On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
> <http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/007863.html>
>
> What Are The Iranians Dreaming About
> Michel Foucault
<snip>
> "What do you want?" During my entire stay in Iran, I did not hear even
> once the word "revolution," but four out of five times, someone would
> answer, "An Islamic government."
<snip>
> What precisely does this mean in a country like Iran, which has a large
> Muslim majority but is neither Arab nor Sunni and which is therefore less
> susceptible than some to Pan-Islamism or Pan-Arabism?
<snip>
> Indeed, Shiite Islam exhibits a number of characteristics that are likely
> to give the desire for an "Islamic government" a particular coloration.
> Concerning its organization, there is an absence of hierarchy in the
> clergy, a certain independence of the religious leaders from one another,
> but a dependence (even a financial one) on those who listen to them, and
> an importance given to purely spiritual authority. The role, both echoing
> and guiding, that the clergy must play in order to sustain its
> influence-this is what the organization is all about. As for Shi'ite
> doctrine, there is the principle that truth was not completed and sealed
> by the last prophet.
I certainly don't want to excuse Foucault's seemingly blanket indulgence of the reactionary mores of the mullahs as detailed in the New Politics article you excerpted first. But I think to fair to him we have to realize how plausible the above part of what he's saying seemed at the time.
When he was writing, nobody but microspecialists had ever heard of the Doctrine of the Jurisprudent -- and even they didn't take it seriously as a political institution. It was a complete break with all previous Shiite thinking. Foucault's comments here are still pretty true today for all Shiites who say they are not Khomenites. They are say they against clergyman having institutional roles in government. And theoretically at least, I think it was perfectly reasonably to argue, as he did, that any outside consultatory role would have be further mitigated by the fact that there must always in principle be a multiciplity of Imams, since everyone must be free to choose their own. If they weren't formally part of the government, and they never had a united position, how could they be running things?
Khomenei's Doctrine of the Jurisprudent completely turned this on its head. It made a single clergyman to the most powerful man in government and the sole interpretive authority. It was hierachy was a vengeance. It changed everything. But Foucault can't really be blamed for thinking that everything in Shiism pointed the other way. It did.
Of course, now that we've seen it change like that, when people like Sistani or Sadr say they don't want clergymen in government because it's against the principles of Shiism, we don't trust them. We've seen how much leeway such principles have when they meet politics. And besides, now it's an open door for anyone to have a sudden Khomenist conversion once they take power.
But at Foucault's point in time, when he was making pure speculations about a future nobody had any inkling of, his thinking on this point at least wasn't naive. It was much more informed than most.
Which is if anything, more humbling. You can be subtle and smart and relatively well informed and still be completely dead wrong about what the near future will bring. And even when you're majorly right -- as he was in his contention that the clergy would not be pushed aside by the old political parties and movements -- you can still be so hugely wrong you'll wish you hadn't said anything.
Michael