[lbo-talk] Foucault on Iran

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 8/31/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> <http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue37/Afary37.htm>
>
> The Seductions of Islamism
> Revisiting Foucault and the Iranian Revolution
>
> Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson
<snip>
> Later, in February 1979, just after Khomeini had assumed power,
> Foucault made an astute prediction in his article, "A Powder Keg
> Called Islam," also in Corriere della sera. He mocked the hopes of
> French and Iranian Marxists, who had believed that Khomeini would now
> be pushed aside by the Marxist Left: "Religion played its role of
> opening the curtain; the Mullahs will now disperse themselves, taking
> off in a big group of black and white robes. The decor is changing.
> The first act is going to begin: that of the struggle of the classes,
> of the armed vanguards, and of the party that organizes the masses,
> etc."
>
> In ridiculing the notion that the secular nationalist or Marxist left
> would now take center stage and displace the clerics, Foucault made a
> keen assessment of the balance of forces. Indeed, he exhibited quite
> a remarkable perspicacity, especially given the fact that he was not
> a specialist on either Iran or Islam. Even more importantly, he
> noted, a new type of revolutionary movement had emerged, one that
> would have an impact far beyond Iran's borders and would also have
> major effect on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "But perhaps its
> historic importance will not hinge on its conformity to a recognized
> 'revolutionary' model. Rather, it will owe its importance to the
> potential that it will have to overturn the existing political
> situation in the Middle East and thus the global strategic
> equilibrium. Its singularity, which has constituted up until this
> point its force, consequently threatens to create its power of
> expansion. Indeed, it is correct to say that, as an 'Islamic'
> movement, it can set the entire region afire, overturn the most
> unstable regimes, and disturb the most solid. Islam -- which is not
> simply a religion, but an entire way of life, an adherence to a
> history and a civilization -- has a good chance to become a gigantic
> powder keg, at the level of hundreds of millions of men."

That's the most crucial insight, which far too many leftists failed to
grasp then and continue to deny even today, by suggesting, _against
all evidence to the contrary_, that, if only Iranian leftists had not
made this or that "error," they would have been able to defeat the
incomparably more numerous Muslim supporters of Khomeini and turn the
revolution into a socialist one.  Foucault was among the greatest
critics of political liberalism and state socialism, so he fell for
neither an illusion that the Iranian Revolution would take a socialist
turn nor a prejudice against the revolution on account of the fact
that it was neither liberal nor socialist.  He found the then new
phenomenon fascinating, and he tried to understand what the Iranians
saw in Islam, what they were dreaming of when they said they wanted an
Islamic government, etc. on their own terms, rather than tell them
what they should see and what they should dream about.

> While Foucault's insight into Islamism's global reach was surely
> prescient, this was undercut by Foucault's uncritical stance toward
> Islamism as a political movement.

Foucault, however, ended the essay "What Are the Iranians Dreaming
About?" neither with affirmation nor negation of the Iranian
Revolution.  Rather, he raised a series of questions, both short-term
and long-term:

<blockquote>I do not feel comfortable speaking of Islamic government
as an "idea" or even as an "ideal." Rather, it impressed me as a form
of "political will." It impressed me in its effort to politicize
structures that are inseparably social and religious in response to
current problems. It also impressed me in its attempt to open a
spiritual dimension in politics.

In the short term, this political will raises two questions:

1. Is it sufficiently intense now, and is its determination clear
enough to prevent an "Amini solution," which has in its favor (or
against it, if one prefers) the fact that it is acceptable to the
shah, that it is recommended by the foreign powers, that it aims at a
Western-style parliamentary regime, and that it would undoubtedly
privilege the Islamic religion?

2. Is this political will rooted deeply enough to become a permanent
factor in the political life of Iran, or will it dissipate like a
cloud when the sky of political reality will have finally cleared, and
when we will be able to talk about programs, parties, a constitution,
plans, and so forth?

Politicians might say that the answers to these two questions
determine much of their tactics today.

With respect to this "political will," however, there are also two
questions that concern me even more deeply.

One bears on Iran and its peculiar destiny. At the dawn of history,
Persia invented the state and conferred its models on Islam. Its
administrators staffed the caliphate. But from this same Islam, it
derived a religion that gave to its people infinite resources to
resist state power. In this will for an "Islamic government," should
one see a reconciliation, a contradiction, or the threshold of
something new?

The other question concerns this little corner of the earth whose
land, both above and below the surface, has strategic importance at a
global level. For the people who inhabit this land, what is the point
of searching, even at the cost of their own lives, for this thing
whose possibility we have forgotten since the Renaissance and the
great crisis of Christianity, a political spirituality. I can already
hear the French laughing, but I know that they are wrong.

(Le Nouvel Observateur, 16-22 October 1978,
<http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/007863.html>)</blockquote>

The long-term questions are good ones, far more interesting than banal
criticisms of Foucault's reportage, but few leftists have taken note
of them.

The will for an "Islamic government," in my view, is a contradiction,
just as the (now largely withered) will for a "Marxist" government is
a contradiction.  Both can be productive contradictions, however, for
liberty is a product of conflict between leaders and masses, (as well
as among factions of leaders and among factions of masses), and the
contradiction between the state religion (be it Marxism or Shi'ism)
and the religion -- or rather "a political spirituality" -- (be it
Marxism or Shi'ism) that resists state power may very well invigorate
the necessary conflict that makes politics alive.
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>