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

Debating the Outcome of the Revolution, Especially on Women's Rights
timeless drama into which one could fit the historical drama of a people that
pitted its very existence against that ofits sovereign. ("Iran, · app., 252)
This was a fitting criticism of the vulgar Marxist notion of religion as a permanently
conservative ideology that masked something deeper, such as class
conflict. Instead, Foucault saw religion as a discourse that could take on different
political meanings at different times. But what was curious was how Foucault
characterized Iranian Shi'ism as a "timeless," unified, historico-cultural
discourse system, one that completely overrode those "contradictions· with
which, he acknowledged in passing, "Iranian society" was "shot through."
Blanchet countered that while in the fall of 1978 the mass movement
had seemed unified, by early 1979 this was beginning to change: "0 bvi ously,
afterwards, things will settle down and different strata, different classes, will
become visible" ("Iran," app., 252). Foucault disagreed. He again extolled
the "absolutely collective will" he had witnessed among the Iranian masses.
He compared the Iranian Revolution to previous anticolonial struggles and
referred to the United States and other Western backers of the shah. There
was more. The Iranian Revolution expressed something greater and deeper
than nationalism: "But national feeling has, in my opinion, been only one of
the components of a still more radical rejection: the rejection by a people not
only of foreigners, but of everything that had constituted over the years, the
centuries, its political destiny" (ibid., 253). Here, what Foucault perceived
to be the deeply antimodernist themes of the Iranian Revolution drew his
attention.
Blanchet again warned of uncritical euphoria with respect to the events in
Iran, referring to his and Briere's experience in China during the Cultural Revolution.
In particular, Blanchet expressed skepticism about Foucault's notion
of an "absolutely collective will":
There was the same type of collective will . . . . Afterwards, we came to realize
that we'd been taken in to some extent; the Chinese, too. It's true that, to an
extent, we took ourselves in. And that's why, sometimes, we hesitate to allow
ourselves to be carried away by Iran. In any case, there is something similar in
the charisma of Mao Zedong and of Khomeini; there is something similar in
the way the young Islamic militants speak of Khomeini and the way the Red
Guards spoke of Mao. ("Iran: app., 253)
Once again, Foucault refused the implications of a more questioning, critical
stance. Disagreeing directly with Blanchet, he insisted on the uniqueness of
the events in Iran vis-a.-vis those in China:
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