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

Appendix 259
that everyone conform to it. In a sense, it was woe betide anyone who did
not conform. We all had problems of this kind in Iran. Hence, perhaps, the
reticence that people often feel in Europe. An uprising is all very fine, yes,
but . . . 121
MICHEL FOUCAULT: There were demonstrations, verbal at least, ofvio­
lent anti·Semitism. There were demonstrations of xenophobia and directed
not only at the Americans, but also at foreign workers who had come to work
in Iran.
PIERRE BLANCHEr: This is indeed the other side of the unity that cettain
people may find offensive. For example, once, one of our photographers got
punched in the face several times because he was thought to be an American.
DNo, I'm French, " he protested. The demonstrators then embraced him and
said, "Above all, don't say anything about this in the press. " I'm thinking, too,
of the demonstrators' imperious demands: "Make sure you say that there were
so many thousand victims, so many million demonstrators in the streets."
CLAIRE BRIERE: That's another problem: it's the problem of a different
culture, a different attitude to the truth. Besides it's part of the struggle. When
your hands are empty, if you pile up the dead, real and imaginary, you ward
off fear, and you become all the more convincing.
MICHEL FOUCAULT: They don't have the same regime of truth as ours,
which, it has to be said, is very special, even if it has become almost universal.
The Greeks had their own. The Arabs of the Mahgreb have another. And in
Iran it is largely modeled on a religion that has an exoteric form and an eso­
teric content. That is to say, everything that is said under the explicit form of
the law also refers to another meaning. So not only is saying one thing that
means another not a condemnable ambiguity; it is, on the contrary, a nec­
essary and highly prized additional level of meaning. It's often the case that
people say something that, at the factual level, isn't true, but which refers to
another, deeper meaning, which cannot be assimilated in terms of precision
and observation . . . 122
CLAIRE BRIERE: That doesn't bother me. But I am irritated when I am told
over and over again that all minorities will be respected and when, at the same
time, they· aren't being respected. I have one particularly strong memory-and
I am determined all the same that it will appear somewhere-of the September
demonstration when, as a woman, I was veiled. I was wearing a chador.
They tried to stop me getting into the truck with the other repotters. I'd had
enough of walking. When I was in the truck, the demonstrators who were
around us tried to stop me standing up. Then some guy starting yelling-it
was hateful-because I was wearing sandals without socks : I got an enormous
impression of intolerance. Yet there were about fifty people around us saying: