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

Debating the Outcome of the Revolution, Especially on Women's Rights
The Fallout over Foucault's Interview in Iran: Th e Revolution in the
Name of God
One of Foucault's lengthiest treatments of the events in Iran was in an in­
terview with Claire Briere and Pierre Blanchet that formed the appendix to
their book Iran: The Revolution in the Name of God. Published at the end of
March 1979, this book was based on reporting by these two journalists in
Liberation. They had been in Iran as well as around Khomeini during his brief
Paris exile in 1978, and Briere had returned to Iran on the same plane as the
ayatollah in February 1979. The interview, which appears to have been conducted
at the end of 1978, was entitled "Iran: The Spirit of a Spiritless World."
Unfortunately for Foucault's reputation, this rather enthusiastic discussion of
Iran's Islamist movement was published in the immediate aftermath of the
March women's demonstrations and amid the growing reports of atrocities
against gay men, Baha'is, and Kurds. The book was widely read because of
its timeliness, and, months later, Iran: The Revolution in the Name of God was
still the most prominently displayed title on the Iranian Revolution in Paris
bookstores. 10
The editors of a subsequent French reprint of Foucault's interview seemed
at great pains to indicate that he was not to be blamed. They implied that it
was the journalists Briere and Blanchet, rather than Foucault, who had been
too enthusiastic about the Islamist movement in Iran (Foucault 1994b, 743,
editor's note). A dose reading of the interview suggests the opposite: that the
two journalists were themselves rebuffed at several points when they nudged
Foucault to take a more nuanced and critical stance toward the Islamist move­
ment in Iran. In the interview, Foucault began his analysis of Iran by com­
plaining that "the Iran affair and the way in which it has taken place have
not aroused the same kind of untroubled sympathy as Portugal, for example,
or Nicaragua." He also found fault with the actions Of a newspaper editor
(unnamed, but possibly the editor of Liberation), who had added the word
"fanatic" to a reporter's phrase about "Islamic revolt " in publishing a dispatch
from Iran ( "Iran : The Spirit of a World without Spirit," app ., 250). Blanchet
then criticized parts of the French Left, ·whether of the I Socialist Party] or . ..
the more marginal left around the newspaper Liberation," which had tended
to distance itself from the Iranian Revolution. These groups expressed "irri_
tation" over two points : (1) "religion is the veil, is an archaism, a regression
at least as far as women are concerned"; (2) "the second, which cannot be
denied, because one feels it: if ever the clerics come to power and apply their
program, shouldn't we fear a new dictatorship?" (ibid ., 250-51).
121