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

Foucault, Gender, and Male Homosexualities 139
specifically in relation to his writings on Iran. There is some evidence that,
in his explorations of male homosexuality in ancient Greece and Rome, Foucault
may have been looking for parallels to contemporary sexual practices in
the Middle East and North Africa. Indeed, if one reads the last two volumes
of The History of Sexuality alongside some recent scholarship on male homosexuality
in the Muslim world, one finds a similar pattern of social relations
and customs. For this reason, Foucault's late writings on gender and sexuality
in the ancient Greco-Roman world deserve more attention from readers concerned
with the implications of his thought for contemporary Middle Eastern
and Mediterranean societies.
This chapter begins with an analysis of Foucault's scattered remarks on
gender and male homosexuality in the Muslim world, suggesting that he saw
a continuity between ancient Greek homosexuality and male homosexual relations
in contemporary North African and Middle Eastern societies. Next,
we explore Foucault's writings on sexuality in the last two volumes of The
History of Sexuality and suggest that Foucault's Orientalism extended itself to
this realm as well. Recalling that Foucault lumped together premodern Western
societies and modern Oriental ones, we explore his idealized notion of
an ethics of love in the ancient Mediterranean societies that was practiced by
a small group of elite Greek and Roman men. In the last section we return
to the subject of male homosexuality in the Muslim Middle East and suggest
that the issues of gender and sexuality occupied a nonobvious but undeniably
crucial site in the revolutionary discourse in Iran.
Finally, we inquire into the ramifications of these writings of Foucault
for the modem gay and lesbian movement in the Muslim world. Up to a
point, Foucault was correct in his observation that Muslim societies have remained
somewhat flexible on same-sex relations. But such a limited form of
acceptance, which involves a total closeting, is not the same as the recognition
sought by the modem gay and lesbian rights movement. Indeed, while several
aspects of Foucault's thought can be quite useful for the study of the Middle
East, his position on sexuality and gender rights comes into conflict with the
aspirations of both the feminist and the gay and lesbian rights movements
in the region. To this day, legal rights for homosexuals in Middle Eastern
Muslim societies are nonexistent, and there are no centers or laws in these
societies that are aimed at protecting the rights of those who engage in open,
consensual gay relationships.