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

4 Introduction
the 198 Os without recognizing the significance of the Iranian episode and his
more general preoccupation with the Orient.
Long before most other commentators, Foucault understood that Iran was
witnessing a singular kind of revolution. Early on, he predicted that this revolution
would not follow the model of other modern revolutions. He wrote
that it was organized around a sharply different concept, which he called
"political spirituality." Foucault recognized the enormous power of the new
discourse of militant Islam, not just for Iran, but for the world. He showed
that the new Islamist movement aimed at a fundamental cultural, social, and
political break with the modern Western order, as well as with the Soviet
Union and China:
As an "Islamic" movement, it can set the entire re gion afire, overturn the
most unstable re gimes, and disturb the most solid. Islam-which is not
simply a re ligion, but an entire way of life, an adherence to a history and a
civilization-has a good chance to become a giga ntic powder keg, at the level
of hundreds of millions of men .. .. Indeed, it is also important to re cognize
that the demand for the "legitimate rights of the Palestinian people" hardly
stirred the Arab peoples. What would it be if this cause encompassed the
dynamism of an Islamic movement, something much stronger than those
with a Marxist, Leninist, or Maoist character? ("A Powder Keg Called Islam,"
app., 241)2
He also noted presciently that such a discourse would alter the "global strategic
equilibrium" (ibid.).
Foucault's experience in Iran contributed to a turning point in his thought.
In the late 1970s, he was moving from a preoccupation with technologies of
domination to a new interest in what he termed the technologies of the self,
as the foundation for a new form of spirituality and resistance to power. 3 The
Iranian Revolution had a lasting impact on his late writing in several ways.
In his Iran writings, Foucault emphasized the deployment of certain instruments
of modernity as means of resistance. He called attention to the innovative
uses that Islamists made of overseas radio broadcasts and cassettes.
This blending of more traditional religious discourses with modern means
of communication had helped to galvanize the revolutionary movement and
ultimately paralyzed the modern and authoritarian Pahlavi regime.
Foucault was also fascinated by the appropriation of Shi'ite myths of martyrdom
and rituals of penitence by large parts of the revolutionary movement
and their willingness to face death in their single-minded goal of overthrowing
the Pahlavi regime. Later, in his discussion of an "aesthetics of