foucault-and-the-iranian-revolution-janet-afary

Visits to Iran and Controversies with "Atoussa H." and Maxime Rodinson 105
(Le Roy Ladurie 1979). Referring to Khomeini and the clerics as advocates
of "a chauvinist Islamism," Le Roy Ladurie argued that the Shi'ite clerics of
1979 shared many characteristics with French Catholic fanatics of the late
sixteenth century. Organized into a Catholic League, they had reacted violently
against the continuing threat of Protestantism, even after the horrific
St. Bartholomew Day massacre of thousands of Protestants in 1572. By 1588,
the League had succeeded in mobilizing large sectors of the urban population.
In this and in their U democratic demands, U the Iranian Islamists resembled
the League. "The organization of the masses, the dictatorship of secret revolutionary
committees, the participation of the common people, but also
the middle classes-bazaar merchants in particular-accentuate the resemblance,"
he added. He concluded by referring to "the figure of Khomeini, this
lethargic and dangerous equivalent of our hysterical preachers of the 1580s."
Such strong warnings were the exception during the heady weeks of January
1979, however.
Surveying Foucault's writings in the months up to Khomeini's triumphal
return on February 1, and comparing them to those of other French intellectuals
at the time, we find that he had carved out a nearly unique and very problematic
position for himself. Foucault realized that the movement against
the shah included many diverse elements, but found Khomeini's ability to
maintain the anti-shah focus remarkable. He also saw the possibility that the
Islamist movement, through its use of modern means of communication,
might develop a global reach. Finally, he celebrated the Islamist movement
as a rejection of a European form of modernity. He hoped that what he called
its "insane" transgressive discourse would fracture the boundaries of a "ratio_
nal" modernity. If this could happen, Foucault argued, the Iranian Revolution
might become the harbinger of similar movements in both the East and the
West. In this sense, he had no serious qualms about the way in which the
Islamists had come to dominate the revolutionary movement, displacing the
Marxist and nationalist Left. In the next chapter, we examine the public controversy
that broke out in March and April 1979 over Foucault's uncritical
embrace of the Iranian Islamists.