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

Introduction 7
his stance on Iran. Biographer Didier Eribon, himself an editor at Le Nouvel
Observateur and a friend of Foucault, wrote, "The criticism and sarcasm
that greeted Foucault's 'mistake' concerning Iran added further to his despondency
after what he saw as the qualified critical reception" of volume 1 of The
History of Sexuality. Eribon added: "For a long time thereafter Foucault rarely
commented on politics or journalism" (199 1, 291). Eribon has furnished us
with what is to date the most detailed and balanced discussion of FO , ucault
and Iran. Another biographer, Jeannette Colombel, who was also a friend
of Foucault, refers to "his error" on Iran and concludes that the controversy
"wounded him" (1994, 216).
In the English-speaking world, there have been fewer criticisms of Foucault
over his involvement with Iran. One exception to this is the critical
biography by the political philosopher James Miller, who characterized Foucault's
Iran episode as one of "folly" (1993, 309). Miller was the only biographer
to suggest that Foucault's fascination with death played a part in his
enthusiasm for the Iranian Islamists, who emphasized mass martyrdom. In
a discussion of Miller's book, the social philosopher Mark Lilla picked up
this theme, writing that during the Iran episode, Foucault had "again heard
the siren call of a 'limit experience' in politics" (2001, 154). The political
theorist Mitchell Cohen has suggested that Foucault's writings on Iran were
"a symptom of something troubling in the kind of left-wing thinking that
mixes postmodernism, simplistic thirdworldism, and illiberal inclination"
(2002, 18).5 David Macey, the author of the most comprehensive biography
of Foucault to date, was more equivocal. Macey regarded the French attacks
on Foucault over Iran as exaggerated and mean-spirited, but he nonetheless
acknowledged that Foucault was so "impressed" by what he saw in Iran in
1978 that he misread "the probable future developments he was witnessing"
(1993, 4 10).
Elsewhere in the English-speaking world, where Foucault's writings on
Iran have been only selectively translated, and the contemporary French responses
to him not translated at all, Foucault's Iran writings have been treated
more kindly. His last two articles on Iran, where he rather belatedly made
a few criticisms of the Islamic regime in the face of the attacks on him by
other French intellectuals, have been the most widely circulated among the
ones that have appeared in English. James Bernauer, a Jesuit scholar sympathetic
to Foucault, translated one of these over two decades ago (Foucault
1981). This article and another somewhat critical one, both something of an
exception among Foucault's writings on Iran, are the only examples of his
work on Iran that appear in a comprehensive, English-language selection of
his shorter writings (Foucault 2000a). In a review of that volume, the literary