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

300 Notes to Pages 243-250
penetrated the Roman world, including Christianity, as well as the Near East and China.
The Mazdakites were a late fifth-century Persian religious sect that opposed the three
"demons" of envy, wrath, and greed. Charged with communistic beliefs concerning
property and gender relations, Mazdak and tens of thousands of his followers were
eventually massacred by the state.
101. See the essays later collected in Rodinson 1993b.
102. The reference to premodern Christianity's tendency to spread by winning over
the rulers of existing states, such as Rome, as against early Islam's inclination toward
founding new states in the areas it conquered.
103. [Rodinson's note] See the sketch by one of the best French specialists on
contemporary Iran, Paul Vieille, in the interesting roundtable on the Iranian revolt
published in Peuples mediterTaneens, no. 5 (October-December 1978): 123ff. [Bani-Sadr et
al. 1978]. See also Vieille 1975.
104. Felix Dupanloup (1802-78) was a liberal French Catholic bishop . Tomas de
Torquemada ( 1420-9 8) was the notorious Spanish Grand Inquisitor who burned some
two thousand people at the stake.
105. In her 1973 book on China, later translated into English, Claudie Broyelle
(1977) had glOrified the position of women in Maoist China, but in a subsequent one, first
published in French in 1977, she and her husband Jacques Broyelle had harshly criticized
the Maoist regime as totalitarian (Broyelle, Broyelle, and Tschirhan 1980).
106. Here and below, the references were to Foucault's anicle, "What Are the Iranians
Dreaming About?" published in October in Le Nouvel ObseroateuT, the only one of his Iran
anicles then available in French (app., 203-9, here specifically 208).
107. Broyelle and BroyeUe were here referring to a lengthy conversation between
Foucault and two young Maoist intellectuals (Foucault 1972b) . Foucault's interlocutors
were Andre Glucksmann, by 1979 a participant in Foucault's journalism project and
today a well-known "New Philosopher" and writer on totalitarianism, and Benny Levy
(1945-2003), who became Jean-Paul Same's secretary from 1974 to 1980 (under the
name Pierre Vi ctor) and later wrote on Judaism and philosophy.
108. "Firmans" are decrees from a king or sultan.
109. Probably an allusion to Le petit Larousse illustre, an abridged and illustrated
version of the famous dictionary; a marabout is a North or West Mrican Muslim holy man
or hermit, sometimes also a trickster figure.
110. Ikon Daudet (1867-1942) was a well-known writer with monarchist and
virulently anti-Semitic political views. Daudet served for many years as editor of the
notoriously reactionary newspaper Action franfaise.
Ill. Rene Andrieu (1920-98) was at that time the quite Stalinist editor of L'Humanite,
the Communist Party newspaper.
112. These are not exact quotations, but an apparent attempt to evoke Foucault's
position during the 1972 debate with the Maoists.
113. Pierre Debray-Ritzen was a conservative child psychiatrist, critical of Foucault
ever since the publication of Madness and Civilization (1961).
114. Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) was a prominent writer and literary critic.