On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 1:55 AM, David McInerney <vagabond@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The Iranian situation was one that
> could have gone in various directions ...
Theoretically, yes, but, empirically, the Iranian Left, multiply
divided as it was and rooted more in an educated, upper-class minority
than in an uneducated, lower-class majority, was in a weaker position
than leftists inside and outside Iran thought it was at the time of
the revolution: see, for instance, Maziar Behrooz, Rebels with a
Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran (I.B. Tauris, 2000). One
positive assessment that Afary and Anderson makes about Foucault's
journalism about the revolution in Iran is that he, nearly alone among
leftists, could see that it wasn't Marxism or secular nationalism that
was the main motive force of the majority of participants in the
revolution.
What Foucault couldn't foresee was how similar to other social
revolutions the trajectory of the Iranian revolution would prove to
be. Foucault, a long-time critic of post-revolutionary states whose
official ideology was Marxism, thought, or rather hoped, that the
revolution in Iran, animated by a new political subjectivity, would
not establish a regime like the ones he criticized. However, the
irony of history, noted by Theda Skocpol, is that Shia Islam served as
the ideology of social revolution through urban mass uprisings against
a modern national state, accomplishing what "socialists have long
dreamt of doing (without success except where war has intervened to
help)," whereas Marxism mainly served as the ideology of rural-based
guerrilla warfare and national liberation against a colonial or
neo-colonial regime ("Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian
Revolution," Theory and Society 11.3, May 1982, p. 267).
> I suggest reading Darius
> Rejali's book "Torture and Modernity: Self, Society and State in
> Modern Iran" (1994) for basic information on the measures used to
> deal with former "allies" and establish and Islamic state in Iran.
Had Foucault lived longer, he might himself have written a book like
Darius Rejali's -- Torture and Modernity* that you mention, but also
Torture and Democracy -- except that Foucault wouldn't say, like
Rejali, that "Torture may be compatible with democracy, but it is not
compatible with liberalism, and we live in liberal democracies today"
(Scott Horton, "Six Questions for Darius Rejali, Author of 'Torture
and Democracy'," <http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002387>).
* See a comment on Rejali's misunderstanding of Foucault by Talal Asad
in Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford
UP, 2003, pp. 103-104.
Yoshie
> The Iranian situation was one that
> could have gone in various directions ...
Theoretically, yes, but, empirically, the Iranian Left, multiply
divided as it was and rooted more in an educated, upper-class minority
than in an uneducated, lower-class majority, was in a weaker position
than leftists inside and outside Iran thought it was at the time of
the revolution: see, for instance, Maziar Behrooz, Rebels with a
Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran (I.B. Tauris, 2000). One
positive assessment that Afary and Anderson makes about Foucault's
journalism about the revolution in Iran is that he, nearly alone among
leftists, could see that it wasn't Marxism or secular nationalism that
was the main motive force of the majority of participants in the
revolution.
What Foucault couldn't foresee was how similar to other social
revolutions the trajectory of the Iranian revolution would prove to
be. Foucault, a long-time critic of post-revolutionary states whose
official ideology was Marxism, thought, or rather hoped, that the
revolution in Iran, animated by a new political subjectivity, would
not establish a regime like the ones he criticized. However, the
irony of history, noted by Theda Skocpol, is that Shia Islam served as
the ideology of social revolution through urban mass uprisings against
a modern national state, accomplishing what "socialists have long
dreamt of doing (without success except where war has intervened to
help)," whereas Marxism mainly served as the ideology of rural-based
guerrilla warfare and national liberation against a colonial or
neo-colonial regime ("Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian
Revolution," Theory and Society 11.3, May 1982, p. 267).
> I suggest reading Darius
> Rejali's book "Torture and Modernity: Self, Society and State in
> Modern Iran" (1994) for basic information on the measures used to
> deal with former "allies" and establish and Islamic state in Iran.
Had Foucault lived longer, he might himself have written a book like
Darius Rejali's -- Torture and Modernity* that you mention, but also
Torture and Democracy -- except that Foucault wouldn't say, like
Rejali, that "Torture may be compatible with democracy, but it is not
compatible with liberalism, and we live in liberal democracies today"
(Scott Horton, "Six Questions for Darius Rejali, Author of 'Torture
and Democracy'," <http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002387>).
* See a comment on Rejali's misunderstanding of Foucault by Talal Asad
in Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford
UP, 2003, pp. 103-104.
Yoshie