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

70 Foucault's Writings on the Iranian Revolution
first dispatch from Iran, Corriere della sera's editors intoned enthusiastically
that Foucault's article would begin "a series of reports ... which will represent
something new in European journalism and which will be entitled
'Michel Foucault Investigates'" (cited in Macey 1993, 406).
In preparation for his trip to Iran, Foucault met with Thierry Mignon, a
human rights lawyer active on Iranian issues, and his wife, Sylvie Mignon. In
addition, Salamatian furnished Foucault with books, paqJ.phlets, and, most
important, contacts inside Iran. Foucault also met twice with Abolhassan
Bani-Sadr, the European-educated Iranian exile who was to become the first
president of the Islamic Republic. (In 1981, he had to flee for his life back to
Paris.) Years later, Bani-Sadr reported that Foucault's interest in Iran in 1978
had turned on two issues. First, he had asked about the conditions under
which a large spontaneous movement could form and be in the process of
making a revolution, all of this outside the traditional political parties. Second,
recounted Bani-Sadr, he had expressed interest at a more general level
in the ways in which a discourse of subjection to power was being replaced
by one of resistance. Bani-Sadr went on to suggest that the encounter with
Iran was a crucial turning point in Foucault's thinking and that as a result of
the Iranian events, he was to become more interested in notions of human
agency and resistance (personal communication, December 11, 2002).
On October 6, three weeks after Foucault arrived in Iran, Khomeini received
authorization to move from his exile in Iraq to the Paris suburb of
Neauphle-Ie-Chateau, where he became the subject of intense international
media attention. By mid-October, the two most important internal opposition
groups, the Freedom Movement (headed by Khomeini's supporter
Mehdi Bazargan) and the secular National Front (led by Karim Sanjabi) had
announced their support for Khomeini's leadership of the movement against
the shah. In September, the political situation inside Iran was still somewhat
fluid, however, and not all observers recognized the depth and seriousness of
the opposition. For example, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency concluded
that month that the shah would remain in power for another decade. Within
weeks, however, sustained strikes in the communications, water, railroad,
manufacturing, and especially the oil sectors would change that prognosis.
During September and October, the shah's appointed government, led
by Prime Minister Ja'far Sharif-Imami, was desperately trying to maintain
the regime by releasing political prisoners. Among those released were two
key supporters of Khomeini, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazari and Ayatollah
Mahmud Taleqani. By late October, angry civil servants were pulling pictures
of the shah and his wife down from the walls of government offices. Former
Prime Minister Ali Amini tried to work out a compromise by encouraging