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

124 Foucault's Writings on the Iranian Revolution
All the same, the Cultural Revolution was certainly presented as a struggle
between certain elements of the population and certain others, certain
elements in the party and certain others, or between the population and the
party, etc. 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 power threatening them 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. (Ibid., 253-54)
Here, Foucault's denial of any social or political differentiation among the Iranian
"people" was absolutely breathtaking. He continued in this vein, again
and again parrying Blanchet's urgings that he discuss differences, contradictions,
or dangers within Iran's revolutionary process. For example, Foucault
declared that with regard to the Iranian Islamists, "religion for them was like
the promise and guarantee of finding something that would radically change
their subjectivity" (ibid., 255). Then he suggested that Marx's famous sentence
on religion had been misconstrued: "People always quote Marx and the
opium of the people. The sentence that immediately preceded that statement
which is never quoted says that religion is the spirit of a world without spirit."
Foucault argued that by 1978, the better-known part of Marx's statement had
become inappropriate: "Let us say, therefore, that Islam, in the year 1978,
was not the opium of the people precisely because it was the spirit of a world
without spirit" (ibid.). Thus, where dogmatic Marxists had quoted only the
latter part of Marx's statement, "religion is the opium of the people, " Foucault
now wanted to interpret the statement in a different way, emphasizing its first
part, that "religion is the spirit of a world without spirit."
Finally, about nine-tenths of the way through the interview, after more
prodding by both Blanchet and Briere, Foucault acknowledged very briefly a
single contradiction within the Iranian Revolution, that of xenophobic nationalism
and anti-Semitism. We can quote these statements in full, since
they are so brief:
There were demonstrations, verbal at least, of virulent anti-Semitism. There
were demonstrations of xenophobia, and not only against the Americans, but
also against foreign workers who had come to work in Iran . ...
What has given the Iranian movement its intensity has been a double reg­
ister. On the one hand, a collective will that has been very strongly expressed
politically and, on the other hand, the desire for a radical change in ordinary