, passe
commodities
produced
not in the
authentically
modem
West,
but in another oriental
society lamely striving
to
replicate
its feats of
engineering.
That these mechanical
eyesores,
however
inefficient, might
be labor-
saving
devices for the women most
likely
to use them does not occur to this Western
male observer who focuses more on the
antiquated
form than the
functionality
of the
merchandise. In
casting
the
discerning eye
of a Western consumer on these
items,
Foucault introduces
a norm of
commodity plenitude
and
technological
advancement
that is
meaningful only
in relation to a
paradigmatic
field of
purchasing possibilities
to
which,
he fails to
acknowledge,
the vast
majority
of the world's inhabitants
have
limited access.
His discussion with one who is
anonymously
described as one of Iran's best
political analysts supports
Foucault's claim that the crisis of
legitimacy
the Shah's
regime
faced was
directly
attributable to his
bungled attempt
to modernize the
realm.
Collapsing
under the
weight
of economic failures and
systemic political
violence,
the
monarchy-which throughout
its rule had retained a firm
grip
on the
reins of
power by pursuing
a
policy
of
"modernization-despotism-corruption"-
was, according
to this
pundit,
now
being rejected by
the Iranian masses who had
collectively
suffered
its calamitous effects. But the modernization
being repudiated
by
what Foucault's readers are
tirelessly
reminded is "an entire culture and an entire
people,""
was not
simply
an indictment of the Shah's much touted
"White
Revolution"'6 of the
early
1960s,
a
top-down program
of
political
reform which
Iranian
poet
Reza Baraheni described in 1977 as a
policy by
which
"[a]ncient
cities
have been
subjected
to
opprobrious
indecencies of a tinsel
westernization, spoiled by
the
vulgarities
of a
regime
that neither values nor understands the
living
attainments
of the East or the West.""7
Rather,
the aversion Iranians of "all social classes" had
developed
to
modernity
could be
traced, quite literally,
to the
genealogy
of the
Pahlavi
dynasty
and to the
identity
of the
sovereign himself, who,
in Foucault's
account,
would
surely
have envied Ronald
Reagan's
Teflon
presidency.
I
then had the
feeling
I had come to understand that the recent events did not
signify
the
intransigence
of the most backward
segments [of
the
society]
in the
face of an
especially
brutal
[program ofJ
modernization,
but the refusal on the
part
of an entire culture and an entire
people
to a
[form ofJ
modernization that is in
itself an anachronism. The
Shah has the misfortune
of
being
identified with this
anachronism. His
error is that of
having
conserved, along
with
corruption
and
despotism,
this
fragment
of the
past
in a
present
that wants
nothing
more to do
with it.
Yes, modernization,
as a
political project
and as
principle
of social
transformation,
is a
thing
of the
past
in Iran. I do not
simply
mean that mistakes
and flaws have condemned the recent forms which the Shah wanted to
give
it...
The "modernization"
that is no
longer
wanted is this series of failures. But it is
also
something older, something
that sticks like an adhesive to the skin of the
current ruler and is his raison
d'&tre.
It is not
only
the foundations of his
government,
but of his
dynasty.'8
In two short
paragraphs,
readers are
acquainted
with the
origins
of the Pahiavi
dynasty,
traceable not to a
grand heritage
of feudal
nobility
but to the
subterranean
machinations of British
operatives
who
spearheaded
the Shah's
father,
Reza
Kahn,
out of the officer
corps
of the Iranian
army's
Cossack
Brigade
to the
pinnacle
of
autocratic
power
in 1921.
Following
the
blueprint
of
Turkey's bold, post-Ottoman
reformer Kemal
Atattirk,
Reza Shah
adopted
a
tripartite strategy
of social
transformation
focusing
on national
integration, secularization,
and
the
construction of a
modern
economic
infrastructure.'9
Internal
opposition
and
meddling by
Western
powers
saw to it that
only
the
"modernization"
component
of
the
"nationalism-laicism-modernism"
formula Foucault
disparagingly
refers to as a
"European-style attempt
'to modernize' Islamic
countries,"
could be
pursued
with
any degree
of success
by
the
forward-looking
Pahlavis.
While there is a veneer of
historical
accuracy
to Foucault's terse
expository
discussion of the
genesis
of the
Pahlavi
regime,
it bears all the
markings
of what Edward Said describes as the
schematic
knowledge produced by
Western Orientalists:
[To
the
Orientalist],
the Oriental was
always
like some
aspect
of the
Westerner,
to some of the German
Romantics,
for
example,
Indian
religion
was
essentially
an
Oriental version of Germano-Christian
pantheism.
Yet the Orientalist makes it
his work to be
always converting
the Orient from
something
into
something
else:
he does this for
himself,
for the sake of his
culture,
in some cases for what he
believes is the sake of the Oriental. This
process
of conversion is a
disciplined
one: it is ... connected to and
supplied by
the
prevailing
cultural and
political
norms of the
West. ...
[I]t
tends to become more rather than less total in what
it
tries to
do,
so much so that as one
surveys
Orientalism in the nineteenth and
twentieth
centuries,
the
overriding impression
is of Orientalism's insensitive
schematization of the entire Orient.
(Said's
emphasis)"
To some
extent,
Foucault's schematic account of the Pahlavi's accession to
power
can,
of
course,
be attributed to the
spatial
limitations of the
journalistic
forum in
which it is enunciated. In a narrative
economy
that
places
a
premium
on
brevity,
reductionist assertions of the
type
Foucault makes
are,
in
effect,
par
for the
genre.
Yet the historical circumstances he chooses to recount and the
priority
he
assigns
to
the individual
agency
of the
Pahlavi monarchs-to whose "skin" the flaws of the
modern
Iranian state are said to "stick like an
adhesive"-are,
particularly
for this
system-minded
"historian of the
present," oddly analogous
to conventional modes
of historical
interpretation
that
glean meaning
from the surface of what Annales
historians characterize as the event-centered
past.
Described
by
Fernand Braudel as
"crests
of foam that the tides of
history carry
on their
strong backs,"21
1'histoire
evenementielle
privileges spectacular
occurrences and the momentous deeds of
potentates
to the detriment of structural forces
purveying
the
deeper
and richer
meanings
of the
longue durde.2
In L 'Ordre du discours
(1971),23
Foucault himself
underscored the
complexities
involved in
producing understanding
of the
past,
methodological concerns he would fail to heed in his own historicizing of the
Iranian
present:
We
frequently
credit
contemporary history
with
having removed the individual
event from its
privileged position
and with
having
revealed the more
enduring
structures of
history.
That is so.
[Yet]
I do not think one can
oppose
the
identification of the individual event to the
analysis
of
long
term trends
quite
so
sharply.
On the
contrary,
it seems to me that it is in
radically compressing
the
event,
in
bringing
the
explanatory powers
of historical
analysis
to bear on official
price lists,
title
deeds, parish registers
... that we see
emerging- beyond battles,
decisions, dynasties
and
assemblies--massive phenomena
of secular and multi-
secular
significance.
... What is
important
here is that
history
does not consider
an event without
defining
the series to which it
belongs,
without
specifying
the
method of
analysis used,
without
seeking
out the
regularity
of the
phenomena
...
without
desiring
to know the conditions
upon
which these
depend. History
has
long
since abandoned its
attempts
to understand events in terms of cause and
effect in the formless
unity
of some
great becoming,
whether
vaguely
homogeneous
or
rigidly
hierarchized. It did not do this in order to seek out
structures anterior
to,
alien or hostile to the event. It was rather in order to
establish those
diverse, converging,
and often
divergent,
but never
autonomous,
series that enable us to circumscribe the 'locus' of an
event,
the limits to its
fluidity
and the conditions of its
emergence. (translation altered)2
Ironically,
the establishment of direct causal
relations,
a
preoccupation
with
dynastic origins
and
political lineage,
as well as a
"vaguely homogeneous"
view of
the forces
generating
the
revolutionary upheaval
that so enthralled him in the fall of
1978,
are all
striking
features of Foucault's
analysis
of the Iranian
crisis.25
This
failure to
grant
his Oriental
object
historical
depth, specificity,
and
multiplicity-in
other
words,
the same
analytical rigor
and
methodological texturing
he
applies
to
his histories of the Western
present-raises
the
sneaking suspicion
that the
oversimplified knowledge
he
imparts
with such haste to his Occidental audience is
not
solely
the
product
of the
spatial
dictates of the
journalistic
forum in which he is
writing. Indeed,
the
objections
Foucault raises in L 'Ordre
du
discours to
teleological
modes of
analysis
that
present history
as "a formless
unity
of some
great
becoming"
can themselves be made with
respect
to his exaltation of the Islamic
revolution's
seemingly organic
cohesion,
the chief source of the movement's
legitimation
and of its claims to cultural and
political authority.
In his denunciation of what Reza Baraheni called the Shah's "tinsel
westernization,"'2
Foucault maintains that the mass revolt whose sources he was
attempting
to
explain
to
Europeans
came from a
ground
swell of
spirituality
which
the
hyper-rationalized
West was
incapable
of
comprehending.
In order to
escape
the
despiritualization
of cultural life from which the revolution's
religious
leaders were
struggling
to save its
constituent-followers,
"an entire
people"
was, it would seem,
prepared
to renounce the amenities of modern
life, including, presumably,
the
roads,
railways,
and the other infrastructural
public
works Reza
Kahn,
the first
Pahlavi,
had undertaken a half
century
earlier:
Of the entire
Kemalist program,
international
politics
and internal forces only
left
the Pahlavis with one bone to
gnaw
on: modernization. And here this
modernization has come to be
roundly rejected.
Not
simply
because of the defeats
it has suffered,
but for the
very principle
it
represents.
With the current agony of
the Iranian
regime,
we are
witnessing
the final moments of an
episode
that began
some
sixty years ago:
an
attempt
"to
modernize"
Islamic countries in a Western
fashion. The Shah is still
clinging
to
[this aim]
as if it were his
only
raison d'8tre.
I don't know if he's still
looking
to the
year
2000. But I know his famous
gaze
dates from the 1920s.2
Charting
an
undeviating
line of historical
continuity
from the Shah's
peacock-
strutting (or,
as the canine
metaphor suggests, dog-lapping)
rule of the
present
to
the
foolhardy modernizing
ventures of his
father,
Foucault
argues
that the
regime
of the
current monarch was
succumbing
to the ruinous
founding principles
of
technological progress
and secularization his
predecessor
had embraced earlier in
the
century; principles
that were somehow
inherently
ill-suited to Iran's Islamic
cultural terrain
and, therefore,
doomed from the outset to failure. With the
exception
of minor
political adjustments,
like the son's
postwar
substitution of
American for British influence and a few other unremarkable
comings
and
goings,
such as the British
ousting
of the Shah's father in 1941 and
subsequent
investiture
of his
son,
the
sputtering engines
of a
dusty
oriental
modernity
had taken the
Pahlavi's
straight
from the alien
origins
of their
dynastic reign
in the
early
1920s to
their inevitable demise a half
century
later.
Although
in L 'Ordre du discours
Foucault welcomes the
passing
of
historiographic
conventions that
produced
"vaguely homogeneous
or
strictly
hierarchized""
meaning by bringing
into
play
relations of "cause and effect in the formless
unity
of some
great becoming,"
his own
interpretation
of the Iranian revolution is
shaped by just
such a
methodology.
The
"great becoming"
Foucault foresees in October 1978 is one in which a
decadent,
not
really
so old order-from its
inception spinelessly
subservient to Western colonial
powers--is
toppled by
a tidal wave of
righteous, single-minded opposition
from an
undivided
people
whose will to
emancipation
was
propelled by magnificent spiritual
resolve. Historical or even anecdotal evidence
adding
shades of
grey
to this black
and white
portrait
of Islam's
revolutionary good
and the Pahlavi's
modernizing
evil
is
systematically placed
under
analytical
erasure.
One finds a
striking example
of Foucault's somewhat
patronizing oversimplification,
as well as of the
self-referentiality
of his
approach
to
understanding
the Iranian
uprising,
in an
illuminating exchange
he
has
with a
group
of Iranian
"technocrats,"
a social
category quite obviously scorned by
this historian of the
panoptic techniques
of
modern
social control.
Drawing
direct
ideological parallels
between
Europe's
cast
of "come-to-the-rescue technocrats" and their Iranian
counterparts,
a sector in
whom the Shah
had,
in
effect, placed many
of his
modernizing hopes,
Foucault
portrays
his interlocutors as
myopic
arrivistes who had lost touch with their cultural
identity
and failed to
recognize
that the
technological
advances
they
envisioned for
their
society
no
longer
had
any meaning
or merit:
[T]hey
speak
of
growth
and
development,
but in
moderation,
and also of
context;
they speak with respect of the "social fabric." One of them explained to me that
all
[sides]
could still be
accommodated, that it was
possible
to modernize
[Iran]
"reasonably," taking
into account
[its]
"cultural
identity,"
but
only
on the
condition that the
King relinquishes
his dreams.
...
This ambitious fellow and
some of the others in his
company
would still like to
salvage "modernization"
by
limiting
the
powers
of the Shah and
scaling
back his ambitions.
They
have not
understood
that
today,
the modernization
[that was]
to be in
Iran,
is dead in its
tracks.29
Foucault
ignores
the fact that the
technological progress
whose
alienating
effects
Western intellectuals and writers have
copiously critiqued
in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries
might
have
quite
different
meanings
for third world countries
striving
to transform economies that the colonial era had bound to the
dependent
structures of raw-material
exportation. By impugning
the notion of
progress
tout
court,
he saves himself the trouble of
taking
on more recondite issues of how
postcolonial
societies
might pursue development
while
preserving
their cultural
integrity
and
asserting
their
autonomy
in a
Western-dominated, increasingly
integrated global marketplace.
He thus
summarily deprives
the
peoples
of
developing
societies-whose colonial
exploitation directly
nourished the West's
economic
expansion
and
technological development--of
the creature comforts their
labor and resources had afforded the
powers
that had
formerly subjugated
them. But
in what he claims is the Iranian
people's categorical rejection
of the modernization
he declares "dead in its
tracks,"
this Western traveller
appears
to have stumbled
upon
a univocal mass whose
spiritual elation,
he
subtextually surmises,
will
compensate
for the
grueling
labor and material burdens of the
premodern
life to
which
they
are more than
willing
to return in order to fend off the
deadening,
corrupting
influences of Western industrialism's "world without
spirit."3
Like the Iranian "technocrats" who
thought
it
possible
to modernize their
society
while
preserving
its cultural
heritage,
Reza
Baraheni,
who in some
respects
validates Foucault's
assertions,
has a more nuanced view of
things.
While
unwavering
in its
opposition
to the Shah's autocratic
rule,
Baraheni's
analysis
contrasts
markedly
with
Foucault's
account of the revolution's dualistic
struggle
between the modem and the
antimodern,
a David and Goliath contest
pitting
the
forces of crass Western materialism
against
the
spiritual
transcendence of Islam.
Rather than
rejecting modernity
en
bloc,
as Foucault claims Iranians were
doing
en
masse in
1978, Baraheni--a
dissident writer who himself had been detained and
tortured in the Shah's
prisons--makes perfectly
clear that it was not Western
goods
and
technology per
se that were
dispossessing
Iranian culture but rather the "double
alienation"
wrought by
the introduction of a
"Woolworth"
consumerism that denied
Iranians "all that is of merit in the West while their own values are corroded" and
their
"ancient,
historic
cities
[are] disfigured."3'
In
contradistinction
to
Foucault's
assertion that it was not
simply
the
culturally
ruinous form the
Pahlavi's modernizing
program
had
taken,
but the
very principle
of modernization itself that was
being
repudiated,
this Iranian intellectual calls not for an
outright rejection
of the notion
of
progress
but rather for a
levelling
of the economic
playing
field on which the
West has
historically exchanged
its admirable
technological
"attainments" for the
treasures of the East.
Baraheni's testimonial to the
brutality
of the Shah's secret
police
and discussion
of the
political
resentments smoldering
in Iran in the years immediately preceding
the revolution are an
important
reminder that there were discourses of resistance
that
spoke
the
experience
of dictatorial
oppression
and
imperialist
domination in a
language
that was not that of the Islamic traditionalists who
ultimately
acceded
to
power
in
1979;
secular voices that were muffled
internally
as the revolt
gathered
momentum and
externally by
Western media
which,
much like
Foucault, painted
the Shah's
opposition
in one broad Islamic stroke and remained fixated on the
spectacular displays
of collective
religious
devotion fast
fading
into mass
political
rebellion. In
Covering
Islam
(1981),
Edward Said observes that in their
reporting
on "The Iran
Story,"
American
journalists generally
avoided the discussion of
crucial historical circumstances and actual affronts to the
country's rights
to
political
self determination that
might
well have shed
light
on the sources of Iranian
ire,
which
appeared televisually
to be driven
solely by religious zealotry
and
xenophobic hysteria.32
Said
notes,
for
instance,
that the
one
subject newspapers
and television
programs
had looked into
only superficially
for the first three months of the
embassy
takeover was the
previous
Iranian
regime:
for a
remarkably long
time it was not
popular
to take
seriously
current
Iranian
grievances against
both the
deposed
monarch and a
longstanding
United
States
policy
to
support
him without reservation.
Somehow, too,
the violation of
Iranian
sovereignty
that occurred in
August 1953,
when
(as
Kermit Roosevelt
details in his recent and
precipitately
withdrawn
book, Countercoup)
the CIA in
conjunction
with the
Anglo-Iranian
Oil
Company
overthrew Mohammed
Mossadegh,
merited a little
investigation,
the
assumption being
that the United
States
as
a
great power
is entitled to
change governments
and
forgive tyranny
when it is inflicted on illiterate nonwhites at our discretion."
In
foregrounding
the
lingering
effects and
deep
resentment the
Mossadegh
affair
had
spawned, Baraheni
earnestly
endeavors to
clarify
Iranian
grievances
of the sort
Said identifies in
political
and historical terms the American audience he is
obviously targeting might readily understand,
and with which he
clearly hopes
it
might empathize. Adopting
the Orientalist
practice
of
converting
Eastern
meanings
into
something Western,
so
that,
in this
case,
one Iranian voice
might
be heard in
the
foreign
realm whose
policies
so
directly
influenced his
country's destiny,
Baraheni reminds his American readers that:
in
August, 1953,
the CIA overthrew the
legally
elected
government
of Dr.
Mossadeq, brought
back to the
country
the
Shah,
his
wife,
his brothers and sisters
who had run
away earlier,
and reinstalled the
present
monarch.
Imagine
a more
tyrannical George III
being
crowned
6,000
miles
away by
the
very
descendents of
George Washington
and
Benjamin
Franklin with
money
raised
by
the American
taxpayer.
The CIA re-created the
monarchy,
built
up
the SAVAK-the Shah's
secret
police--and
trained all its
prominent members,
and stood
by
the Shah and
SAVAK as their
powerful ally, making way
for the
police
state which
Iran has
become.3
Oddly enough,
in his extensive
reporting
on the revolution's
genesis, Foucault
makes
only sporadic, quite uninformative reference to the
Mossadegh matter, the
latest in a series of
foreign
interventions and
imperialist indignities
to which Iran
had been
subjected
since the dawn of the
century.
In
striving
to see that blame for
the traumas Iran's
"modernization"
had
produced stayed
affixed to the
Pahlavis,
two
dictatorial rulers whom he
stereotypically configures
as classic Oriental
despots,
the
often
covert, though
nonetheless
weighty
forces of
Empire-Czarist Russian,
British,
and their American
postwar incarnation-are,
in
effect, relegated
to the
margins
of his
analysis
and thus de
facto
diminished in their
significance.
Although
in the
closing segments
of the "Lo Sci" ha cento anni di ritardo"
article,
Foucault
unequivocally
identifies the Shah's
regime
as an instrument of
colonialism-again,
an
oversimplification
of the more refined relations of
dominance
modern
Western
powers
had established with Iran
(which was,
in
fact,
never
directly subjected
to colonial
rule)-in
its
substance,
his discussion
only
rather
perfunctorily
factors the effects of
foreign hegemony
into the
revolutionary
formula he is
analyzing. Why
Foucault
might opt
to
de-emphasize
the historic 1953
coup
and its
repressive
dictatorial
aftermath,
which
many
informed
commentators-Iranian and non-Iranian alike-saw as
having decisively
fuelled
antagonism
toward the Shah's
regime
and its American
underwriters,
is a
question
that is well worth
exploring.
A brief discussion of the
precise
circumstances
surrounding Mossadegh's
overthrow
may help
to remind Western
(particularly
American)
readers of the
negative
force this intervention had in
shaping
contemporary
Iran's
political
culture and its now
deeply antagonistic, suspicion-
laden relations with the West.
Identifying
some of the internal
paradoxes
and
contradictions
generated by
the
coup
and
by
Iranian
society's complex political
and
cultural
response
to it further serves to illuminate in
interesting ways
the
interpretive blindspots
in Foucault's
analysis
of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
In his
illuminating essay "America, Iran,
and the Politics of Intervention
(1951-
1953),"
James A. Bill notes that in the halls of
Washington power,
the CIA's 1953
overthrow of
Mossadegh
was "considered for
years
. . . to be one of the
major
success stories of
[American]
direct covert intervention."35 "Operation Ajax,"
as it
came to be
known,
thus became the model for the
agency's spate
of clandestine
operations
which
sought,
or so the Iranian intervention's code name
suggests,
to
cleanse
foreign countries-ranging
from Guatemala in 1954 to Chile in 1973-of
the
murky political
forces that were
perceived
to be a threat to Cold War America's
vital interests. There
are, indeed, striking parallels
between the CIA-orchestrated
coup
which in
September
1973
deposed
the Chilean
president
Salvador Allende and
the underhanded ouster of Dr.
Mossadegh
in Iran
twenty years
earlier: both leaders
had come to
power through
free elections and both advanced the
daring proposal
that their
country's
natural resources-Iran's
plentiful
oil reserves and Chile's rich
copper
mines-should be
nationalized;
a
proposition
that
outraged
the British-
dominated
Anglo-Iranian
Oil
Company (AIOC), just
as it later miffed the American
mining monopolies
with considerable
profit-margin
stakes in the political
fate of
Chile's vast
copper
fields. Described
by
Richard Cottam as a "devoted proponent
of
Enlightenment
values
[who]
was dedicated to the task of
bringing
real independence
and national
dignity
to his
country,"'
Mohammed Mossadegh
headed the National
Front,
a
populist
secular movement
striving
to end the
Shah's
dictatorial rule and to
build a liberal democratic state that would reclaim the
rights
to Iran's natural
resources from the
foreign
concessions
that,
since their
discovery
earlier in the
century,
had been their chief beneficiaries.
Appointed
Prime Minister in
May 1951,
Mossadegh single-mindedly pursued
his
political objective
of
freeing
Iran's
economy
from
foreign domination,
a
policy priority
which
agents
of Britain's
vital
interests in the
AIOC
countered
through
covert
attempts
to destabilize
the
government. Earning
him what in this case was the dubious distinction of Time
Magazine's
1952 "Man of the
Year," Mossadegh's
"anti-western"
campaign
to
reappropriate
Iran's oil fields was viewed
not
as a
legitimate patriotic
assertion of
national
sovereignty
and
dignity,
but as the
product
of
"fanaticism,
irrationality
and
irresponsibility"37 that,
as his British adversaries saw
it, typified
"the worst
aspects
of the 'Persian character."'38
Acting initially
as mediators in the
increasingly
contentious
dispute
between
Mossadegh
and the
AIOC,
American
negotiators appointed by
the Truman
administration
urged
the British to abandon
designs
for a direct
military
intervention and to
adopt
a more
conciliatory
demeanor
by actually considering
Iranian
grievances.
In
July 1951,
Truman sent Averell Harriman and a team of
diplomats
to Iran where
they
met with
Mossadegh
and toured oil fields in the
south,
facilities at which British dominance and
privilege
were
clearly
evidenced in their
superior living conditions, and, quite symbolically, by
the water fountains that
displayed
the
signs:
"Not for Iranians." Bill relates that when
they attempted
to
persuade
him to come to a
negotiated
settlement with the
AIOC, Mossadegh balked,
invoking
the
example
of the Boston Tea
Party, asking
his interlocutors how
"American
independence
leaders
[would]
have
responded
if some Persian mediators
had come aboard the
ships
anchored in Boston harbour and asked the colonists not
to throw that Tea overboard?""39 After an October 1951 visit to the United States
during
which Truman troubleshooter
George
McGee
painstakingly
worked with
Mossadegh
on
formulating
a
compromise
solution to the
Anglo-Iranian impasse,
Anthony Eden,
the
Foreign Secretary
of Great Britain's
newly
elected conservative
government, rejected
the
proposal,
which called for nationalization of the oil fields
and the
barring
of British technical
personnel
from Iran.
Only
when the Eisenhower
administration
took office
in
January
1953 did
high-
level officials in the American
government begin seriously entertaining
the
possibility
of
resolving
the conflict
by attempting
to
topple Mossadegh's
government.
Bill
explains
that American
angst
over the Communist threat and
concern for
securing cheap supplies
of oil in order to fuel
postwar expansion,
were
the
major impetus
for
abandoning
the
conciliatory approach
to
dealing
with
Mossadegh
and his nationalist demands. While the British had harbored
suspicions
that US
policy
makers in the Truman
years
were
attempting
to
usurp
its dominant
role in Iran by using Mossadegh "as an American wedge to break the AIOC's
monopolistic grip
on Iran's oil
reserves," these fears were
allayed
with the advent of
the Eisenhower administration which saw to it that in
"exchange
for American
support
in
overthrowing
the
[Mossadegh] government,
the British
grudgingly
permitted
US
companies
a 40
percent
interest in Iranian Oil."" Richard
Cottam,
an
official
marginally
involved in the formulation and execution of the American
policy
toward
Mossadegh
and the oil crisis that his demands for nationalization had
engendered,
observes that the British also
played
on the anti-Communist
paranoia
sweeping
American
society
at the
height
of the
McCarthy period, successfully
drawing
the State
Department
and the CIA into its interventionist
scheme.41 James
Bill
explains
the
long-term
effects of this
pivotal
decision to
cooperate
with the
British in the
following
terms:
The American intervention of
August
1953 was a momentous event in the
history
of Iranian-American
relations,
which were
damaged
for the next
twenty-five
years; following
the revolution of
1978-79,
America's troubled relations with the
Islamic
Republic
of Iran turned into
open hostility.
From the Iranian
perspective,
the manner in which the United States chose to intervene in their internal affairs
was at least as
reprehensible
as the decision to intervene
itself.
The fact that the
CIA
joined
hands with interventionist
England
in
co-ordinating
activities of
royalist
Iranians
and
distributing money
to hired demonstrators was a matter
discussed and condemned
by
Iranian citizens for
years
afterwards. This was
recalled in the anti-American chants and
speeches
heard
during
the revolution of
the late 1970s.42
That Foucault fails not
only
to
explore
in
any depth,
but
simply
to
acknowledge
the
impact
of these
paramount
historical circumstances
derives,
I would
venture,
from his considerable intellectual investment in the thesis that Iran's
revolutionary
movement was the
expression
of a
transcendent,
collective effort to
reinject "Spirit"
into "a World Without
Spirit."
In order to sustain the
argument
that the
Ayatollah
Khomeini was the
"mythic
head of the revolt" which had a
glorious
vision of a
wholly
new form of
politico-spiritual
democratization and
emancipation
from
Western values and
domination,
Foucault would have had to
go through
considerable
analytical
contortions to
explain why
the Islamic
hierocracy
had in fact
supported
the Shah and his
illegitimate
1953 return to
power
on the
wings
of
Anglo-
American intervention and
participated
in the destabilization of
Mossadegh's
government.
Indeed, during
the earlier
Pahlavi's reign,
the same clerical forces had
buttressed Reza Kahn's
dictatorship, banking
on the monarch's
suppression
of the
republican aspirations
of Iran's
emerging
middle class and
secularizing intelligentia
which it
rightly
saw as a threat to the
religious
traditionalism that was the
cornerstone of the Islamic
hierocracy's authority.
Said
Arjomand
notes that decades
later,
Reza Shah's son
Mohammad "was
also
given
crucial clerical
support
at the
most critical moment of his
reign. Though,"
he
points out,
"commentators have
shown
astounding forgetfulness
of the fact
[that]
the
support
of the
Ayatollahs
Kashani and
Behbehani
...
was as
important
as that of the CIA in
staging
the return
of Mohammad
Reza Shah after his
flight
to Rome in 1953."' Just as
Shi'ite
leaders
had endorsed the foundation of the
Pahlavi Dynasty
in 1925,
in an effort to stave off
the threat of secular
republicanism,
their successors turned to the Shah in 1953 as
"a
safeguard against
the
spread
of communism."" Clerical support
for the
monarchy
continued until 1963 when the reforms and liberalization of the Shah's
"White
Revolution"
provoked
the ire of the
Ayatollah
Khomeini and his
religious
followers.
Conveniently overlooking
the fact that Shi'ite leaders
had, along
with
the
CIA,
run
roughshod
over
Iran's
democratic
aspirations
in
1953,
Khomeini and
his
supports began mounting
stiff
religious opposition
to the second
Pahlavi's reforms,
calling
for constitutional limits to the Shah's
rule. When,
in October
1962, the
monarchy
enfranchised women and
adopted
other measures that limited
the
political
influence of the Shi'ite
hierocracy,
Khomeini
vociferously objected, just
as
he did a
year
later in
denouncing
the
six-point
"White
Revolution"
whose
land
reform
agenda
made inroads into the traditional feudal sources of clerical revenues.
Describing
Khomeini's
opposition
to the
program
as "black
reaction,"
the Shah
unleashed his
by
now formidable
police apparatus-buttressed,
as it
was, by
CIA
techniques
and materiel-which
repressed
mass demonstrations
by
the
Ayatollah's
supporters
and sent their
figurehead
into
exile,
first in
Turkey,
then
Iraq.
In
October
1978,
Khomeini took
up
residence at
Neauphles-le-Ch~teau
on the outskirts of Paris
where,
according
to one of his
biographers,
Didier
Eribon,
Foucault met with the
Islamic Revolution's "almost
mythical
character."45 In his 28 November 1978
entry
into Corriere's "Persian
Notebooks,"
Foucault asserted:
Today,
no head of
State,
no
political leader,
even one
supported by
all of his
country's media,
can boast
being
the
object
of such
personal
and intense devotion.
This attachment derives
undoubtedly
from three facts: Khomeini isn't there
[in
Iran]:
for fifteen
years
he has been
living
in exile from which he himself wants to
return
only
if the Shah is
gone;
Khomeini
says nothing, nothing
other than
no--to
the
Shah,
to the
regime,
to
dependence; finally, Khomeini
is not
apolitician;
there
will not be a Khomeini
party,
there will not be a Khomeini
government.
Khomeini is the focal
point
of a collective will."
(Foucault's emphasis)
The rhetoric of nullification to which Foucault resorts so
insistently
here in
identifying
the sources of
Khomeini's
magnetism
is
fully
consonant with the claim
he had been
implicitly advancing
from the
beginning
of his intellectual involvement
with the
uprising:
that Iran could
emancipate
itself
by severing
all ties to the
modern
world,
presumably existing solely
on the sustenance of
Spirit.
In
unflinchingly practicing
the
politics
of
negation
wherein the
awe-inspiring present
of the
revolutionary
event is dissociated from both recent historical
past, and,
perhaps
most
disturbingly,
from what
many
observers in the fall of 1978 saw as a
portentous
near
future,
Foucault seems to
over-identify
his own New Left
contestation with the aims of the Iranian
opposition
to the Shah and his
corrupt
modernization.
Indeed,
in his discussion of Khomeini's role as "the
mythic
head of
the revolt in
Iran,"
Foucault draws an
altogether astounding parallel
between the
Islamic Revolution and the
decidedly
less
pious
student
uprisings
of the 1960s
("a
little like
European
students in the
1960s,
Iranians want 'it
all'"47),
an
analytical
leap which,
I would
argue,
is
yet
another
sign
of the
projective
character
of his
intellectual and
political engagement with the Iranian revolution.
Although
Foucault's
writing
on the
subject effectively countered what Said called the
"aggressive
hyperbole"'
much of the Western
press used in
manufacturing
what
quickly
came to be an anti-Iran
public consensus, Foucault's anti-consensus
discourse was no less
hyperbolic
in its idealism.
Engrossed
in the mass rebellion
carried out "with bare hands"
against
the Shah and his awesome
machinery
of
repression,
Foucault streamlines his accounts of the
past and,
more
disturbingly,
dispenses
with
pondering
the
possibilities
of the
future, thereby fostering
the
Orientalist notion that the Islamic East is somehow not
subject
"to the
ordinary
process
of
history,"
and
reinforcing
the sense that
"primitiveness
... inhered in the
Orient,
was the
Orient,
an idea to which
anyone dealing
with or
writing
about the
Orient had to
return,
as if to a touchstone
outlasting
time and
experience."49
The
rhetorical manner in which this acclaimed counter-cultural historian
justifies
his
fixation on the
enthralling revolutionary present-to
the detriment of both
past
and
future-has a
remarkably disingenuous ring
to it:
I don't know how to write the
history
of the future and I am a bit awkward at
exploring
the
past.
I would
like, nevertheless,
to canvass "what is
happening,"
for,
these
days, nothing
is a
foregone
conclusion and the dice are still
rolling.
This
is
perhaps
the work of the
"journalist,"
but in all
truth,
I am
just
a
neophyte."
The extreme
modesty ("I
don't
know,"
"I am a bit
awkward")
of this 26 November
statement in Corriere contrasts
sharply
with the
supreme
confidence Foucault had
exhibited in the 1 October
article,
"Lo Sci" ha cento anni di
ritardo,"
in which he
proclaimed:
"I don't know if
[the Shah]
is still
looking
to the
year
2000,
but I know
his famous
gaze
dates from the 1920s"
[emphasis added]). Perhaps
in the
intervening
weeks,
the
outright indignation
Foucault's earlier
analyses
had
provoked prompted
him to strike a more amateurish
pose
than the one he had so
authoritatively projected
in earlier
reports.
In a terse but
testy exchange
between Foucault and one Iranian reader
residing
in
Paris that took
place
in Le Nouvel Observateur
following
its 16 October
publication
of the "A
quoi
r8vent les Iraniens?" article-an
epistolary
encounter that well
might
be seen as a new and
topographically
inverted set of
Persian_Letters-the
extent to
which Foucault
failed,
or
simply
refused to fathom the
grave implications
of the vast
social, political,
cultural,
and
juridical
reforms Islamic clerics were
conjuring
in the
fall of 1978 is
disturbingly
evident. In the 6 November issue of Le Nouvel
Observateur,
one Atoussa H.
responded
to Foucault's celebration of the revolution's
"spiritual"
'lan.
Vigorously indicting
the French
Leftist intelligentia,
this woman
chided Foucault's
complacency
toward the
possible
establishment of an Islamic
regime
in
Iran,
stunned that he could find
anything "moving"
in a traditionalist
movement so
openly championing
the
patriarchal
enslavement of women and
planning
to enfranchise minorities
only
"so
long
as
they
do no harm to the
majority."
Seeking
to
give
the term "Muslim
spirituality"
more
textually-grounded meaning
than does
Foucault,
Atoussa H.
suggests
that he and other Western Leftists who
found themselves enraptured by
the revolutionary
ardor and aims of the Islamic
movement take the time to read
passages
of the Koran, so that they might
bette'
comprehend
"what the literal
application
of the Koran by
moral order of
the
Ayatollah
Khomeini would mean."
',esperately
lamenting
that after twenty-five
years
of dictatorial
rule,
the Iranian
people
were
being given
the
opportunity
to
choose
only
between the Savak's
treachery
and the
Ayatollah's
theocratic
tyranny-slim pickings
to be sure-she concludes with the
eloquent query:
Spirituality?
Return
to
popular
sources
[where]
the hands and heads of thieves
and lovers fall? ... It would seem that for
[a]
Western Left
weary
of
humanism,
Islam is desirable .. . in other lands.
Many
Iranians like
myself
are
distressed,
despondent,
at the
thought
of an "Islamic"
government. They
know what it
means.
Throughout Iran,
Islam is a smoke screen for feudal and
pseudo-
revolutionary oppression. Often, too,
as in
Tunisia, Pakistan,
and
Indonesia,
Islam--alas--is
the
only
form
of
expression
available to muzzled
peoples.
The
progressive
Left in the West should
recognize
the circuit breaker the Islamic
religion
can become when it contains societies
eager
for
change,
and not let
themselves be seduced
by
a
remedy
that is
perhaps
worse than the ill.s5
Foucault's
thoroughly condescending reply
on 13 November to the salient
points
Atoussa H. had raised a week earlier indicate
that,
as was the case in his
conversation with his "come-to-the-rescue-technocrats" in
Iran,
he had little interest
in
considering differing
views of the
situation, even,
indeed
especially,
those
articulated
by
Iranians
directly
affected
by
the
cataclysmic changes reshaping
their
society.
This
investigativeparti pris
for
"spiritually"-inclined
sources is
particularly
evident in the "A
quoi
revent les Iraniens?"
piece,
where Foucault
readily
acknowledges
that
during
his visit to Teheran and the
holy city Qom,
he had
refrained from
asking professional politicians
the
question
"What do
you
want?"
opting
to
pursue
his
inquiry regarding
the
aspirations
of the Iranian
people among:
"religious figures, students,
intellectuals interested in
problems concerning Islam,
or even with former
guerrilla fighters
who had abandoned armed
struggle
in 1976
to work within traditional
society.""
This
muffling
of
different,
that is to
say,
of
secular Iranian voices serves not
only
to
support
his central
argument
that the
society
had rediscovered its
essential,
irreducible
"spiritual
force"
against
which the
foundering monarchy's repression
was
powerless,
but also to buttress the
sweeping
claim that "an entire culture and entire
people""53
had embraced the ideal of
establishing
an Islamic
regime;
a new form of
government by which,
he had it on
good authority,
"no one in Iran means a
political regime
in which the
clergy
would
play
a
framing
and
governing
role."" But when the Iranian woman mentioned
above succeeds in
publicly voicing very
sound
political objections
to what she saw
as an
overly-optimistic (and,
in
retrospect, decidedly naive) reading
of the revolt and
celebration of its
spiritual energies,
Foucault
simply
and
obdurately charges
her with
not
having
read his
article,
a far from subtle assertion of the
European
male
philosopher's
intellectual
integrity
and
superiority. Bristling
at the idea his "A
quoi
revent les Iraniens"
essay
had in
any way suggested
that "'Muslim
spirituality'
would
advantageously replace
the
[Shah's] dictatorship,"
Foucault
points
out that
he had indeed underscored
aspects
of the movement that were "less than
reassuring."
In
evaluating
both the content and tenor of this contentious
exchange,
and in
juxtaposing
it with the
original
text that occasioned
it, however, one has the
sense that Foucault's
imperious stonewalling
of the
very specific points Atoussa
H.
32
South Central Review
had
raised,
stemmed not from a refusal to
engage
in a debate with an individual who
had not read his
article,
but rather from an effort to neutralize the force of a
critique
formulated
by
a reader who had
recognized
its
utopian (not
to mention
sexist)
thrust
all too well. Foucault
presents
himself in this
response
as an
anti-essentialist,
difference-tolerating
Occidental who has
proven
himself
capable
of
making
the fine
analytical
distinctions his Iranian detractor has rather
maliciously glossed
over in
her confusion and totalization of the Islam
experience:
Had there
only
been an error of
reading
involved in Mine H.'s
letter,
I would not
have
responded
to it. But it contains two intolerable
things: 1) [It]
confounds all
aspects,
all
forms,
all of the virtualities of Islam in the same disdain in order to
reject
it en bloc
through
a
millenary
denunciation of
[its]
"fanaticism."
2) [It]
suspects
all Westerners of
being
interested in Islam
only
out of
scorn
for Muslims
(what
can one
say
about an Occidental who
despises Islam?).
The problem
of
Islam as a
political
force is an essential
problem
for our era and will remain so in
the
years
to come. The chief
requisite
for
approaching [the problem]
with a
minimum
of
intelligence
is not to
begin by injecting
hatred into it."
In this
response
to Atoussa
H.,
Foucault leaves the distinct
impression
that the
"less than
reassuring" revolutionary developments
he had
signaled
in the 16
October Nouvel Observateur article had
something
to do with the
potential they
carried for intensified
patriarchal oppression
and
persecution
of
minority religious
and ethnic
groups,
two of the most
threatening
"virtualities" this reader had
signaled
in her
critique
of Foucault's
analysis.57
Yet,
in
actuality,
Foucault used this
skeptical terminology only
when
speaking
of the
post-revolutionary
model of
government
clerics were
formulating
in the fall of 1978 and in
cautioning against
the all too "familiar" caveats of its Western content:
No one is to be
deprived
of the fruits of his
labor,
what should
belong
to
everyone
(water, underground resources)
must not be
appropriated by anyone.
As for
freedoms, they
will be
respected
to the extent that their exercise is not
injurious
to
others,
minorities will be
respected
and free to live as
they please
as
long
as
they
do not
harm
the
majority,
between man and
woman,
there will not be an
inequality
but a difference of
rights,
since
[gender involves]
a difference of nature.
In the
political
realm,
decisions will be made
by
the
majority,
leaders will be held
responsible by
the
people,
and
anyone
can rise
up
and hold he who
governs
accountable.
It is often said that the definitions of the Islamic
government
are
imprecise. Quite
the
contrary, they
seemed to me to have a
very
familiar, but,
I must
say,
less than
reassuring transparency
to them.
"These
are formulas based on
bourgeois,
revolutionary democracy,"
I
said,
"we haven't
stopped repeating
them since the
18th
century,
and
you
know what
they
led to." But I was
immediately
told: "The
Koran enunciated them well before
your philosophes
and if the Christian,
industrial West has lost a sense of them,
Islam will know how to
preserve
their
value and
efficaciousness.'"
(Emphasis added)
Unlike Atoussa H. who
incisively questions just
"when minorities
begin
to 'do
harm'?"'
Foucault leaves this condition of
minority rights unproblematized, just
as the
blatantly discriminatory "separate
but
equal" principle
to
govern
the
new
society's gender
relations remains "naturalized."
Lending
further credence to the
proposition
that his
writing
on the Iranian revolution
possesses
a
highly projective
character,
Foucault
charges
Atoussa H. with
confounding
"all
aspects,
all
forms,
all the virtualities of Islam in the same disdain in order to
reject
it
enbloc" and
with
suspecting
"all
Westerners of
being
interested in Islam
only
out of
scorn for
Muslims"
(emphasis added), quite
the same
totalizing analytical
mode he himself
had
consistently adopted
in
singing
the
praise
of the Islamic revolution. More
striking
is the fact that Foucault
himself
had
obviously
not "read" with
any
care
Atoussa H.'s statement of 6
November,
since her bone of
political
contention was
not with "all Westerners" but
very specifically
with Leftist intellectuals
who,
as
Foucault so
publicly
demonstrated in his "amateur"
journalism,
seemed so
eager
in the fall of 1978 to see the
spiritual
ideals of the Islamic revolution
put
into
institutional
practice-"chez
les autres."
Despite
what can now be seen as the
insightfulness
of this Iranian critic's
challenge
to Foucault's
reading,
in his
quite
manipulative handling
of this "difference" of
opinion,
the
European
male
philosopher
somehow
manages
to
get
the
upper
rhetorical
hand,
not
only
in
having
the last word but
by deftly creating
the
impression
that it is he who has taken the
higher intellectual,
political, and,
most
astonishingly,
moral
ground, twisting
Atoussa H.'s
straightforwardly
formulated
objections
into the
seemingly
unscrupulous
utterances of a
shamelessly Westernized,
self-hating
Oriental.
Foucault's
unresponsiveness
to Atoussa H.'s concerns is even more
unsettling
in
that it
typifies
his
general unwillingness
to examine the
gender implications
of the
movement's recourse to
religious orthodoxy
which-like its
monologic
variants in
Judaism and
Christianity-rigidly
codifies the subordinate status of
women,
an
important aspect
of the Shi'ite
clergy's revolutionary
ambitions that
goes
conspicuously under-reported
in his "Persian Notebook." Which is not to
say
that
the
subject of,
for
example,
the
constricting
dress code about to be
mandated for
women does not
impinge upon
Foucault's intellectual consciousness in the course
of his
investigative reporting.
When
sobering questions regarding
the
social,
cultural, political, juridical,
and indeed
physical autonomy
of women come to the
fore, however,
Foucault often shifts the
discussion,
giving
it a
related,
though
distinctly non-gendered
focus. A
noteworthy example
of this
marginalization
of
gender
concerns can be found in the
closing passages
of the
"Esprit"
interview
where Claire
Bridre,
one of the
correspondents
Liberation
sent to
Iran,
recalls what
she terms the "immense intolerance" and
contempt
with which some of the male
Islamic activists treated her
during
a demonstration when she
attempted
to board
a van
transporting foreign journalists. Although
she was
appropriately
clad in the
chador,
the
full-length
veil
prescribed for women, she was not wearing opaque
stockings
under her
sandals, a violation that
prompted
these
young
men to demand
her removal from the van. While Bribre herself fails to
explore
the sexual
politics
34
South Central Review
at work in this incident
(rationalizing
it in terms such as
"[t]he
Movement's force
[comes from]
its
uniqueness.
As soon as it
perceives
small
differences,
it feels
threatened. I believe in this
case,
intolerance is
necessary,"60
Foucault
readily
endorses this reductionist
reasoning
with such
platitudes
as
"[i]n
order to face such
a redoubtable
armed
power,
one must not feel
alone,"6'
further
noting
that
revolutionary
movements often "have an element of
jingoism, nationalism,
exclusion,
and have a
mobilizing
force that is
truly
tremendous for individuals."62
The net result of this sort of
displacement
is that Foucault and his discussants
retain
nothing
of the
gender specificity
of the
incident, commenting only
in the
most
general
fashion
upon
the
necessary
intolerance that such momentous
struggles
often entail.
Had Foucault shown the same interest in
commenting
on the immense
courage
required
of the women who
during
the week of 12 March
1979,
took en masse to
the streets of
Teheran, Isphahan, Tabriz,
and Bandar-Abbas to
protest
the
imposition
of the chador and other traditionalist
legislation
in the
works,
such
disregard
for the
plight
of women under a
prospective
Islamic
regime might
seem
less
significant.
Yet Foucault's silence on the
week-long demonstrations--which
advanced under torrents of what Le Monde's Jean
Gueyras
described on 14 March as
the "insults and
jeers"
of Islamic militants who hounded the women with
indiscriminate
charges
of
being "'agents
of the
Savak,
instruments of
imperialism
...
tools of international
communism,
... defenders of the
Pahlavi
dynasty
...
and
admirers of Princess
Ashraf,
the Shah's sister
[who was]
known for her loose
morals"63-raises
troubling questions regarding
his
astonishing disregard
of the
issues of
gender oppression
his
object
of
analysis vigorously
foisted on him. No
less
intrepid
than the anti-Shah
protests
of the
preceding months,
this bold
initiative
by
Iranian women to
protect
their civil
rights
and to make a
very public
point
of the fact that
they
had not
participated
in
deposing
the Shah
"pour
revenir
en
arriere,"64
went, journalistically speaking, entirely
unnoticed
by
Foucault whose
commentary
on the Iranian matter had
by
this time slowed to a dribble.
Lamentably,
this silence conforms all to well to the
apathy
he so
consistently
exhibited in his
analyses
toward women and the dim future a
religiously-fashioned
post-revolutionary
world
might
hold for them.
In the
"L'Esprit
d'un monde sans
esprit"
interview,
Foucault
emphasizes
the
importance
of
distinguishing-as
does
Frangois
Furet in his
analysis
of the French
uprising
of
1789--between
the broader
processes
of
economic, social,
and cultural
transformation that led to the revolution and what he terms "the
specificity
of the
revolutionary
event."65
Yet,
as I have
sought
to
illustrate, throughout
his Persian
adventure,
Foucault focuses
obsessively
on the
latter, highlighting
the drama and
theatricality
of the
spellbinding display
of collective
courage
the Iranians
staged
for the world in late 1978 and
early
1979.
Captivated by
the
"beauty"
of an
uprising
whose
spiraling
violence seems to have
heightened
the
political
thrill of
it all, Foucault introduces an aesthetic dimension into the
argument
he had been
advancing
since the first
entry
into Corriere Della Sera's "Taccuino Persiano" on
28
September
1978:
Now what struck me in Iran is that there is no
struggle
between
different
elements. What
gives
it such
beauty,
and at the same time such
gravity,
is
that
there is
only
one confrontation: between the entire
people
and the
state
threatening
it with its
weapons
and
police.
One didn't have to
go
to
extremes,
one found them
there
at
once,
on the one
side,
the entire will of the
people, on
the other the machine
guns.
The
people demonstrated,
the tanks arrived.
The
demonstrations were
repeated
and the
machine-guns
fired
yet again.
And
this
occurred in an almost identical
way, with,
of
course,
an intensification
each
time,
but without
any change
of form or nature. It's the
repetition
of
the
demonstration. The readers of Western
newspapers
must have tired of it
fairly
soon.
Oh,
another demonstration in Iran! But I believe the
demonstration,
in its
very repetition,
had an intense
political meaning.
The
very
word demonstration
must be taken
literally:
a
people
was
tirelessly demonstrating
its will. Of
course,
it was not
only
because of the demonstration that the Shah left. But one
cannot
deny
that it was because of an
endlessly
demonstrated
rejection.
There
was in these demonstrations a link between collective
action,
religious ritual,
and an
expression
of
public right.
It's rather like in Greek
tragedy
where the
collective
ceremony
and the reenactment of the
principles
of
right go
hand in
hand. In the streets of Tehran there was an
act,
a
political
and
juridical act,
carried out
collectively
within
religious
rituals-an
act of
deposing
the
sovereign. (Emphasis added,
translation
altered)"
Along
with the facile conversion of Eastern
signifiers
into Western cultural
currency (i.e.
Greek
tragedy, Frangois
Furet's account of the French
Revolution)
and the
breezy
circulation of markers of Oriental
despotism,67
Foucault's recourse
to the rhetoric of
drama-language
that resurfaces once
again
in the "Inutile de se
soulever?" article
published
in Le Monde on 11
May
1979--might
well be seen
as
"demonstrating" yet again
the Orientalist
impulses asserting
themselves in his
Iranian text. Edward Said
points
out that for the Western
traveller,
the Middle
East has
long
been considered "a
place
of
pilgrimage"
that functions
chiefly
as a
"spectacle,
or tableau vivant."69 This notion of the Orient as site of exotic
pilgrimage
and
stimulating
tableau
vivant
for writers
seeking
relief from the
tedium of the familiar
aptly
characterizes what
appears
to have been the
personal
circumstances
surrounding
Foucault's decision to travel to Iran in
September
1978. Didier Eribon surmises that Foucault decided to take Corriere Della Sera's
editor
up
on an offer extended in 1977 to author a series of
articles,
since he found
himself
badly
in
need-to
extend the theatrical
metaphor-of
a
change
of
scenery.
Unenthused by
the
prospect
of
writing
on cultural and
philosophical
issues with
which he had become so
closely identified,
Foucault
proposed
the alternative of
undertaking investigative reporting abroad,
to which Corriere's editor
readily
agreed.
In
September
1978
following
the
slaughter
in
Teheran's Jaleh
Square,
whose
political
aftershocks
compounded
the traumas of the Tabas
earthquake
a
week
later,
reporting
on "The Iran
Story"
was
surely
one of the most exotic
assignments to be had
by Western
journalists. Given his extended intellectual
involvement and fascination with resistance to the formidable forces of "Le
Pouvoir," it is not
surprising
that Foucault would choose in the fall of 1978 to cover
the showdown between a monarch of
legendary brutality
and a
people prepared
to
"take to the
streets,
in the hundreds of
thousands,
in their
millions,
and face the
machine-guns
bare-chested."70 Was the
counter-proposal
to act as one of
Corriere's
foreign reporters simply
"a
way
of
getting
around
[the editor's] request,
as some
say, or," Eribon asks,
"did
he,
as others
believe, simply
feel the need to
get
away
from Paris after what he considered to be the failure of the La
Volontd
de
savoir?""
Although
Foucault's actual motivations cannot now be determined with
any certainty,
an examination of the texts
produced
and statements made
during
the Iranian
episode
of his
writing
career indicate it was more out of a desire to
encounter a
dramatic, defamiliarizing
difference than out of a
longstanding
involvement
with, passion for,
and
knowledge
of
things
Persian that led him to
undertake this
project.
In "Inutile de se
soulever?",
Foucault's final
essay
on the Iranian
revolution,
the
philosopher
reaffirmed his
respect
for the Iranian
people,
his awe of its
revolutionary will,
and the
enduring
menace such a force
represents
to all forms of
tyranny:
Uprisings belong
to
history.
But in a
way they escape
it. The movement in
which a
solitary man,
a
group,
a
minority,
or an entire
people says:
"I
no
longer
obey," risking
its life in the face of a
power
it deems
unjust--this
movement
seems to me
unconquerable.
For no
power
is
capable
of
mastering
it
completely:
Warsaw will
always
have its rebellious
ghettos
and its sewers inhabited
by
insurgents.
And because the man who rises
up is,
in the
end, inexplicable,
there
must be a
wresting away
that
interrupts
the thread of
history,
and its
long
shackles of
reason,
so that a man can
"really" prefer
the risk of death to the
certainty
of
having
to
obey.n
With this
eloquent
affirmation of "man's" indomitable
spirit
of resistance to
political oppression,
Foucault no doubt lifted the
spirits
of Western
progressives
who had
placed
such
high emancipatory hopes
in the mass
uprising against
the
Shah,
but
who, by May
1979 when this article
appeared
in Le
Monde,
were
quite
probably recoiling
in horror at the draconian
punishment being
meted out to the
new clericalist
regime's rapidly multiplying
moral and
political
foes. In this swan
song
of his Iranian
adventure,
the
sincerity
of Foucault's effort to combat
tyranny
and,
more
commendably,
to
engage
a different kind of
dialogue
between East and
West that
might
lead to
greater respect
for the otherness of its Oriental
interlocutor,
is
very
much in
evidence.73
And
quite courageously, he
even
goes
so
far as to intimate that he
might
well have
erred
in his
appraisal
of
just what,
as
Atoussa H.
put
it,
"the literal
application
of the Koran
by
moral order of the
Ayatollah
Khomeini would
mean," simply stating:
"[t]here
is
certainly
no shame
in
changing
one's
opinion."
Yet even in this
contemplative, quite moving essay,
Foucault overlooks the
possibility
that the
principle
of
"wresting away
from the
fiber of
history"-a rupture
that enables the
rebelling subject
to
say
"I no
longer
obey"-might
also have
interpretively impinged upon
his reading of Iran's
revolutionary
text as a tableau vivant of "men
rising up," leading
him to
privilege
dazzling political spectacle
over the
complexities
of historical
process.
In the end,
perhaps
Foucault's
greatest oversight
in the "Iranian
affair"
was
simply
that of
having
failed to
recognize,
as Atoussa H. had months before
suggested
he
might,
that third world revolution is not a
spectator sport
for Western intellectuals
"en
mal
d'humanisme,"
that
is,
for intellectuals
weary
of the freedoms that tradition
has
long
since secured for them.
NOTES
1. I
would like to extend
my
thanks to Allan
Megill
for
sharing
his valuable comments on an earlier draft
of this
essay
and to
Cinzia Blum,
Alan
Nagel,
and Vahid Nowshirvani for their careful
reading
of and
suggestions
on the final version. Thanks also to
Peggy
Trezbiatowski
for her research assistance in
gathering
the documentation
upon
which I have based
my analysis.
2. Uta Liebmann
Shaub,
"Foucault's Oriental
Subtext," PMLA
104.3
(May 1989):
306-15.
3. Claire Brihre and Pierre
Blanchat,
Interview with Michel
Foucault, "L'Esprit
d'un monde sans
esprit,"
Iran: La Rdvolution au nom de dieu
(Paris: Seuil, 1979),
225-41. For an
English
translation of this
interview,
see "Iran: The
Spirit
of a World Without
Spirit,"
Politics,
Philosophy,
Culture: Interviews and
Other
Writings,
1977-1984,
ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman
(New
York:
Routledge, 1988),
211-24.
4. In their article "Foucault et l'Iran: A
propos
du d6sir de
r6volution"
(Canadian
Journal
ofPolitical
Science 24.2
[June 19911: 221-36),
Lawrence Olivier and
Sylvain
Labb6 offer a
very
different
political
and
philosophical
assessment of Foucault's
analysis
of the 1978 Iranian revolution. Much as
Foucault,
or so I
argue
in the
discussion
that
follows,
elided the
cultural, political
and historical
specificity
of the Iranian
Revolution,
Olivier and Labb6
analyze
Foucault's texts on the
subject through
the
corpus
of the Western
philosopher's thought, conspicuously assigning priority
to
it,
rather than to the "other"
term
of the Foucault-
Iran
encounter,
that
is,
to the Iranian cultural and
political context,
which
ultimately proves
to be of
very
little
import
to these commentators.
5. Foucault's articles in and Corriere Della
Sera, Le Matin,
Le
Monde,
and Le Nouvel
Observateur,
are
as follows: "A
quoi
revent les Iraniens?"LeNouvel
Observateur,
16 October 1978:
48-49;
"II
mitico
capo
della rivolta
iell'Iran,"
CorriereDella
Sera,
26 November 1978:
1+;
"Inutile de
se soulever?"LeMonde,
11
May
1979:
1+;
"La rivolta dell'Iran corre sui nastri delle
minicassette,"
Corriere Della
Sera,
19
November 1978:
1+;
"L'esercito,
quando
la
terra trema,"
Corriere Della
Sera, 28
September
1978:
1+;
"Lettre
ouverte
i
Mehdi
Bazargan,"
Le Nouvel
Observateur,
14
April
1979:
46;
"Lo Scii ha cento anni
di
ritardo,"
Corriere Della
Sera,
1 October 1978:
1+; "R6ponse
de Michel Foucault
i
une lectrice
iranienne,"
Le Nouvel
Observateur,
13 November 1978:
26;
"Michel Foucault et
L'Iran,"
Le
Matin
26
March 1979:
15;
"Ritorno
al
Profeta?" Corriere Della
Sera,
22 October 1978:
4;
"Sfida
all'opposizione,"
Corriere Della
Sera,
7 November 1978:
1+;
"Teheran: la fede contro lo
Scii,"
Corriere Della
Sera,
8
October 1978:
11;
"Una
polveriera
chiamata
Islam,"
Corriere Della
Sera,
13
February
1979:
1;
and
"Una rivolta con le mani
nude,"
CorriereDella
Sera,
5 November 1978:
1+;
LeNouvel
Observateur,
6
November 1978: 27.
6. Michel
Foucault,
L
'Archdologie
du savoir
(Paris: Gallimard,
1969) (translated by
Alan M. Sheridan
as The
Archeology ofKnowledge [New
York:
Pantheon,
1972]).
7. Edward W.
Said,
Orientalism
(New
York: Random
House, 1978),
3.
8. Ibid.
9.
Ibid.,
25.
10. In the
"L'Esprit
d'un monde sans
Esprit" interview,
Foucault cites the Iranian
opposition's
count of
4,000
protesters
killed in the Jaleh
Square massacre,
while a decade
later,
the historian Said
Arjomand
estimated that there were 250 fatalities.
11. See
"L'esercito, quando
la terra
trema" (28 September 1978),
"Lo Scii ha cento
anni
di ritardo"
(1
October
1978),
"Teheran: la fede contro lo SciV"
(8
October
1978)
"Ritorno al Profeta?"
(22
October
1978),
"Una rivolta con le mani
nude"
(5
November
1978),
"Sfida
all'opposizione" (7
November
1978),
"La rivolta dell'Iran corre sui nastri delle minicassette"
(19
November
1978), "11
mitico
capo
della
rivolta"
(26
November
1978),
and "Una
polveriera
chiamata Islam"
(13 February 1979).
12. See Atoussa
H.,
"Une lectrice
iranienne 6crit," Le
Nouvel
Observateur,
6 November 1978:
27;
and
Claude and
Jacques Broyelle's
"A
quoi
reve
les philosophes?:
Michel Foucault s'est-il
tromp6
sur
la
r6volution Iranienne?" Le
Matin,
24 March 1979: 13.
13.
Foucault, "Lo Scii";
unless otherwise
indicated,
all translations are
my
own.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid. This
totalizing
rhetoric returns time and
again
in both the Corriere articles as well as in the
"L'Esprit
d'un monde sans
esprit" interview,
where the
adjective
"tout" or "toute" is used no fewer than
twenty-two
times in reference to Iran and
Iranians.
16. The Shah's "White Revolution" was a series of reforms which the monarch
adopted
in
January
1963
under
pressure
from both domestic
opposition
and the
Kennedy
administration. In The Turban
for
the
Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran
(Oxford:
Oxford
University Press, 1988),
Said Amir
Ajormand
summarizes the
scope
of what Foucault calls "all the
grand
initiatives of
power" ("tutte
le
grandi
iniziative
del
potere")
as a
six-point program
to
bring
about:
"1)
land
reform,
2)
sale of some state-owned factories to
finance the land
reform, 3)
the enfranchisement of
women, 4)
nationalization of forests and
pastures, 5)
formation of a
literacy corps,
and
6)
institution of
profit-sharing
schemes for workers in
industry" (72).
17. Reza
Baraheni,
The Crowned Cannibals:
Writings
on
Repression
in Iran
(New
York:
Vintage,
1977),
5. In his introduction to Baraheni's
work,
E.
L.
Doctorow describes the author as a "chronicler of
his nation's torture
industry
and
poet
of his nation's secret
police
force." Doctorow further notes that "in
[Baraheni's] case,
our aesthetic
response
must be a shade less
righteous
because
Iran, by
all
responsible
accounts,
is a
country
whose ruler we installed ourselves and to whose health and
well-being
we have been
devoted in all the usual
ways-with
our
planes
and tanks and
computers" (x).
18.
Foucault,
"Lo Sci&."
19. Between 1927 and
1938, Reza
Shah initiated numerous
public
works
programs
that included the
construction of the
Trans-Iranian
Railway
and the
expansion
of the
country's roadways
from
eight
hundred
to fourteen thousand miles
(Arjomand, 65).
20.
Said, Orientalism,
67-68.
21.
Fernand Braudel,
On
History,
trans.
S. Matthews
(Chicago: University
of
Chicago
Press, 1980),
21.
22. For a discussion of the
early
Annales historians'
conceptualization
of historical time
spans,
see
Braudel's On
History.
23. Michel
Foucault,
L'Ordre du discours
(Paris:
Gallimard, 1971).
The
English
version of this
text,
"The Discourse on
Language,"
was
published
as an
appendix
to Alan Sheridan's 1972
translation of Foucault's L
'Archdologie
du
savoir,
which had been
published
in France two
years
before
L 'Ordre du discours.
24.
Foucault, "The
Discourse on
Language,"
in The
Archeology ofKnowledge,
230.
25. In the
"Esprit"
interview,
Foucault in fact uses
strikingly
similar
language
to describe what he observed
in
Iran:
"je
ne sais
pas
s'il vous
est
arriv6,
a
vous,
en
Iran,
de
ddterminer,
de
cerner
la nature de cette
immense contestation
religieuse,
moi, je
trouve
que
c'est trbs difficile.
Les
Iraniens eux
m&me nage
dans
cette
ambigult6
et
ont plusieurs
niveaux de
langage, d'engagement, d'expression,
etc."
(Bri6re
and
Blanchat,
229).
26.
Baraheni,
5.
27.
Foucault,
"Lo Scii."
28.
Foucault,
"The Discourse on
Language,"
in
TheArcheology ofKnowledge,
230.
29.
Foucault,
"Lo Sci."
30. Bribre and
Blanchat,
225.
31.
Baraheni, 5.
32. Edward W.
Said, Covering
Islam
(New
York: Pantheon
Books, 1981),
75-103.
33.
Ibid.,
108.
34.
Baraheni,
5-6.
35. James A.
Bill, "America, Iran,
and the Politics of
Intervention,
1951-1953."
Musaddiq,
Iranian
Nationalism,
and
Oil
ed. James A. Bill and William
Roger
Louis
(London:
I.B. Tauris, 1988),
287.
36. Richard
Cottamn,
"Nationalism in
Twentieth-Century
Iran and Dr. Mohammed Mussadiq,"
in
Musaddiq,
Iranian Nationalism,
and
Oil,
23.
37. Ibid.
38. Fakhreddin Azimi,
"An Overview of the Political Career of Dr. Muhammad
Musaddiq," inMusaddiq,
Iranian Nationalism,
and
Oil,
55-56.
39. Bill, 271.
40. Ibid., 275.
41.
Cottam,
180.
42.
Bill,
280-81.
43.
Arjomand,
81.
44.
Ibid.,
85.
45. Didier
Eribon,MichelFoucault (Paris: Flammarion, 1989),
304.
46.
Foucault,
"II
mitico
capo
della
rivolta
nell'Iran."
47. Ibid.
48.
Said, Covering Islam,
108.
49.
Said, Orientalism,
230-31.
50.
Foucault,
"II
mitico
capo della
rivolta nell'Iran."
51. Atoussa
H.,
"Une iranienne
6crit."
52.
Foucault,
"A
quoi
revent les
Iraniens?";
Foucault is most
likely referring
here to the
People's
Mojahedin,
a
political
formation
Sepehr
Zebih characterizes as "one of the most
active,
the best
organized,
and
perhaps
the
largest guerrilla organization"
of the radical
Left-identified
groups
in
pre-revolutionary
Iran. Zebih
explains that "during
their clandestine
activity,
the
group
advocated the
integration
of what
they
viewed as
genuine Shia
radicalism and some
aspects
of Marxist socialism.
They
could be considered
leftist,
both in
advocating
the use of force and armed resistance to
topple
the
existing regime
and in the
acceptance
of social and economic
concepts generally
identified with Marxism. The
regime
had no
difficulty
designating
them as an Islamic Marxist
organization,
even
though
a better term would have been a Radical
Shia-Marxist
Socialist
organization
because the term 'Islam' has broader connotations than the activities
and
ideology
of this
particular group
exhibited"
(The Left
in
Contemporary
Iran:
Ideology, Organization
and the Soviet Connection
[London:
Croom Hell, 1986], 12).
Zebih's
study
offers a concise and
informative discussion of the role and influence the
Old, New,
and
predominantly
secular Left has had in
modem Iranian
politics
since the 1917 formation of the Iranian
Communist
Party,
known in Iran as the
Tudeh
Party.
53.
Foucault,
"Lo SciA."
54. Ibid.
55.
Foucault, "R6ponse
de Michel Foucault A une lectrice
iranienne."
56. Ibid.
57. Atoussa
H.,
"Une iranienne 6crit." She writes: "Pour avoir une id6e
de
ce
que signifierait la
'spiritualitk' du
Coran
appliqu6e
A la lettre
par
l'ordre moral de
l'ayatollah Khomeini,
il n'est
pas
mauvais
de
relire
les textes.
[ ...]
Sourate 2: 'Vos
6pouses
sont
pour
vous un
champs,
venez
done i
votre
champs
comme vous l'entendez.' En clair:
l'homme
est le
seigneur,
la femme
esclave,
on
peut
en user selon son
caprice,
elle n'a rien A dire.
Qu'elle porte
le
voile,
n6 de la
jalousie
du
Prophte
envers
Alcha! Il
ne
s'agit
pas
de
parabole spirituelle
mais bien d'un choix de
soci6t6. Les femmes devoil6es sont souvent insult6es en
ce moment et les
jeunes musulmans,
eux-mmnes
ne
cachent
pas que,
dans le
r6gime qu'ils veulent,
les
femmes
n'auront
qu'i
bien se tenir.
Il
est
6crit
aussi
que
les minorit6s ont droit A la
libertd,
A
condition
de
ne
pas porter
tort A la
majorit6.
A
partir de quand
les minorit6s
commencent-elles
A
'porter tort'?" The
Islamic
regime's vigilant repression
of the Ba'hai
minority
and of Kurdish demands for
autonomy
in the
early stages
of its institutionalization is
ample
indication of Atoussa
H.'s
political
acumen. For a discussion
of the
Koran-inspired legislation
which
greatly
intensified the institutional
oppression
of
women,
see
Nayareh
Tohidi's "Gender and Islamic Fundamentalism: Feminist Politics in
Iran,"
Third World Women
and the Politics
ofFeminism,
eds C.
Mohanty,
et
al. (Bloomington:
Indiana
University Press,
1991):
251-
67.
58.
Foucault,
"A
quoi
rave les iraniens?"
59. Atoussa
H.,
"Une iranienne 6crit."
60.
Bri&re
and
Blanchat,
240.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63.
'"Tout
au
long
du
parcours, lesjeunes
femmes
ont
6td
accabldes
d'injures et de ricanement.
Elles out
6t6
accus6es tour A tour
d'&tre des 'agents de
la
SAVAK',
des
'instruments de
l'imparialisme', des
'outils
des
supp6ts
du
communisme international', des
'd6fenseurs
de
la
dynastie
des
Pahlavi', et des 'admiratrices de
la
princesse Achraf', soeur du chah, connue pour
la libertd
de
ses
moeurs"
(Jean Gueyras, "Les Formations
de gauche
d6conseillent aux femmes la
pour
suite
des
manifestations
de rue,"
Le
Monde,
14 March
1979,
4). Gueyras
also
reports that the Iranian
Left
failed to
participate
in the women's
demonstrations, claiming
that
any
further action in the streets would destabilize Mehdi
Bazargan's provisional government and lead
"in6vitablement
i
l'arriv6e
au
pouvoir
d'616mnents
religieux
les
plus
extr6mistes"
(4).
64. Ibid.
65. Briare and
Blanchat,
230.
66.
Foucault, Politics,
Philosophy, Culture,
216.
67. In a
subsequent portion
of the
"Esprit" interview,
Foucault
again
introduces the
trope
of Oriental
despotism
when
referring
to the
Savak, stating:
"on avait affaire
i
une
police qui
n'6tait certainement
pas
efficace,
mais dont la violence et la cruaut6
remplacaient
la finesse"
(Bri6re
and
Blanchat, 233).
Foucault
neglects, however,
to remind readers that the Shah's secret
police
had been
organized, trained,
and
equipped
by
CIA
operatives,
which therefore extends
responsibility
for its "violence and
cruelty"
into the Western
hemisphere.
Yet here
again,
as in the case of the
Pahlavi's corrupting modernity,
the Savak's
brutality
is
made to "stick like an adhesive" to the Iranian
agents
while
releasing
Western technicians of torture from
the
grip
of its moral
reprehensibility.
68. Foucault resorts even more
insistently
to the
language
of drama in this
essay, writing:
"les fameuses
manifestations, qui ontjoud
un rdle si
important, pouvaient
"
la fois
r6pondre
r6ellement a la menace de
l'arm6e
(jusqu'i
la
paralyser),
se
ddrouler
selon le
rythme
des cdrdmonies
religieuses
et finalment
renvoyer
a une
dramaturgie intemporelle oii
le
pouvoir
est
toujours maudit.
Etonnante
superposition,
elle
faisait
apparaitre
en
plein vingtiame
siacle un mouvement assez fort
pour
renverser le
r6gime apparamment
le mieux
arm6,
tout en 6tant
proche
de vieux raves
que
l'Occident a connu auture
fois, quand
on inscrire les
figures
de la
spiritualit6
sur le sol de la
politique."
In the
"Esprit" interview,
he also refers to the
revolutionary
movement as
"cette
sorte de
thdatre qu'ils fabriquent
au
jour
le
jour
et
qui
constitue la
R6volution"
(Briare
and
Blanchat,
230
[emphasis added]).
69.
Said, Orientalism,
158.
70.
Foucault, Politics,
Philosophy, Culture,
217.
71.
Eribon,
289.
72.
Foucault,
"Inutile de se soulever?"
73. In the
"Esprit" interview,
it is
apparent
that Foucault understands the Iranian revolution was an irritant
to the
Western body politic-ofthe
Left and ofthe
Right. However,
he
quite obviously
did not
comprehend
that the
historical, discursive,
and
ideological
forces of Western Orientalism were
plainly
at
work,
a
signifying system
which Edward Said identifies and
analyzes
in
Orientalism,
and from
which,
I have
argued
here,
Foucault was unable to extricate himself in his
writing
on Iran. In
response
to a
question by
Claire
Briare
asking
him to
explain
how he had
become,
like herself
"spellbound" (envofitd) by
the
revolution,
Foucault
responds by saying
that he
began
his
inquiry asking himself: "qu'y
a-t-il done eu d'un
peu aga9ant
dans ce
qui
s'est
pass6
en
Iran
pour
toute une s6rie de
gens
de
gauche
ou de droite? L'Affaire
d'Iran
et la
mani"re dont elle s'est d6roul6e n'ont
pas
soulev6
la m^me forme de
sympathie
sans
problame que
le
Portugal par exemple,
ou
que
le
Nicaragua.
Je ne dis
pas que
le
Nicaragua,
en
plein 6t6,
au moment
oui
les
gens
se doraient en
plein soleil,
a soulev6
beaucoup d'intarat,
mais
pour
l'Iran,
j'ai
tras vite senti une
petite
r6action
6pidermique qui
n'6tait
pas
de l'ordre de la
sympathie
imm6diate.
Un
exemple:
cette
journaliste
que
vous connaissez bien. Elle fait T6h6ran un
papier qu'on publie
&
Paris, et,
dans la
phrase
finale
oui elle
parlait
de la r6volte
islamique,
elle retrouve la
phrase qu'elle
avait 6crite
avec, ajout6
tout
crnlment,
l'adjectif
'fanatique', qu'elle
n'avait bien sur
pas
6crit.
(a
me
parait
assez
typique
de
l'espece d'agacement qu'a
provoqu6
le mouvement iranien"
(Briare
and
Blanchat, 227-28).

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