thank you for this thread. this debate can be had in many different registers, one of which is also Negri's 'constituent - constitutive' power lens. If any of you can take it anywhere else than a bleak: 'you can only be a revolutionary so long as you are ineffective', pls say so, it would help a lot.
Chetan Vemuri wrote:
Chetan Vemuri wrote:
Thank you for bringing up Rahimi.
Personally I find Foucault's ideas on Iran fascinating, in light of what we
see today, post-9/11 and in increase in religious politics in general
(religious right in the US, Hindu nationalism in India). I think many forget
that Foucault aside, many left wing intellectuals supported the 1979
Islamist overthrow of the Shah because of his tyranny and his being a pawn
of US anti-communist interests that suffered a fatal reputation after
Vietnam. I think Afary and Anderson fail to realize that even westernized,
enlightened Iranian liberal intellectuals supported the revolution and spoke
highly of it in the same time period as Foucault.
None of them forsaw the repression following Khomeini's coming to power,
repression that Foucault himself attacked in a later letter.
The ironic thing is that while Foucault's initial hopes for the revolution
may have turned out to be wrong (as did the hopes of other leftist
intellectuals supporting Khomeini), these same later disillusioning
revelations about the revolution ironically proved him right in the argument
he made against Noam Chomsky back in 1971 regarding how one group fighting
for "justice' ultimately becomes a power structure once its over, regardless
of whether they're better than the previous govt or worse. The power
structure is neither good nor bad.
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi <
critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 12:26 PM, Leon Farhi Neto
<leonfarhineto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Ali,Afary and Anderson's own ideology of liberalism that shapes their
For a negative point of view on this question, you can take a look at:
AFARY, Janet; ANDERSON, Kevin B. Foucault and the Iranian Revolution:
Gender and the Seductions of Islamism. Chicago: University of Chicago,
2005.
criticism of Foucault has in turn been criticized by Babak Rahimi
among others:
<https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12437>.
Yoshie
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