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

The Paradoxical World of Foucault 17
A Heideggerian Orienta list Subtext?
Perhaps more than any other philosophical position, Martin Heidegger's criticism
of technology and modernity influenced Foucault's work. Heidegger had
tried to distance himself from both the metaphysical and the rational, scientific,
and technological traditions of the West. In charting a new ontological
and antihistoricist perspective, he employed many Roman Catholic theolqgical
concepts for his ostensibly secular inquiry into the "fall" of modern man
(Heidegger 1962). He characterized modernity by subjectivity, a move away
from the theocratic and traditional values that had defined ethics and politics
for centuries. In the absence of traditions that had given meaning, structure,
and certainty to the world, the modem subject relied on human perception,
on feeling and on rationality. Mastery over nature through science and labor
became the goal of life. Modem historical inquiries produced a notion
of progress based on the acquisition of technology and the control over nature.
To Heidegger, however, this never-ending drive for mastery over objects
(and by definition over other subjects) had catastrophic consequences. The
pursuit of humanity in the modem world produced an utter "inhumanity."
Subjectivity and modernity culminated in a "totalitarian world technology,"
whether in its American, Soviet, or Nazi versions, even though Heidegger was
not unsympathetic to the latter (Steiner 1987, 28; see also Gillespie 1984,
127-28). Only through recognizing human limitations, through facing the
reality of their own eventual death, could human beings free themselves from
the dogma of science and technology and live authentic lives.
Heidegger's call of conscience and questioning of Western modernity
have been likened to Oriental forms of meditation, including Japanese traditions
of ascetic speculation (Steiner 1987, 33; Gillespie 1984, 174). This too
has been linked to Foucault. Several commentators, especially Ua Schaub,
have pointed to Foucault's preoccupation with various forms of mysticism
(Christian and Jewish), as well as magic, hermeticism, and gnosticism
(Schaub 1989, 306). Others have wondered if a preoccupation with Eastern
thought, including Buddhism, lies beneath Foucault's criticism of Western
technologies of power and Western morality. Schaub suggests that Foucault's
constant questioning of limits and his explorations of transgressivity were
influenced by an Eastern "counter-discourse that appropriates Oriental lore
in opposition to Western strategies of control," an East that remained supposedly
incomprehensible to the modern, rational European world (308).
Indeed, similar to a passionate Romantic, Foucault may have exoticized and
admired the East from afar, while remaining a Westerner in his own life (Brinton
1967, 206).