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

130 Foucault's Writings on the Iranian Revolution
that they believe to be unjust, seems to me to be irreducible. This is because no
power is capable of making it absolutely impossible. Warsaw will always have
its ghetto in revolt and its sewers populated with insurgents. (HIs It Useless to
Revol!?" app., 263; emphasis added)
Here again, as in his fall 1978 anicles, Foucault was using the term irreducible
to describe the Iranian uprising. At least in pan, this seemed to mean that
it was so elemental that it could not be reduced to any smaller constituent
elements, such as panies, tendencies, or factions.
In the Le Monde anicle, Foucault also focused on the themes of death, dying,
and martyrdom, with which he continued to be fascinated: "The man
in revolt is ultimately inexplicable. There must be an uprooting that interrupts
the unfolding of history, and its long series of reasons why, for a
man 'really' to prefer the risk of death over the certainty of having to obey."
In a dig at liberalism, he added that this type of sentiment is "more solid
and experiential than 'natural rights" ( "Is It Useless to Revolt?" app., 263).
Many revolts across history had therefore expressed themselves in religion,
he argued:
Because it is in this way both "outside of history" and in history, because
each person stakes his life and his death, one can understand why uprisings
have been able to find their expression and their drama so readily in religious
fo rms. For centuries, all of these promises of the hereafter or of the renewal
of time, whether they concerned the awaited savior, the kingdom of the last
days, or the reign of the absolute good, did not constitute an ideological cloak.
Instead, they constituted the very manner in which these uprisings were lived,
at least in those places where the religious forms lent themselves to such
possibilities. (Ibid., 264)
Thus, religion seemed indeed to be Marx's "spirit of spiritless times, " but not
his "opium ofthe people."
Here, in rejecting any notion of religion as an ideology, Foucault argued
that the Iranian experience moved outside the paradigms that had defined
similar social movements ever since 1789:
Then carne the age of "revolution. " For two centuries, it hung over history,
organized our perception of time, and polarized hopes . The age of revolution
has constituted a gigantic effort to acclimate uprisings within a rational and
controllable history. "Revolution" gave these uprisings a legitimacy, sorted