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

114 Foucault's Writings on the Iranian Revolution
(Gueyras 1979a). Feminists connected to the journals Des femmes en mouvement
and Histoires d'elles now held large public debates over Iran, with both
French and Iranian women taking the floor. The Trotskyist Revolutionary
Communist League (LCR), the largest group to the left of the Communist
Party, called for "solidarity" with the Iranian women, who, as reported on
March 1 4 in the leftist paper Liberation, "were fighting for the right to control
their own lives and against an Islamic normalization that threatens the freedoms
of all workers, of minorities, and of homosexuals." On Friday, March
16, as recounted enthusiastically by Liberation, a thousand turned out for a
demonstration in Paris in support of the Iranian feminists. Slogans included
"We will give in neither to the shah nor the ayatollah" and "The veil will
fall, from Tehran to Casablanca." Among the participants were Iranian and
French feminists, as well 'as gay and lesbian activists (Delacour 1979a). In
Iran that same day, about a hundred thousand demonstrators, many of them
women clad in black chadors, rallied in Tehran to defend Khomeini and to
denounce the women's demonstrations of the previous week. Much larger
than the feminist demonstration of March 10, this one enjoyed the full support
of the regime, including free transportation, and did not have to contend
with violent harassment on the streets. G
In Paris, Simone de Beauvoir called a press conference on March 19 to
announce that an international delegation composed of feminist activists and
intellectuals was heading to Iran to gather information. Whil she had to
cancel her own plans to travel to Iran for health reasons, de Beauvoir made a
public statement of solidarity:
We have created the International Committee for Women's Rights (CIDF) in
response to calls from a large number of Iranian women. Their situation and
their revolt have greatly moved us . ... The first task we have taken up is a very,
very burning one for today. It is the task of acquiring information concerning
the struggle of the Iranian women, communicating that information, and
supporting their struggle. We have received an appeal from a very large
number of these women. We have also seen their struggles, their fights, and
their actions. We have appreciated the depth of the utter humiliation into
which others wanted to make them fall, and we have therefore resolved to
fight on their behalf. . . . It is very possible that the mission will fail. inasmuch
as they might turn it away the moment it arrives. Nevertheless the die will
have been cast, and it is important to have a demonstration-on the part of
a very large number of Western women, French women, Italian women, and
others-of solidarity with the struggle of Iranian women. ("Speech by Simone
de Beauvoir, " app., 246-47)