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

Appendix 2 55
PIERRE BlANCHET: In comparative terms, it may well be that our own
economic difficulties are greater than those in Iran at the time.
MICHEL FOUCAULT: Perhaps. Yet, whatever the economic difficulties,
we still have to explain why there were people who rose up and said: We're
not having any more of this. In rising up, the Iranians said to themselvesand
this perhaps is the soul of the uprising: "Of course, we have to change
this regime and get rid of this man, we have to change this corrupt admin­
istration, we have to change the whole country, the political organization,
the economic system, the fo reign policy. But, above all, we have to change
ourselves. Our way of being, our relationship with others, with things, with
eternity, with God, etc., must be completely changed, and there will only be
a true revolution if this radical change in our experience takes place ." I be­
lieve that it is here that Islam played a role. It may be that one or other of its
obligations, one or other of its codes exerted a certain fascination. But, above
all, in relation to the way of life that was theirs, religion fo r them was like
the promise and guarantee of finding something that would radically change
their subjectivity. Shi'ism is precisely a fo rm of Islam that, with its teaching
and esoteric content, distinguishes between what is mere external obedience
to the code and what is the profound spiritual life; when I say that they were
looking to Islam fo r a change in their subjectivity, this is quite compatible
with the fact that traditional Islamic practice was already there and already
gave them their identity; in this way they had of living the Islamic religion
as a revolutionary fo rce, there was something other than the desire to obey
the law more faithfully, there was the desire to renew their entire existence by
going back to a spiritual experience that they thought they could find within
Shi'ite Islam itself. People always quote Marx and the opium of the people.
The sentence that immediately preceded that statement and which is never
quoted says that religion is the spirit of a world without spirit. Let's say, then,
that Islam, in that year of 1978, was not the opium of the people precisely
because it was the spirit of a world without a spirit. 119
CLAIRE BRIERE: Byway of illustrating what you just said-"A demonstra­
tion there is really a demonstration" -I think we should use the word witness.
People are always talking about Hussein in Iran. Now who is Hussein? A
"demonstrator, " a witness-a martyrwho, by his suffering, demonstrates
against evil and whose death is more glorious than the life of his victor. The
people who demonstrated with their bare hands were also witnesses . They
bore witness to the crimes of the shah, of the SAY AK, the cruelty of the regime
that they wanted to get rid of, of the evil that this regime personified.
PIERRE BlANCHET: There seems to me to be a problem when one speaks
of Hussein. Hussein was a martyr, he's dead. By endlessly shouting "Martyr,