Foucault in Iran

foucault in iran
Muslim International
Sohail Daulatzai and Junaid Rana

Series Editors
A different version of chapter 2 was published as When Life Will No
Longer Barter Itself: In Defense of Foucault on the Iranian Revolution, in
A Foucault for the 21stCentury: Governmentality, Biopolitics and Discipline in the
New Millennium, ed. Sam Binkley and Jorge Capetillo, 27090 (New Castle:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009). Published with the permission
of Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Copyright 2016 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz, author.
Title: Foucault in Iran : Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment / Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi.
Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2016] | Series: Muslim international |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015036894 | ISBN 978-0-8166-9948-3 (hc) | ISBN 978-0-8166-9949-0 (pb)
Subjects: LCSH: Foucault, Michel, 19261984Influence. | IranHistoryRevolution, 1979. |
IranHistoryRevolution, 1979Historiography.
Classification: LCC B2430.F724 G52 2016 | DDC 955.05/42dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015036894
TO GOLROKH
This page intentionally left blank
The country that is more developed industrially only
shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.
Karl Marx, Das Kapital
Modernity can and will no longer borrow the criteria by

which it takes its orientation from the models supplied by
another epoch; it has to create its normativity out of itself.
Who else but Europe could draw from its own traditions
the insight, the energy, the courage of vision to shape our
mentality?
Jrgen Habermas, Philosophical Discourse of Modernity
If philosophy of the future exists, it must be born outside

Europe or equally born in consequence of meetings and
impacts between Europe and non-Europe.
Michel Foucault, On Zen Buddhism
contents

preface xi
introduction
Foucaults Indictment 1
1. Thinking the Unthinkable: The Revolutionary

Movement in Iran 19
2. How Did Foucault Make Sense of the Iranian

Revolution? 55
3. Misrepresenting the Revolution, Misreading Foucault 75
4. The Reign of Terror, Womens Issues, and

Feminist Politics 113
5. Was ist Aufklrung? The Iranian Revolution as a

Moment of Enlightenment 159
conclusion
Writing the History of the Present 187
acknowledgments 193
notes 197
index 231
preface
I remember vividly that cold, rainy Friday in October 1977 when,

after a day of strenuous climbing in the Tehran mountains, my com-
rades and I descended on the Goethe Institute, where the second night
of a ten-night poetry reading was underway. Thousands sat under the
pouring rain, some with (and others, like me, without) umbrellas, in the
enormous garden of the institute. I saw for the first time faces of those
major literary figures whose works I had keenly read and with whose ideas
I associated closely. Although it was hard to hear the words in that over-
crowded garden, I, like everyone else there, knew what was said. The
quiet crowd was the main speaker.
The Ten-Nights, as it became known in the lexicon of the Iranian
Revolution, led to more gatherings, this time on university campuses,
without the immunity that the grounds of the German Cultural Mission
afforded the original meetings. What appeared to me as a seamless expan-
sion of this protest movement turned into marches on the streets and
eventually into the uprising of an entire nation that articulated what that
quiet crowd could not utter freely only a few months earlier, Down with
the Shah, down with the U.S. imperialism.
Very soon after I began the research on this book I realized that the
main challenge for me writing about the revolutionary movement of
197879, and the philosophical contemplations of an astute observer like
Michel Foucault, was to find a meaningful way to navigate the volatile
terrains of memory, myth, ideology, and history. My own proximity to
the events as a militant Marxist-Leninist student who organized rallies,
wrote pamphlets, recruited other students to the cause, and fought daily
battles on the streets of Tehran during the ghastly period of martial law,
xi
xii | Preface
made writing about them that much more complex. I found myself in
the precarious position of the one who lives in a particular historical
moment as well as through its telling. As I began to research this book
and examine archival material related to the same period, many of my
memories, like the one at the Goethe Institute, had to be resituated in a
wider context, which at times challenged the significance I had originally
attributed to them. I realized how, either subconsciously or consciously,
I had generated in my mind a particular arc of events that was situated
in a field of competing, affectively charged and mobilizing, narratives.
During research it became increasingly equivocal whether I should
regard my own participatory and eyewitness accounts as a form of priv-
ileged knowledge or, in contrast, a distortion of reality. I do understand
the problem of correspondence and the representation of reality, and do
not wish to claim that I had to weigh my own accounts against the real-
ity of what had happened. Rather I needed to reevaluate the historical
significance I attributed to the influence of my own revolutionary milieu.
And perhaps the biggest challenge for me was to advance an under-
standing of the revolution within its own temporal unfolding, resisting
the temptation to cast the shadow of the Islamic republic over the revo-
lutionary movement that led to its foundation.
I have given the latter point the most earnest attention. This was
necessary because both sides of the postrevolutionary power struggle,
those who dominated the state and those who were purged and sup-
pressed, came to view the revolutionary movement as an instance of a
bifurcated Islamist versus secular politics. The postrevolutionary regime
sanctified its rule as the indubitable outcome of the revolution. It trans-
formed the religious rituals and the symbolic universe through which
revolutionary demands were articulated into a formal, juridical, and doc-
trinal foundation of an Islamic state. The opposition to the establishment
of the Islamic Republic also followed the same steps by calling the post-
revolutionary theocratic reign of terror the inevitable consequence of
the Islamic character of the revolutionary movement.
The revolutionary movement in Iran offered a world-historical pos-
sibility to move away from a binary Islamist/secular politics, to imagine a
form of unscripted politics practices at the threshold of a novelty. But
that possibility collapsed in the wake of the way the postrevolutionary
realpolitik colonized revolutionary ideals. I do not use this as a euphemism
Preface | xiii
to cover the real costs of this colonization. A vicious campaign of assas-
sination, mass executions, and massive incarceration, along with a bloody
eight-year war and the unprecedented flight of the unwanted, evokes
the unfathomable emotional mark, the sheer human stakes that the
(post)revolutionary process in Iran has produced. I mention this instead
to highlight the convolution that is involved in reconciling the memory
of events with historical processes and conceptual assertions.
As I was writing this book, many colleagues and critics have asked
me, Why should we care about what Foucault says about the Iranian
Revolution? Is he not just another abstruse French intellectual with
the colonial habit of poking his nose into another peoples affairs? I
think these are legitimate questions. I have conceived this book, not as
an exegesis of Foucaults intellectual oeuvre. Rather, I found his essays
on the Iranian Revolution a perfect window through which one could
look at the revolutionary events in Iran outside the discursive frames
that make revolutions legible. The fact that the revolution in Iran trans-
formed his theory of power and subjectivity also has less to do with Fou-
cault, in my mind, than with the generative conceptual significance of the
Iranian Revolution.
At the very core of Eurocentrism is the attribution of theoretical sig-
nificance to European historical experiencesclass formation, race and
gender relations, state and politics, life-course and aging, power and
subjectivity, and so on. The universal is the generalizable European con-
crete. Both in his essays and in his later transformations, Foucault offers
important clues on how to comprehend the Iranian Revolution not as
an instance of Eurocentric theories of power, politics, and history. While
writing the book, I realized that Foucault failed to acknowledge the the-
oretical significance of the Iranian experience. Although he advances a
theory of subjectivity in his late writings, he never articulated that theory
in relation to its origins in the political spirituality of the revolutionary
subjects in the streets of Tehran.
Introduction
foucaults indictment
Is it possible for a people to envision and desire futures uncharted

by already existing schemata of historical change and patterns of social
change? Is it possible to think of dignity, humility, justice, and liberty
outside Enlightenment cognitive maps and principles? These are the
types of questions that motivate the writing of this book.
I was in Berlin, finishing the first draft of this book, when the massive
uprisings of 201011 swept North Africa and the Middle East. Remark-
ably, for a number of weeks, reading and writing about Foucaults essays
on the Iranian Revolution of 1979 corresponded with events that were
unfolding more than three decades later. The same kind of inexplicabil-
ity that puzzled Foucault about a man in revolt in Tehran, the same
kind of transformative exuberance that he called political spirituality, and
the same kind of ambiguity about the future direction of these uprisings
that fascinated Foucault during the Iranian Revolution seemed to define
those moments. There was another important similarity in what was hap-
pening in 201011 with the Iranian Revolution of 197879. Pundits and
scholars tried to make sense of this sudden upsurge of protest, analyze
its causes, and attribute meaning to the demands of the insurgent masses
in order to make these historical events legible to a global audience.
Unlike the Iranian Revolution thirty years earlier, the Arab upris-
ings not only overtook the streets of major cities and squares but also
dominated the global mediascape that operated paradoxically both as an
instrument of the effective dissemination of its existence and, at the same
time, as a means of its discursive reticence. Although by and large the
masses on the streets identified their movement as a call for human dig-
nity (kerama) and an end to social injustice and corruption (kefaya), only
1
2 | Introduction
a few weeks after their emergence the news reports and scholarly analyses
identified the moment as the Arab Spring. In order to make a phenom-
enon legible, one has to operate within a recognizable assembly of points
of references. By naming it the Arab Spring, the uprisings entered a
conceptual and discursive universe with a written past and a known future
direction.
In Iran, Foucault tried to see the revolution as a phenomenon of his-
tory and, at the same time, as a phenomenon that defies it. He perceived
those who marched on the streets of Tehran as subjects of history who
had risen to make history the subject of their revolutionary acts. He
encouraged his readers to see Iranians at the threshold of a novelty rather
than subjects of the discursive authority of a world that is perpetuated in
tired conceptions of History. In Iran, Foucault tried to introduce the
revolution without closing the window of possibilities, without subject-
ing the revolutionary movement to the logic of historical inevitabilities.
The Arab Spring was a discourse, in the making for five years,
constructed to do exactly the opposite, close the window of possibilities
and subject the uprisings to historical inevitabilities. After the massive
rallies to condemn the assassination of the former Lebanese prime min-
ister, Rafik Hariri, in February 2005, conservative as well as a number of
liberal and Left columnists began to ponder the wisdom of George W.
Bushs Middle East project. They considered the mass protests against
the Syrian influence in Lebanon, the Cedar Revolution, an Arab
Spring that heralded the fruition of the Bush policy of exporting
democracy to the land of the unfriendly tyrants. In a self-congratulatory
op-ed, the staunch conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer com-
pared the Beirut protests to the 1848 revolutions that did presage the
coming of the liberal idea throughout Europe. The Arab Spring of
2005, he proclaimed, will be noted as a similar turning point for the
Arab world.1 Krauthammer was not alone in identifying the emergence
of an Arab Spring. A series of editorial columns in Le Monde, The Indepen-
dent, Der Spiegel, and Foreign Policy debated whether the Cedar Revolu-
tion of 2005 invoked the Spring Time of Nations in Europe of 1848,
Prague Spring of 1968, or Eastern Europe of 1989.
The Arab Spring of 2005 did not materialize the way the pundits
predicted. But the uprisings of 201011 turned into a full bloom Spring,
albeit a short-lived one. The dominant explanations of the uprisings
Introduction | 3
interpreted this Spring, whether it was a reference to Prague of 1968, or
Europe of 1848, as a triumph of liberalism and the discovery of Enlight-
enment in the Arab world. In Alain Badious words, Our rulers and our
dominant media have suggested a simple interpretation of the riots in
the Arab world: what is expressed in them is what might be called a desire
for the West.2 Not only did this view conflate competing interests of the
uprising in single reductionist desire for the West, but more significantly,
it subjected those who rose up to make history to the unfolding of its
inherent logic.
Foucault highlighted in Iran the struggle of a nation asserting itself
for both an inclusion (in making history) and an exit (from terminal his-
tory). He conceived the indeterminacy of the revolutionary movement
in Iran as a possible source of creativity and inspiration rather than an
expression of backwardness finally unleashed forward toward progress.
The narrative of Arab Spring denied the 201011 uprisings the singular-
ity with which they could be comprehended and advanced outside the
recognized patterns of revolutionary transformation. The discourse of
Arab Spring devoured the Egyptian liberals and revolutionaries and de-
nied them the impetus to articulate the significance of their uprising
notwithstanding the burdens of a universal history. They considered any
deviation from the conventional narratives of revolution to be failure and
inauthentic to their movement. The election of Mohamed Morsi of the
Muslim Brotherhood invariably and quickly became the case in point.
Even before the Morsi Administration showed its incompetence and
autocratic tendencies, liberals and many actors on the Left regarded a
Muslim Brother president as the epitome of one step forward, two steps
back, thus their Orwellian jubilance over the July 2013 military coup to
save democracy.
Liberal and Left parties hastily celebrated the Arab Spring as the
end of the ideological significance of political Islam. They believed that
these revolutions would restore the authority of secular politics that had
been obscured by the Iranian Revolution since 1979. The secularists of
the Left and the Right vowed that they would not allow Egypt to be-
come a second Iran. Not thinking through the singularity of the Egyptian
moment, they deemed irrelevant the conspicuous facts that the incom-
petent Morsi lacked anything in common with the charismatic Kho-
meini, that the Brotherhood institutionally lacked the same effective Shia
4 | Introduction
clerical network, and that the Brotherhoods political philosophy shared
no affinity with the Shia liberation theology.
I do not wish to suggest an intellectual commitment to a linear pro-
gressive conception of History was the reason a military coup in Egypt
halted the Arab uprisings of 201012. But the desire to turn Arabs into
legible subjects of the March of History rather than making history the
subject of their uprising made the self-proclaimed secular actors ambiv-
alent about, if not unashamedly promoting, a military intervention to
save the nation from the unyielding Islamist reactionaries. On August
14, 2013, the military forces massacred 1,250 Brotherhood supporters
in two protest camps in Cairo. After the massacre, the only audible voice
was the sigh of relief of the former revolutionaries who thought that they
had brought the nation from the brink of an electoral catastrophe back
to the mainstream of history. You can take the country back from a military
junta, you cant redeem the nation from the yoke of the Messengers of God, was
the word on the streets.
The bifurcation of political actors into secular versus Islamist gen-
erated alliances on the ground that otherwise one would deem implau-
sible. As we know by now, the fragility of a secular coalition between the
military and the Egyptian Left and liberals became evident soon after
the coup. But the basic premise on which that coalition was justified
remains in place on the ground and in intellectual circles. The binary
conception of secular versus religious politics assumes actual uniformi-
ties on both sides of the dichotomy that correspond neither to a coherent
conceptual project nor to the shared experience of a particular politics.3
The same Whiggish narrative has recast the revolutionary move-
ment in Iran of 197879 and has dominated its historiography. Many of
these revisionist accounts are motivated by ideological commitments to a
universal history that renders the entire history of the twentieth-century
Middle East as a struggle between progressive, democratic, secular forces
against reactionary, autocratic Islamists. This was exactly the kind of
epistemic violence inherent in bifurcated historiographies in contradis-
tinction to which Foucault wrote his essays on the Iranian Revolution.
Those who celebrated the Arab Spring not as a moment of defiance but
as a desire for inclusion in and conformity to History could have learned
important lessons from Foucaults writings on the Iranian Revolution.4
Introduction | 5
The interest in Foucaults contemplations on Islam and Iran, for the
most part, remained a Parisian-Persian affair during the time of the rev-
olution in 197880. Although a number of essays published in the early
1990s engaged his Iranian musings,5 it was not until the terrorist attacks
of September 11, 2001, that renewed interest in his thoughts about the
Iranian Revolution appeared. One might reasonably ask what Foucault
had to do with acts of atrocity committed on American soil years after
his death? But as I shall demonstrate here, a host of philosophers, soci-
ologists, historians, and essayists of the Left and liberal persuasion ex-
ploited the terrorist assaults of 9/11, and other recent violent encounters
in Europe involving Muslims, to launch a feverish attack on the propo-
nents of what they dubbed cultural relativism. Nihilism and the awak-
ening of the antiquated regimes of power, these scholars warned, was
the inevitable consequence of the loss of the Enlightenment as the Uni-
versal Referent.
In 2005 coauthors of a book on Foucault and the Iranian Revolution
went even further to indict and convict Foucault as the main poststructur-
alist culprit of this insidious cultural relativism.6 They raised fundamental
challenges to Foucaults historiography in order to divulge the inherent
link between his philosophical oeuvre and his revolutionary sympathies
toward the alleged pseudofascist core of Islamism.
Foucaults essays on the Iranian Revolution are either dismissed as
another botched Orientalist venture or disparaged as an infantile left-
ism of a romantic European philosopher.7 But the centerpiece of the
new debate is a problem that extends far beyond Foucault. Such a per-
spective warns against the calamity of Islamism and the failure of post-
structuralist philosophers, led by Michel Foucault, to reckon with the
catastrophic consequences of deviating from the project of the Enlight-
enment. Affected by the civilizational ardor of the post-9/11 moment,
the authors of Foucault and the Iranian Revolution hold poststructuralists
(and their unlikely allies Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn!)8 respon-
sible for affording postmodern discursive legitimacy to premodern Islam
ists and their mission to obliterate modernity. They set up their position
in the question framing their book: Did not a post-structuralist, leftist
discourse, which spent all of its energy opposing the secular liberal or
authoritarian modern state and its institutions, leave the door wide open
6 | Introduction
to an uncritical stance toward Islamism and other socially retrogressive
movements?9
Afary and Anderson trace the roots of the horrific terrorist acts of
9/11 back to the Iranian Revolution and its ensuing radical Islamist pol-
itics. They argue that the Jihadist politics of total annihilation is the ulti-
mate extremity of being seduced by what Foucault called political
spirituality. They chastise the Left in Western countries for ignoring
the specific social and political context in which al-Qaeda arose, [namely],
that of two decades of various forms of radical Islamist politics, beginning
with the Iranian Revolution (169). They situate their own critique of
Foucaults reporting of the Iranian Revolution as a critical engagement
with root causes of 9/11!
What distinguishes Afary and Andersons account of Foucault from
earlier critiques is that they see his writing as the manifestation of, rather
than an aberration from, his philosophical skepticism and genealogical
historiography. In this book, I shall argue that Foucaults sympathies had
nothing to with a romantic fascination with a premodern world and the
pastoral exercise of power. Rather, his enthusiasm was kindled by wit-
nessing a moment of making history outside the purview of a Western
teleological schema.
The second major argument Afary and Anderson propose is that Fou
caults experience of the Iranian Revolution informed his later writings,
especially the second and third volumes of The History of Sexuality and
his renewed interest in the question of ethics. They suggest (and offer his
essay What Is Enlightenment? as evidence) that the postrevolutionary
reign of terror in Iran forced Foucault to recant and alter his stance
toward both the Enlightenment and humanism10 as immutable Univer-
sal Referents. But, in order to justify their case, these authors miscon-
strue Foucaults earlier works and look for the footprint of the Iranian
Revolution in the wrong places in his later writing.
This assumption is one of the common misinterpretations of Fou-
caults later writings and his interest in questions of ethics, care of the self,
and Enlightenment. Even Slavoj iek, who defends Foucaults engage-
ment with the Iranian Revolution and argues that he correctly detected
the emancipatory potential in the events,11 repeats the same standard
narrative that one should read his turn to Kant a couple of years later as
his response to this failed engagement.12 I have dedicated the last chapter
Introduction | 7
of this book to a detailed discussion on how Foucaults engagement with
the Iranian Revolution transformed his later writings, particularly on the
question of the hermeneutics of the subject.
The significance of how Foucault made sense of the Iranian Revo-
lution and how his encounter with the revolutionary movement informed
his later writings go beyond a scholarly interest in Foucault. Neither was
he an expert on Shiism nor did he have a deep understanding of Iranian
history. What made his essays on the Iranian Revolution exceptional was
his willingness to observe the revolution without a commitment to the
temporal map of a universal history. He observed the revolution as a
moment at the threshold of a novelty, as something radically new out-
side the tired conceptions of linear revolutionary politics. Not only did
the revolution, and the way its actors lived it, give Foucault a conduit to
reflect on his own genealogical method, more importantly, it afforded
him a conceptual awareness to project the indeterminacies of the revo-
lutionary movement back to the Enlightenment.
Although I offer a close reading of Foucaults essays on the Iranian
Revolution and the way it transformed his ideas, I do not consider this
book to be an extended commentary on Foucault. Rather, through this
engagement with Foucaults writings, I hope to introduce a new historiog-
raphy in which trajectories, ideas, relationships, and other eventful contin-
gencies are understood as elements in a condition of historical possibilities.
In the following introduction, I show how the 9/11 attacks honed a
civilizational alliance in the West against Islamism. I argue that despite
their fundamental political differences, Euro-American neoconservative
militarists and the militant defenders of the Enlightenment on the lib-
eral and Left continuum share a conceptual angst against an undifferen-
tiated Islamism as the global threat to democracy and human rights.
In chapter 1 I introduce a dramaturgy of the events to highlight the
significance of Shia-Islamic rituals and symbolic language in shaping and
sustaining the revolutionary movement. My use of the word drama-
turgy is not meant to imply any artificial staging, but rather refers to
the dramatic character of events as they unfolded and simultaneously
emplotted in time and space. I also emphasize how a binary representa-
tion of actions and ideologies of political parties and leaders with refer-
ences to their secular or religious orientation distorts the realities of the
revolutionary movement. In order to show what Foucault saw in 1978
8 | Introduction
and how he made sense of his observations, I end the chapter with his
arrival in Tehran in September 1978.
In chapter 2 I introduce Foucaults writings on the Iranian Revolu-
tion. I show how his critique of modernity and genealogical history in-
formed his conception of political spirituality. The chapter also highlights
the distinction Foucault draws between the revolt and the outcome of
the revolution and the significance he attributes to the transformative
power of revolt on revolutionary subjects.
Chapter 3 examines Afary and Andersons misreading of Foucault
and their misrepresentation of the revolutionary events. I illustrate how
they present Foucault as a romantic advocate of pastoral power, seduced
by the authentic touch of violent spectacles and outbursts, in love with
the ruthless exercise of power.13 I also show that in order to support
their interpretive liberties, they use passages from Foucaults writings out
of context. I argue that analyses such as theirs are trapped in a teleology
that cannot account for, and therefore inevitably vacates, a whole welter
of possibilities immanent within political Islam. In their writing, Fou-
cault appears utterly misguided because he failed to see, on the one hand,
the inherent totalitarian core of political Islam, and on the other hand,
the constitutive significance of secular democratic forces.
One of the main grievances against Foucaults sympathetic depiction
of the revolution has been his gendered ambivalence toward the ques-
tion of rights and civil liberties. In chapter 4 I discuss the question of
feminist politics and the womens movement during the first few months
after the triumph of the revolution. Foucaults critics contend that he
ignored massive demonstrations of women after the revolution against
compulsory hijab (veiling) and dismissed the outpouring of solidarity
offered by global sisterhood as another instance of Western arrogance.
By scrutinizing the events of March 8, 1979, that marked the celebra-
tion of International Womens Day in Tehran, in this chapter I argue that
in their critique, Foucaults detractors appeal to a universal and reduc-
tionist sense of womanhood without regard to the contingencies of post-
revolutionary power struggles.
In the last chapter I examine the transformation of Foucaults concep-
tion of history and the question of the subject. A number of Foucault schol-
ars have claimed that after witnessing Ayatollah Khomeinis grande terreur,
Foucault retreated from his earlier fascination with political spirituality
Introduction | 9
and sought shelter in the safe Kantian haven of the Enlightenment. On
the contrary, rather than a belated liberalism, I argue that Foucaults
thoughts about historicaltransindividual subjectivity, the hermeneutics
of the subject, and the question of ethics in his last lectures at the Col-
lge de France were consistent with his depiction of the Islamic Revolu-
tion. I will demonstrate that, without speaking directly about it, Foucault
reaffirmed his sympathy with the revolution without thereby endorsing
its repressive aftermath.
The Danish Cartoons, September 11, and the Mishap of Relativism

On March 1, 2006, in reaction to the Danish cartoon affair,14 twelve writ-
ers, journalists, and intellectuals of diverse political backgrounds pub-
lished a manifesto called Together Facing the New Totalitarianism. It
begins provocatively: After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalin-
ism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism. The
authors called for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the pro-
motion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all. They
avowed that the recent events have revealed the necessity of the struggle
for these universal values. To leave nothing opaque, the antitotalitarian
writers of the manifesto stressed that they reject cultural relativism
which implies an acceptance that men and women of Muslim culture are
deprived of the right to equality, freedom, and secularism in the name of
the respect for certain cultures and traditions.15
One does not need to do more than scratch the surface of this man-
ifesto to uncover the historical omissions that have made its production
possible. They reject cultural relativism because they believe that is the
only way to defend the rights of men and women of Muslim culture.
Who these men and women whose rights they defend are remained
unfathomed. Is there such a singular phenomenon called Muslim culture?
Does Islamism in its multiple manifestations form a coherent totalitar-
ian ideology similar to fascism or Stalinism? More importantly, by turn-
ing secularism into a universal right, the twelve authors overlook the
fact that the totalitarianisms they abhorred as well as the nation-building
programs of the postcolonial era were all failed secular projects.
Much more intriguing than the manifestos threadbare polemics
of Universal Humanism were the names of the twelve framers of this
10 | Introduction
swaggering document. It included Philippe Val (the founder of the left-
ist French weekly Charlie Hebdo); as well as Irshad Manji, the redoubt-
able neoliberal Muslim reformer (author of the best seller The Trouble
with Islam Today); the French feminist sociologist Caroline Fourest,
whose claim to fame was her controversial book Frere Tariq (which was
an expos of the Swiss Muslim theologian Tariq Ramadan); Ayaan Hirsi
Ali, a right-wing Dutch politician of Somali origin who was elected to
the Dutch parliament on an anti-immigrant platform of the right-wing
VVD (her video Submission was widely distributed by the LPF, a Dutch
neo-Nazi party); and, finally of course, the ever-present manifestation
of rainbow politics, Salman Rushdie.
The alliances between the old Left and the new Right are products
of a distinct historical moment in which Maryam Namazie, one of the
leaders of the Iranian Communist Party, feels at home coauthoring a
manifesto with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a partisan of the American Enterprise
Institute. This moment became historically distinct not only because on
9/11 a single blow had been delivered to the centers of American eco-
nomic power and military might but also because it had occurred at a
time of declining American hegemony. 9/11 happened at a moment when
neoconservative messianic politicians entered the public arena, when
Europe was finally forced to face its colonial past on the streets of its big
cities, and when the Iranian Revolution of 1979 had already signaled the
feasibility of an Islamic alternative.
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, even as we mourned, a host of
observers struggled to make sense of its politics and define a case for its
exceptionality. Bruce Cumings, the distinguished historian of East Asia,
only a few weeks after the attacks, calling the assault infantile nihilism,
noted feverishly,
Nothing in recent history has prepared us for such a contemptible fusion

of willful mass terrorism, bloodstained earthly tragedy, and passionate,
ardent convictionthe adolescent fantasy that one big bang will change
the world and usher in a global jihad, a new epoch of Crusades, or
the final solution to eight decades of history that have passed since the
Ottoman Empire collapsed.16
For Cumings, a leading historian of East Asia who has written forcefully
about mass terrorism during the Korean war, who describes the horrors
Introduction | 11
of how the United States reenacted in Korea the Allies blanket bombing
of Germany and reintroduced the creation of urban annihilation zones,
who illustrates in gruesome detail targeting of civilians with napalm
bombs when oceans of it were dropped on Korea silently or without
notice in America, who describes how the U.S. Air Force loved this
infernal jelly, its wonder weapon, calling the atrocity of 9/11 unprec-
edented is exceptionally bewildering.17 He further argues: In the past
month many on the Left, in my view, have made the fundamental error
of framing the terrorist attacks against the sorrier aspects of the Ameri-
can record abroad, when in fact nothing that has ever happened since
the United States was founded could sensibly justify such wild, wanton
and inhuman recklessness.18 Cumings, along with a wide array of other
historians and social theorists, inaugurated a debate on the moral equiv-
alency of the 9/11 attacks by emphasizing the exceptional degree of its
violence and the lack of respect for human life.19 9/11, they proclaimed,
defied politics. It was eitherin the language of political philosophers
an apocalyptic nihilism, a rejection of the world as it is,20 or, in the
messianic discourse of neoconservatives, simply an act of evil.
With the same heated sentiment of the post-9/11 reactions, the dis-
tinguished critical theorist Seyla Benhabib added her observations a few
weeks after the assault:
It has become clear since September 11 that we are faced with a new
form of struggle that threatens to dissolve the boundaries of the polit-
ical in liberal democracies.... The attacks unleashed by these groups,
especially the use of the biological weapon anthrax to contaminate the
civilian population via the mail,[21] indicate a new political and mili-
tary phenomenon which challenges the framework of state-centric poli-
tics.... Historians always warn us that the unprecedented will turn
out to have some forerunners somewhere and that what seems new
today will appear old when considered against the background of some
longer time span. Nevertheless to think the new in politics is the
vocation of the intellectual. This is a task at which luminaries like
Susan Sontag, Fred Jameson, Slavoj iek, who have seized this
opportunity to recycle well-worn out 1960s clichs about western im-
perialism and hegemony, have failed us by interpreting these events
along the tired paradigm of an anti-imperialist struggle by the wretched
of the earth.22
12 | Introduction
A host of other theorists have followed the same logic and have called
into question the fetishization of anti-imperialist struggle and the need
for a universal defense of, again in Benhabibs words, reason, compas-
sion, respect for the dignity of human life, the search for justice and the
desire for reconciliation. In order to appreciate the lack of historical
understanding of all varieties of Islamism on display here, one needs to
commit a number of Feuerbachian reversals of Marxs piercing thesis
elevennamely, that the philosophers have only sought to change the world;
what is crucial, rather, is to understand it!
Moral outrage, as Tariq Ali points out, has some therapeutic value,
but as a political strategy it is useless.23 Delinking 9/11 attacks from
anti-imperialist struggles, and an indiscriminate use of the conception of
Jihad, transforms Jihadists into suprahistorical agents motivated more by
the loss of Andalusia in 1492 than any particular atrocities committed by
colonial and imperialist powers of the twentieth century. Although there
is an acknowledgment of the blood spilled in the centuries of political and
economic domination of Western powers, those atrocities are never con-
sidered to be politically incomprehensible. The post-9/11 Enlightenment
moralists argue that al-Qaeda (or at times Islamists in general) operatives
do not respect life and do not subscribe to the accepted rules and norms
of war and killing. Rather, they envision the culmination of their war
against the West in total annihilation. I would point out that these writers
characterize al-Qaedas violence without temporality, as being senseless
and therefore wholly unrelated to the instrumental rationality that had
driven the relentless brutality of European and American imperialism.
Calling the atrocity of 9/11 unprecedented, devoid of politics, and
a mere expression of an infantile nihilism points to the ideological com-
mitment of its proponents, who only recognize forms of violence with
reference to post-Enlightenment rationalities. Indiscriminate mass mur-
der of civilians; acts of disproportionate violence against nonmilitary
targets; the use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; methods
of collective punishment; and all other inconceivable acts of brutality
have been common features of the colonial and postcolonial world order.
Then what makes the senseless brutality of 9/11 exceptionally senseless?
I will argue later in this book that one significant point of exceptionality,
what generates unease and disgust, is that the perpetuators do not legit-
imize their acts within the Enlightenment rationalities.
Introduction | 13
Marx was prophetically right when he wrote in the Communist Man-
ifesto that [the bourgeoisie] compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to
introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bour-
geois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
One can take this one step further and show that the critics of capitalism
and imperialism also strive to create a critical world after their own image.
They create a world in which those who are waiting for the end of the
modern age, as Marshall Berman famously declared, can be assured of
steady work.24 According to this perspective, the Enlightenment im-
planted a system of rational thought, as Habermas remarked, that will
go on reproducing itself infinitely; its end is unthinkable unless it ushers
in total annihilation. It is, indeed, the last stage in History.25
In many significant ways, in their Foucault and the Iranian Revolution,
Afary and Anderson speak on behalf of the discursive, political, and con-
ceptual alliances that were formed after 9/11 to defend modernity against
its enemies. They defend it by invoking a teleological language of prog-
ress and thereby perpetuating the structural position of the West as the
sole producer of modernity and the non-West as its everlasting consumer.26
According to this view, The fundamental fissure in the Muslim world,
as David Held proposes, is between those who want to uphold universal
standards, including the standards of democracy and human rights, and
want to reform their societies, dislodging the deep connection between
religion, culture and politics, and those who are threatened by this and
wish to retain and/or restore power to those who represent fundamen-
talist ideas. The political, economic, and cultural challenges posed by
the globalization of modernity now face the counterforce of the glo-
balization of radical Islam.27
Afary and Anderson identify the unbridled joy of people in Kabul
after the Talibans fall in 2001 as a representative instance of the kind of
historical crevice about which Held speaks. The fall of the Taliban, Afary
and Anderson assert, shocked many Islamists, as well as those Western
leftists and progressives who had taken a culturally relativist position
toward Afghanistan.28 Who these Left-progressive cultural relativists
are remains unexplored as well as the very fact that it was the American
strategic interests that gave rise to al-Qaeda and their Taliban support-
ers, first to fight the Soviet invaders and then to contain the Iranian
Revolution.
14 | Introduction
A whole host of liberal and Left-liberal intellectuals viewed 9/11 as an
irrefutable indictment of cultural relativism. They dismissed any attempt
to contemplate political roots of the assault and to think about its his-
torical contingencies as ethically perverse.29 Raising questions about
the context and/or political intentions of 9/11 terrorists have either
been silenced by charges of moral equivalency or, as James Der Derian
puts it, rendered moot by claims that the exceptional natures of the act
places it outside political discourse: explanation became identified with exon-
eration.30 The characterization of any attempt to comprehend 9/11 in
its historical and political contingencies as an advocacy of a bien-pensant
anti-Americanism31 further depoliticized the event and encouraged the
pervasiveness of the (non)politics of fear. A state of fear of losing our
way of life that operates as, in Raymond Arons words, a primal, sub-
political emotion.32 Those who raised questions about the political con-
junctures of 9/11, particularly in its immediate aftermath, were dismissed
as motivated by a stubborn determination to inform the American peo-
ple that the terrorist assault had been a response, albeit a mad and wicked
one, to American power and American foreign policy.33
It is only through situating 9/11 terrorists outside history as evil, or
residuals of a dead past, that the authors of Foucault and the Iranian Rev-
olution can place the Iranian Revolution and the Islamist movements it
inspired as the specific social and political context in which al-Qaeda
arose. It is only by conceptualizing Islamists of all varieties, from Aya-
tollah Khomeini to Osama bin Laden, as suprahistorical actors that one
can take Foucaults defense of the Iranian Revolution as an indication
that, had he been alive, he would have endorsed the 9/11 attacks. To
show that they are not the only ones who have drawn such an erroneous
conclusion, Afary and Anderson borrow from Alain Minc, the ideologue
of French neoconservatism and President Sarkozys trusted adviser. In
an editorial called Le terrorisme de lesprit,34 which appeared on Novem-
ber 7, 2001, in Le Monde, Minc called Baudrillards critique of the mis-
guided American-led war on terror a theoretical extension of Foucaults
defense of Khomeinism.
In his editorial Minc illustrates the continuity between Foucaults
supposed advocacy of Khomeinism and the value Baudrillard attributes
to the symbolic and literal significance of 9/11 in exposing the vulnerabil-
ity of the single-hegemon global order.35 But using a truncated quotation,
Introduction | 15
Afary and Anderson present Mincs argument as if he were linking Fou-
cault theoretically not to Baudrillard but to the 9/11 terrorists. Moreover,
one could hardly claim that Foucaults writings on Iran... continues
to undercut his reputation in France while citing his intellectual foe
and a well-known advocate of market fundamentalism. I certainly doubt
that Mincs disparaging remarks would erode Foucaults credibility among
any intellectual community.36
But Afary and Anderson see in Minc and other prominent com-
mentators their defense of the Enlightenment rationality against what
they call postmodern and postcolonial critiques of what Fred Dall-
mayr once called the Western conceit of superiority.37 In his op-ed
Attacks on U.S. Challenge the Perspective of Postmodern True Believ-
ers,38 just more than a week after the 9/11 attacks, Edward Rothstein of
the New York Times holds postcolonialists and postmodernists partly re-
sponsible for theses atrocities. This is because, he argues, the postmod-
ernists advocate the idea that concepts we take for grantedincluding
truth, morality, and objectivityare culturally constructed. In his scath-
ing criticism, Rothstein does not even spare Thomas Kuhn, the respected
sociologist and historian of science, for his role in historicizing science
and scientific practice, or the pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty,
who has challenged objective notions of truth. The attacks of 9/11,
Rothstein stresses, cry out for a transcendent ethical perspective, even
a mild relativism seems troubling by contrast. He holds Kuhn and Rorty,
along with other postmodernists(!), guilty of rejecting universal values
and ideals and in turn leaving little room for unqualified condemnations
of a terrorist attack, particularly one against the West. Such an attack,
however inexcusable, can be seen as a horrifying airing of a legitimate
cultural grievance.
This Enlightenment rationalist fundamentalism, in the words of one
of its self-proclaimed adherents, shares the commitment with religious
fundamentalism that there is culture-transcending knowledge: there is
indeed knowledge beyond culture.39 Both positions recognize the
uniqueness of truth and avoid the facile self-deception of universal
relativism.40 Indeed, we are left wondering, as James Der Derian spurns
Rothsteins censure of relativism, where would that view place fervent
truth-seeking and serious enemies of relativism and irony like Osama
bin Laden? Terrorist foe but epistemological ally?41
16 | Introduction
This position becomes doubly absurd when Afary and Anderson situ-
ate 9/11 as the inevitable outcome of the Iranian Revolution. They rec-
ognize that radical Islamism is a diverse social and political movement
but insist that they share uniform ideological commitments. They rec-
ognize that Wahhabi Saudis consider the Shiite Iranians to be heretics,
and that the Islamic Republic almost went to war with Afghanistan under
the Taliban regime, but those facts, they insist, do not change the reality
that these radically different political entities form a singular movement
called radical Islamism. Like fascism earlier, which had German, Ital-
ian, Spanish, Romanian, and many other varieties, radical Islamism has
enough common features to discern it as a general phenomenon.42 To
advance their assertion, they go even as far as fabricating the fact that
the dominant conservative part of the [Iranian] government around
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned U.S. actions against bin Laden.43
It is a known fact that the Iranian government railed against bin Laden
and his Taliban supporters. But more importantly, the U.S. forces could
not so easily oust the Taliban and end their rule in Afghanistan without
Iranian logistical and political help.44
Islamism, as it was conceived during the Iranian Revolution, was
neither an archaic form of fascism nor a traditional cultural leftover.
It was rather a response to and a consequence of modern conditions.
Islamism has gone through major internal transformations of its own,
and its proponents have advanced important critical reassessments of its
main premises.45
It remains imperative to understand Islamism, its technologies of
debate, and its derivative political ideologies not simply through refer-
ence to the universal Enlightenment rationality and the teleological his-
tory it envisions. The Iranian Revolution triumphed ten years after the
disillusionment that followed 1968 in Europe. Foucault wrote during a
moment when many Europeans believed all that was revolutionary had
melted into air, with all revolutionary politics being branded as totalitar-
ian utopianism. Foucaults writings on the Iranian revolution go beyond
a journalistic account of its unfolding. Foucault offers a departure from
binary understandings in which the revolution was depicted in multiple
ways as the struggles of the passing of traditional society in a modern-
izing Middle East. Although he emphasizes the religious character of
Introduction | 17
the revolution, he remains skeptical of bifurcated conceptions of Islamist
versus secular politics based on a temporal map of Enlightenment ratio-
nalities. The most important lesson one can draw from Foucaults essays
is to regard the revolutionary moment as the realization of a condition
of possibilities, rather than an instance of the reaffirmation of the inter-
nal logic of a universal History.
1
thinking the unthinkable
The Revolutionary Movement in Iran
Nobody has ever seen the collective will and, personally,

I thought that the collective will was like God, like the soul,
something one would never encounter. We met, in Tehran and
throughout Iran, the collective will of a people.
Michel Foucault, 1979
Man gets rid of fear and feels free. Without that there would be
no revolution.
Ryszard Kapuscinski, 1982
The main thrust of the critique of Foucaults writings on the Ira-

nian Revolution lies in the basic assumption that he failed to recognize
the deep plurality of the revolutionary movement. That he was taken by
a touch of authenticity in the naked experience of violent spectacles
and dark mysticism of the limit-experience of revolutionary Iranians.1 A
common narrative of the revolutionary movement holds that the clergy
hijacked the revolution and assumed its leadership at the expense of Left
and democratic secular forces. The myth of the stolen revolution has
shaped the historiography of the revolutionary movement of 197879
and has since become the hegemonic representation of the period. Within
that frame, Foucaults support of the revolution, particularly with his
emphasis on its religious tenor, appears in retrospect as a simple infatu-
ation with a ritualistic spectacle of death and an Orientalist fantasy of the
emancipatory promise of what he termed political spirituality.
In this chapter, I demonstrate that from its earliest inception in 1977
a small but militant faction within the clergy, those who followed Aya-
tollah Khomeini, led the revolutionary movement that culminated in
the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic
Republic. While it is certain that many people of diverse walks of life
19
20 | Thinking the Unthinkable
and a variety of political parties participated in massive rallies and pro-
tests, it is also clear from the record that a religious disposition and the
leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini leant this movement an uncompro-
mising revolutionary character. In this chapter, I intend to show that
Shiism offered a cultural context, a shared language within which a revo-
lutionary movement could be defined, advanced, sustained, and experi-
enced. It afforded a political milieu to spread and perpetuate a movement
that massive numbers of peoples could identify with in historically com-
plex, politically ambiguous, and, to a large extent, inexplicable ways.
The purpose of the following chronology is to restore the constitutive
significance of Shiism, both as a feature of the popular cultural endow-
ment and as a liberation theology, in the 197879 revolutionary move-
ment. Rather than a series of formal, theological, and legal principles,
Shiism in the revolutionary context gave political expression to basic
principles of justice that corresponded to what Hegel termed Sittlichkeit
that is, the customs, norms, and expectations inherent in the conception
of the good life.2
Iran, the Island of Stability

Only thirteen months after the 1977 New Years Eve state dinner in Teh-
ran, when President Carter toasted the Shah, calling the country the
island of stability, the peoples revolution closed the book of monarchy
in Iran. By all accounts, the Iranian Revolution of 197879 appeared like
a thunderbolt from the blue. In a conceptual universe that seemed inca-
pable of explaining its emergence and its outcome, the Iranian Revolu-
tion was indeed unthinkable.3 At the time, Iran was a country ruled by
an autocratic regime that allowed no public expression of dissent. The
monarchy sustained its authority by perpetuating two absolutes: the
absolute and entrenched power of the state and the absolute despair of
the masses.4 President Carters remark, therefore, did not register as
something inconsistent with the general tenor of the time. No one
imagined, even remotely, that the king would be toppled by the revolu-
tionary force of millions with bare hands and open arms facing the fifth
largest military in the world.
Earlier that year, the Carter administration had encouraged the Shah
to adopt a policy of political openness. Iran had already emerged as a
Thinking the Unthinkable | 21
regional powerhouse, and the Shahs grip of power seemed unshakable.
The monarchy enjoyed a relatively stable economy, and its radical polit-
ical foes had been neutralized. The Shah had dissolved the two loyal
parties in March 1975 and established a single-party system under the
Resurrection Party. Soon thereafter, he reconstituted the Iranian calen-
dar and changed its point of origin from the hijra (holy migration) of
Prophet Mohammad to the coronation of Cyrus the Great. The Shahs
Resurrection was to herald the coming of age of a new imperial power in
the region with grand civilizational aspirations.
In two major operations, SAVAK (the notorious and much-feared
secret police) had killed the last members of the leadership of Sazman-e
Cherik-ha-ye Fadai-ye Khalq-e Iran (The Organization of Iranian Peo-
ples Devotee Guerrillas) first in the spring of 1975 and then in the
summer of 1976, rendering the organization practically ineffective. Just
a month after the establishment of Resurrection, the Shahs secret police
concocted a plan to murder influential leaders of the opposition who
were already serving their sentences in Tehrans notorious Evin Prison.
On April 19, 1975, Bijan Jazani, a Marxist theorist and an early advocate
of armed struggle, along with eight other prisoners were executed on
the hills overlooking the prison complex. The next day, the headline in
the state newspaper Kayhan read 9 Killed during an Escape Attempt
from Evin Prison. The second operation in the summer of 1976 led to
the killing of Hamid Asharf and the remaining members of the Fadaian
leadership.5
With the decapitation of the communist opposition, in a policy in-
formed by the Cold War, the Carter administration believed that the
Iranian despot could afford a modest relaxation of his authoritarian rule.
In order for President Carters human rights policy to have any credibil-
ity, he needed to persuade the close American ally, the king of torture and
unlawful imprisonment, to curb the atrocities of his feared secret police.
After the revolution it became known that the extent of these atroc-
ities was greatly exaggerated, but at the time the Pahlavi regime had
emerged as the main target of an unremitting campaign of human rights
organizations. Amnesty International and other western critics of the
ancien rgime grossly overestimated the accounts of the brutality of the
Iranian regime. In its 1975 and 1976 country reports, citing exiled groups
and foreign journalists, Amnesty International estimated the number
of political prisoners in Iran between twenty-five thousand and one hun-
dred thousand. In an article entitled Terror in Iran, Reza Baraheni, a
prominent literary and social critic, made Amnesty Internationals esti-
mate widely known in intellectual circles in Europe and the United
States.6 The vast numbers of dissident Iranian students in Europe and
the United States further publicized the plight of the members of the
opposition inside the country.
At a time that the regime appeared to have successfully entrenched
its authority, fractures began to appear in the absolute power of the state.
The launching of the Resurrection Party coincided with the resurrec-
tion of a revolutionary spirit, which reintroduced Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini to the scene of oppositional politics. As an uncompromising
leader, Khomeini had remained a voice of dissent in exile since he was
forced out of the country in 1964. From his home in Najaf, Iraq, Kho-
meini continued to lambast the Shah for his despotism, corruption, and
dependence on foreign powers. But Iranians seldom heard his voice or
were allowed to utter his name in public. That changed on the eve of
June 5, 1975, in the holy city of Qom. Between four and five hundred
seminary students had gathered on the occasion of the anniversary of
the riots that led to Khomeinis exile and defiantly called for Khomeinis
return.7 After the evening prayer, the students chanted Long live Kho-
meini, Down with Pahlavi. A large banner appeared from one of the
main buildings with these words written on it in red: Remember June
5, 1963, the day when those emancipated human beings, Khomeini and
his companions, rose up against tyranny!
The police and SAVAK attacked the seminary from their barracks
outside the campus with water cannons and tear gas. They blocked the
streets leading to the seminary, containing the students to the campus
courtyard and preventing people on the outside from joining in. The skir-
mishes continued overnight. Rumors traveled throughout the city that the
police had violated the sacred grounds of the seminary. More people tried
to take part in the students rescue from the police siege. One of the
young students addressed the people outside the walls of the campus:
People! We are your children. We have risen up to defend Islam and

the Quran. We want to be free from the yoke of [the Shahs] tyranny
and to be independent from the American and Israeli colonialism. We
defend the rights of the downtrodden and the oppressed. The Police!
You are our brothers, our target is the bloodthirsty regime of Pahlavi,
not you!8
The students chanted Down with the Pahlavi regime, The divine will
triumph over the evil, and Whoever holds up a Quran, is sent to prison
from now on. A red flag appeared on one of the domes of Imam Hos-
sein Mosque, the tallest building on campus. Although the color red has
its own significance in Shiite religio-political rituals, the regime publi-
cized the act as a sign of communist infiltration. On the third day of the
protests, more red flags appeared on seminary buildings and minarets.
One seminary student from Isfahan proclaimed: We want people in all
corners of the city to witness that we intend to continue the path of
Imam Hossein with our blood.9
Around four oclock in the afternoon, Qoms police chief autho-
rized anti-riot security and SAVAK agents to enter the campus and to
end the disturbances. Before the raid, the police chief, Colonel Javadi,
addressed the protesters inside the school: What is your real motiva-
tion for raising a red banner? Have you ever thought why the color red
is used here? Do you not know what objectives those behind this follow?
Bring them down and return to your quarters. No harm will be done to
you if you follow our directives. The raid was brutal and indiscrimi-
nate. Witnesses reported that students were thrown off the roofs to the
courtyard. The police struck the protestors violently with electric batons
and punched and kicked the wounded. They arrested more than 350
people, who later reported that, while in police custody, they were
beaten mercilessly.10
Still believing that communists posed the main threat to the stabil-
ity of the regime, the state-controlled media presented the riots as a
failed attempt by Islamic-Marxists to foment unrest in the holy city of
Qom. Kayhan, a Tehran newspaper, reported:
The detainees [of the Qom riots] have confessed that they were distrib-
uting pamphlets published by foreign terrorist groups. They admitted
that they were spreading Islamic-Marxist propaganda... and that they
are against the principles of the Resurrection Party. The arrested protes-
tors had put on clerical robes and infiltrated the clergy in order to
advance their anti-national and subversive agenda.... When the security
forces tried to restore order, they attacked the police with rocks and
clubs. They shouted communist slogans and carried red flags.11
Shia clerics had a century-old history of political activism in Iran. Although

high-ranking ayatollahs seldom violated the dominant philosophy of
political quietism in the seminaries, those who did always found signifi-
cant support among the younger generation of seminary students who
often came from the countryside and working-class families. Despite that
fact, the regime always attributed social unrest to communists. In the
mind of the secret police and the regimes propaganda machine, not only
did linking the protests to communist conspiracy discredit it in the eyes
of the religious masses, it further justified the regimes atrocities and
ensured support in the Cold War mentality of its American and Euro-
pean allies.
Calling the Qom protests of 1975 a communist conspiracy also forced
the grand ayatollahs to issue statements condemning communism. Only
one day after the seminary campus was cleaned up from days of riots, the
three most influential ayatollahs tried to distance themselves from the
unrest. Ayatollah Golpaygani declared: The newspapers have published
trumped up accusations against the clergy. I refute these accusations
categorically. In the sacred realm of Shiism, there are no sympathies for
communist ideas.12 Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari, one of the most
influential sources of emulation, also issued a statement emphasizing that
the Shia clergy and the seminaries have irreconcilable differences with
communism and materialism. Those students arrested during the unrest
in Qom have no communist sympathies. I deny all such assertions in the
newspapers.13 Fear of communist infiltration forced many high-ranking
clerics to wonder about the political aspirations of the younger genera-
tion of seminary students. One ayatollah admitted that the issue of rais-
ing a red flag forced many grand ayatollahs not to take any serious steps
toward securing the release of the students.14
In retrospect, the 1975 protests were the first signs of an emergent
Shii revolutionary drama. Hitherto, the majority of the sources of emu-
lation objected to the dominant culture industry that promoted the
unimpeded westernization of society. But the question of monarchical
legitimacy seldom entered their critical discourse. Even Ayatollah Kho-
meini did not question the legitimacy of monarchy until during his exile
in Najaf in the 1970s. In June 1975 the grand ayatollahs in Qom and
Mashhad sensed the specter of a distinct transformation. And indeed, a
generation motivated by Ali Shariatis (193377) emancipatory theology
was gathering force to step out of the seminary quarters and onto the
unknown grounds of an emerging revolutionary movement.15
With the exception of Ayatollah Khomeini, all the grand ayatollahs
viewed Shariatis revolutionary discourse with suspicion. A young Paris-
educated sociologist from a famous devout family in the holy city of
Mashhad, Shariati castigated the clergy for their inaction against tyr-
anny. He argued that the clergy had turned Islam into a religion of
superstition and deception. He advanced a theology in which prayer and
politics, submission and subversion, mystical seclusion and revolution
conjoin in a struggle for justice. He called his theology the Alavid Shiism,
Shiism of action, of resistance, of martyrdom, as opposed to the clerical
stagnant Safavid Shiism of the court, of the ceremonial and otherworldly
concerns. The grand ayatollahs in Qom knew that Shariatis writing
colored that red flag flying on top of the seminary minarets.
University campuses in Iran, particularly after the CIA-designed
coup that toppled the nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq
in 1953, had always been a theater of student protests. These protests
transformed major campuses (particularly Tehran University, Tehran
Polytechnic, and Aryamehr Technical University, along with the univer-
sities of Mashhad, Tabriz, Isfahan, and Shiraz) into a battleground between
dissident students and riot police. But the university security forces often
would contain these rallies within the university premises, and students
seldom could break out of the police blockade and spread the demon-
strations out onto the city streets.
The other major organization that advocated urban guerrilla warfare
against the regime, Mojahedin-e Khalq-e Iran (Iranian Peoples Moja-
hedin), was also in disarray after a bloody internal power struggle between
its Marxist faction and its Islamist faction. On June 19, 1977, Ali Shariati,
who was claimed by the Mojahedin as their spiritual leader, died in En-
gland of a heart attack. His death was blamed on SAVAK, and soon there-
after he would become the martyred teacher of the revolution.
The Shah now turned to his imperial ambitions of reviving the ancient
Persian Empire. With the elimination of major opposition organizations
complete, and under pressure from his Western allies, the Shah began a
hesitant policy of political liberalization. The policy was primarily focused
on improving the condition of prisons and gradually releasing those
who had either served their terms or commuting their sentences. The
majority of these prisoners were journalists, poets, novelists, and other
dissidents with Left tendencies, mostly Marxist but also Islamist. This
was to prove a major miscalculation on the Shahs part.
The Ten Nights at the Goethe Institute

The first social signs of changes happened in October 1977, when post-
ers and fliers appeared on university campuses announcing ten nights of
poetry reading sponsored by the Goethe Institute in Tehran. The newly
revived Iranian Writers Association organized the events for October
1119. This appeared to be the first real test of the limits of freedoms
that the regime was willing to tolerate. More than sixty writers and poets
were scheduled to speak. The organizers, who came from various polit-
ical and ideological backgrounds, assured the German director of the
institute, Hans Becker,16 that the gathering was going to be just a cul-
tural event. The Goethe Institute had a history of sponsoring Persian
poetry nights, and the organizers had no difficulty persuading Becker
that they had no political intentions except asking the government for
the formal recognition of their association.17
The Writers Association was formed in 1968 by a diverse group of
writers and social critics and commentators. The main objective of the
association was to work within the legal frame of the time and defend
the freedoms that were guaranteed in the constitution. When for the
first time a group of writers filed for a legal status in June 1968, their
application was denied based on a report prepared by SAVAK. The report
concluded: The members of this association are the same people who
have been investigated before. Based on our records, they have socialist
sympathies and dissident ideas. Therefore, based on section 312, the
establishment of such an association with that type of membership is not
recommended. In another document around the same time, SAVAK
reiterates that the Writers Association is illegal and its members are
disturbed individuals with communist, socialist, and extremist tendencies.
They intend to influence the youth with their propaganda and hence we
have objected to its legalization.18
In early 1977, with the changes in the political atmosphere, a number
of writers and poets began a letter-writing campaign to revive the asso-
ciation. In a letter dated June 12, 1977, more than forty writers signed a
petition to Prime Minister Hoveyda, demanding permission to resume
their legal activities within the frame of their constitutional rights, estab-
lish a club for social gatherings, and publish a journal.19 The letter to the
prime minister was also translated and sent to reputable international
literary magazines and journals with the hope that it would generate sup-
port among influential writers around the world. Although government
policy toward the association did not change, the letter, published in
Europe and the United States, brought attention to the plight of the
Iranian writers. In a letter addressed to the prime minister, the president
of PEN, Richard Howard, condemned the repressive policies of the
government and asked the administration to respect the freedom of ex-
pression in Iran. The international attention forced the Iranian prime
minister, who fancied himself a sophisticated man of culture, to respond
in a public forum. In a speech to the Iranian radio and television club,
Hoveyda declared: We all desire to live in a country in which the free-
dom of expression is respected, so long as it does not undermine the
very being of our nation.20
The prime ministers response emboldened the writers. Two weeks
after his televised comments, the association issued a more poignant
statement about the situation of the press and publishing in Iran. This
time the number of signatories rose from forty to ninety-eight. Consid-
ering how closed public display of discontent had been since the 1953
coup, these statements generated a sense of courage and boldness among
Iranian intellectuals. As Mahmoud Enayat, one of the most respected
Iranian journalists, reminisced, Although the statements were quite
moderate, they left a significant mark. There was nothing radical about
what those writers stated. They only protested the prevailing policy of
censorship, without even criticizing the regime. But that dispassionate
objection, which was unprecedented since 1953, generated passionate
reverberation [among Iranian intellectuals].21
In August 1977, after thirteen years of service, the Shah sacked
Hoveyda and replaced him with a more technocratic and liberal-minded
administration led by Jamshid Amuzegar. The changes coincided with
slum dwellers riots against forced evictions in neighborhoods in the
southern and western edges of Tehran. When the city sent in bulldozers
to level their accommodations, they resisted and vandalized police vehi-
cles. Although the riots were effectively suppressed, they further re-
vealed the discord between the Shahs discourse of Iran as the Gate of
the Great Civilization and the realities of social and political life in the
country.
It was under these circumstances that the Writers Association seized
the opportunity and stepped out of its immediate milieu to organize ten
nights of poetry reading at the Goethe Institute in Tehran. By all accounts,
no one anticipated the massive turnout for a few nights of poetry recita-
tion. More than five thousand people, mostly university students, attended
the first night on October 11. When the word spread that, despite heavy
security presence, the grounds of the institutes garden were protected
by diplomatic immunity, the crowd doubled in size for the second night.
Even heavy rain did not discourage the audience from sitting in the open
for hours in an anxious environment to hear a few lines of poetry and
commentary. For the first four nights, every speaker respected the agree-
ment that they would not politicize the event, instead maintaining its
literary theme, albeit with marked political innuendo. The unspoken were
the most important words that the crowd heard during the first nights.
That, however, changed on the fifth night. Said Soltanpour, who was
just released from prison as part of the new liberalization policy, broke
the contract and openly condemned the tyrannical regime. One of the
organizers of the event remembers that all his poems were inspired by
guerrilla warfare: bombs, explosions, and hand grenades. People were
very receptive and punctuated his reading with their applause. He was
agitated and showed no interest in leaving the stage.22 Here is a passage
from the first poem Soltanpour recited:
The Ghazal of Our Times
A song of blood grew in one uproar after another,

thunderous it became
The earth took another color, and time,
how colorful it became
The eyes of every seeking star, searching in blood,

A lightening of rage and a dagger in the heart of the night,
it became
[...]
At the nights darkness the trigger of the sun was pulled,
A mountain of fire and blood rose like a wave,
Our desire it became,
The beloved whom they call the red sedition,

Found our path in darkness of the night,
Our leader it became.23
Despite the increasing tension during the event, The Ten Nights of
the Goethe Institute concluded without a major incident. Messages of
support for the Writers Association poured in from around the world.
Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir lent their support with a letter
signed by a long list of French intellectuals, including Roland Barthes,
Michel Ronchant, Louis Althusser, Louis Aragon, Pierre-Flix Guattari,
Hlne Parmelin, Claude Mauriac, and many others. Michel Foucault
also signed the letter. This was Foucaults first encounter with the situa-
tion in Iran, an encounter that soon would turn for him into a signifi-
cant intellectual and political project.24
The success of the Writers Association encouraged other associa-
tions such as the Association of Iranian Lawyers and the Iranian Com-
mittee for the Defense of Freedom and Human Rights to take a measured
advantage of the emerging political opening in the country. They orga-
nized letter-writing campaigns to government officials and international
organizations for the recognition of their rights.
Students of different universities in Tehran organized similar events
for the members of the Writers Association on their respective campuses.
The event at Tehran Technical University of Aryamehr, on November
16, 1977, became violent, and the university police arrested a number of
students. The audience protested the arrests and staged a sit-in inside
the athletics hall of the university. After twenty-four hours of negotia-
tion, the police agreed to release the arrested students if the demonstra-
tors dispersed. The crowd walked out of the university in silence, but a
larger crowd joined them on the streets and turned the walk into an im-
pressive rally of ten to fifteen thousand. The young protestors shouted
Death to the fascist regime, Unity, struggle, victory, Death to the
Shah. A movement that began as an attempt for legal recognition of the
Writers Association had now turned into a full-blown antiregime protest
on a major street (incidentally, called Eisenhower) in Tehran.
At the same time, Iranian students in the United States staged a
massive protest against the Shahs visit in front of the White House.
Despite the strong police presence, the students successfully disrupted
the ceremony on the White House lawn. The police used tear gas but
wind blew it toward the White House and gave a number of reporters
the opportunity to take pictures of the Shah and President Carter in tears.
The banners in front of the White House read: Mr. Human Rights
Meets the King of Torture!
A commonplace view considers the Goethe poetry nights to be the
precursor of the revolutionary movement that began a few months later.
But, as Javad Taleei, one of the organizers and a participant in the event
recalls, one should not forget that during the poetry reading nights, and
even for months after that, we thought that the relative economic pros-
perity that the petro-dollar had afforded the country could not be sus-
tained without some level of political openness. But at the time, no one
could imagine that Iran would witness a revolution in a near future. Dur-
ing that period we wanted a reformed state structure and a guarantee of
political freedom. At the time in political rallies one could not hear the
name of Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the future events that change the
direction of the movement toward a revolutionary path.25
Indeed, the revolutionary movement unfolded in a different series
of events that occurred outside the milieu of political and intellectual
circles whose central agenda was to restore the monarchy to its true con-
stitutional roots. With the exception of the radical guerilla movement,
whose operational capacity SAVAK had already destroyed, other politi-
cal actors (i.e., the liberals of the National Front and Freedom Move-
ment and communists of the Tudeh Party) followed the constitutional
motto Let the king reign but not govern!
The Demise of Mustafa Khomeini and the Revolutionary Movement

The other important event in October 1977 was the death of Ayatollah
Khomeinis forty-seven-year-old son, Mustafa, who was also exiled with
his father in Najaf, Iraq. Like all other untimely deaths of political figures,
dissident religious authorities attributed Mustafa Khomeinis death to a
Figure 1. Front page of Resistance, a publication of the Iranian Students

Association, USA, vol. 5, no. 1, December 1977. Courtesy of Taraneh Hemami.
SAVAK conspiracy. Despite the fact that it quickly became an accepted

fact that SAVAK agents had poisoned Mustafa, Ayatollah Khomeini him-
self downplayed the conspiracy theory in his message and treated the
unfortunate demise of his son as Divine expediency. He further called
his loss a small part of the greater misery to which the Muslim nation
is subjected.26 Mustafas death created another opportunity for the mil-
itant clerics to mobilize the crowd in the seminaries and mosques across
the country. Without exception, all the memorial services became sites
of protest against the regime. A SAVAK report indicated that more than
six thousand people crowded into the main mosque in Qom, chanting
Long live Khomeini. SAVAK agents filed similar reports in the cit-
ies of Yazd, Tabriz, Isfahan, Mashhad, and Tehran. In almost all cases,
they highlighted the fact that the memorial services were overtly anti-
establishment with a strong presence of subversive elements.27
A high-profile service was held in Ark Mosque in Tehran. Mehdi
Bazargan, the future head of the postrevolutionary provisional govern-
ment, later recalled:
No one before had seen a memorial service like this. An overwhelming
crowd had packed all the prayer spaces indoors; the courtyard, balco-
nies, rooftops of all surrounding buildings; and all the streets near the
mosque. The police had given up the possibility of crowd control. But
everything was orderly. All those people had responded to an invita-
tion that was distributed a day earlier with signatures from national-
ists, intellectuals, clerics, and bazaar merchants in alphabetical order
Figure 2. Mustafa Khomeini, walking behind his father (first on the left) to
Imam Alis shrine in Najaf (1965). Source: Islamic Revolution Documentation
Center, The Anniversary of Mustafa Khomeinis Martyrdom: Commemorative Photo
Album, November 2011.
without titles or designation. This was quite a meaningful and chal-
lenging task. That gathering demonstrated the willingness of many
groups with different political tendencies to unite under the leadership
of Ayatollah Khomeini, that militant ruhani.28
Dariush Homayoun, the Shahs influential minister of intelligence, aptly

observed that the congregation after the death of Khomeinis son in Ark
Mosque became a point of convergence between progressive liberals,
the National Front, and the Left. With the exception of the government
figures, every significant political personality was there. It was clear that
the religious leadership had successfully mobilized all these [oppositional]
forces.29
Whereas the 1975 riots in Qom and Mashhad failed to spread across
the country, memorial services for Mustafa Khomeini in 1977 immedi-
ately became a nationwide rallying point against the Pahlavi regime.30
Unlike the reformist undertone of the letter-writing campaigns led by
the Writers and Lawyers Associations, these gatherings struck an un-
compromising tone, holding the regime responsible for Mustafas death.
His death also brought a new form of alliance among university students
(both inside and outside the country), religious institutions, and the
Bazaar. A SAVAK report indicated that a minute of silence in honor of
Mustafa Khomeini was observed simultaneously on major university
campuses in Tehran. That kind of coordinated mobilization alerted the
regime intelligence services to networks that operated undetected by
their agents.31
In the same report, a SAVAK field agent stated that the cassette tapes
of memorial sermons from different cities were now being distributed
openly in the street of Qom. More than fifty thousand participated in
the commemoration of Mustafa Khomeini held in Qom on the seventh
day after his death.32 An informal grassroots network called shabakeh-ey
payam-resani nehzat Imam Khomeini (a network distributing Imam
Khomeinis messages) was formed. The main objectives of this network
were to spread the name and the leadership of Khomeini, normalize pub-
lic expressions of discontent with the Pahlavi regime, generate a trans-
national interest in Khomeinis movement, create unity under Khomeinis
leadership, and intensify a campaign against the SAVAK and regimes
intelligence network.33
Figure 3. SAVAK report on Mustafa Khomeinis
memorial service in the Imam Hussein Mosque in
Tehran, October 1977. The report indicates that more
than 150 members of the clergy participated in the
ceremony. The speakers, it is reported, openly praised
Ayatollah Khomeini to a receptive crowd. One of the
speakers (A. Hejazi) promised the return of the Ayatollah
soon. Source: Islamic Revolution Documentation
Center, The Anniversary of Mustafa Khomeinis Martyrdom:
Commemorative Photo Album, November 2011.
Mustafa Khomeinis death set in motion a cycle of fortieth day
mourning, which defined the basic rhythm of the revolutionary move-
ment for the ensuing fourteen months. After the fortieth day memorial
service for Mustafa Khomeini, the government sent those prominent reli-
gious figures who delivered the sermons into domestic exile in remote
towns with inclement environments. But these exiles also coincided with
the beginning of the month of Moharram, a month with the most symbolic
significance in Shiite Islam for struggle against oppression and tyranny.
Every year during the month of Moharram people of all walks of life
organize elaborate processions of Ashura, mourning the martyrdom of
Imam Hussein in Karbala in 680 CE. Imam Hussein refused to pledge
allegiance to the Umayyad caliph Yazid and revolted against his tyran
nical rule. Ali Shariati had already rearticulated the entire history of
Shiism based on the martyrdom of Imam Hussein as the history of strug-
gle between the oppressed and the oppressor, between the selfless acts
of emancipation against forces of tyranny and despotism. Now, Shariatis
revolutionary theology had found a concrete expression on the streets of
Iranian cities. For the very first time in recent history, with the begin-
ning of the month of Moharram, the self-flagellating crowd of mourn-
ers in front of Hosseinieh Ershad, a lecture hall and religious complex
in which Shariati delivered most of his fiery speeches, chanted political
slogans against the Shah. On December 21, 1977, a crowd of a few hun-
dred called the Shah the Yazid of the time and proclaimed their readi-
ness for Hussein-like martyrdom against his tyranny.34 In the month of
Moharram, during the winter of 197778, Imam Husseins historical bat-
tle of Karbala against the despotic Yazid began to be reenacted in the
neighborhoods in major Iranian cities. Every day is Ashura, every land
is Karbala became the slogan that advanced the revolutionary move-
ments struggle for justice with a religio/transhistorical fervor. With
these religious markers, the revolution unfolded like a passion play of
Imam Husseins martyrdom. The events, like those passion plays, rap-
idly eroded the distinction between the spectators and the actors.
Toward the end of 1977, when Jimmy Carter arrived in Tehran for
a state visit, the general view was still that all that unrest was just another
passing moment of discontent rather than the beginning of a sustained
revolutionary movement that would soon topple the Shah. But that per-
ception was rapidly changing.
The Red and Black Colonialism
Responding to the growing anti-Shah rallies and open enthusiasm for a
return of Ayatollah Khomeini, on January 7, 1978, an editorial column
appeared in a state-owned newspaper, Ettelaat, entitled Iran and the
Red and Black Colonialism. The color scheme of the op-ed referred to
an apparent collaboration between communists and Islamists against the
regime. These days, the essay began, during the month of Moharram,
once more we are alerted toward the unity of black and red, or the old
and new colonialism. The editorial asserted that Irans unprecedented
social and economic progress under the leadership of the Shah had made
colonial powers scramble to restore their old influence in the country.
The author, who used a pseudonym, condemned the Iranian Tudeh Party
for acting in the interest of the (new colonial) Soviet expansionist ambi-
tions. He furthermore exploited a commonplace belief about the British
influence in the clerical establishment to assert that the new demands
for Khomeinis return were a desperate attempt by an old imperial power
to regain its lost significance.
Undoubtedly, the main objective of the editorial was the defamation
of Khomeini. Highlighting the importance of the White Revolution of
1963, which instituted a new policy of land reform and woman suffrage,
the author called those who rose against the reforms reactionaries,
convened under the leadership of Khomeini, who were afraid of losing
their old privileges.
This man has a suspicious background and ties with the most reaction-
ary elements of the old colonialism. He lacked reputation among the
respected clerics and was looking for an opportunity to gain notoriety
through political adventurism. Ruhollah Khomeini was the perfect
candidate to realize the alliance between red and black reactionaries.
He was responsible for the shameful events of June 5, 1963 [which led
to his exile].35
The anonymous columnist also claimed that [Khomeinis] associates

know him as the Indian Sayyed. The point of this baseless reference to
Khomeinis Indian origins was to insinuate a British connection that had
informed his political project. This calculated attack met with fierce reac-
tion from all religious centers around the country. In two days of violent
protests in Qom, and later in Mashhad, the security forces opened fire
and killed scores of people. The Freedom Movement, led by Mehdi
Bazargan, announced that more than 100 demonstrators were killed, 500
suffered from gunshot wounds, and more than 1,400 were arrested in
two days of riots in Qom and Mashhad.36 The bazaars in Isfahan, Tabriz,
Yazd, Mashhad, Ahvaz, and many other towns closed down shops in
protest of the op-ed and the ensuing savagery of the security forces.
Grand Ayatollahs in Qom and Mashhad seminaries suspended their
classes and demanded an apology from the government for insulting the
integrity of the clergy and calling its revered personalities agents of Brit-
ish imperialism.
After the January 1978 riots in Qom, the revolutionary movement
began a sustained expansion throughout the country. From only a few
weeks earlier when voices of discontent were seldom heard on the streets
of any city, now the country only existed via a revolutionary praxis. Vast
numbers of Iranian students abroad turned the revolution from its early
stages into a transnational event and a source of aspiration for revolu-
tionaries around the globe.
From these very early days, it became evident that a Shii-Islamic
symbolism had offered the movement a revolutionary ardor and turned
it into an all-embracing force that perpetuated its motion through reli-
gious rites and rituals. No one understood this better than Ayatollah
Khomeini. He used his folk rhetoric to weave an Islamic revolutionary
sensation into the very fabric of a potent anticolonial discourse. He spoke
with an inclusive tone without ever relinquishing the Islamic character
of the militant movement, the leadership of which he had masterfully
claimed. His message commemorating the fortieth day of the Qom mas-
sacre is just one example of how he used his effective clerical oratory to
incite a revolutionary zeal.
As I speak to you today, many big cities such as Tehran, Tabriz, Mash-
had, Isfahan, have come to a standstill. Most businesses are closed and
universities are on strike. The target of all these protests is one man:
the Shah. People have recognized that the Shah is guilty of inflicting
this misery upon the nation. They knew, but they have now found the
courage to overcome that barrier of fear.
... Today, forty days has passed from the time that they brutally
massacred our devout seminarians. How many tears should our people
shed over the death of their youth? Our brave nation now stands with
empty hands and sorrowful hearts united against the agents of the
regime, resisting in every alley, on every street corner. Our people have
proven that we are alive, not dead.
... Qom Seminary has revived Islam. Our respected ulama have
proven wrong those who believed that what we promote is the opiate
of the masses, that we collaborate with the British and other colonial
powers. The colonialists, the British, the Germans, and the Soviets,
propagated all this that the seminaries are the place of advocacy for
backwardness. They called religion the opiate of the masses, because
they knew how active and vibrant Islam is.
... A Muslim who is oblivious toward the concerns of others is
not a Muslim.... Islam is a religion that speaks to the problems of
Muslims.... How can we remain silent when they kill our youth? That
is not the manner of Islam. Should we be content with all these atroc-
ities? We must change ourselves.37
While students at university campuses and religious centers, bazaar

merchants, and sympathetic imams of major mosques around the coun-
try planned for commemoration rallies of the Qom massacre in more
than ten cities, only in Tabriz did the events turn violent and riots break
out in all parts of the city. Responding to an invitation by a dissident
cleric and a student of Ruhollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Qazi Tabatabaei,
an estimated fifty thousand people gathered inside and in front of Mirza
Yusef Mosque in Tabriz. The growing number of mourners/protestors
and the radicalization of the speeches inside the mosque forced the police
to open fire on the crowd. The news traveled fast around the city, and
riots broke out in several neighborhoods. People torched and ransacked
government buildings, banks, and police stations. In a pamphlet pub-
lished a week after the uprising, Militant Muslim Students of Tabriz Uni-
versity claimed that the demonstrators burned to the ground 62 banks
and 12 state office buildings. They further wrecked 162 government
buildings and 97 banks and 7 movie theaters. Not a single place was
looted. The demonstrators trashed the banks but did not touch a single
bill. Many witnesses reported that in the midst of that violence and chaos
an incredible discipline prevailed. The students claimed that more than
four hundred people were killed during the two-day unrest. Another writer
from Tehran reported that all entrances to the city are closed, Tabriz is
practically under martial law and no one is allowed to enter or exit the
city. The number of the dead is now passed a thousand.38 For the first
time, after the massacre in Tabriz, the faculty of Qom Seminary issued
a joint statement denouncing the massacre. Although the statement fell
short of calling for the overthrow of the regime, it offered condolences
to Ayatollah Khomeini, thus recognizing him as the leader of the resis-
tance movement.39
The regime continued its effort to contain the revolutionary move-
ment by characterizing it as a communist conspiracy. Holaku Rambod,
one of the main ideologues of the Shahs Resurrection Party, wondered:
It is not quite clear when and from which border the perpetrators of
Tabriz sedition entered Iran. Two days later he claimed: Known com-
munists were responsible for dragging Tabriz into mayhem. Jafarian,
another spokesperson of the party, reiterated that the rioters who set
the city ablaze were not from Tabriz. The Shah himself remained defi-
ant and in denial. We will continue our policy of maximum freedom,
he addressed a crowd in a stadium in Tehran one week later, because
the foundation of the Shah and the Nation Revolution is so strong that
the decaying remains of the black and red unholy alliance cannot shake
it.40 However, in retrospect, the Shah acknowledged that the only con-
spiracy that undermined the authority of his repressive machine was the
creative use of religious symbols and rituals. He wrote:
Based on Islamic rituals, on the fortieth day of passing, the parents and
close relatives of the dead would go to the gravesite of their loved one.
I do not believe, before these events, anyone had exploited someones
death so shamelessly for political gains.41
After the Tabriz massacre, in coordinated messages, a group of high-

ranking clerics declared the upcoming Persian new year on March 20 a
day of national mourning. Their statement began with a quatrain:
On the day that the Divine commandments are violated,

there is no fest,
On the day that our source of emulation mourns,
there is no fest,
On the day that thousands of seekers of justice endure torture,
Our deserving leader bears the torment of exile,
there is no fest.42
In the same statement, the ulama asked the nation to commemorate the
bloody day in Tabriz on its fortieth day in small and large gatherings.
This time, on March 30, 1978, it was the city of Yazd that became the
scene of bloody clashes between more than twenty thousand demonstra-
tors and the anti-riot police. The opposition claimed that the security
forces had shot and killed more than one hundred people. The events in
Yazd marked the emergence of a new pulse in the revolutionary move-
ment. The mourning/protest cycle had found a life of its own. City after
city, town after town, marked in solidarity one anothers uprisings. Each
time, the slogans became more radical and less compromising. Immedi-
ately after the Yazd massacre, the newly established Association of Mili-
tant Clergy issued its manifesto calling for the overthrow of the Pahlavi
regime and the establishment of an Islamic government.43
By the late spring of 1978, while street protests widened, workers in
major industrial centers began to organize short-and long-term strikes.
On April 18, 1978, workers of Tabriz Industrial Machine Factory went on
strike against what they called the savagery of the regimes agents against
defenseless protestors.44 Students at major universities around the coun-
try boycotted classes and the bazaar shopkeepers closed their doors in
defiance to their respective cities police orders to keep them open.
In his first substantive interview with a major Western newspaper,
Ayatollah Khomeini explained his views of the revolutionary movement
and its objectives. Le Monde correspondent Lucien George met with the
ayatollah in his home in Najaf and described him as a determined, aus-
tere, pious leader under whose name Iranians had risen up against the
tyranny of the Shah. Georges description added to Khomeinis mystique
as a charismatic leader, selfless and ready to accept the consequences of
his action without fear and with dignity. In the introduction to his inter-
view, he wrote:
Khomeinis humble residence is situated in the bend of one of the nar-

row streets of Najaf where the houses are intricately mazelike in order
to protect them from the scorching rays of the sun. This residence is
like the dwellings of the poorest people of Najaf. In this humble dwell-
ing, there is no visible sign of the authority of the leaders of rebellions
or those of the opposition groups living in exile. If Ayatollah Khomeini
has the power to mobilize Iranians and stage an uprising, it undoubt-
edly stems from his power to influence and dominate their thinking.
This power, instead of decreasing subsequent to his banishment from
Iran, has increased tenfold.45
Despite the fact that the regime continued to blame foreign agents, com-
munists, and Islamic Marxists for the unrests, the Le Monde interview
provided a glimpse into the ideological intricacies of the emerging move-
ment and its leadership. By April 1978 Khomeini had already claimed
the mantle of the undisputed leader of the revolutionary movement.
In the following extended excerpt, Khomeini shows how he care-
fully crafted an uncompromising language that in its symbolic construct
and strategic demands spoke to a vast majority of Iranians and maintained
a global reach. He invented a revolutionary discourse that distressed a
majority of ayatollahs whose political quietism had dominated the semi-
naries for decades, out-paced the reformist demeanor of nationalist and
religious liberals, and was openly hostile to communists. Despite these
categorical distinctions Khomeini drew between his authority and alter-
native oppositional politics, others found no alternative but to accept his
leadership and unite under his banner.
Le Monde: The Shah accuses you of being against civilization and liv-
ing in the past. How would you answer this?
Khomeini: It is the Shah himself who is opposed to civilization, and
who is living in the past.... The Shah implements the policies of
the imperialists and attempts to keep Iran in a backward and retro
gressive state. The Shahs regime is autocratic.... It is because of
these undeniable facts that the Shah is attempting to invert the
matter of our opposition to his regime and accuse us of living in
the past and being against civilization.
Le Monde: What do you think about the term Islamic Marxism that
the regime often uses? Do you have any organizational link with
the radical leftist groups?
Khomeini: It is the Shah who has used this term and his associates who
repeat it. This is an erroneous concept full of inconsistencies, its
purpose being to discredit and extinguish the movement of our
Muslim people against his regime. Islam is based on monotheism
and the Oneness of God, which contradicts all forms of material-
ism. The term Islamic Marxism is a fiction. The Shah and his
propaganda machine invented this imaginary alliance between
black reactionaries and red saboteurs in order to plant fear in
Muslims hearts and sow the seeds of doubt in them. There has
never been an alliance between Muslims, who are campaigning
against the Shah, and Marxist elements.
Le Monde: What is your political agenda? Do you intend to overthrow
the regime? What sort of regime will you install in the place of
this one?
Khomeini: Our ideal goal is the establishment of an Islamic system of
government. Nevertheless, our first concern at present is to top-
ple this despotic regime. We should, at first, set up an authority
that would fulfill the basic needs of the people.
Le Monde: What do you mean by Islamic government? What naturally
comes to mind by that is the Ottoman Empire or Saudi Arabia.
Khomeini: The only point of reference for us is that of the period of
the Prophet and of Imam Ali.... The type of state that we shall
establish will certainly not be a monarchical regime. But what kind
of government we promote is outside the scope of this interview.46
While the overthrow of the Shah became the main demand of strik-
ers and demonstrators around the country, the ayatollahs in Qom con-
tinued to be cautious in their critique of the regime. In response to a
German television reporter who asked whether the Shah had to step down
or not, Ayatollah Shariatmadari maintained that it makes no difference
to us one way or the other. We want freedom. We want free parliamen-
tary elections. He repeated the old motto of the liberal constitutional-
ists Let the king reign but not govern.47 In another interview with
Claire Brire of Libration, he struck a chord of caution, particularly
against Khomeinis relentless call for the overthrow of the Shah: We
are only asking for the implementation of Islamic ordinances, justice,
freedom, and an unrestricted execution of the [existing] constitution.48
With the exception of two organizations, Fadaian and Mojahedin,
that promoted armed struggle against the regime through an urban guer-
rilla warfare, other major political parties followed a similar reformist
agenda in the earlier days of the revolutionary movement. Fadaian and
Mojahedin both were rendered ineffective since the last members of
their leadership were either killed or imprisoned by SAVAK. Although
they both enjoyed significant support among students and young urban
middle classes, they lacked organizational resources to influence the direc-
tion, content, and form of the revolutionary movement. Up to the point
that the uprisings around the country were still gathering revolutionary
vigor, the Tudeh communist party advocated checking the Shahs dicta-
torship, rather than pursuing a revolutionary overthrow of his regime.
Rather than reflecting the rapidly growing sentiments on the ground, the
headlines and editorials in Mardom (The People), the biweekly publica-
tion of the party, continued to promote a reformist agenda and the expan-
sion of Irans relation with the Soviet bloc. For example, in the March
20, 1978, issue of Mardom, the editors condemned the actions of a group
of dissident students who took over the Iranian embassy in East Berlin.
They called it a West German and imperialist conspiracy to damage
the relation between the German Democratic Republic and Iran.49
By the beginning of the Iranian New Year in March 1978, it had
become clear to the Shahs advisers that the growing unrest in the coun-
try was not heading toward another cul-de-sac. The movement was
vast, sustained, and radical. Its leadership on the ground was inconspic-
uous but organized. The Shah was forced to implement a new series of
political liberalization initiatives and a limited democracy project in
hopes of placating and diffusing the movement. He canceled his long-
awaited trip to Eastern Europe and tried to refashion himself as a reli-
gious man. He traveled to Mashhad, Irans holiest city, to pay tribute to
the holy Reza, the eighth Shiite imam. At the end of his pilgrimage, he
told the reporters that the source of the unrest in the country are two
groups: the radical Left and extreme Right. He warned the nation that
if the government fails to maintain peace and order, the country will
fall into the hands of the Tudeh party communists.50 A week later, he
sacked General Nassiri, the infamous head of SAVAK, and replaced him
with the fifty-seven-year-old General Moghaddam to carry out the
overhaul of one of the worlds most feared intelligence and security ser-
vices. To lend further support to General Moghaddam, the Shah also
introduced legislation called the expansion of democracy to the par-
liament on June 13, 1978.
None of these reforms received any traction with the public or drew
official notice by the religious authorities. The legislative reforms and,
more importantly, the perpetual rallies and strikes, emboldened the Law-
yers Guild and other professional associations to demand the expansion
and implementation of their constitutional rights of assembly and free-
dom of expression, the separation of the branches of the government,
and an independent judiciary to oversee the proposed reforms. These
associations letter-writing campaigns brought more international atten-
tion to the growing tension in Iran.
Centered around mosques, holy shrines, bazaars, and universities,
large and small demonstrations continued to destabilize the regime. The
dual policy of reform and suppression proved to be unsuccessful, and
this failure was brought out in the open by the declaration of martial law
in Isfahan on August 11, 1978. In a hastily drafted statement, the gov-
ernment announced:
Last night, a few saboteurs, who had no intention but to destroy the
city of Isfahan, demonstrated and vandalized public buildings and offices.
Therefore, with the recommendation of local authorities, the govern-
ment declares one month of martial law in order to protect the prop-
erty and livelihood of Isfahan residents. The government is committed
to continue its steadfast steps toward the expansion of freedoms, but it
will not tolerate the anti-Islamic acts of sabotage and disturbance of
the peace.51
Although martial law was only declared in Isfahan, for the first time, army
soldiers intervened directly in suppressing rallies in Shiraz, Ahvaz, Qom,
Mashhad, and Rafsanjan. While the government announced that the
declaration of martial law in Isfahan needed to be sanctioned by the par-
liament, in reality it was already instituted in many different cities around
the country. Despite the apparent allegiance of the demonstrators and
their local organizers to Ayatollah Khomeini, Isfahans chief military
administrator, General Naji, continued to lay the responsibility of the
unrest in the city on a band of insurgent Islamist-Marxists whose mis-
sion is to create chaos and destruction in the country.52
The midsummer of rising protests also coincided with the month of
Ramadan, which gave the revolutionary movement greater opportuni-
ties for mobilization and a more meaningful inspirational association with
Shii-Islamic symbolism. Observing Ramadan festivities, for the first time
since the recent movement had begun, mosques opened their doors to
host gatherings with explicit political tenor. SAVAK agents reported that
mosques imams played cassette tapes of Khomeinis sermons openly to
animated congregations. The intelligence field reports further frustrated
the beleaguered Shah.53 The month of Ramadan of 1978 turned mosques
into places of political organization, mass mobilization, and networking.
One mosque in particular operated as the clerical opposition headquar-
ters in Tehran.
Qoba Mosque54 is located a few blocks north of Irshad Islamic Cen-
ter, where Ali Shariati delivered most of his fiery political sermons to a
young generation of Muslim intellectuals. Shariatis penetrating oratory
made his anticolonial rhetoric effective and popular among university
and high school students. He turned Islam into a liberation theology to
reclaim it from both its torpid clerical guard and modern prejudices of
secularity.
The transfer of the center of Islamic resistance from Irshad to Qoba
Mosque served a symbolic as well as a real purpose: that the clergy now
had the desire and the ability to organize a mass movement to overthrow
the Shah and breathe a revolutionary spirit into the soul of Islam. Qobas
imam, Mohammad Mofatteh, lacked the kind of charisma and radicalism
that made Shariati the teacher of the revolution. But during the Rama-
dan (JulyAugust) of 1978, he invited emergent political and clerical
leaders of the revolutionary movement to deliver defiant sermons against
the Shah and in defense of their exiled leader. Mehdi Bazargan (the
future head of the provisional government), Mohammad Javad Bahonar
(the first clerical prime minister after the revolution, who was assassinated
in August 1981), Ali Khamenehi (the future president and supreme
leader), and many other influential figures spoke during Ramadan prayers
in Qoba Mosque.55
The declaration of martial law in Isfahan further radicalized the rev-
olutionary movement. Those who had hoped that the Shah could relin-
quish his authoritarian rule in order to save constitutional monarchy
began to realize that the movement existed sui generis and was headed
toward a full-blown revolution. The possibility of reform had vanished.
For the first time, street battles and marches found support among indus-
trial workers. Seventeen hundred workers in Behshahr Textile Factory
went on strike, demanding better work conditions and the right of col-
lective bargaining. The magnitude and scope of the movement rose vig-
orously. The grand ayatollahs in Qom and Mashhad found it increasingly
difficult to invite people for calm and advocate a resolution in which the
Shah could save his throne. Their dissatisfaction with Khomeinis uncom-
promising position, more and more, had to be kept inside the seminary
quarters. In a joint statement, the three most influential grand ayatollahs
Shariatmadari, Marashi, and Golpaipaniissued a statement asking the
regime to respect peoples legal and legitimate demands for freedom
and justice. The ayatollahs reprimanded the Shah for militarizing the
situation and leading the country toward inexorable violence.56
For his part, the Shah tried to strike a chord of appeasement with
promises of limited political reform and a gradual expansion of demo-
cratic institutions. He hoped that he could satisfy the leadership of the
liberal National Front and Liberation Movement, and the grand ayatol-
lahs of Qom and Mashhad, with a retreat to the basic premises of the
Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and relinquish his authoritarian rule
in order to save his reign. Mehdi Bazargan, the head of Liberation Move-
ment, prepared a message to Ayatollah Khomeini asking him to use his
authority to slow the pace of revolutionary demands and steer the tran-
sition of power toward a more guided and controlled path. He told
Khomeini: It is better to direct the sharp edge of the attack toward the
dictatorship [of the Shah] instead of his colonial supporters. We cannot
win fighting on two fronts. If we provoke Americans and Europeans, it
will reinforce their support for the Shah. Bazargan encouraged Kho-
meini to exploit the political opening that the Shah had augured and try
to change the regime through electoral politics.57 It is not clear whether
Khomeini ever saw this message or not, but he remained committed to
the revolutionary overthrow of the regime and tried to marginalize those
who toyed with the idea of reforming the monarchy.
A few days later, on August 19, 1978, the anniversary of the 1953
CIA-backed coup that toppled the Mosaddeq administration and restored
the Shahs regime, unknown assailants torched Rex Movie Theater in
the southern city of Abadan. Seven hundred people were locked in and
all the exit doors were blocked as the fire spread. Three hundred and
seventy-seven people charred to death and the rest were severely burned.
The prime minister and first deputy of the Resurrection Party, Jamshid
Amuzegar, blamed the opposition and those who are so removed from
any sense of humanity, faith, and religion for this savage act. In an un-
equivocal statement, Ayatollah Khomeini called the Shah responsible for
this horrendous crime. Will anyone else except the Shah and his sup-
porters benefit from this crime? The origin of this atrocity is the same
as all other mass killings of innocent people in the country.58
Although the true perpetrators of the Rex massacre remained at large,
the event itself completely burnt down remaining bridges for compromise.
While the reluctant grand ayatollahs inside the country continued their
cautious support of the protests, junior clerics advanced a bolder con-
demnation of the regime and called for a categorical end to monarchical
rule in Iran. In his statement, the revered Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari
declared: One can only compare this atrocity with crimes committed
by the Nazis and Fascists during World War II. But he hesitated to
hold the regime responsible. Instead, he chose his words carefully in the
hope that he could slow down the violence that was reaching the point
of no return. We are not certain what kind of calculated scheme and
devious plots are behind this tragedy. No matter who the responsible par-
ties are, without a shred of doubt such an ugly and shameful act only
shows its perpetuators barbarity and their utter lack of conscience.59 In
Tehran, on the same day, in an intrepid move, 122 junior clerics signed
their names under a statement that accused the regime of setting fire on
men, women, and children. They ended their short statement by warn-
ing the regime that the fire they have set soon will burn the oppressive
regime.60
The Black Friday

Toward the end of Ramadan, the cycle of seventh day and fortieth day
memorials had left the regime without plausible options as to how to
contain the spread of protests. The vicious cycle of more killings and mas-
sive political rallies of remembrance narrowed the possibility and legiti-
macy of a top-down reform project. The month of Ramadan and the
Shii rituals of remembrance also generated a remarkable space without
which diverse groups of people could not participate in the revolutionary
movement.
But the most important religio-political event was yet to come. Mus-
lims celebrate the end of the month of fasting on the last day of Rama-
dan with Eid-e Fitr, a day of celebration and reflection. In Iran of 1978,
any possibility of congregation, commemorative or celebratory, meant
another opportunity for political protest. After days of negotiation with
Tehrans clerical establishment and the Liberation Movement leadership,
the newly appointed government of Prime Minister Sharif-Emami agreed
to permit a peaceful prayer service in the Qaytariyeh area of the citys
northeast. Sharif-Emami had hoped that he could invest in the Qom
grand ayatollahs by persuading them that the nation was in peril and that
Khomeinis path would lead to the destruction of the country. Although
he found sympathetic ears in Qom and among liberal nationalists, no
one had the audacity to openly support his reform cabinet. Sharif-
Emami thought that he had scored a victory when the clerical negotia-
tors for the Fitr service agreed not to allow the radical elements to turn
the religious ceremony into a rally against the Shah.61
Ayatollah Khomeini remained undaunted and showed no concerns
about the negotiations in Tehran. He issued an unyielding statement on
the occasion of the Eid-e Fitr, asking the people not to comply with any
conciliatory gestures. Our Divine duties will not change, he declared,
after the month of Ramadan. Feisty rallies toward the realization of
Islamic goals are prayer rituals of all days and months.... Do not allow
the regime to deceive you with promises of reform, do not give them
that chance.... With your strikes and protests, make their savage acts
known to the world.62
No one anticipated the massive crowd that gathered on the hills of
Qaytariyeh in the morning of the Eid on September 4, 1978. Hundreds
of army and anti-riot police trucks surrounded the hills and were posi-
tioned along the twenty-kilometer route that the demonstrators planned
to march. Military helicopters circled the air, one of which carried the
Shah, who personally observed the crowd of a million with teary eyes.63
People met the soldiers with thousands of stems of carnations and roses,
truckloads of which appeared mysteriously during the march down the
street toward the main railway station in the southern edge of the city.
These shouts shook the city:
With Khomeinis orders, the movement continues!

Our movement is Hosseini, our leader is Khomeini!
Military is blameless, the Shah is shameless!
The silence of each Muslim, is a betrayal of the Quran!
Estimates varied significantly of how many people marched on that day

in Tehran, from tens of thousands to more than one million. One thing
was undisputed: in a symbolic and literal gesture, contiguous lines of
people connected the affluent north part of the city to the working-class
neighborhoods by the railway station in the south. That Monday dem-
onstration was the largest in the countrys history. Word spread at the
end of the rally that a second rally was planned for Thursday. The sec-
ond rally grew bigger and yet more radical.
Military join us!

The movement shall continue till the death of the king!
Shame on the Pahlavi Monarchy!
Long live the path of our martyrs!
The Thursday rally, which was organized by the newly established Asso-
ciation of Militant Clergy, ended at Shahyad Square on the western edge
of the city with a declaration that the movement will continue until the
fall of monarchy.64 Thousands of fliers were handed out: Tomorrow,
Friday, Jaleh Square.
Sharif-Emamis cabinet would represent a fleeting attempt to inhibit
the movement with conciliatory politics. Just a short two weeks earlier,
in his inauguration speech, he invited all parties to rise under the eternal
guiding light of the Quran and the precious teachings of Islam within
the constitutional law and save the nation.65 He commuted sentences
of high-ranking clerics, including Khomeinis brother, and promised that
he would soon form a national reconciliation government. But now, on
the eve of the second million-strong rally in one week, he abandoned his
placatory discourse and, in the late hours of the night on Thursday, Sep-
tember 7, declared martial law in Tehran, effective immediately.
Unaware of the declaration of martial law, from the early hours of
the morning people flooded Jaleh Square, this time on the east side of the
city. Tanks and armored vehicles were already in place in the square. Hun-
dreds of soldiers lined to prevent the growing mass to congregate. Army
helicopters with heavy machine guns pointing to the ground monitored
the situation. Military commanders ordered the people to disperse and
respect the martial law, which prohibited gatherings of more than three
individuals in public places. The celebratory and jubilant spirit of the two
earlier marches dissipated quickly. An air of anxiety and anger overtook
the square. The crowds refusal to disperse met first with shots of tear
gas and then live bullets directly fired into the densely occupied square.
Eyewitness accounts recounted the horror of hundreds being shot.
The bloodshed stunned the protestors. A state of incredulity gave rise to
Figure 4. The massacre of Black Friday, September 1978. Source: Islamic
Revolution Documentation Center.
rumors that the soldiers who shot people had blue eyes and blond hair.
Others claim that they overheard that the soldiers were speaking
Hebrew, and they were Israeli soldiers who shot people from the heli-
copters. Many reported that they saw with their own eyes that the sol-
diers refused to shoot, and in a number of cases they either shot themselves
or their commanders.66 But the most important and lasting depiction of
the massacre of what came to be known as Black Friday was the number
of people killed during the clashes. Despite the fact that the real number
of the dead was eighty-eight, the revolutionary narrative of the event
was shaped by a common belief that four to ten thousand were martyred
on that fateful day.
The Eid-e Fitr congregation and the ensuing rallies that led to Black
Friday, on the one hand, sealed the fate of the Shah, and on the other
hand, allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to establish himself as the undisputed
leader of the revolution. The events of that week turned the protests into
an uncompromising revolutionary movement, the demands of which
were articulated and put into motion with references to Shii-Islamic
symbols, rituals, and points of reference. By the end of the summer of
1978, Ayatollah Khomeini consolidated his leadership, and his militant
disciples inside the country had taken charge of the rhythm and pace of
the movement. Now confident of his incontestable authority, after the
Friday massacre Khomeini issued a statement closing the door to any
possibility of compromise and political solutions that were short of the
abolition of monarchy. Today, Khomeini declared, a garden of flow-
ers is blooming from the bosom of the Iranian nation. Today, I only see
courage and jubilance in every corner of the country.... The Iranian
nation! Be certain the victory belongs to you. With his characteristic
poise, Khomeini called on the soldiers to defy their commanders and join
the revolution of the people.
The patriotic military of Iran! You witnessed the love of the nation in
the way people showered the soldiers with kindness and flowers. You
are well aware of the fact that in order to sustain their oppression, those
plunderers have exploited you as the instruments of murder and cru-
elty. Join the other soldiers who have already deserted the Shah and are
now fighting on behalf of their nation against his tyranny. You the great
ulema of Islam and those political personalities who have not bowed
to the Shahs intimidations and have kept fear out of your hearts, you
symbolize the resilience and confidence of our nation. In these sensi-
tive moments, not only must you resist, you must also strengthen the
spirit of the people in their struggle against their enemies.67
The declaration of martial law in Tehran and eleven other cities turned
out to be an admission of the inability of the regime to fend off the revo-
lutionary tide. By the end of the summer of 1978, Khomeini spoke, and
was spoken of, as the uncontested leader of the revolutionary movement.
And that was the movement the French philosopher Michel Foucault
witnessed in Tehran. When he arrived in Tehran in September 1978,
there was no contention over the leadership of the revolution. Despite
their reluctance to sign on to a revolutionary struggle, the liberal nation-
alists (the National Front, the Freedom Movement, other prominent
members of the Lawyers Guild) had already realized the irrelevance of
their reformist agenda. The greatest casualty of Black Friday was the con-
stitutional monarchythe Shah could no longer reign or govern!
The ineffective Left, with its limited influence and marginal orga-
nizational power, found Khomeinis radicalism and his militant stance
against imperialism congruent with its own political agenda. Marxists,
Figure 5. Michel Foucault arriving in Tehran, September 1978. Photo courtesy

of Michel Setboun.
Figure 6. Rally in Tehran, December 1978. Source: Islamic Revolution

Documentation Center.
each with different justification, promoted and recognized the leadership

of Ayatollah Khomeini. With a vulgar understanding of revolutionary
politics and a crude appreciation of a materialist conception of historya
crudeness borne in part, no doubt, form the history of censorship and
brutal repression of their movementthe Left understood the revolu-
tion as a first teleological step toward a democratic transformation that
would inevitably lead to a proletarian dictatorship.
In this chapter, I have tried to show that in contrast to narratives of
stolen revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini ascertained his leadership from
the very moment that the anti-Shah protest became revolutionary in its
character and in its demands. In no practical or ideological sense did
other political parties and personalities enjoy the authority and influence
that Khomeini exercised over the emerging revolution from his home in
Najaf. The next chapter will turn to the question of how Foucault tried
to make sense of the unanimity and fearless determination he saw in Teh-
ran without subjecting it to the tropes of a linear progressive History.
2
how did foucault make
sense of the iranian
revolution?
The rebellious flight of a fountain
that cannot escape the earth
and is simply trying deliverance.
Ahmad Shamlou
Foucault was deeply engaged with the prisoners rights movement

through his work with the Groupe dInformation sur les Prisons. In 1977
two French lawyers who were involved in Iranian exilic politics brought
the issue of Iranian political prisoners to his attention. He also followed
the news about the Iranian Writers Associations plan to have ten nights
of poetry reading at the Goethe Institute in Tehran in October 1977.
He joined a group of influential French intellectuals and signed an open
letter in support of the association. His growing interest in Iranian affairs
coincided with his fascination with the idea of the philosopher-journalist
and the challenging idea of writing the history of the present. After fail-
ing to find any traction with French papers, Foucault approached the
Italian daily Corriere della Sera to write and edit a regular feature loosely
framed as Michel Foucault Investigates. The original plan was for him
to write a series on President Carters America. However, with his newly
acquired awareness of the growing political tension in Iran, in 1978 the
revolutionary events in Iran overtook this project. Foucault visited Iran
for the first time at the end of the summer of 1978 and for the second
time just a few weeks later in the fall of the same year.
Once he made the decision to travel to Iran, he began an intensive
course of reading on Islam and Iranian history. Perhaps the most signifi-
cant figure in influencing his reading list and connecting him to Iranian
55
56 | How Did Foucault Make Sense of the Iranian Revolution?
intellectual circles was Paul Vieille, the foremost French authority on the
anthropology and sociology of Iran. Through Vieille he met Abolhasan
Bani Sadr, who would become the first president of the Islamic Repub-
lic, and was encouraged to read the work of Ali Shariati, though at the
time only a limited number of his writings were available in French or
English. Works of Louis Massignon and his most famous disciple, Henry
Corbin, two towering figures of the French tradition of Islamic studies,
informed Foucaults comprehension of Islam. Both Massignon and (later)
Corbin tried to circumvent doctrinal Islam and its interpretive legalism
by emphasizing the significance of mysticism and Sufi traditions in Islam.
The weight Massignon and Corbin attributed to mystic, spiritual, and
ritualistic Islam left a considerable mark in Foucaults mind.
Massignons four-volume magnum opus, The Passion of al-Hallaj:
Mystic and Martyr of Islam, was exactly the type of scholarship that lent
Foucault the ideal type of Truth-seeking revolutionary, thousands of
concrete manifestations of which he later encountered on the streets of
Tehran. The Persian mystic Mansur al-Hallaj (858922) did not repre-
sent a typical Sufi master. But his execution, at the behest of Abbasi Caliph
al-Muqtadir, for the alleged heresy he committed with his famous man-
tra ana al-Haqq (I am the Truth), transformed him into the very image
of sacrificing life for the sanctity of truth. Following Massignon, whose
rendition of Islamic mysticism greatly influenced his own view of Islam,
Ali Shariati sought to promote Hallaj as a typical representative of
Islamic spirituality.1 Shariati took an important step further in infusing
Hallajs spirituality into his liberation theology and translating it into the
language of justice and emancipation. In a lecture delivered in 1968 in
Tehran, and translated to French and English in the mid-1970s, Shariati
marvels at Hallajs burning mind. It is known that Hallaj paced the
streets of Baghdad in the ninth century, holding his head between his
two hands while crying, Rebellion has taken me over, release me from
the fire which is burning within me. Then Shariati pauses and won-
ders: What if Iranian society consisted of 25 million Hallajs?
Such burnings are of a kind of spiritual insanity. If all of the individuals
of a society were to turn into [Hallaj], there would be life and there
would be liberty. There would be knowledge and learning as well as
power and stability; enemies would be destroyed and there would only
remain love for God.2
How Did Foucault Make Sense of the Iranian Revolution? | 57
Before leaving for Tehran, Foucault was predisposed to this Islam of mys-
tics and martyrs, despite the marginality of its practice in historical accounts
of Islam. But in Tehran of 1978, ten years after Shariati delivered those
numinous contemplations from his pulpit at Hosseinieh Ershad, the up-
rising of millions of Hallaj-like seekers of Truth no longer appeared as
the romantic fantasy of a utopian intellectual. Foucault witnessed the real-
ity of a nation in revolt and thus never questioned the centrality of the
kind of transformative spirituality that his reading of Islam evoked.
Foucault arrived in Tehran on September 10, 1978, two days after
the capital had been stopped cold by a week of massive demonstrations.
The first and second demonstrations had been peaceful and drew unprec-
edented numbers. According to some estimates, more than one million
people participated in the first, and hundreds of thousands more in the
second. The third demonstration, immediately after which Foucault
arrived in Tehran, known in the history of the Iranian Revolution as Black
Friday, marked a turning point in the revolutionary movement. Eighty-
eight people were massacred on Friday, September 8, mostly by heavy
machine gun shots fired from military helicopters.
The French philosopher revealed his unexpected awe in an interview
that was published in March 1979, one month after the collapse of the
monarchy:
When I arrived in Iran, immediately after the September [8, 1978,]
massacres, I said to myself that I was going to find a terrorized city,
because there had been four thousand dead. Now I cant say that I
found happy people, but there was an absence of fear and an intensity
of courage, or rather, the intensity that people were capable of when
danger, though still not removed, had already been transcended.3
Commenting on the unprecedented presence of the masses men,

women, young, old, children, disabled, the uprising of a whole popu
lationon the streets, Foucault describes how in Tehran he witnessed
a concrete manifestation of an old abstract concept in French political
philosophy:
Among the things that characterize this revolutionary event, there is the
fact that it has brought outand few people in history have had this
an absolutely collective will. The collective will is a political myth with
which jurists and philosophers try to analyze or to justify institutions,
etc. Its a theoretical tool: nobody has ever seen the collective will
and, personally, I thought that the collective will was like God, like the
soul, something one would never encounter. I dont know whether you
agree with me, but we met in Tehran and throughout Iran, the collec-
tive will of a people.4
Foucault turned the transformative moment he experienced during the

Iranian Revolution into a reflection and commentary on history. It is not
farfetched to think that he regarded himself as one of those new men
that the revolution created on the streets of Tehran. He also turned the
courage and the absence of fear he encountered in Tehran, I would like
to argue here, into an impetus and a possibility of seeing the world out-
side the dominant progressive narratives of the March of History.
In the Iranian Revolution, he saw an instance of his antiteleological
view of history. He understood the marching masses on the streets of
Tehran as the embodiment of what he called political spirituality, mak-
ing history through the transformation of the self. He prioritized the act
and experience of rebellion over the concerns about the outcome of the
revolutionary movement.
Teleological History
Foucault rejected all forms of developmentalist discourse, Marxian or
otherwise. Commonly, these views attributed the emergence of the rev-
olutionary movement in Iran to the contradictions emanating from the
Shahs modernization schemes. Rather than posing a conventional oppo-
sition between a particular past-orientation and a prescriptive future-
project, Foucault defined history as a way of reinventing the present
moment. This, he believed, was the distinct strength of the revolution.
What attracted him to the revolution was the ambiguity within which it
operated. Not ambiguity in its rejection of the Shah, but in its vision
of the future, in the lack of an affirmative and precise description of its
agenda. In addition to the religious character of the revolution, it was
this ambiguity that generated bewildering anxiety among Western intel-
lectuals, particularly among French observers long steeped in the national
discourse of a liberating lacet. In a gesture that characterized the militant
secularism of most French intellectuals in 1979, Claire Brire challenged
the basis for Foucaults enthusiasm for the Iranian Revolution:
The reaction Ive heard most often about Iran is that people dont
understand. When a movement is called revolutionary, people in the
West, including ourselves, always have the notion of progress, of some-
thing that is about to be transformed in the direction of progress. All
this is put into question by the religious phenomenon.... Now, I dont
know whether you managed, when you were in Iran, to determine, to
grasp the nature of that enormous religious confrontationI myself
found it very difficult. The Iranians themselves are swimming in that
ambiguity and have several levels of language, commitment, expres-
sion, etc.5
It is in response to this common teleological view that Foucault empha-

sizes the idea that a nations rebellion is a historical fact through which
subjectivity (not that of great men, but that of anyone) introduces itself
into history and gives it its life.6 Rather than making him skeptical of
the nature of the revolutionary movement in Iran, Foucault viewed the
fact that Iranians appeared to be swimming in ambiguity as an instance
of his own constitutive ambivalence toward history, to use Edward
Saids term.7
Writing history of the present from a genealogical perspective inevi-
tably generates moral anxieties of the Nietzschean sort. One needs to
grasp Foucaults writings on the Iranian Revolution in the context of his
general opposition to any ontology that contains teleological elements.
That is to say, he would be opposed to any presentation of a present
firmly rooted in a past orientation and a future projection. It is on exactly
this point that he reads the Iranian Revolution as a moment when his-
torical subjects refuse to subject themselves to History. Here Foucault
poses the problem of history as a paradox in which a deliberately opaque
quality runs through his reflections on the temporal situation of the rev-
olutionary actor. In the revolution he saw an important affirmation of
what he had already formulated many years earlier in his inaugural lec-
ture delivered on December 2, 1970.
We must not imagine that the world turns toward us a legible face
which we would have only to decipher; the world is not the accomplice
of our knowledge; there is no prediscursive providence which predis-
poses the world in our favor. We must conceive discourse as a violence
which we do to things, or in any case as a practice which we impose on
them.8
As Michiel Leezenberg observed, Foucault turned his reports on
the Iranian Revolution into a philosophical commentary on modernity.
Journalism, as a way of grasping what is in the process of happening, for
Foucault was a means of what he called reportages des idesthat is, jour-
nalism about ideas that are not contained within the boundaries of the
Enlightenment progressive schema. By emphasizing the significance of
ideas and how they give rise to collective movements of revolutionary
proportion, Foucault situated himself in opposition both to postmodern
incredulity toward all that is grand as well as to Marxian dogma of the
primacy of economy.9 He wrote:
Some say that the great ideologies are in the course of dying. The con-
temporary world, however, is burgeoning with ideas... One has to be
present at the birth of ideas and at the explosion of their force; not in
the books that pronounce them, but in the vent in which they manifest
their force, and in the struggles people wage for or against ideas.10
In a more sociological report, originally called The Shah and the

Dead Weight of Modernity, changed by the editors of Corriere della sera
to The Shah Is a Hundred Years behind the Times (published on Octo-
ber 1, 1978), Foucault situated the revolution not in any form of failed
project of modernity, but rather as evidence that it is possible to tran-
scend modernity and the spiritless world it has instituted. He writes that
he had been incessantly advised that Iran was going through a crisis of
modernization, and that a traditional society cannot and does not want
to follow [its] arrogant monarch in his attempt to compete with the
industrialized nations.11 The revolutionary events did not signify a
shrinking back in the face of modernization by extremely retrograde
elements, to which some commentators referred to as archaic fascism.12
But he argued that the Shah was hopelessly trying to preserve a Kemalist
modernization project envisioned in the 1920s by his father to fashion
the country into a European state. He ridiculed the liberal nationalists
ideas that Iran needed a modified modernization under a constitutional
regime with the motto Let the king reign but not govern. For him,
archaic was modernization itself, not the religious mode of the revolu-
tionary expression.
What is old here in Iran is the Shah. He is fifty years old and a hundred
years behind the times. He is of the age of the predatory monarchs. He
has the old-fashioned dream of opening his country through secular-
ization and industrialization. Today, it is his project of modernization,
his despotic weapons, and his system of corruption that are archaic. It
is the regime that is the archaism.13
Foucault recognized the competing interests of a variety of political par-

ties and tendencies. But at the same time, he highlighted what he called
the paradoxical effects of the revolutionary movementnamely, that the
revolt spread without splits or internal conflicts.14 As he pointed out,
the release of mostly Marxist political prisoners, the opening of the uni-
versities in the fall of 1978, and, most importantly, the strike of the work-
ers of the oil industry in the south, each could introduce irreconcilable
frictions into the revolutionary movement.15 But they did not. The polit-
ical calculations of competing factions remained dormant and did not
find expression in what he called the revolutionary experience itself.
In that sense, Foucault turned the revolutions ambiguity and lack of any
future plan from a point of unease into a source for creative possibilities.
Although Foucault endows the revolutionary movement with a col-
lective will and underplays class, gender, and ethnic contradictions, he
does so not at the expense of making politics effortless and uncompli-
cated. Quite to the contrary, he argues that something inhabits peoples
political will that is far greater and more substantive than political bat-
tles over a future constitution, over social issues, over foreign policy, or
over the replacement of officials. In a typical ironic sense, he argues
that political will is to prevent politics from gaining a foothold. Here
Foucault eschews his signature genealogical method to echo the escha-
tological temperament of the revolutionary subject itself.16 He argues:
It is a law of history that the simpler the peoples will, the more com-
plex the job of politicians. This is undoubtedly because politics is not
what it pretends to be, the expression of a collective will. Politics breathes
well only where this will is multiple, hesitant, confused, and obscure
even to itself.17
At a certain moment, he observes, without precipitating social or polit-

ical causes, the whole of the Iranian people were united in their opposi-
tion to the Shah. In several occasions in his reports, Foucault wondered
about an indefinable force that had transformed life within each indi-
vidual and united the Iranian body politic. What we witnessed, he
declared, was not the result of an alliance between various political
groups. Nor was it the result of a compromise between social classes....
Something quite different has happened. A phenomenon has traversed
the entire people and will one day stop. In a romantic evocation, Fou-
cault maintains that there was literally a light that lit up in all of them
and which bathed them all at the same time.18
Foucault conceptualized this phenomenon as political spirituality, a
force that asserts itself in a continuous enchantment of history. Political
spirituality appears here as an alternative to historical determinism.
For the people who inhabit this land, what it 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 Christian-
ity, a political spirituality. I can already hear the French laughing, but I
know that they are wrong.19
Foucault believed that the revolutionary movement in Iran, with its strug-
gle to present a different way of thinking about society and politics,
may offer the West the possibility of an exit from its own intellectual
exhaustion. We have to abandon, he conveys to an Iranian writer and
social critic after his first visit to Iran in September 1978, every dogmatic
principle and question one by one the validity of all the principles that
have been the source of oppression.... We have to construct another
political thought, another political imagination, and teach anew the vision
of a future.20
Although Foucault was right to propose that the revolutionary Iran
demanded a new way of thinking about the deep connection of religion
and politics, he was mistaken in thinking that the alternative based on
Islamic teachings in revolutionary Iran had taken nothing from West-
ern philosophy.21 He knew quite well that Ali Shariati advanced his
conception of Alavid Shiism, to which Foucault refers a number of times,
and his revolutionary historiography of Islam in dialogue with (along
with references to) French existential Marxism and German phenome-
nological philosophy and sociology. What Foucault identifies in Iran
could more accurately be defined as an idiosyncratic convergence of polit-
ical and religious views that formed a revolutionary ideology without a
definite association to Western conceptual commitments to History.
Political Spirituality
Although Foucault acknowledged that Shii Islam was the source of this
political spirituality, he did not conceive of it as a dogma or in a doctrinal
religious frame. He saw spirituality as a desire to liberate the body from
the prison house of the soul. In this typically Foucauldian inversion, he
intended to highlight the ways the body seceded from the normative
docility of the technologies of the self.22 This was not new territory for
Foucault. As Jeremy Carrette has argued, he grappled with the concept
of spirituality years before he encountered the Iranian Revolution.23
By spirituality, Foucault explained, I understand... that which
precisely refers to a subject acceding to a certain mode of being and to
the transformations which the subject must make of himself in order to
accede to this mode of being.24 He gives spirituality a corporeal mean-
ing, which he directly links to the care of the self. In his discussion of the
self in his later oeuvre, Foucault remains skeptical of the liberal rational
subject elicited by a governable moral order. Rather, he views the care
of the self as an ethical imperative wherein ethics is the kind of rela-
tionship you ought to have with yourself... how the individual is sup-
posed to constitute himself as a moral subject of his own actions.25 (I will
expand this argument in chapter 5.)
Although in his notion of spirituality one might detect traces of
Batailles conception of inner experience, and its mystical intimations, this
should not lead us to understand the act of transcendence inherent in
Foucaults notion of spirituality and ethics merely as a transgressive expri-
ence limite. Not only does such a connection discount the religious context
of Foucaults discourse,26 more importantly it depoliticizes his concep-
tion of spirituality and ethics. Foucaults biographer James Miller pro-
moted this depoliticized conception and transformed it into a generally
accepted frame in which Foucaults enthusiasm for the Iranian Revolu-
tion was explained away by his aesthetic fascination and obsession with
death rituals of the revolutionary movement.27
Yet, as I see it, the ethical proposition of the care of the self and the
spirituality it requires for its exercise are foundationally linked to Fou-
caults conception of politics, particularly with what he calls the gov-
ernmentalization of the state.28 In The Hermeneutics of the Self, he extends
Habermass notion of domination and argues:
Governing people... is always a versatile equilibrium, with complemen-
tarity and conflicts between techniques which assure coercion and pro-
cesses through which the self is constructed or modified by oneself....
Among the techniques of the self in this field of self-technology, I think
that the techniques oriented towards the discovery and the formulation
of the truth concerning oneself are extremely important.29
In his scheme of power, Foucault weds the state (as the instrument of
coercion), religion (as an institution of legitimation), and the individual
(as the protagonist of self-governing technologies), thereby collapsing
the boundaries between politics, religion and the ethics of self.30 It is
in this context that one must understand his conception of the 197879
revolutionary movement in Iran.
How can one analyze the connection between ways of distinguishing

true and false and ways of governing oneself and others? The search
for a new foundation for each of these practices, in itself and relative
to the other, the will to discover a different way of governing oneself
through a different way of dividing up true and falsethis is what I
would call political spiritualit.31
Contrary to a commonplace reading of Foucaults enthusiasm about the

Iranian Revolution, in his view, religion does not appear as an incidental
element of the movement. Rather, it links the revolutionary movement
directly to a peoples general sense of their place in the world, in the
creation of which religion plays a constitutive role. So what is the role
of religion? Foucault asked. Not that of an ideology, which would help
to mask contradictions or form a sort of sacred union between divergent
interests. Religion afforded the revolution a vocabulary, according to
Foucault, the ceremonial and the timeless drama, through which a
people could redefine its existence.32
Although the emphasis on the religious tenor of the Iranian Revo-
lution might be superfluous, Foucaults understanding of the connection
between religion and politics was uncommon. In contrast to the skepti-
cism of his early critics,33 and the warnings of those whom he thought
were stricken by excessive Westernness,34 he objected to the argument
that the role of religion in Iran was merely to provide a doctrinal platform
for revolutionary intentions. The connection he sought to explore was not
between religious dogma and governance. On more than one occasion,
Foucault acknowledges that the mullahs are not at all revolutionary,
even in the populist sense of the term. References to religion in his
writings on the Iranian Revolution were not to anything spoken by the
mullahs or articulated by any other exponent of the divine text. Accord-
ing to Foucault, writing on October 8, 1978, religion constituted a force that
perpetuated the hermeneutics of the subject on the streets of revolutionary Iran.
[Religion] transforms thousands of forms of discontent, hatred, misery,
and despair into a force. It transforms them into a force because it is a
form of expression, a mode of social relations, a supple and widely
accepted elemental organization, a way of being together, a way of speak-
ing and listening, something that allows one to be listened to by others.35
Foucault thought Shiism was particularly conducive to the kind of

hermeneutics that he deemed essential in the total transformation of the
self. As I stressed earlier, his knowledge of Shii Islam, at least in its clas-
sical context, was shaped by the French scholarship advanced by Louis
Massignon and Henry Corbin, both of whom regarded the quest for
justice and mystical spirituality as the kernel of Shiism. He was also
intrigued by Shariatis hermeneutical approach and his emphasis on the
transformation of the self as the precondition of the revolutionary act.
In the following conversation with Claire Brire and Pierre Blanchet in
March 1979 in Paris, Foucault shifted the debate on the basis for the
revolutionary movement from both Marxist economic determinism as
well as an Orientalist textual reading of Islam.
Whatever the economic difficulties, we still have to explain why there
were people who rose up and said: were not having any more of this. In
rising up, the Iranians said to themselvesand this perhaps is the soul
of the uprising: Of course, we have to change this regime and get rid of
this man, we have to change this corrupt administration, we have to
change the whole country, the political organization, the economic sys-
tem, the foreign policy. But, above all, we have to change ourselves. Our
way of being, our relationship with others, with things, with eternity,
with God, etc., must be completely changed, and there will only be a
true revolution if this radical change in our experience takes place. I
believe that it is here that Islam played a role. It may be that one or other
of its obligations, one or other of its codes exerted a certain fascination.
But, above all, in relation to the way of life that was theirs, religion for
them was like a promise and guarantee of finding something that would
radically change their subjectivity. Shiism is precisely a form of Islam
that, with its teaching and esoteric content, distinguishes between what
is mere external obedience to the code and what is the profound spiri-
tual life; when I say that they were looking to Islam for a change in their
subjectivity, this is quite compatible with the fact that traditional Islamic
practice was already there and already gave them their identity; in this
way they had of living the Islamic religion as a revolutionary force, there
was something other than the desire to obey the law more faithfully,
there was the desire to renew their existence by going back to a spiri-
tual experience that they thought they could find with Shiite Islam.36
In Iran, Foucault recognized the possibility in Islam of a continuous

and active creation of a political order perpetuated by an individual expe-
rience of piety and the care of the self.37 The intriguing part of his view
of Shiism is that he does not interpret Islamic Law (capital L) as the
source of justice; rather, in another characteristic inversion, it is justice
that made law and not law that manufactured justice. In the third install-
ment of his reports on October 8, 1978, on the pages of Corriere della
sera, he shows some familiarity with an old debate about the question of
justice in different juridical Islamic schools. One must find this justice
in the text dictated by God to the Prophet. However, one can also deci-
pher it in the life, the sayings, the wisdom, and the exemplary sacrifices
of the imams, born, after Ali, in the house of the Prophet, and perse-
cuted by the corrupt government of the caliphs, these arrogant aristocrats
who had forgotten the old egalitarian system of justice.38 In contrast to
a common Orientalist theme, which is strictly committed to the herme-
neutics of Text and Law, Foucault highlights the experience of and desire for
justice in the hermeneutics of the subject.39 Like Shariati, he conceives Islam
as a religion that has given people inexhaustible resources for resisting
the power of the state. Accordingly, on October 16, 1978, in an essay
published in Le Nouvel Observateur, he ponders whether one could com-
prehend an Islamic government, as a reconciliation, a contradic-
tion, or as the threshold of a novelty.40
Foucault puts forward a conception of religion that is perpetuated in
the practice of the care of the self and spirituality. He was not scandal-
ized by the concept of Islamic government and rejected its suggested
inherent link with theocracy because he understood it to be a utopia,
the terms and exact meaning of which would be negotiated in the future.
Foucault correctly refused to identify the establishment of a theocracy
as the inevitable consequence of the religious character of the revolution-
ary movement. As I have shown elsewhere, the entire revolutionary
movement, including its clerical leadership, shared this view that Islamic
government had to be understood as an ideal, the realization of which
depended on the conscious subjectivity of its practitioners. What emerged
eventually as the Islamic Republic resulted not from any inherent feature
of the revolutions ideological commitments, but rather from an intensely
fought postrevolutionary power struggle.41
Foucault believed that the inspiration for an Islamic government
came from faith not in legalism but in the infinite creativity of Islam. A
number of religious authorities had told Foucault that although they
were inspired by the principles of governance during the time of the
Prophet, they did not intend to replicate it. Rather, they wanted to
renew their fidelity to Islam without encouraging a pure obedience.
They stressed that they did not claim that the Quran offers precise
responses to the problems of contemporary life. These problems are
distinct, thus the necessity of long work by civil and religious experts,
scholars, and believers toward their resolution. That is why Foucault
understood the concept of Islamic government not as an idea or
even an ideal, but rather, as he put it, as a form of political will.42
In the Iranian Revolution, Foucault observed a displacement (and
a rescue at the same time) of the tradition of modernity.43 He predicted
that his enthusiasm would scandalize the French, whose commitment to
lacit was fundamental to their intellectual expression. Even his friends
ridiculed him. One of them, Claude Mauriac, who had been influenced
by Foucault and Gilles Deleuze in the early 1970s to retreat from his
earlier Gaullist politics, recalled a private conversation on November 23,
1978, in which he had expressed reservations to Foucault about his support
of a political spirituality. He recounted their conversation in his memoirs:
Mauriac: I read your paper in Nouvel Observateur, but not without sur-
prise, I must say.
Foucault: And you laughed? You are among those that I could already
hear laughing.
Mauriac: No ... I only said to myself that as to spirituality and poli-
tics, we have see what that gave us.
Foucault: And politics without spirituality, my dear Claude?44
Is It Useless to Revolt?
Foucaults enthusiasm about revolutionary politics in Iran was also
informed by a fervent debate in French intellectual circles kindled by
Franois Furets revisionist account of the French Revolutions place in
history.45 Furet introduced a general skepticism about the significance
and wisdom of revolutions in world history, consigning the French expe-
rience from a constitutive event of modern European history to an anom-
aly with everlasting tension between 1789 and 1793. In a post-1968
France, Furets revisionist intervention struck a chord with the defeatist
French Left and triumphant liberals, those who wanted, in ieks words,
a decaffeinated revolution, or a revolution which does not smell of a
revolution.46
Not only did Foucault try to make sense of revolutionary spirituality,
he also admired the fact that the Iranian masses revived the spirit of revo-
lution, which many Europeans believed had disappeared from history.
By locating the spirit of the revolution in Iran, Foucault inverted another
central element of Orientalism, that of the unchanging essence of Mus-
lim societies. Instead, he laments the stagnation of Western subjectivity
and the dominant skepticism about revolutionary political spirituality.
Rather than what his biographer James Miller dismissed as an aes-
thetic fascination with death rituals of a violent revolution, Foucault saw
in Iran a moment of creative pause in, or even negation of, his theory of
power and governmentality. The Iranian masses demonstrated the pos-
sibility of resistance without participating in or perpetuating a preconceived
schema of power. This is the single most important point that distin-
guishes Foucaults reflections on the Islamic Revolution from his earlier
oeuvreand indeed from every other notable observer of the events in
Iran. A major theme in the revolution he identified was the forceful ex-
pression of a negation: the Shah must go! What made the revolution
strong was the following paradox: no long-term objectives were articu-
lated, no design for government brought forward. Simple slogans dom-
inated popular speech. Because of this, the Iranian people expressed their
clear, obstinate, almost unanimous popular will.47
How far do we want to generalize from Foucaults journalism? Did
witnessing revolution in Iran alter his general understanding of the means
and possibility of resistance to power? Did he deviate in his observations
of events in Iran from his understanding of resistance to power as an act
that extends our participation in the present system?48 Many early crit-
ics of Foucault, particularly in feminist scholarship, had rebuked his
conception of power for its lack of recognition of the real possibility of
resistance. Foucault, Nancy Fraser once pointed out, adopts a con-
cept of power that permits him no condemnation of any objectionable
features of modern societies.49
While it is debatable whether Foucault followed Derrida in negat-
ing the possibility of actual resistance to present arrangements,50 his all-
encompassing and generative notion of power troubled both the partisans
as well as the detractors of his theory. Despite his sympathies toward
Foucauldian ethics, William Connolly chastised him for not acknowl-
edging that we can criticize the present from the perspective of alterna-
tive ideals without being subject to an iron law that subsumes all actions
into mere reproduction or variation of the present social order.51
One of the most vociferous of his critics, Jrgen Habermas, also cas-
tigated Foucault for what appeared to be nihilistic apathy toward eman-
cipatory politics. He linked nihilism in Foucaults theory to the idea of
aporia,52 which informed the pessimistic views of early Frankfurt School
theorists about the post-Enlightenment world.53 Habermas claimed that
there was no critical stance in Foucaults analysis of power. If resistance
simply reproduces existing relations of power, Habermas maintains, there
wouldnt be any resistance. Because resistance has to be like power: just
as inventive, just as mobile, just as productive as it is.54
Foucaults comments such as It seems to me that power is always
already there, that one is never outside it, that there are no margins
for those who break with it to gambol in,55 seem to reaffirm the posi-
tion that Richard Rorty aptly formulated in viewing Foucault as a stoic,
a dispassionate observer of the present social order, rather than its con-
cerned critic.56
Foucault did attempt to avoid the categorical condemnation of all
forms of resistance, which his critics read into his work. He went to
considerable lengths to explain the nuances of his conception of power
and governmentality. Although he developed a more cohesive theory of
counter-power and resistance in his later work on ethics and the care
of self, in earlier writings, contrary to his detractors claims, he did not
trivialize resistance as simply another means of participating in disciplinary
power. In Power/Knowledge, for example, he spoke of the possibility of
integrating resistance into global strategies.57 He identified the chief
problem for intellectuals as the possibility to establish a new regime of
truth.58
But it is in his post-1979 writings that he carefully considers the sig-
nificance of revolt as an ethical concern, in spite of the fact that it would
result in giving rise to other institutions of disciplinary power. In On
the Genealogy of Ethics, Foucault responded to the charge that one
can spot what appears to be quietism in his work. In reply to the ques-
tion whether the Greek philosophy was an attractive and plausible alter-
native to contemporary ethics, Foucault cried out:
No! I am not looking for an alternative; you cant find the solution of a
problem in the solution of another problem raised at another moment by other
people. You see, what I want to do is not the history of solutions, and
thats the reason why I dont accept the word alternative. I would like
to do the genealogy of problems, of problmatique. My point is not that
everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly
the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have some-
thing to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to a hyper-and pessimis-
tic activism.59
The paradoxical notion of pessimistic activism captures the core of

Foucaults response to the Iranian Revolution. In his very last piece on
the subject, Is It Useless to Revolt?, published in May 1979 on the
first page of Le Monde, Foucault responded to the growing crowd of crit-
ics who ridiculed him for cheering on a revolution whose objective was
the establishment of an Islamic state. In perhaps the most moving pas-
sage of his entire revolutionary reportage, he defended his enthusiasm
without endorsing its outcome. He wrote:
Uprisings belong to history, but in a certain way, they escape it. The
movement through which a lone man, a group, a minority, or an entire
people say, I will no longer obey, and are willing to risk their lives in
the face of a power that they believe to be unjust, seems to me to be
irreducible. This is because no power is capable of making it absolutely
impossible. Warsaw will always have its ghetto in revolt and its sewers
populated with insurgents. The man in revolt is ultimately inexplicable.
There must be an uprooting that interrupts the unfolding of history,
and its long series of reasons why, for a man really to prefer the risk
of death over the certainty of having to obey.... If societies persist and
survive, that is to say, if power in these societies is not absolutely abso-
lute,[60] it is because behind all the consent and the coercion, beyond
the threats, the violence, and the persuasion, there is the possibility of
this moment where life cannot be exchanged, where power becomes
powerless, and where, in front of the gallows and the machine guns,
men rise up.61
Here, in the last installment of his revolutionary essays, we see the most
Kantian Foucault where he brings to light how the noumenal dimension
of revolutionary struggle transpires and momentarily suspends the nexus
of historical causality.62 The inexplicable and irreducible rebellious sub-
ject, the noumenon, suddenly coincides in a paradoxical relation to a
rational network of reality that has generated its phenomenal existence.
To Foucault, this very act and experience of becoming, regardless of its
actual consequences, needed to be celebrated. He tried to distinguish
his position from the fashionable condemnations of the horrors of revo-
lution, whether Iran in 1979 or France in 1793. For Foucault, revolts
have historical significance no matter how untimely and ill-fated they
are. As Deleuze, in a Foucauldian gesture, argues, History amounts only
[to] the set of preconditions that one leaves behind in order to become,
that is, to create something new, no matter how badly they turn out.
Those who conflate the outcome of a revolutionary movement with its
experience, Deleuze further explains, constantly confuse two different
things: the way revolutions turn out historically and peoples revolution-
ary becoming. These relate to two different sets of people. Mens only
hope lies in a revolutionary becoming: the only way of casting off their
shame or responding to what is intolerable.63
For Foucault, the objectionable postrevolutionary regime could not
explain the significance of the revolutionary movement in shaping the
rebellious subjectivity of Iranians. One must find the manifestation of
his pessimistic activism in the inexplicable insurrectionary individual and
the irreducible subject. In light of the mounting evidence of atrocities per-
petrated by the new regime in Tehran, his critics in France pressured him
to recant his support for the revolution. In spite of being disheartened by
the proliferation of violence in postrevolutionary power struggles, Fou-
cault saw no shame in defending the revolution but insisted that there
is no reason to say that ones opinion has changed when one is against
hands being chopped off today, after having been against the tortures of
the SAVAK yesterday.64
Whereas his critics rebuked him for what they considered to be
Nietzschean nihilism in his all-encompassing theory of power, now Fou-
cault had to justify his enthusiasm about an uprising that led to the estab-
lishment of the Islamic Republic. The colonization of the uprising by
realpolitik, Foucault argued, does not justify the condemnation of the
revolutionary movement. What is more important from the point of
view of the subject is not the level of success or failure of the revolution-
ary movement but in the manner in which it was lived.
Foucaults Fanonian Predicament

The major distinction of Foucaults writings on the Iranian Revolution
lies in the way he conceives the subject not as a product and producer of
power but rather as the agent of resistance to it. More importantly, he
avoids a common epistemic violence that turned the revolutionary move-
ment in Iran into a legible act that conforms to recognizable historical
teleologies. Foucault believed that by liberating their bodies from the
prison houses of their souls, by marching fearlessly on the streets in defi-
ance of martial law, Iranians reinvented themselves through a transforma-
tive political spirituality. A spirituality motivated and shaped by complex
historical circumstances, but irreducible to it. Iranians created a new
Man in a Fanonian sense. This new Man was inspired by a political
rearticulation of the Shii historical drama of rising against injustice,
spoke a different language (familiar but novel), invented a new way of
being with others and relating to ones self, and found the transforma-
tive powers in ways hitherto thought impossible.
In the same romantic vein that Fanon believed that through the
very act of revolutionary struggle the colonial subject would erase past
trauma, Foucault thought that political spirituality would transpose Ira-
nians relation with their past. Fanon hoped that the liberated new
Man had the capacity and the historical impulse to initiate a new begin-
ning in a complete tabula rasa. But as the experience of Algeria demon-
strated, the past easily outlived the revolution, and its weight burdened
the present. Foucault tried to highlight the significance of living the
revolution, but he, like Fanon, neglected to recognize that the same
magnanimous revolutionary energy could then revert into fueling a re-
pressive state machine.
Foucault and Fanon also share something perhaps even more impor-
tant, and that is their limited knowledge of the society that has given rise
to the emancipatory struggle on which they each comment. In his Dying
Colonialism, Fanon tries to reinterpret cultural practices in Algerian soci-
ety outside their abstract, anachronistic context. Although he was deeply
immersed in the Algerian struggle, he did not speak Arabic and had a
very limited knowledge of Islam and Algerian society. He rightly points
out that cultural signs are fixed neither in their meaning nor in their
practice. But he fails to see how these signs, as malleable and negotiated
as they might appear, exist in deeply rooted, enduring structures of dom-
ination, particularly in gender relations on which he comments in the
often-debated chapter called Algeria Unveiled.65
Fanon links womens ardent love of the home as a sign of resistance
to the colonial structure that has negated reciprocal justification of inter-
action between the home and society at large. The Algerian woman,
he asserts, in imposing such a restriction on herself, in choosing a form
of existence limited in scope, was deepening her consciousness of strug-
gle and preparing for combat. In reality, he further argues, the effer-
vescence and the revolutionary spirit have been kept alive by the woman
in the home.66 Women appropriated the cover of the veil to create an
inverted panopticon against the French colonial officers. Fanon believed
that the revolutionary war had offered a dislocation of the old myths
and had transformed irreversibly gender relations in Algeria.
Fanons perception of Islam in Algeria was informed by his deep
involvement in the revolution. He lacked a nuanced appreciation of the
complexity and significance of religion in Algerian society. Similarly,
Foucaults view of Islam and the way it was appropriated by the revolu-
tionary actors was greatly influenced by the political spirituality that he
correctly identified as the guiding torch of the revolution. By reading
Massignon and Corbin, who gave central significance to mystical Shiism
and Sufi transcendentalism in their history of Islamic thought, Foucault
was predisposed to grasp the revolution he observed in terms of the spir-
itual reenactment of Seekers of the Truth. Although he correctly em-
phasized the significance and the hegemonic position of religion in giving
rise to the revolutionary movement, he failed to see the deeply rooted
networks and ethos of legalistic and doctrinal Islam that would eventu-
ally dominate the postrevolutionary state politics.
Foucault is also too intent to ascribe otherness to the Iranian Rev-
olution. He tries very consciously not to see the revolution through the
prism of a Western conceptual toolkit and thereby Orientalizes it in a
worn-out discursive universe. But by doing so, he neglects to recognize
the extent to which the revolution belongs to a historical situation dif-
ferent from, but related to the Western context.67 As I discuss in the
next chapter, Islamic liberation theology and the emancipatory language
it invented emerged from both a negation of as well as an appropriation
of Western notions of justice and history. This offered the Iranian Rev-
olution a singularity that could be comprehended only through an open
defiance to a universal History.
3
misrepresenting
the revolution,
misreading foucault
A Revisionist History
Did the mullahs steal the revolution? For more than three decades, the
myth of the stolen revolution has served as the master narrative of count-
less scholarly works as well as political treatises written by those who
found themselves on the defeated side of the postrevolutionary struggle.
In order to see the significance of Foucaults reading of the Iranian Rev-
olution, I believe it is essential to set aside this myth, which is driven by
a commitment to a progressive, universal History and a binary under-
standing of secular versus Islamist politics. Janet Afary and Kevin Ander-
sons Foucault and the Iranian Revolution is emblematic of how this myth
is constructed, deployed, and disseminated. In their book, Afary and
Anderson evoke this myth both to indict Foucault for his failure to fore-
see the looming Islamist disaster and to cast the revolution as a regres-
sive denunciation of modernity (or modernization, they use the two terms
interchangeably).
This chapter responds closely to their reading to show why it is
empirically necessary to recognize the singularity of the revolution and
to liberate it from the constraints of universalist narratives. Through
a close engagement with Afary and Andersons book, I intend to save
the integrity of the revolutionary movement from its later outcomes. By
doing so, I also try to disentangle Foucaults writings from those oppres-
sive consequences of the postrevolutionary state-building.
Afary and Anderson claim that the originality of their book lays in
the fact that they have shown that Foucaults support of Islamism and
his fascination with political spirituality was simply an extension of his
anti-modern philosophy. But in so doing they produce serious flaws
75
76 | Misrepresenting the Revolution, Misreading Foucault
both in their interpretation of Foucault and their representation of Islam-

ism. In their view, Foucaults anti-modern bias prevented him from appre-
ciating feminist premonitions (4) and secularist warnings about the
true nature of Islamists as an antidemocratic and antiwoman element in
the revolutionary movement. Not only did he support the reincarnation
of fascism in Iran, more hurtfully he failed to recognize that the Ira-
nian people suffered under a regime for which he had helped to build
support [!] (133).In this sense, he had no serious qualms about the way
in which the Islamists had come to dominate the revolutionary move-
ment, displacing the Marxist and nationalist Left.1 The following pas-
sages depict their core argument against Foucault.
Why, in his writings on the Iranian revolution, did he give his exclusive
support to its Islamist wing? Certain modalities in Foucaults oeuvre
seemed to resonate with the revolutionary movement that was unfolding
in Iran. There was a perplexing affinity between this post-structuralist
philosopher, this European critic of modernity, and the anti-modernist
Islamist radicals on the streets of Iran. Both were searching for a new
form of political spirituality as a counterdiscourse to a thoroughly mate-
rialistic world; both clung to idealized notions of premodern social
orders; both were disdainful of modern liberal judicial systems; both
admired individuals who risked death in attempts to reach a more
authentic existence. Foucaults affinity with the Iranian Islamists, often
construed as his error over Iran, may also reveal some of the larger
ramifications of his Nietzschean-Heideggerian discourse.... The dif-
ference between the Foucauldian grand narrative and the liberal or
Marxian ones is that Foucaults narrative privileges not modernity but
the traditional social orders. (13)
Afarys earlier work on the Iranian constitutional revolution heavily

informs her and Andersons narrative of the 197879 revolutionary move-
ment.2 In that book, she begins her account of the constitutional revo
lution with the hanging scene of Sheikh Fazlollah Nuri, an influential
ayatollah who turned against the constitutional revolutionaries. She ends
it with the rehabilitation of Nuri after the 1979 Revolution. Nuri had
tried to contain the judicial and legislative powers envisioned in the new
constitution with references to Islamic sharia and questioned the neces-
sity of such bodies in the presence of the divine text and the clergy. For
Afary, contemporary Iran is shaped by the long-term effects of the same
Misrepresenting the Revolution, Misreading Foucault | 77
struggle between constitutionalism and shariatism and the unresolved
conflicts among secular, progressive, and democratic actors against reli-
gious, conservative obstructionists.
If these mutually exclusive binaries remain in the background of her
earlier work, in her coauthored critique of Foucault she moves this ide-
ological device to the center of her depiction of the 197879 Revolution.
She and her coauthor understand the revolution to be a movement
against the Shahs authoritarian program of economic and cultural mod-
ernization (1). They emphasize the authoritarian character of the reforms
under the Shah and not his project of modernization per se. While the
brutal methods the Pahlavis (father and son) adopted were indefensible,
their modernization objectives were a justifiable response, Afary and
Anderson believe, to an irresistible historical inevitability.
They argue that in addition to Islamists, the coalition that made the
revolution possible included nationalists, secular liberals, and Leftist
parties. In their view, while the progressive-democratic-secular factions
fought the authoritarianism of the Shah, what motivated the Islamists,
the obstructionist and reactionary faction, was their hostility toward the
social and cultural transformations of Iranian society that the Shahs mod-
ernization scheme opened up. By late 1978, Afary and Anderson write,
the militant Islamist faction led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had
come to dominate the antiregime uprising, in which secular nationalists,
liberals, and leftists also participated (1).
In their historiography of the revolution, Afary and Anderson offer
a narrative in which the conflict between the innately regressive Islamists
and the inherently progressive secularists of all political persuasions were
played out in selectively constitutive moments. The following passage
summarizes their understanding of how revolutionary processes culmi-
nated in the monopolization of power by the Islamists:
Increasingly, in the name of national unity, the secular, nationalist, and

leftist demands of many of the anti-Shah demonstrators were articu-
lated in religious terms and through the rituals that commemorated
the death of [the Shiite Imam] Hussein. The Islamists controlled the
slogans and the organization of the protests, which meant that many
secular women who joined the protests were pressured into donning
the veil (chador) as an expression of solidarity with traditional Muslims.
Muharram fell in December in 1978, at the height of the uprising, and
its celebration brought a million people to the streets. By February 1979,

the Shah had fled, and Khomeini returned from exile to take power. The
next month, he sponsored a national referendum that declared Iran an
Islamic republic. Soon after, as Khomeini began to assume nearly abso-
lute power, a reign of terror ensued. (2)
Here Afary and Anderson misrepresent the chronology of the revolution-

ary movement to justify their narrative that the revolution had been
initiated and led by a coalition of secular-liberal-left factions but was
hijacked by Islamists in its final stage. As I illustrated in chapter 1, by the
midsummer of 1978 the anti-Shah revolutionary movement was arrayed
under the indisputable leadership of Khomeini. This is not to contest
the fact that students of the Left largely shaped the protest movements
on university campuses, or to argue against the significance of liberal
lawyers advocacy groups and other nationalists who showed dissatisfac-
tion with the Shahs despotism. But the historiographical point here is
that Khomeinis leadership was a key element of the mass revolutionary
movement that toppled monarchy. And it was this social fact that Fou-
cault encountered in his sojourn in Iran. Religious rituals and Islamic
symbolic language were constitutive, and not incidental, features of the
revolutionary movement.
Secular versus Islamist Politics

During the 1960s and 1970s, although there were marked ideological
distinctions between Muslim and Marxist groups, those distinctions were
not politically articulated in terms of secular and Islamist divisions. Thanks
to Ali Shariatis legacy, for many years Muslim and Marxist revolution-
aries alike regarded themselves as comrades in arms holding the same
ideals, albeit with different ideologies. In his poignant defense during
his show trial, Khosrow Golesorkhi, a communist poet and journalist who
was tried on trumped up charges and sentenced to death in 1973, reso-
nated with many Iranian intellectuals who saw themselves as part of an
anti-imperialist and national liberation movement.
I begin my defense with the words of Imam Hussein, the greatest mar-
tyr of the peoples of the Middle East. As a Marxist-Leninist, I searched
for social justice for the first time in the teachings of Islam, and then I
found socialism.... I begin my words with Islam. In Iran, the true Islam
has always fulfilled its duty to the liberation movements.... Today
also the true Islam is carrying its responsibility toward our national
liberation movement. There are close similarities between what Marx
saysthat in a class society, wealth is accumulated on one side and
poverty, hunger, and misery on the other, and that the downtrodden is
the producer of wealthand what Imam Ali says, that no palace is
built without the misery of thousands. This is why I call Imam Ali the
first socialist in world history.... Being tried today in this courtroom
is just another example of Imam Husseins life. We are ready to sacri-
fice our lives on behalf of our countrys disinherited. Imam Hussein
was in the minority, and Yazid enjoyed mansions, armies, state, and
power. Hussein stood up and was martyred. Yazid occupied a small
corner in history, but what has been repeated in history is the legacy of
Hussein and his struggle, not the rule of Yazid. Peoples history is the
reenactment of Husseins path. As a Marxist I applaud such an Islam,
the Islam of Ali, the Islam of Hussein.3
In his final defense, which appeared in a state-run broadcast, Golesorkhi

exemplified the dissident political culture of the time by highlighting
the issues of social justice as the engine of the Iranian revolutionary
Figure 7. Khosrow Golesorkhis trial, Tehran 1973. Front row from the left:
Teifour Bathai, Khosrow Golesorkhi, Manuchehr Moqaddam-Salimi, and
Karamat Daneshian, who was also executed along with Golesorkhi.
Figure 8. Still frame from a state television program broadcast on the

anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in 2010. In recent years, the Islamic
Republic Television has appropriated Golesorkhis defense in which he praises
Shii Islam as the source of his own revolutionary awakening.
movement, meaningful both for Islamists and Marxists. The ideological

context of the political expression of social justice seldom became a point
of contention among Iranian revolutionary organizations.
This was not only true for revolutionary organizations but also for
a whole host of Left-leaning social critics, influential literary figures, and
historians subscribing to the same anticolonial idea of justice and libera-
tion politics in which they seldom highlighted the distinction between
the secularreligious binary opposition. From the dawn of the Shahs
White Revolution in 1963the historical moment of the political emer-
gence of Ayatollah Khomeiniuntil the collapse of the monarchy in
1979, these critics spoke of the Shii Islam of Hussein and Imam Ali as
the ideological foundation of the struggle against oppression and tyranny
and for social justice.4
In fact, it was the radical Islamists who viewed Marxists with suspi-
cion and mistrust, not the opposite. This mistrust was exacerbated in 1975
after the Islamist leadership of the Mojahedin adopted Marxism and
cleansed the organization of those who refused to observe its so-called
ideological transformation. However, even after the new Marxist lead-
ership assassinated one of the organizations Muslim leaders,5 the Marx-
ist and Muslim Mojahedin insisted that they shared the same goals in
their struggle against the Pahlavi regime and U.S. imperialism. Ideologi-
cal differences, both sides maintained, must not create divisions in their
united front against the Shahs tyranny. A famous letter from a Marxist
member of the Mojahedin, Mojtaba Taleqanithe son of the promi-
nent scholar and revolutionary leader Ayatollah Taleqani, and one of the
most influential clerical voices of the revolutionto his father illustrates
the significance of maintaining this unified front.
After defending his conversion to Marxism and arguing why reli-
gion cannot offer answers to the problems of the toiling classes, Mojtaba
reassures his father that regardless of his doctrinal shift, the struggle must
continue against those who have been co-opted by the Shahs regime. He
reminds his father that both of them draw their uncompromising com-
mitment to the revolution from their unrelenting faith in the masses. He
wrote,
I do not want to flatter you, but you have so far done much for the
struggle and have shown yourself to be a true son of the toiling masses
and of the hard-working peasantry. You have not acted as an offspring
of the powerful classes.
If you did not possess these pro-mass sentiments, you would have
gone the same way as the others. For to be able to resist, one must be
close to the masses. In the old days, especially in the period of 196970,
we would dismiss dialectical materialism on the grounds that if one
did not believe in the afterlife one would not be willing to make the
supreme sacrifice. I now realize that a communist is willing to make the
supreme sacrifice precisely because his cause is that of the masses.
... Father, I end this letter by stressing that I will resist the regime
as you have done, and that I will follow your example to the end. I will
try to write again soon even though I do not know when, or even if,
you will receive this letter.
Your Son, Mojtaba.6
From the earliest formative moments of the revolution, secularism

never defined the point of divergence among different revolutionary
organizations. Even Marxist Mojahedin insisted that they aspired to the

same objectives as the their Muslim brethren. While there were Islamist
and non-Islamist camps among liberal nationalists and leftist organiza-
tions prior to the triumph of the revolution in February 1979, the ques-
tion of secularism never became the defining point of divergence among
these political parties. This ambivalence toward secularism had both
strategicpolitical as well as theoretical dimensions. Politically, by the
midsummer of 1978 it became clear that it was Khomeinis leadership
that gave the pervasive protests around the country their revolutionary
potential. Without recognizing his leadership, no political party at the
time could join the rising revolutionary movement. The liberal nation-
alists signed on reluctantly, hoping they could use Khomeinis revolu-
tionary alternative as a means to bargain for political reform. In their
teleological view, the Left believed that revolution itself was a historical
inevitability. It minimized the religious mode of the insurrection as a fleet-
ing epiphenomenal expression of ideological superstructure.
By and large, the language of secularity was not spoken during the
revolutionary movement. A secularist self-consciousness, and the demo-
cratic principle to which it referred, emerged during and after postrevo-
lutionary struggles that led to the monopolization of state power by a
diverse group of Khomeini supporters.
The Depiction of Revolutionary Events

By reading Afary and Andersons narrative, one comes to the false con-
clusion that the revolutionary movement unfolded under a perpetually
contested leadership struggle, suggesting that Ayatollah Khomeini be-
came the head of the movement toward the end of the struggle through
a Bonapartist political maneuvering. They also wrongly suggest that the
intellectuals and political factions of the revolution engaged in intense
debates about the ideological and political merits of secularism. They
argue that Khomeini and his Islamist faction dominated the revolution-
ary movement, displacing the Marxist and nationalist Left, in December
1978, only two months prior to the final victory of the revolution. This
historiography sets Foucault up for failing to discern the disputing fac-
tions among the insurrectionists. Even in a chapter on how the Islamists
asserted and perpetuated their leadership through processions, passion
plays, and rites of penance, Afary and Anderson make no mention of the
political significance of the Shii ritual of mourning the fortieth day of
the dead, which guaranteed the continuity and coherence of the move-
ment in late 1977 and early 1978. This omission is critical. It distorts the
fact that Foucault indeed witnessed a unified and not a divided and con-
tested mass movement upon his arrival in Tehran in September 1978.
As I discussed in chapter 1, the religious expression, in its expansive
rhythm and in its revolutionary soul, allowed the movement to spread
so deep and so wide among diverse classes in different regions of the
country. The timing, sequence, and religious idiom of these mass dem-
onstrations do not mean that everyone who participated demanded an
explicitly Islamic revolution. But it is essential to appreciate the fact that
the Shii discourse of martyrdom and sacrificeand more importantly,
the provision of an extensive network of mosques and other religious
sitesturned the protests into a sustained revolutionary movement. It
was the language of Shii Islam that gave voice to the revolution, despite
the fact all those who spoke it did not attribute the same meaning to its
terms and concepts. Shii rituals afforded continuity to the movement
by generating a repertoire of dissent to which a vast majority of the pop-
ulace felt a deep sense of connection and familiarity.
Although Afary and Anderson acknowledge the significance of these
rituals in the formative stages of the revolution (6366), they modulate
the fact that through these rituals, the clergy had already asserted its lead-
ership by the time Foucault touched down at Tehran airport.
In the fall of 1978, during the early stages of the Iranian revolution, a
variety of nationalist and leftist students joined the Islamists in mass
anti-regime demonstrations. Soon, however, the Islamist wing domi-
nated. The struggle against the Shah was cast as a reenactment of the
historic battle between Hussein and Yazid, and the ostensibly secular,
nationalist, and leftist demands of many of the demonstrators were artic-
ulated in religious garb and through Muharram rituals. (49, my italics)
No credible account of the revolution regards the fall of 1978 as the

early stages of the Iranian Revolution. According to their account, the
Islamists took over the leadership of the revolution in December 1978,
only two months before the final collapse of the monarchy on February
11, 1979.
Furthermore, Afary and Anderson argue that by the term irreduc-
ible, Foucault had in mind a revolution that was so elemental that it
could not be reduced to any smaller constituent elements, such as par-
ties, tendencies, or factions (130). This is false. Foucault explains exactly
what he means by referring to uprisings in history as irreducible right after
he introduces the term: This [the irreducibility of uprisings] is because no
power is capable of making it absolutely impossible.7 As Bonnie Honig
points out, Foucault was fully aware that the revolutionary movement
was far from an absolute totality. That is why he commended Pierre Blan-
chet and Claire Brire for their reports from Iran in which they didnt
try to break up this phenomenon into its constituent elements; they
tried to leave it as a single beam of light, even though we know it is made
up of several beams. Thats the risk and interest in talking about Iran.8
Honig summarizes the predicament of reductionism with an intriguing
comparison with miracles.
As the early twentieth-century theologian and philosopher Franz Rosen-
zweig said with regard to the miracle, of course all miracles can be
explained rationally, not because miracle is not miracle but because
explanation is... explanation. Revolution, like miracle, depends upon
observers to receive it in a non-reductionist way.9
The point here is not that all of the factions that participated in the revo-
lution adopted an Islamist agenda. This was true even for the revolution-
ary clergy themselves. Neither Khomeini nor any of his close advisers
knew exactly what it meant to advocate an Islamic Republic. No one at
the time knew how to translate the symbolic language of Islamic social
justice into a system of governance with specific legal and political pro-
visions. Iranians, as Foucault wrote in October 1978, were at the
threshold of a novelty. The particular form of the Islamic Republic was
not the result of the unfolding of a grand scheme of the clergy toward
which Foucault remained ambivalent. Although the allegorical language
of Islam and its political ideology conditioned and gave voice to the revo-
lutionary movement, Islamist governance, the centerpiece of which was
velayat-e faqih (the guardianship of the jurist), was the contingent outcome
of the postrevolutionary power struggle, rather than its blueprint.
Misrepresentation of Shii Rituals and Ali Shariatis
Islamist Political Ideology
Another misconception about the revolution holds that the clerical lead-
ership knew from the beginning what type of politico-legal system they
intended to establish, and that on behalf of their strategic plans they
duped other revolutionary factions into accepting what appeared to be
a tactical, provisional revolutionary platform. Accordingly, Afary and
Anderson ridicule Foucault for his inability to fathom the true inten-
tions of the Islamists. Furthermore, they turn Shii rituals from unifying
and inspirational practices into a theater of hate and bigotry against
Iranian ethnic and religious minorities. Having turned old and decisive
rituals inside out, they reproach Foucault for neglecting to note these
objectionable practices. In his accounts of both Christian and Muslim
rituals, Afary and Anderson proclaim,
Foucaults omissions are surprising and troubling. He belonged to a

generation that was well aware of the uses that fascist movements had
made of Christian rituals of martyrdom and passion plays. Why was
there no reference to any of this in his 197879 writings on Iran, or even
in his work on the hermeneutics of religion in the 1980s, which was
written later and far away from the frenzy of the revolutionary moment?
These omissions were all the more surprising, given the political agenda
of Khomeinism, with its intolerance toward minority religions and
ethnicities, its hostility toward atheistic leftists and secularists, and
its dismissal of womens rights. (55)
It is true that passion plays and other Muharram rituals of reenactment

of the events of Ashura historically had an anti-Sunni undercurrent.10
One should not understand these ritualistic patterns in essentialist terms
but rather highlight how these multifaceted practices change in diverse
historical settings.11 But by politicizing these reenactments, the Islamist
ideologues of the revolution disassociated themselves from the tradition-
alist renditions of these events as days of mourning. By rearticulating
the legend of Karbala and the martyrdom of Imam Hussein as a trans
historical battle of justice against tyranny, liberation theologians such as
Ali Shariati de-emphasized the anti-Sunni sentiments of the reenact-
ment rituals. In contrast to Afary and Andersons claim, in a politicized
reenactment of Ashura, Yazid, the second Caliph of the Ummayad dynasty
against whom Imam Hussein revolted, appears as the universal tyrant.

The main intention of the political Ashura was to unite Sunni and Shii,
and for that matter all non-Muslims of Iran, in their struggle against the
tyranny of despots, from Yazid to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Shariati in
particular believed that turning Ashura into a reaffirmation of Shiism
by religious rituals of self-flagellation and passion plays emptied Karbala
from its universal messagethat of struggle for justice on behalf of the
mustazafin, the downtrodden. If there is a thread that binds Shariatis
entire corpus it would be the transformation of Safavid Shiism from
superstition and closed-mindedness into the Alavid Shiism of libera-
tion and justice.12
Afary and Anderson juxtapose traditionalist and apolitical Muharram
rituals with the events of the revolutionary movement and emphasize their
bigotry without making any informed reference to actual anti-Sunni or
anti-Semitic incidents. They criticize Foucault for failing to observe the
anti-minority core of these rituals, without offering any evidence, with
the exception of anecdotal citations, of such hostilities among the Mus-
lim revolutionary actors. They even decontextualize their anecdotal ref-
erences to advance their assertion of how, during their processions, these
rituals terrorized non-Shiites:
These ceremonies and processions remind non-Shiites and non-Muslim

Iranians of their marginal and precarious status. The frenzied Muharram
processions sometimes lead to violence. Often, when two rival factions
(dasteh), which are performing the sinehzani (self-flagellation rituals),
come face to face in a narrow alley, neither gives the other the right-of-
way. As a result, there are at times violent outbursts, resulting in inju-
ries or even deaths, and terrifying non-Shiite communities.13
Here they not only obscure the boundary between the traditionalist
particularism (Shii versus Sunni) and the political universalism (justice
versus tyranny) of the reenactment rituals, they also disregard the con-
text of the above narrative of violence and terror. Although processional
turf war could occur during Muharram, it would be highly unlikely that
what was a distinctly Lebanese communal scene could be found in the
Iranian context. The composition and structure of neighborhoods and
religious communities in Iran and Lebanon are distinct, each with its
own subtleties. Claiming that these ceremonies remind non-Shiite and
non-Muslim Iranians of their marginal and precarious status is a seri-
ous claim that simply cannot be substantiated by a reference to a case
study of Lebanon.
Not only do Afary and Anderson fail to highlight the distinction
between the traditionalist and political Muharram rituals, they distort
Shariatis position to make it consistent with their essentialist view of
Islamism as an ideology of bigotry and xenophobia. They argue that
men like Al-Ahmad and Shariati modernized the old religious narra-
tives by connecting them to some of the themes of leftist thought, thus
making them more palatable to students and intellectuals. They describe
Shariati as an opportunistic Islamist who had an instrumental relation
with the Alavid Shiism he had advanced. He called for a revolutionary
concept of Islam, one that could challenge the monarchy and bring a
new generation of Muslim thinkers like him to power (60).
Shariati had long been accused by his traditionalist detractors from
Qom and Mashhad Seminaries of having an instrumentalist relation with
Islam. At the time when he wrote his treatises on revolutionary Shiism,
high-ranking clerics and ayatollahs organized a campaign to condemn
him as an apostate for calling into question the traditional authority of
the clerical establishment. A number of grand ayatollahs launched a def-
amation campaign against him. They asked the Shah and his secret police
to stop what they called the spread of Shariatis poisonous words and
deceptive books. They also accused him of being a SAVAK collaborator
whose mission was to destroy Islam from within. A long list of ayatol-
lahs lent their support to a petition to ban their followers from attend-
ing his lectures and issued fatwas condemning his heresy.14 A number of
influential clerics even highlighted the fact that Shariatis political Islam,
what he called Islamic ideology, downplays differences between Sunni and
Shii Islam. Naser Makarem Shirazi, one of his most vociferous critics,
called Shariatis praise of the Sunni Saladin, the Muslim warrior who
defeated the Crusaders and retook Jerusalem in 1187, distasteful and
damaging to the souls of his young followers.15
Afary and Andersons characterization of Shariati bears no resem-
blance to the man, his ideas, and the kind of contentions those ideas gen-
erated within the clerical establishment. They portray him as being yet
another Islamist intellectual without distinction who promoted the same
bigotry and prejudices that all fundamentalists do.
In his search for what he considered to be an authentic interpreta-

tion of Islam, Shariati castigated the external influences on Islam, which
had been many in over a thousand years of rich intellectual ferment
and cross-fertilization. In particular, he wished to drive out Greek phi-
losophy, Indian and Iranian mysticism, as well as Christian and Jewish
theology. He also rejected the more tolerant interpretations of Islam
found in Persian poetry (e.g., Omar Khayyam), in Muslim philosophy
(e.g, Farabi, 870950; Avicenna, 9801037), or even in Sufi mysticism.
Finally and most controversially for Irans leftist youth, he rejected
Marxism as a Western fallacy, singling out Marxs humanism for par-
ticular attack. (60, my italics)
Any cursory study of Shariatis own work as well as the scholarship about
his contribution would show without any confusion that his project was
never about cleansing Islam of external influences.16 As a pious man, there
is no doubt that he would have found Sartres existentialism or humanist
Marxism profane, but in spite of the absence of the Divine in these
intellectual traditions, Shariati found common grounds with their polit-
ical philosophy. Even his understanding of other world religions, Abra-
hamic and otherwise, could not be, by any stretch of the imagination,
categorized as being intolerant and fundamentalist.
Afary and Anderson refer to a number of essays Shariati wrote in
the 1970s, the English translation of which was entitled Marxism and
Other Western Fallacies: An Islamic Critique.17 However, it appears as though
the book title alone gave them enough grounds to castigate him for
intolerance toward humanism and non-Islamic worldviews. Had they
engaged in a careful reading of the book, they would have found his
repeated homage to the great eastern religions. He repeatedly declares
his admiration for their distinct comprehension of humanitys relations
with God and the world.
Just as Shariati professed admiration for the other Abrahamic faiths,
he welcomed secular political philosophy. Not only did he consider himself
a socialist, he called Imam Ali, Imam Hussein, and Abu Dharr Ghaffari,18
his revolutionary hero of the early Islamic period, God-worshipping
socialists. Moreover, he freely appropriated key Marxian concepts,
such as class struggle, classless society, imperialism, and capitalist
exploitation, into his lexicon of Islamic ideology. The intellectual influ-
ences that conditioned Shariatis lifework suggest that not only was he
not an Islamic chauvinist, but he attempted explicitly and implicitly to
advance an Islamic ideology that was inspired by socialist ideas of justice
and diverse political liberation philosophies. He frequently quoted Marx,
whose ideas he studied under a Jewish ex-communist, George Gurvitch,
at the Sorbonne. He stoutly defended the anticolonial struggles in Africa
and Asia and advanced his liberation theology with references to the
notion of the vanguard party from Lenin, permanent revolution from
Trotsky, and guided democracy from the Indonesian nationalist leader
Sukarno. Not only did he not conceal his proclivities for these non-Islamic
sources, he chastised the dominant clerical establishment for their ambiv-
alence toward the predicaments of the contemporary world, especially
for their response to the postwar decolonization of former imperial pos-
sessions. Indeed, Shariatis entire philosophy rested on the principle of
the unity of all Abrahamic religions in their struggle for social justice.
When in the early 1970s high-ranking clerics accused Shariati of
apostasy and Wahhabism, he first tried to appease his clerical critics.19
But he was incensed by the ayatollahs complacency in matters of injus-
tice and tyranny. In a letter to Ayatollah Milani, who had earlier forbid-
den his followers from reading his books or attending his lectures, he
lamented that he still respects [the ayatollah] and reminded him that
his presence offered hope and support to all the youth who desired a
safe haven in these bewildering times. The letter that had started with
a pleasant appreciation turned into an unforgiving censure of the clergy.
He wrote,
Everybody is asking this question (and because of my gratitude toward

you I have tried in vain to offer them a persuasive answer to them): Why
is it that pious people such as yourself, who sit on the cathedral of the
deputy of the Shii messiah (imam-e zama n) as a source of emulation,
have not uttered a word about tyranny in this world? For eight years,
the French army bloodied and massacred the Muslims of Algeria, ruined
their cities, tortured their warriors, and the Algerians fought hero-
ically. The enlightened Christian priests in France sympathized with
the Algerians. The existentialist Sartre and the antireligion Ms. Sim-
one de Beauvoir defended them and endangered their own lives for the
sake of the Algerians cause. Even the French communist Henri Alleg
joined the Algerian resistance and made the atrocities of the French,
their torture of the Algerian mujahidin, known to the world. You, one
of the leaders of the Shiite world, did not even issue a meaningless
statement of sympathy.... For more than twenty years now the Mus-
lims of Palestine have suffered at the hand of the Israelis. Their atroc-
ities are so horrific that they compelled a young Japanese man to
sacrifice his life heroically in defense of the Palestinians. But our cler-
ical leaders do not show one-thousandth of the sensitivity they display
in my condemnation in denouncing the brutalities of the Israelis....
It perturbs me deeply to witness that a great source of emulation writes
on the pages of his book that the Prophet has advised those who eat
melon would go to the heaven! And then you have the audacity to call me
an unfit element.20
In his Sorbonne professor Gurvitch, Shariati found the perfect manifesta-

tion of his general theory that the primary principle of a true religious
community is the struggle against injustice. In a provocative letter to his
father circa 1972, demoralized by the attacks launched against him by the
grand ayatollahs, Shariati referred to Gurvitch as a model to be emu-
lated. He called Gurvitch someone who had spent all his life fighting
against fascism, Stalinist dictatorship and French colonialism in Algeria...
closer to the spirit of Shiism than Ayatollah Milani. He considered a
Jewish man who fights for social and economic justice to be his religious
brother, and denounced a pious source of emulation, who justified and
upheld the exploitative and oppressive status quo, as a polytheist foe.21
In order to fill out their bigoted portrait of Shariati, Afary and Ander-
son distort his well-known reservations about mysticism and the ratio-
nalist school of Islamic theosophy known as the Mutazila. They turn
Shariatis critique of the Mutazila scholasticism and Sufis detachment
from the worldly affairs into an indication of his intolerance of external
influences on what he considered to be an authentic interpretation of
Islam. They argue,
In particular, he wished to drive out Greek philosophy, Indian and

Iranian mysticism, as well as Christian and Jewish theology. He also
rejected the more tolerant interpretations of Islam found in Persian
poetry (e.g., Omar Khayyam), in Muslim philosophy (e.g., Farabi, 870
950; Avicenna, 9801037), or even in Sufi mysticism. (60)
In contrast to what Afary and Anderson assert, Shariatis objection to

those Islamic traditions had nothing to do with the question of religious
tolerance. Rather, he believed that dominant interpretations of Islam had
turned this religion into a lifeless belief system removed from the every-
day concerns and grievances of its practitioners. He wanted to replace
the antiquated Islam of inaction that was institutionalized in the semi-
naries with a dynamic Islam of movement and worldly engagement.
During his short career,22 Shariati delved twice into mysticism and
Gnostic practices (irfan), both times as a result of political despair. The
first time he turned to mystical introversion was during a period of stu-
dent activism after the 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran, which ousted the
nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. In these years, his
activism was influenced by the remnants of a short-lived movement called
God-Worshipping Socialists (khoda-parastan-e socialist). But a general
apathy toward and fear of politics in Iranian society rendered that and
other political activities irrelevant. In his writings dated from the late
1950s and early 1960s, known as desert contemplations (kaviriyat), not
only did he see mysticism as the path to the Truth, he immersed himself
in the mystical practices of solitary meditation. The kavir, or desert,
both literally and allegorically represented to him the solitude that was
the necessary precondition for achieving closeness to the Divine. As a
young man he saw himself as a reincarnation of the great Sufi masters
and poets such as Mansur Hallaj and Rumi.23 The desert makes a mock-
ery of Mans material achievements, he believed.24
It was exactly the same solitude in Sufi practices, and not political
and religious tolerance, to which he later objected. Indeed, this triggered
the most important existential crisis of his life. He refuted the kind of
Sufism that advocated disengagement from worldly affairs and sought
certitude in the inner experiences of the Divine. The mystic experiences
of desert contemplations seemed to be inimical to social responsibility. Ulti-
mately, he felt compelled to distance himself from Sufism in order to
pursue earthly justice. Furthermore, he also rejected the systematization
of Gnosticism in the Sufi Orders; that is, he rejected an organizational
logic in Sufism, not its embrace of the plurality of mystical experiences.
During his last imprisonment, before he left the country in 1977 for the
last time, Shariati revisited his passion for mysticism.
Ironically, at the dawn of the revolution, he considered his project a
failed attempt to imagine a revolutionary Islam. He thought that the
young armed activists of the Mojahedin organization misunderstood his
message of liberation. The liberation he had promoted, he later lamented,

was liberation from ignorance. He thought that to end injustice and
oppression, rather than taking up arms, the enlightened intellectuals
must liberate Islam from the petrified clerical institutions that promoted
superstition, exclusivism, and political quietism.
Not only do Afary and Anderson misrepresent Shariatis critique
of Sufism as antipluralism, they also claim erroneously that he rejected
Muslim philosophers because they were influenced by Greek philoso-
phy. Shariati objected to identifying al-Farabi and Avicenna as the main
defenders of the Islamic tradition not because they appropriated Greek
philosophy in their Mutazila rationalism but because he believed that
such genealogies would turn Islam into a scholastic dogma detached from
the realities of Muslims everyday lives. Through what he called Alavid
Shiism, he intended to offer an alternative genealogy of Islamic tradi-
tion in which the defining moments were marked by action and struggle
rather than doctrinal debates. Instead of offering a historical narrative
based on philosophical discourse and theological debates, Shariatis his-
tory of Islam consisted of a succession of martyrs and rebellions against
tyranny. He was inspired by the St. Pauls and Aarons of Islam, rather
than by its St. Augustines and Maimonides; by those who chose Islam
consciously; by those whose Islam was realized in exile, prison, and bat-
tlegrounds rather than in seminary quarters. Thus, he constructed an
axiom of the true Islam in the idea of a movement parallel to the succes-
sion of caliphs and the great philosophers of institutionalized Islaman
Islam of Abu Dharr and Hallaj versus the Islam of Umar and Avicenna.25
During a roundtable discussion in the late 1960s, a historian criti-
cized Shariati for reproaching traditional Islam and its institutions. The
critic insisted that Shariati had not rationally and scientifically proven
his vaunted distinction between the Islam of struggle and institutional-
ized Islam. The unnamed critic further ridiculed his genealogical inno-
vation and called it far from a neutral sociological scrutiny. Shariati
responded:
I am not a scientific researcher, but I feel the heaviness of centuries of
torture and martyrdom on my soul.... This qibla,[26] which symbolizes
emancipation from thousands of years of enslavement, has transformed
into the house of oppression and ignorance, and now you demand calm
and scientific research spiced by a respectful aristocratic etiquette....
The logic of Shiites like myself is not the same as the logic of Avi-
cenna, al-Ghazali, of the researcher or of the Orientalist, mine is the
logic of Abu Dharr.... O my brother, our quarrel is not over a scien-
tific theory, it is over the inheritance of [the caliph].27
In this sense, Shariati viewed Islam as a contested discourse the reality

of which must be determined in revolutionary praxis. What he despised
was the kind of orthodoxy the principles of which were discussed in the
seminarian chambers or philosophers quarters. His thought went through
major transformations during his lifetime. But he never defined his proj-
ect as purging Islam from external influences.
Khomeini the Demagogue

Afary and Anderson treat Ayatollah Khomeini with the same kind of care-
lessness and prejudice. They portray Khomeini as a dogmatic ideologue
whose philosophical, theological, and political ideas require no serious
consideration. They present him as a historical residue, a product of
uneven modernization, whose ideas may be summed up in a simple pre-
modern fantasy. Like the way they describe Shariati, they depict Kho-
meini as an ahistorical actor with an unchanging political philosophy,
impervious to the circumstances that conditioned his thought. The Kho-
meini of the 1930s, 40s, 60s, 70s, and 80s are all the same static figure
with predetermined stagnant ideas, waiting opportunistically to realize
his archaic fascism.28 For example, As a junior cleric, Afary and Ander-
son write,
Khomeini published Kashf al-Asrar (The Unveiling of Secrets) in 1943,

a book that advocated a return to clerical supervision of the entire
legal code, the return of the veil, as well as Quranic physical punish-
ment. At the same time, in an innovation for clerical politics, Kho-
meini wished to take over rather than dismantle the state apparatus
built by Reza Shah. (73)
Although they offer a number of references to justify their claim, none

of those scholarly sources actually substantiate the view that in 1943 Kho-
meini advocated the dissolution of the state apparatus. In fact, it is com-
monly understood among scholars of Iran that at the time Khomeini,
echoing a dominant Shii political philosophy, advocated a promonarchy
accommodationist position.29 For most of Islamic history, both Sunni and

Shii theologians subscribed to the political doctrine of the primacy of
order over chaos. This doctrine, whose most eloquent proponent was
Muhammad al-Ghazali (10581111), calls for Muslims to obey their
king/sultan/caliph, for he provides security for the ummah. In his Kashf
al-Asrar (1943), Khomeini emphasized that bad government is better
that no government; we have never said that the king must be a faqih,
or know all the conditions of the obligatory religious duties; and the
Ulama always cooperate with the government if that is needed.30
There is convincing evidence that at the time he composed Kashf
al-asrar, Khomeini was familiar with the idea of governance by the guard-
ianship of the jurist (velayat-e faqih), put forward more than one hundred
years earlier by Mullah Ahmad Naraqi (17711829). Naraqi had argued
strongly for the right of the mujtahid (the legitimate source of religious
interpretation) to act as a successor to the imam, and vested him with all
the powers of the imam.31 But despite his familiarity with Naraqis polit-
ical philosophy, in 1943 Khomeini promoted the more traditional Shii
quietist position. He defended the principle of an advisory role for the
clergy as envisioned in the 1907 constitutional amendment. Only in the
early 1970s did he begin to articulate a justification for the breach of the
political authority and the assumption of power by the clergy. For Afary
and Anderson, however, Khomeini represents a suprahistorical funda-
mentalist ideology and remains the same ideologue from the time he
entered the public arena to the time of his death in 1989.
In his earlier writings Khomeini adhered to the same principles put
forward by the anticonstitutionalist cleric Sheikh Fazlollah Nuri (1844
1909).32 Despite the fact that he was willing to accept the authority of
the monarch, he considered all forms of constitutionalism and legislative
acts to be inconsistent with the teachings of Islam. Evidently, Afary and
Anderson are unaware of Khomeinis political transformations, and he
appears in their critique as a transhistorical fundamentalist who planted
the seeds of the 1979 revolution in his youth.
More importantly, Afary and Anderson disregard Khomeinis remark-
able political transformation during the 197879 revolutionary move-
ment. Khomeini abandoned his earlier views on constitutional monarchy
and formulated a theory of Islamic governance and the rule of the jurist.
He further refined his position after he was expelled from his exilic home
in the Iraqi city of Najaf and migrated to Paris in October 1978. In Paris
not only did he highlight the constitutional bases of Islamic government,
he called for an Islamic Republic based on the sovereignty of the people.
His radical departure from his earlier positions is evident in a declara-
tion he issued on January 12, 1979. There he announced the formation
of the Council of the Islamic Revolution, the main responsibility of
which would be to make necessary preparations for the transfer of power
to a postrevolutionary provisional government. The new government,
he stated, would be entrusted with the following tasks:
1.The formation of a Constituent Assembly composed of the elected

representatives of the people in order to discuss and approve the
new Constitution of the Islamic Republic
2.The implementation of elections based on the principles approved
by the Constituent Assembly and the new Constitution
3.The transfer of power to the representatives chosen in those elections33
Portraying Khomeini and Shariati as fundamentalist bigots only

diminishes the significance of the historical transformations and contin-
gencies of their ideas. By definition, fundamentalists reflexively follow
doctrinal convictions that remain coherent, resilient, and resistant to
changing circumstances. Throughout their book, Afary and Anderson
either ignore important transformative moments in Islamist politics in
Iran or misrepresent the events in order to fit the reality into their own
ideological scheme. For example, they frequently remind their readers
of Khomeinis and Shariatis anti-Semitism and their importunate hos-
tility toward religious and ethnic minorities in Iran. These are represented
as self-evident facts offered to underscore Foucaults misplaced enthusi-
asm for bigoted Islamist leaders.34
There is no question that Khomeini and the entire clerical establish-
ment viewed Bahaism as a heresy and considered its followers to be apos-
tates. Moreover, they treated the question of Judaism and Christianity
in classical Islamic terms, regarding Jews and Christians as the people of
the Book and therefore protected under Islamic rule. In a careless gen-
eralization, Afary and Anderson invariably couple the Bahais and Jews
together as target of Khomeinis hatred. In the postrevolutionary regime,
Bahais were persecuted and in many instances executed. They were
never recognized as a religious minority or accorded special protection
in the new constitution. Nevertheless, anecdotal references to Shariatis

comments about Jews or Khomeinis inflammatory conflation of Zion-
ism with Judaism and Israel with the Jews has to be understood in the
context of and in reference to the relationship between Iran and Israel
along with the power the United States and Israel exercised over the
political and economic affairs of Iran under the Shah. Throughout the
1960s and 1970s, a great majority of Iranian Left and liberal intellectu-
als used the same indiscriminate conflation of Israel with Jews. Israeli
politics had become indistinguishable from Judaism.35
One of the main reasons, Khomeini stressed in an interview on
December 7, 1978, we oppose the Shah is his assistance to Israel....
He has plundered the Muslims oil wealth and has given it to Israel. This
has always been one of the reasons of my opposition [to this regime].36
Not only did Khomeini make that connection during the revolutionary
movement, he also made his declarations clearly in political connection
with Israel even in his earlier writings. For example, in 1963, in one of his
earliest political sermons against the Shahs White Revolution, although
he talks about the Jewish control of the Iranian economic lifelines, he
made it clear that by Jewish control he meant the state of Israel. After a
brief incarceration, he gave a defiant sermon at the Azam Mosque and
repeated the point: Our religion compels us not to reconcile with the
enemies of Islam, the Quran dictates not to unite with the enemies of
Islam against Muslims. Our nation opposes the Shahs accord with Israel
(1:77). And most importantly, conscious of the ambiguities in his own
earlier statements, on the eve of the revolution on Christmas Day of 1978,
Khomeini issued a declaration stressing that his opposition to Zionism
and Israel is a separate matter from Judaism and Jews, we must respect
other religions and their followers (4:219). And a few months later, after
the revolution, he revisited the issue and reminded a group of demon-
strators against Israel that Zionism is a political and colonial project
and distinct from the affairs of the Jewish community (6:164). The point
should be unmistakable: Khomeini was politically anti-Zionist, but hardly
an anti-Semite. He took pains to distinguish the two, and Afary and
Anderson carelessly conflate the two.
Afary and Andersons comments on Khomeinis hostility toward eth-
nic minorities are even more unfathomable. They are troubled by Fou-
caults omissions of Khomeinist intolerance toward minority religions
and ethnicities (54) but offer no proof of this intolerance toward minor-
ity ethnicities during the revolutionary period. It is also puzzling to think
of Khomeini speaking on behalf of the Persian majority, while his entire
political discourse rested on an antinationalist ideology. As I have shown
elsewhere, the postrevolutionary civil war in Kurdistan and Arab, Turk-
man, and Azeri ethnic strife were part of a struggle motivated less by
Khomeinist hostility toward ethnic minorities and more by a bloody
attempt to consolidate and restore the power of the central government.37
Afary and Anderson invent a revolutionary genealogy in the context
of which declarations of Khomeini, and the political ideology he and other
Islamists represented, appear as a self-evident, homogenized, and ahis-
torical fundamentalism. They repeatedly misappropriate Khomeinis dec-
larations and decontextualize them to establish a Khomeinism that was
inherently dogmatic, intolerant, and fascist. For example, they cite Kho-
meini denouncing teachers who did not support his vision of revolution:
If you see that your professor, your teachers, or leaders of the nation,
are being diverted from their national and religious obligations, at the
head of which is the uprooting of this decrepit regime, you must vehe-
mently protest and suggest to them the way of the nation, which is the way
of God. If they do not accept [argument], then avoid them and clearly
explain their deviant ways to the innocent people. [Say] that [the teach-
ers] are traitors to religion, to the nation, and to the country, that they
want the shah and his owners, the international thieves, to continue
their plundering and to keep the nation poor and backward.38
To make Khomeinis true intentions more deliberate, Afary and Ander-

son cite his interview with the BBC a few days later, in which he hinted
at the authoritarian pathway he had in mind for Iran, when he declared
that he had no intention of restoring the 19067 Constitution. He termed
it an old and reactionary thing, adding, Islamic law is the most pro-
gressive law.39 More perplexing than their romantic and idealized notion
of the 1906 Constitution is Afary and Andersons chagrin at Khomeinis
categorical denunciation of it. Was the revolution not about the aboli-
tion of constitutional monarchy?
The above references to Khomeinis declarations against those who
were being diverted from their national and religious obligations were
made after the liberal nationalists appealed to him in France to accept the
Shahs concessions and allow the king to remain in power as a constitu-

tional monarch. For decades after the 1953 coup, the Iranian secular as
well as Muslim liberal nationalists (the National Front and Liberation
Movement, respectively) demanded a revival of the 1906 Constitution
and defended a constitutional monarchy in which they thought the Shah
must reign but not govern. The nationalists, who remained up to that point
committed to their reformist agenda, reluctantly situated themselves in
the revolutionary camp. They tried to exploit the ambiguity in Khomei-
nis notion of the Islamic Government and wed it to their long-held belief
in the constitutional monarchy. By the time Khomeini arrived in Paris
in October 1978, the Shahs regime had unmistakably lost all legitimacy.
The question then was whether to save monarchy or resume the revolu-
tion against it. In the above passages, Khomeini was not situating his
revolutionary vision against others revolutionary agenda. He was defend-
ing the revolution itself.
A wide range of liberal nationalists, from the reformist Ali Amini, a
Shah loyalist, to Mehdi Bazargan, a Muslim reformist opposition leader,
approached Khomeini in Neauphle-le-Chateau to arrive at a grand bar-
gain to save the Shahs throne but strip him of all his governing powers.
With millions relentlessly and fearlessly demonstrating on the streets of
the Iranian cities and strikes crippling major industries and state bureau-
cracy, the grand bargain was dead on arrival in October 1978. No leader
at the time could remain in the position of leadership by agreeing to halt
the momentum of revolution. To end any hope to resuscitate the old
Constitution, Khomeini declared monarchy, in no ambiguous terms and
against his own previous beliefs, fundamentally incompatible with Islamic
political philosophy. He repeated in a number of occasions: The regime
we will establish will have no resemblance to a monarchy (2:47).
On October 14, 1978, only four days after the interview Afary and
Anderson cite with the BBC, in response to a reporters question, What
type of government will replace the Shahs regime? for the first time
Khomeini introduces his notion of republicanism in order to put to rest
the comparisons that were being made between his conception of the
Islamic government with the Saudi or Libyan systems (2:36). By introduc-
ing an Islamic Republic, in effect, he ended any possibility of a compro-
mise with the regime. He made it clear, as another reporter during an
interview observed, The leadership of the revolution was not only against
the Shah, but against any form of monarchy, constitutional or otherwise
(3:52). In a series of declarations and interviews thereafter, Khomeini
effectively marginalized the camp that still hoped for the realization of
the old constitutionalist principle that the Shah must reign but not govern.
He stressed that the peoples vote will determine the shape of the next
political system (ibid.). We will call for a general referendum on a
republican system (3:25859). Since our nation is Muslim and it regards
us as its servant, based on that, I presume that it will ratify our proposal
[of an Islamic Republic] (3:33).
Khomeinis shift from promoting an Islamic government to propos-
ing a specifically republican system was a major transformation in his polit-
ical philosophy. This point is either unknown or irrelevant to Afary and
Anderson. For them, these tactical shifts were made only to conceal his
essentially authoritarian intentions. In consequence, observers like Fou-
cault who took Khomeinis political maneuvering seriously were merely
dupes of the cunning ayatollah.
Defending an editorial written by the influential Iranian sociologist
Ehsan Naraqi in support of the liberal-nationalist concession plan, Afary
and Anderson chastise Foucault for failing to appreciate the extremely
popular wish for a return to the 19067 Constitution (91). Not a single
account of the Iranian Revolution history corroborates the idea of mass
support for the return of the 19067 Constitution at this point in time,
a few months before the collapse of monarchy in February 1979. In his
October 1, 1978, commentary, The Shah Is a Hundred Years behind
the Times, Foucault rightly pointed out that the liberal constitutionalist
solution, Let the king reign but not govern, had become an untenable
alternative. By then, this allegedly popular wish had lost even its most
vociferous advocates among the secular liberal nationalists. As Foucault
reported on November 7, 1978,
Karim Sanjabi, the leader of the National Front, had finally accepted
the first point of the ayatollahs declaration, to the effect that the shahs
monarchy is illegitimate and illegal. His abdication and departure had
thus become a prerequisite for the reconstitution of political life. By
Friday evening, the monarch lacked even indirect support anywhere
among the opposition, leaving him without any room to maneuver.40
On numerous occasions in his interviews with the press, Khomeini

was asked to draw a distinction between an Islamic Republic and other
forms of republics. His response to a Le Monde reporter on November
13, 1978, characterized his conception of the common ground between
Islam and his envisioned republic.
Le Monde: Your Excellency wishes to establish an Islamic Republic
in Iran. For the French people this is ambiguous, because a repub-
lic cannot have a religious foundation. Is your republic based on
socialism? Constitutionalism? Would you hold elections? Is it
democratic?
Ayatollah Khomeini: Our republic has the same meaning as anywhere
else. We call it Islamic Republic because the conditions of its
emergence are embedded in Islam, but the choice belongs to the
people. The meaning of the republic is the same as any other
republics in the world. (4:479)
Khomeini took practical steps beyond his rhetorical endorsement of re-

publicanism. He bestowed the responsibility of drafting the new consti-
tution to Hassan Habibi, a Sorbonne-educated jurist, who later formed
a commission comprising civil experts in jurisprudence.41 Habibi was
profoundly influenced by Gaullist French republicanism. Habibis affin-
ity with Gaullism manifested itself in the document he drafted, in which
he assigned absolute executive powers to the president and called for a
Guardian Council to review the constitutionality of laws passed by the
majlis (parliament) in order to examine their compatibility with Islam.
The Revolutionary Council and the Provisional Council of Ministers
under the supervision of Yadollah Sahabi, another prominent liberal pol-
itician and an advisor to the provisional government of Mehdi Bazargan,
further revised the document and published the official preliminary draft
on June 14, 1979.42 This version revised the first draft by moving it closer
toward a social-democratic constitution. It added provisions on wom-
ens rightsspecifically the right to hold public officeand on other
social justice issues it emphasized participatory democracy and further
restricted the private ownership of industry. The published April 1979
version limited the power of the president and increased that of the prime
minister. More importantly, it recognized municipal and provincial coun-
cils as a major source of decision-making and executive power. Ayatollah
Beheshti, one of the founders of the Islamic Republic Party and the vice
chair of the Constitutional Assembly, notably advocated the issue of wom-
ens right to run for every elected office of the government (including the
office of the president). Ayatollah Taleqani, one of the most influential
leaders of the revolution and a member of the Revolutionary Council,
championed the elevation of municipal councils as the practical founda-
tion of governance.43
Not only did Khomeini trust civic jurists to draft the new constitu-
tion, on several occasions he lent his support publicly to the published
preliminary draft in which no mention of velayat-e faqih was made.44 For
example, in a meeting with members of the Tehran Preachers Society
on June 17, 1979, he insisted on supporting the published draft and hoped
that it would be approved and instituted shortly. Indeed, until velayat-e
faqih was passed by the Assembly of Experts on September 12, 1979,
Khomeini remained faithful to his 1978 Paris declaration of Islamic re-
publicanism, in which ruhaniyat (the clergy) was to assume an advisory
role in the guidance and proctorship of the state.45 According to Hassan
Habibi, the Revolutionary Council approved the published version of
the constitution with the direct blessing of Ayatollah Khomeini, who
had only expressed minor concerns about the consistency of the docu-
ment with Islamic jurisprudence in matters of womens rights and the
relationship between the Shiites and minority Sunnis. In an interview
with the Kayhan daily, Habibi argued that Khomeini believed that the
realities of our society do not allow a full appreciation of velayat-e faqih,
our society is not ready to accept this.46
Whereas Foucault saw in the phrase Islamic government an ambig-
uous notion oscillating between a utopia and an ideal that would
eventually open a contested politics of governance, Afary and Anderson
see the unfolding of a preordained fundamentalist clerical order. For
Foucault,
[Islamic government] is something very old and also very far into the
future, a notion of coming back to what Islam was at the time of the
Prophet, but also of advancing toward a luminous and distant point
where it would be possible to renew fidelity rather than maintain obe-
dience. In pursuit of this ideal, the distrust of legalism seemed to me
to be essential, along with a faith in the creativity of Islam.47
At the time he wrote these lines in October 1978, the same revolution-
ary spell that had mesmerized millions of Iranians might have enchanted
Foucault. But nevertheless, he rightly repeated the caveat that a religious
authority pointed out to him that it would require long work by civil and
religious experts, scholars, and believers in order to shed light on all the
problems to which the Quran never claimed to give a response.48 For
Afary and Anderson, Khomeini and the other clerical leaders of the revo-
lution appeared to adhere to medieval dogma, oblivious to the predica-
ments of the contemporary world. Afary and Andersons commitment
to their own modernist ideology rendered them incapable of recogniz-
ing that Khomeinism was not, as Ervand Abrahamian put it, simply a
religious crusade obsessed with scriptural texts, spiritual purity, and theo-
logical dogma. Khomeini was a shrewd and flexible populist, conditioned
by and responsive to the historically distinct, socially specific political and
economic grievances of the Iranian people.49
The Atrocities of the Islamic Republic

The historical events that offer the most compelling material for Afary and
Andersons interpretation of the Iranian Revolution lies in the immedi-
ate postrevolutionary period, which eventually led to the reign of terror
of the 1980s. They argue that the following acts: the dissolution of fam-
ily protection laws, the brutal suppression of the Kurdish (and later Arab)
demands for the right of self-determination, instituting mandatory hijab,
the executions of prominent figures of the ancien rgime, and, soon there-
after, the indiscriminate mass executions of members and sympathizers
of the opposition parties, all showed the conspicuous continuity in and
internal consistency of Islamism. Rather than acknowledging the post-
revolutionary contingencies of power struggles, they identify the reign
of terror as the foreseeable unfolding and inevitable manifestation of
Khomeinism.
The fact of the terror is indisputable. It remains a defining and bru-
tal moment in the history of the young Islamic Republic. Tens of thou-
sands were imprisoned, executed, and assassinated by the state. The state
took repressive measures to curtail the short-lived liberties and demo-
cratic institutions. The critical question, however, is why and how the post-
revolutionary moment degenerated into bloodshed and oppression. To
reduce such events to the unfolding of the internal logic of Islamism hin-
ders deeper understandings of the mechanisms by which revolutionary
moments of collective political participation give way to the power strug-
gles of state-building.
In Afary and Andersons chronology, there are no words of the con-
tingencies that informed the policies and politics of the new republic. In
their narrative, actions of the postrevolutionary state were motivated by
its ideological commitments rather than being shaped by the demands and
realpolitik of state-building. I do not use state-building here as a euphe-
mism to conceal the brutality with which it is associated. Rather, I want to
emphasize that one needs to contextualize the consolidation of power not
as a signifier of the fascist core of Islamist ideology, but as concrete responses
to particular events. In March 1979, Afary and Anderson write, [Kho-
meini] sponsored a national referendum that declared Iran an Islamic
Republic. Soon after, as Khomeini began to assume nearly absolute power,
a reign of terror ensued (2). Or, in the conclusion of the book, they sim-
ply declare that Khomeini moved quickly to repress feminists, ethnic and
religious minorities, liberals, and leftistsall in the name of Islam (163).
They also mention that during this period, from 1979 to 1988, more than
twenty thousand political prisoners were executed (301n128).
In their narrative, this repression operates like a self-propelling
machine. There is no mention that on June 28, 1981, an opposition group
blew up the headquarters of the ruling Islamic Republic Party and killed
more than seventy of its founders and members of the parliament. Among
the dead was Ayatollah Beheshti, who served as the chief justice at the
time. Two months later, on August 30, 1981, President Ali Rajaei and
Prime Minister Mohammad Bahonar were assassinated by another bomb
blast. In a period of two years, from 1981 to 1983, the Mojahedin orga-
nization carried out countless assassinations against key personalities of
the clergy, members of the parliament, influential Friday Prayer Imams,
members of neighborhood militia forces, and those who were suspected
of cooperation with the regime. Hashemi Rafsanjani, then the speaker of
the parliament, and Ali Khamenei, then the president, both were injured
during assassination attempts. None of these justify a policy of indiscrim-
inate execution of young members and sympathizers of the opposition
parties. However, it demonstrates that the atrocities committed by the
Islamic Republic were not simply the realization of Khomeinism.
Foucaults early critics compared him with intellectuals who defended

fascism and Stalinist totalitarianism. In a scathing commentary, Claudie
and Jacque Broyelle, who appeared to be rehabilitating themselves from
their Maoist past, called on Foucault to acknowledge his errors like a
good reflective intellectual and confess: I was mistaken. Here is what
was wrong in my reasoning: here is where my thinking is in error.50 In
reply, in addition to pointing out their complete misunderstanding both
of the revolution and the historical significance of political Islam, Fou-
cault rebuked them for calling on him to acknowledge his error. This
was a maneuver, he spat, whose form and content I detest. Frus-
trated by the intolerance of those who found his conception of political
spirituality an errant aberration in the French tradition of anticlericalism,
Foucault refused to participate in a polemic the basic premise of which
was You are going to confess, or you will shout long live the assassins.51
Afary and Anderson hardly mask their glee in their description of
how the French ridiculed Foucault. For them, not only was the compari-
son of Foucault with those who defended fascism and other totalitarian-
isms legitimate, but more importantly, they argue, time had proven the
truth of the fascist core of Islamism. In the epilogue of the book, after
nodding to the ideological and political diversity of Islamism, they con-
clude: Nonetheless, like fascism earlier, which had German, Italian, Span-
ish, Romanian, and many other varieties, radical Islamism has enough
common features to discern it as a general phenomenon (163).
They provide a number of references to substantiate the claim that
Islamism indeed exists as an ideologically unified general phenomenon.
The two scholarly authorities whom they cite on this point, John Espo
sito52 and Fred Halliday,53 however, contradict their thesis. Neither Espo
sito nor Halliday consider the varieties of Islamist movements, from the
Taliban to the leadership of the Iranian revolution, to be parts of a single
phenomenon. On the contrary, they emphasize the social context of the
different Islamist movements in order to highlight their distinctions and
distinctiveness, not their uniformity.
Paul Berman is the only authority they offer who advances a theory
of Islamo-fascism and a direct correspondence between Islamism and
totalitarianism.54 But Berman, who defended the American invasion of
Iraq and who advocates a messianic American interventionism for the
promotion of democracy around the world, could hardly be a credible
expert on Islamism or offer a justifiable alternative to what Afary and
Anderson call Western cultural relativists.55
They enumerate a number of instances, from Khomeinis fatwa against
Salman Rushdie, whom they call a man of the Left [!] (164), to the
Talibans destruction of the Buddha statues in Bamyan to highlight the
internal consistency and fascist core of Islamism in spite of its regional,
social, and cultural diversity (16467). To further prove that Islamists of
all kinds form a united front regardless of their differences, they even
claim, without substantiation, that the Iranian supreme leader and the
conservative part of the government... condemned U.S. actions against
bin Laden (173). This, of course, is erroneous. The collapse of the Tal-
iban regime was made possible by the indispensable help and strategic
planning of the Islamic Republic. During the war, members of the Ira-
nian Revolutionary Guard Corps even cooperated with the CIA and the
U.S. Special Operation Forces in supplying and funding the command-
ers of the Northern Alliance.56 Even the Bush administrations special
envoy, James Dobbins, stressed that the Islamic Republics assistance was
crucial during the war, and more importantly, in reaching an agreement
at the December 2001 UN-sponsored conference in Bonn, Germany,
on the transitional government of Afghanistan.57 Nevertheless, Afary and
Anderson conclude that the unbridled joy with which the population of
Kabul greeted the fall of the Taliban in late 2001 shocked many Islamists,
as well as those Western leftists and progressives who had taken a cultur-
ally relativist position toward Afghanistan (165).
Misreading Foucault
Afary and Anderson draw on their facile, uniform picture of Islamism in
order to make self-evident the flaws of Foucaults view on the Iranian
Revolution. It is relatively easy, from the vantage point of the twenty-
first century, they point out, when militant Islamist movements have
caused immense destruction not only in Iran, but also in Algeria, Egypt,
Afghanistan, and the United States, to see substantial flaws in Foucaults
writings on Iran (136). But Foucaults ultimate sin was not his ignorance
of Iranian history, they argue, but something deeper that has also moti-
vated a whole generation of intellectuals in the West: he adopted a roman-
tic idealization of premodern societies. They argue that Foucault, and
by association other so-called cultural relativists, cheered on the revolu-

tion because he discerned a manifestation of his poststructuralist critique
of modernity in the supposedly antimodernist chants of Islamist radicals
on the streets of Tehran!
Both [Foucault and Islamist radicals] were searching for a new form of
political spirituality as a counter-discourse to a thoroughly materialis-
tic world; both clung to idealized notions of premodern social orders;
both were disdainful of modern liberal judicial systems; and both
admired individuals who risked death in attempts to reach a more
authentic existence. Foucaults affinity with the Iranian Islamists, often
construed as his error over Iran, may also reveal some of the larger
ramifications of his Nietzschean-Heideggerian discourse. (13)
With his Nietzschean view of history, they argue, Foucault saw in Kho-
meini an bermensch who could persuade millions to risk their lives in
the struggle against the Shah (14). Poststructuralists (they never make
it clear who else besides Foucault they have in mind) and leftists (namely
Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky) were so mesmerized by Islamist anti-
imperialist discourse and preoccupied with their critique of the secular
liberal or authoritarian modern state and its institutions that they allowed
retrogressive movements, such as Islamism, to flourish (136).
Is what they claim true? Did Foucault privilege a romantic premod-
ern social order over modern governmentality? Did his generative and
relational theory of power call for rescuing the modern subject by return-
ing to an authentic self, as they argue? Did Foucault combine an
admiration for the Orient with a certain nostalgia for the aristocratic in
order to cope with the modern callous form of individualism? (18). It
is only through a perfunctory reading that one can argue that Foucaults
affinity with the Iranian Revolution stemmed from his nostalgia for the
past. Afary and Anderson offer such a reading of Foucault with out-of-
context quotations and puzzling misinterpretations. For example, they
attribute Foucaults blissful ignorance of the hierarchical traditions
that regulated relations between adults and youths, men and women,
and upper and lower classes to his fascination with silence as a mode
of expression. Here they cite Foucault:
Silence may be a much more interesting way of having a relationship with

people.... I think silence is one of those things that has unfortunately
been dropped from our culture. We dont have a culture of silence; we
dont have a culture of suicide either. The Japanese do, I think. Young
Romans or young Greeks were taught to keep silent in very different
ways according to the people with whom they were interacting. Silence
was then a specific form of experiencing a relationship with others. This
is something that I believe is really worthwhile cultivating. Im in favor
of developing silence as a cultural ethos.58
Afary and Anderson do not acknowledge that he made these comments

in an interview in 1982 discussing his experience in a Japanese Zen tem-
ple. For them, in this passage, Foucault is privileging the silence of mostly
youth, women, and the lower classes in premodern social orders... as a
preferred mode of discourse.59 They interpret Foucaults contemplation
on silence as an expression of his Orientalist prejudice through which he
constructs a binary history of submissive and irrational East versus asser-
tive and discourse-oriented West. Although, they assert, Foucault was
probably [!] an Orientalist (20), unlike other Orientalists, he sympa-
thizes with the Orientals pre-technological lifestyle and their victim-
ization by Western imperialism.
Although Foucaults use of silence in his work is at times ambiguous
and confusing, it is hard to imagine that any of these ambiguities would
lead one to interpret his assertions as a defense of the silencing of the sub-
jugated. Indeed, Foucault is aware of the operational varieties of silence
in society. As he remarks in a 1982 interview, There [are] many differ-
ent ways of speaking as well as many forms of silence.60 In his work,
Foucault divides silence into two general forms.
The first, more evident in his earlier work, particularly in his Arche-
ology of Knowledge (originally published in 1969) is a mechanism through
which the normalizing and disciplinary powers of religion and science
manage the silenced body. In this case, all the powers of discourse and speech
exist in a binary opposition to silence. Foucault viewed silence as the bro-
ken dialogue of the mad (Madness and Civilization, 1961), the silent obser-
vation of the prisoner (Discipline and Punish, 1975), the imposing silence of
confessional technologies (History of Sexuality, 1976).61 With these meta-
phors, he positioned silence as a mechanism of exclusion, an instrument
in the service of domination. In this first instance, he regards silence as
a coercive normalizing technology as a means of manipulating and con-
trolling the silenced self (in cloister, prison, school, and regiment).62
In the second instance, developed in the first volume of his History

of Sexuality (1976), and later with his concept of political spirituality, Fou-
cault points to the hermeneutic significance of silence in the disciplinary
apparatus of confessional technology. Here, silence is situated not in a
binary opposition to speech acts, but itself as a mode of communication.
This is the point he stresses in his comment on Zen Buddhism.63
In his later work, however, he introduces a new conception, what he
calls pedagogical silence.64 Here Foucault distinguishes between being
silent as a pedagogical strategy and being silenced as an exclusionary
practice. Pedagogical silence could be traced back to Stoicism with its
practices of the self, ...emphasized and laid down by the Pythagore-
ans.65 Stoic Silence was an alternative to the Platonic discipline of learn-
ing by dialogue. In short, Foucaults treatment of silence in both cases,
as a behavioral discipline borrowed from Zen Buddhism or as a peda-
gogical principle of the Stoics had nothing to do with justifying or approv-
ing the repression (the silencing) of the oppressed.
In a footnote, Afary and Anderson recognize that in the History of
Sexuality Foucault adopts two seemingly contradictory attitudes toward
the concept of silenceone as a strategy of resistance and the other as a
repressive imposition. And they conclude: What [Foucault] misses is that
premodern silences are also imposed and forced, especially on women
(280n3). They emphasize Foucaults inattention toward the plight of their
transhistorical conception of women, because they want to illustrate that
his gendered ambivalence was a central feature of his defense of Islam
ism. More importantly, in his historiography, Foucault carefully avoids
these types of binary oppositions between modernity and premoder-
nity. To say that he endorses a premodern silencing of women or other
oppressed groups while he is critical of silencing practices of modern
disciplinary technologies is, to say the least, a gross misunderstanding of
Foucaults genealogical history.
Neither does Foucaults antiteleological genealogy romanticize the
past, nor his theory of disciplinary technology and discursive power priv-
ilege pastoral or ancient modes of being and subjectivity. One can appre-
ciate the anxieties that Foucaults genealogy generates when he aims to
record the singularity of events, outside of any monotonous finality.66
But a plausible concern for a Nietzschean nihilism one might detect in
Foucaults radical genealogy is far from a caricature of him defending
the premodern against modern relations of power. Even a superficial
reading of Foucaults lectures at Collge de France on Security, Territory,
Population, delivered a few months before his first trip to Iran, shows the
absurdity of the claim that he felt affinity with the Iranian revolution
because of its promise of the return of a repressed past!67 In those lec-
tures, Foucault clearly argues how pastoral (priestly) power is diffused in
modern techniques of governmentality and disciplinary regimes. He links
governmentality genealogically with Machiavellian state philosophy of
raison detat and ultimately to the medieval church and Christian pasto-
ral authority. It is the idea of the priest as the shepherd, the guardian and
guide of the flock, and its mixing with the Greco-Roman techniques of
self-examination that, according to Foucault, shaped the effective core
of the modern governmentality. Given Foucaults distinctive genealogy,
it is difficult to imagine how it would be possible to think conceptually
that he privileges premodern formations over modernity.
Afary and Andersons misinterpretation of Foucault relies on a
common liberal view of the transcendental individual. They reject what
they perceive to be Foucaults despairing view of modernity and its all-
encompassing disciplinary technology, and argue that he disregards the
greater freedoms that liberal democracy has afforded the individual along
with the same technologies (90). Foucaults foundational blunder, in their
view, becomes self-evident in response to the question: Is the freedom of
the modern subject not greater than that of the premodern individual? Afary
and Andersons affirmative response resides in their teleological view in
which they project the modern subject back onto the premodern indi-
vidual, an individual who experiences love, belief, freedom, privacy, and
other proclivities of the modern subject within the oppressive confines
of the premodern order.
More importantly, Afary and Andersons entire project rests on a
series of mutually exclusive dichotomies, on the one side of which they
locate anything modern, and on the other retrogressive residual premo-
dernity. In a brief note on contemporary Iranian history, they recapitu-
late their approach to a century of revolutions in Iran:
To Iranians and those familiar with the countrys history, the revolution-
ary uprising of 197879 was part of a series of turbulent events stretch-
ing back to 1906, in which the themes of democracy versus autocracy,
nationalism versus imperialism, socialism versus capitalism, secularism
versus clericalism, and womens emancipation versus tradition had

played themselves out at several key junctures. (72)
To put it bluntly, this appealing historical narrative is far removed from

the interactions and relations of significant actors of the two revolutions
and Irans decades of contested politics. The turbulent twentieth century
in Iran generated ambiguous alliances between different social groups
and political parties. There was not a single historical moment in which
the dichotomous distinctions such as democracy versus autocracy or
secularism versus clericalism described the real distinctions on the
ground between the premier political actors. This history is marked more
by actions of secular autocrats, clerical democrats, Westernized nation-
alists, and traditionalist defenders of womens equality than by the coher-
ent efforts of one side of those Manichaean configurations against the
other. The ideal types that Afary and Anderson construct to justify their
progressive teleology hardly reflect the careers and political affinities of
actual historical actors in Iran.
A binary history curtails in significant ways our understanding of the
dynamics of the revolutionary movement in Iran. The revolutionary
movement of 197879 did not spread along the line of a secular versus
Islamist binary narrative. A multifaceted theology of discontent, a reli-
gious emancipatory language, and a symbolic appropriation of Islamic
rituals gave the revolutionary movement a voice with which a diverse
group of revolutionary actors identified. Leftist students movements, the
impressive reception of poetry nights at the Goethe Institute in the fall
of 1977 in Tehran, riots of shantytown dwellers, the letter-writing cam-
paigns of human rights lawyers, and the indispensible strike of oil work-
ers never posed an alternative to the revolutionary movement that emerged
under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini.
The 197779 movement was primarily motivated by issues of social
justice and dignity in which the explanatory significance of binary devices
such as secular versus religious were at best limited. The bifurcated mis-
representation of the revolutionary movement also ridicules Foucault
further for his inability to see what must be evident to any observer. That
there were two factions in the revolutionary movementone progres-
sive, secular, and democratic and the other reactionary, religious, and
tyrannicaland Foucault chose to endorse the latter. It is in this context
that Afary and Anderson link Foucaults politics not only to his ignorance
of the Iranian situation, but also, and more importantly, to his theoreti-
cal commitment to a critical stand against the Enlightenment rational-
ity. It might be true, they propose, that Foucault was unaware of the long
history of secular and religious frictions in Iran, but he supported Islam
ism because of his romantic awe of the premodern.
One of the major flaws in Afary and Andersons analysis of the revo-
lution and Foucaults interpretation of it is that they assume, as Norma
Claire Moruzzi argues in her insightful review, that the Iranian revolu-
tion was not only a failure but a disaster, and they, therefore, are appalled
that Michel Foucault wrote excitedly about it while it occurred.68 Indeed,
whether a revolution is a failure or a success within itself is an ideologi-
cal question the answer to which involves many different aspects of social
and cultural life and might not be known for generations. Was the Chi-
nese Revolution a success or the Russian a failure? Was the Haitian Rev-
olution a failure judged by its legacy of repressive regimes or a success
reckoned through its overturning of slavery? How many generations
passed until historians began to speak of the French Revolution as a tri-
umphant marker of modern Europe? The Iranian Revolution has gone
through many conflicting periods and has not followed a straight path
along the lines of Brintons The Anatomy of Revolution. The initial hopes
and moderation coexisted with a reign of terror; and the period of terror
and virtue proved incapable of eliminating the strong roots of the Ther-
midor spirit. But the long eight-year Thermidor period under President
Khatami (19972005) led to a return of the soldiers of virtue and the
proponents of terror. And now in 2015, the spirit of moderation and hope
returns. To borrow from Foucault, These days nothing is finished, and
the dice are still being rolled.69
Afary and Anderson argue that the blunder of Foucaults romantic
and culturally relativist views (which are somehow also poststructuralist)
is the most manifest in gender and sexuality politics. Foucault, they stress,
is blind to the Islamist antiwoman outlook because of his theoretical
shortcomings on feminist politics and Orientalist fantasies. I will elabo-
rate on this point in the next chapter.
4
the reign of terror,
womens issues,
and feminist politics
The veil will fall, from Tehran to Casablanca!
Women protesters in Paris, March 1979
On November 6, 1978, Le Nouvel Observateur published the following

letter, called An Iranian Woman Writes, by Mme. Atoussa H. The let-
ter castigated Foucault for his failure to acknowledge the oppressive
nature of Islam and reprimanded the Western Left for romanticizing
the Iranian revolution without regard to its oppressive ideology.
Living in Paris, I am profoundly upset by the untroubled attitude of
French leftists toward the possibility of an Islamic government that
might replace the bloody tyranny of the shah. Michel Foucault, for
example, seems moved by the Muslim spirituality that would advan-
tageously replace, according to him, the ferocious capitalist dictatorship
that is tottering today. After twenty-five years of silence and oppression,
do the Iranian people have no other choice than that between the SAVAK
and religious fanaticism? In order to have an idea of what the spiritu-
ality of the Quran, applied to the letter under Ayatollah Khomeinis
type of moral order, would mean, it is not a bad idea to reread the texts.
Sura 2 [sic]: Your wives are for you a field; come then to your field as
you wish. Clearly, the man is the lord, the wife the slave; she can be
used at this whim; she can say nothing. She must wear the veil, born
from the Prophets jealousy toward Aisha! We are not dealing here with
a spiritual parable, but rather with a choice concerning the type of
society we want. Today, unveiled women are often insulted, and young
Muslim men do not themselves hide the fact that, in the regime that
they wish for, women should behave or else be punished. It is also writ-
ten that minorities have the right to freedom, on the condition that
113
114 | The Reign of Terror, Womens Issues, and Feminist Politics
they do not injure the majority. At what point do the minorities begin
to injure the majority?
Spirituality? A return to deeply rooted wellsprings? Saudi Arabia
drinks from the wellsprings of Islam. Hands and heads fall, for thieves
and lovers.... It seems that for the Western Left, which lacks human-
ism, Islam is desirable... for other people. Many Iranians are, like me,
distressed and desperate about the thought of an Islamic government.
We know what it is. Everywhere outside Iran, Islam serves as a cover for
feudal or pseudo-revolutionary oppression. Often also, as in Tunisia,
in Pakistan, in Indonesia, and at home, Islamalas!is the only means
of expression for a muzzled people. The Western liberal Left needs to
know that Islamic law can become a dead weight on societies hunger-
ing for change. The Left should not let itself be seduced by a cure that
is perhaps worse than the disease.1
Mme. Atoussa H.s remarks offer an iteration of what has become a

familiar trope in twenty-first-century political debates over headscarves
and the vulnerabilities of Muslim women.2 There is nothing new about
the kind of textual essentialism based on which Mme. H. castigates Fou-
caults sympathies toward the Islamic revolution. For Atoussa H., an un-
varying transcendental Islam informs Islamist politics that steers the
genuine revolutionary impulses of the masses toward its inherently
oppressive project. In that picture, the divergent Islamist tendencies in
Iran, the Saudi Wahhabism, Indonesian Islam, and Pakistani postcolo-
nial state all share the same common repressive core. Unlike Atoussa H.s
claim, Foucault remained as one of the very few voices to defend the
revolutionary movement not despite but because of its religious mode
of expression.3 But her letter offered a new impetus to French intellec-
tuals to call on Foucault to reconsider his position and acknowledge the
pitfalls of defending the Islamic Revolution.
The apparent Orientalist prejudice that guided Atoussa H.s critique
of Foucault did not disturb Foucaults critics. The depiction of Islam
as a historical actor, extirpated from the cultural and political contin-
gencies of its practitioners, and Islam as a world view that shapes and
homogenizes different cultural practices and discursive traditions has
always been a hallmark of classical Orientalism. As Abdallah Laroui, the
Moroccan historian and public intellectual, and an early critic of Orien-
talism, once wrote, the problem of the Orientalist historiography lies in
The Reign of Terror, Womens Issues, and Feminist Politics | 115
the way it creates a closed cultural system, the fundamental features of
which are perpetuated by textual theological references, regardless of
time and space. Laroui further argued that for Orientalists, There are
no differences between classical Islam and medieval Islam or simply Islam.
There is, then, only one Islam: an Islam that mutates within itself when
tradition takes shape on the basis of a reconstructed classical period.
From that time onward the actual succession of facts becomes illusory;
examples can be drawn from any period or source whatever.4
By contrast, Foucault showed more sensitivity toward the Orientalist
proclivities that informed Atoussa H.s comments.5 In a short response,
he reminded Mme. H. that he did not come up with the idea that a Mus-
lim spirituality would advantageously replace dictatorship. Rather, he
was impressed by the historically contingent fact that millions of Iranians
had dared to shout Islamic government! while being chased, beaten,
arrested, and killed by squads of soldiers on their cities streets. He pointed
out that one should be true to the elementary obligation to ask oneself
what content was given to the expression and what forces drove it. Fou-
cault rightfully identified Atoussa H.s hostility toward the Islamic Rev-
olution not in her misreading of his own views and the events of the
revolution but in her merging together all the aspects, all the forms,
and all the potentialities of Islam within a single expression of contempt,
for the sake of rejecting them in their entirety under the thousand-year-
old reproach of fanaticism.... The problem of Islam as a political force
is an essential one for our time and the coming years. In order to approach
it with a minimum of intelligence, the first condition is not to begin by
bringing in hatred.6
More than three decades after the revolution, it is now self-evident
that the situation of women in Iran, despite patriarchal policies of the
postrevolutionary regime, is hardly explicable with a few references to
the Quranic verses. It is certainly true that the Islamic Republic insti-
tuted a new regulatory regime that hindered womens social mobility and
incessantly tries to constitute a gender-segregated public sphere. But it
is also true that the same policies generated conditions for an unprece-
dented participation of women with religious commitments from diver-
gent social classes in public life. Development indicators released by the
World Bank and UNICEF show that in the areas of education, employ-
ment, life expectancy, and health, womens situation in Iran improved
significantly compared to the years of modernization under the Pahlavi
regime.7 An ahistorical textual invocation of Islam simply cannot account
for the complex field of gender politics in postrevolutionary Iran. Instead,
as with the revolution itself, an analysis of gender politics requires a care-
ful attention to the specificities of events and contingencies of ideas that
inform it.
A cursory look at the historical changes in Shii discourse on gender
relations shows the heterogeneous and at times contradictory practices
it has engendered both before and after the revolution.8 In contrast to
the feminist premonitions of Atoussa H., Parvin Paidar illustrates, the
revolutionary movement in Iran significantly altered the position of the
clergy on womens political and social participation. Although this unprec-
edented change did not advance an anti-patriarchal awakening, it did sig-
nify a remarkable transformation in gender relations in Iran. With her
utterly reductionist view, Atoussa H. invited Foucault to give primacy to
a truncated passage in the Quran at the expense of the lived experiences
of Iranian women who participated in demonstrations by the millions.
But the question of the role of Shiism, as Paidar shows, in the position
of women must only be addressed within the political contingencies and
various historical conjunctures of its exponents. Far from being fixed and
predetermined, Paidar asserts,
the political agenda of Islamic forces was set throughout [the past] cen-
tury in response to and as part of an interaction with other political
forces. This was why Islamic gender policies put forward within various
historical conjunctures were indeed heterogeneous and at times con-
tradictory. An example of this was the way in which some of the gender
policies of the Islamic Republic, such as womens right to vote, contra-
dicted previous positions adopted by Shii clergy under the Qajar and
Pahlavi regimes.9
More often than not, ideological commitments, even if they remain im-
pervious to political circumstances, generate unintended social realities.10
Foucault was more concerned with the revolutionary movement and the
realities that it was generating in its wake. He insisted that one should
not draw an unmediated connection between the Islamic dogma and a
literal reading of the Quran with real-life and revolutionary experi-
ences of the ordinary masses. This is plainly historical thoughtlessness.
This kind of reductionist generalization envisages womens status with
reference only to formal/legal institutionswhich in any event are diverse
and contradictory, particularly on the woman questionand ignores
the lived experiences of women and the hermeneutics of power and
authority outside the scripture.
The postrevolutionary struggle for the consolidation of power by the
Islamic Republic and its ensuing reign of terror afforded more credibility
to warnings, such as Atoussa H.s, about the inherent repressive charac-
ter of Islamism. If Foucault failed to see the wisdom in Mme. H.s pru-
dent warning on the antiwomen essence of Islam, his later critics observe,
he should have faced the fallacy of his misplaced enthusiasm about the
revolutions spiritual lan and the tableau vivant of men rising up in
the postrevolutionary brutalities committed by the Islamists, particularly
against women.
Foucaults detractors warned him that his idea of political spiritual-
ity, which he romanticized as a new mode of revolutionary expression,
was nothing more than an ideological foundation for a religious tyranny.
They stressed that the Islamic Revolution, unlike what Foucault imag-
ined, did not stand at the threshold of a novelty, but rather it set in
motion a giant leap backward toward the creation of a brutal theocracy.
Without a doubt, the reign of terror that ensued after the establishment
of the Islamic Republic added considerable currency to the contentions
of Foucaults critics. The execution of more than four hundred military
commanders, intelligence officers, and torturers, along with a number
of key ministerial members of the ancien rgime, added further evidence
to the backwardness of the postrevolutionary regime and its religious
ideology. Human rights organizations and Western governments con-
demned the Islamic Republic for its speedy trials and executions, despite
the fact that an overwhelming majority of revolutionary parties supported
and encouraged those acts of swift justice.
Foucault repeatedly delinked his notion of political spirituality and
the significance he attributed to Shii Islam in the revolutionary move-
ment from the establishment of an Islamic government. But his detrac-
tors continue to insist that the philosopher failed to acknowledge the
inherent authoritarian and repressive characteristic of political Islam. A
repressive state, they argued, was the inevitable consequence of the Islamic
revolutionary ideology.
From the Revolution to the Reign of Terror
In Islam and Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran, I have shown, through
careful examination of the events and debates that led to the final ratifi-
cation of the constitution of the Islamic Republic, that the clergy did
not follow a master plan after the assumption of power in 1979. It is true
that Khomeini and his followers promoted an Islamic state, but they re-
mained uncertain about how exactly such a regime was to be created and
what its establishment entailed. As much as the revolution itself was
unthinkable, as Charles Kurzman argues in his thoughtful monograph,
the postrevolutionary state-building also unfolded along inconceivable
lines with unpredictable outcomes.11
Neither the provisional government nor the Revolutionary Council,
both appointed by Ayatollah Khomeini, appeared to be committed to
the kind of radical and fundamental changes that would satisfy the mili-
tancy that had consumed the revolutionary spirit of the masses. A diverse
group of parties saw the provisional government incapable of the radi-
calism that the postrevolutionary reconstitution of society required. Three
major communist groups, Tudeh Party, Fadaian, and Peikar,12 in addi-
tion to a host of radical Islamist parties, both inside and outside the rev-
olutionary government, exhorted the provisional government to advance
a radical platform of social transformation and deliver swift revolution-
ary justice against the remnants of the ancien rgime.
Only one week after the collapse of Pahlavi Dynasty, the provisional
government announced that it was working on a frame to issue a general
amnesty for high-ranking officers of the military and SAVAK agents who
were not directly involved in the torture and murder of political dissi-
dents. In response, the most influential communist organization in Iran,
the Fadaian, issued a piercing statement on February 16, 1979, under the
heading: General Amnesty, A New Year Present to Counter-Revolution!
In their statement, they called the action of the provisional government
an open animosity toward the revolution.
FELLOW REVOLUTIONARY IRANIANS!
While the blood of tens of thousands of our martyrs, who sacrificed

their lives for the liberation of oppressed peoples of Iran, still drips
from the walls; while the majority of the bloodsucking mercenaries
and villains of the old regime under the guidance of the CIA are busy
plotting against the revolution; while, based on the admission of the
Provisional Government, the SAVAK agents are still busy slaughtering
people and conspiring against the revolution, what does issuing a gen-
eral amnesty mean? Is it not a gift to the enemies of our nation?13
The more the provisional government tried to contain the revolutionary

vigor of competing political parties and the militant drive of neighbor-
hood and professional associations, the deeper it fell into a crisis of legit-
imacy. In their revolutionary political discourse, the Left and militant
Islamists understood respect for human rights and deference to formal
legal procedures only as liberal jargon appropriated by agents of colonial
interests in order to suppress the revolutionary tide. Together, they shut
down early attempts of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and his allies,
including a number of influential members of the clergy, to advance an
Islamist political philosophy congruent with a democratic political dis-
course. Bazargan believed that his administration was forced to resign after
only nine months through a revolution against the revolution, which
was primarily motivated by a Marxian-inspired philosophy of permanent
revolution.14 And it wasnt only Marxist parties who promoted perpetual
radicalization of the revolution. Militant Islamists, who were influenced
by Shariatis liberation theology and Khomeinis uncompromising anti-
establishment fervor, spoke openly about the significance of permanent
revolution as a core principle of their revolutionary ideology.15
Ultimately, in its first attempt the government failed to resist the
expansive radicalization of revolutionary demands. In Kurdistan, Leftist
and nationalist Kurdish parties occupied government buildings and de-
manded regional autonomy. After a failed attempt at negotiation, the new
revolutionary government responded with massive air strikes, which
eventually led to a bloody war in Kurdistan. In Turkman Valley, in north-
east Iran, land distribution disputes led to a full-fledged armed conflict
between the Fadaian-led resistance and the newly formed Revolution-
ary Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. With massive support and
encouragement from all political fronts, the revolutionary courts handed
down execution orders in summary trials.
When Habib Elghanian, a well-known Jewish entrepreneur and an
ardent supporter of Israeli interests in Iran, was executed by firing squad
on May 9, 1979, the communist paper Peikar celebrated his execution in
these lines:
THE SACRED WRATH OF THE PEOPLE!
Once more, the flames of the sacred wrath of the people devoured
another group of spies and villains in the revolutionary courts. Those
ignoble and deceitful creatures who presided over the pillage and plun-
der of our toiling people with a pharaonic authority, showed a despi-
cable and nauseating display of begging for their lives and to continue
their shameful existence. How blind and ignorant are those who believe
that the people will forget the blood of their martyrs and the dreadful
agony they suffered during those oppressive years. And how blind and
ignorant are the masters of these reprehensible criminals in the West
and Israel, whose tears for the violation of human rights now drips
on their filthy faces to show sympathy for the bloodsucking humans
like Elghanian. They think that they can shake the unwavering deter-
mination of the people for the annihilation of those traitors who pro-
tected their colonial interests for decades. Let them dream! Our people
will destroy its enemies and no power in the world may stop them.16
In a resolution authored by Senator Jacob Javits, the U.S. Senate passed

a resolution condemning the increasing number of executions in Iran,
particularly that of Elghanian, as human rights violations. A coalition of
Iranian communist organizations called a massive rally against the con-
tinuing American intervention in Iranian affairs. In addition to the call
for the nationalization of all Iranian industries, the organizers declared
their full support of the executions carried out by the revolutionary
courts and asked for a further expansion of the scope of the executions. The
declaration, signed by eleven communist organizations, generically called
The Unification Conference, also demanded the establishment of
labor camps for the rest of SAVAK agents and other guilty members of
Pahlavi security and police forces and government bureaucracy.17 The
Fadaian issued a separate but similar declaration, wondering: What does
the wicked American imperialism object to? The very fact that the Amer-
icans are defending these criminals is a proof that they were guilty and
their sentences could be nothing less than execution.18
Rather than a simple manifestation of political spirituality and a
plain evidence of the inevitable consequences of Islamism in power, the
atrocities that were committed after the revolution were the outcome of
a conflict between two tendencies, on both sides of which Islamist and
secular actors fought to advance an agenda. One side remained commit-
ted to an anticolonial and anticapitalist program and advocated a per-
manent revolution for the reconstitution of the entire society based on
competing conceptions of social justice. The other side called for the
institutionalization of the revolution through legal and formal procedures
and called the incessant radicalization of postrevolutionary politics a rev-
olution against the revolution.
Foucaults critics saw in Islamism and what Foucault celebrated as
political spirituality simply a bridge to totalitarianism. His critics identi-
fied in the postrevolutionary power struggle, particularly in the form of
gender politics and the imposition of new restrictions on womens mobil-
ity, an instance of the fallacies of abandoning Enlightenment rationality
and its immutable universal referents. The influential French Marxist
Orientalist Maxime Rodinson wrote:
Michel Foucault, part of a line of radically dissident thought, placed

excessive hopes in the Iranian Revolution. The great gaps in his knowl-
edge of Islamic history enabled him to transfigure the events in Iran,
to accept for the most part the semi-theoretical suggestions of his Ira-
nian friends, and to extrapolate from this by imagining an end of history
that would make up for disappointments in Europe and elsewhere....
The political spirituality that had inspired the revolutionary move
mentcovering over the more material motives for the discontent and
the revolthad at a very early stage shown that it operated by no means
in the humanist sense that had been attributed to it, very naively, by
Foucault.19
To his detractors, it is more puzzling that the philosopher of gender and

sexuality saw no spirituality in womens protests against mandatory hejab
during the first postrevolutionary celebration of the International Wom-
ens Day on March 8, 1979. If Foucault could dismiss Atoussa H.s lone
plea as a disgruntled Westernized woman, how could he ignore the voice
of thousands of Iranian women marching on the streets to mark the Inter-
national Womens Day in March 1979? How could he dismiss a global
feminist movement that supported them, both by taking part in rallies in
Tehran and mobilizing women in Paris, New York, Milan, and London?
Did Foucaults silence on the imposition of chador20 and Ayatollahs
Khomeinis order to abolish family protection law further confirm fem-
inist skepticism of his theory of power? How could Foucault remain
unfazed in the face of what Le Mondes Jean Gueyras described on March
14, 1979, as the insults and jeers of Islamic militants who hounded the
women with charges of being agents of the SAVAK, instruments of
imperialism... tools of international communism, ...[and] defenders
of the Pahlavi dynasty?21
Liberation, Women, and the Hejab

Since the time leading up to the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, the
issue of hejab has been one of the key signifiers of modernity in Iran. Both
symbolically and literally, hejab in Iran represents the embodiment of
nationalism, citizenship, colonialism, culture, and class. Gendered tra-
jectories of modernity in Iran have always generated social formations
that, more often than not, defy simple binary distinctions between the
traditional versus the modern or the religious versus the secular. Mod-
ernist discourses motivated by such schemata perceive hejab as the means
of womens subjugation, a patriarchal device for the prohibition of wom-
ens public life. Not only did the revolutionary movement in Iran negate
this modernist assumption, more importantly, the unprecedented rise in
the literacy rate and economic participation of women under the post-
revolutionary regime demonstrated the ambivalence of hejab in relation
to womens participation in public life.
Although during the revolutionary movement women of the Left
did not wear a headscarf to cover their hair, they shared an ideological
commitment and a cultural affinity with Muslim women activists in be-
lieving that a modest dress signified an anti-imperialist conviction. An
overwhelming majority of men and women of the Left who joined the
revolutionary movement regarded the hejab as the site of a continuous
and contested debate over issues of class, gender, and nationalism.22
In that context, hejab never signified a distinction between secular
and Islamist revolutionary parties. It indeed was a shared view, on the one
hand, of a majority of Iranian men whose gheirat (masculine pride) was
vulnerable to what seemed to them to be the real force of emasculation
(namely, colonial penetration), and on the other hand, by women who
saw their dignity threatened and their body objectified by the encroach-
ment of Western capitalist consumer society. Not only was the female
body a location of patriarchal exercise of authority, but also, and more
generally, it was a site of negotiating modernity and its boundaries in Iran.
Afsaneh Najmabadi aptly conceptualized this Iranian feminist view as
being modern-yet-modest.23
As much as competing political parties have contested the significance
and boundaries of modernity, they have also questioned the meaning
and manifestation of modesty. The concept of gharbzadehgi (westoxica-
tion), which was popularized by the influential social critic and novelist
Jalal Al-e Ahmad (192369), captured this gendered sense of alienation
that allowed a common thread to unify a diversity of prejudices.24 Be-
tween the inauguration of the White Revolution in 1963, which laid the
foundation for land reform and industrialization, and the revolutionary
movement of 197779, more than ever women emerge as the very
embodiment of westoxication. For both the secular as well as the Islamist
Left, Iranian women appeared to be a double Other: the enemy within,
fitna [sedition, immorality], and the enemy without, the West. Such a
conceptualization paved the road for both secular and Islamist opposi-
tions to Pahlavi capitalist reforms to sing in unison condemnation of the
super-Westernized woman.25
Although from different standpoints, both the Islamist and the sec-
ular Left generally considered this super-Westernized woman to be
the signifier of a plague that had imperiled the integrity of the Iranian
society. In its crudest form, to borrow again from Najmabadi,
She was identified with a woman who wore too much make-up, too
short a skirt, too tight a pair of pants, too low-cut a shirt, who was
too loose in her relations with men, who laughed too loudly, who
smoked in public. Clearly, it signified a subjective judgment; at least to
some extent it was defined in the eyes of the beholder.... Yet, both [the
Islamic militant and the radical secular] felt comfortable in denounc-
ing gharbzadeh and the gharbzadeh woman in a single voice.26
Many of the earlier critics of gharbzadehgi believed that under capitalism

women had been exploited both as laborers and frivolous consumers.
The promised equality of men and women, Al-e Ahmad lamented in
1962, was only limited to a coercive unveiling. We opened the doors of
a few schools to them and after that? Nothing! That was enough for
them.... What have we done in reality? We have allowed women to
appear in public: a mere hypocrisy, a pretense. We have dragged the
woman who is the guardian of our tradition, family, and bloodline to the
street and compelled them to become lascivious and spread depravity
and debauchery. We encourage them to be vain, aimless and devoted to
fashion.27
There is no doubt that during the revolutionary movement womens
dress became a site of political struggle. To exercise their political dom-
inance, vigilant Islamist operatives harassed, and on many occasions
attacked, women who appeared in rallies without headscarves. In the final
months of the revolution, Muslim militants chanted the demeaning and
misogynistic slogan yarusari, yatu-sari (cover your hair or have your head
whacked). On numerous occasions Islamists targeted women without
hejab during anti-Shah rallies. Moreover, reports appeared in Tehran dai-
lies that these vigilantes had beaten nonobservant women and even in
a number of cases thrown acid on womens faces. Although influential
members of the clergy tried to emphasize that hejab means modesty in
dress and not a particular form of cover, attacks on women without a
tight headscarf grew exponentially. In an interview published in Kayhan
newspaper on the same day that the Shah left Iran, Ayatollah Montazeri,
who was just released from prison, told a French reporter that Islamic
hejab does not mean wearing a veil and being socially insulated. The goal
is to not see women naked [lokht] in society in such a way that they become
the object of lust.28
Although not pervasive before the revolution, these incidents raised
enough concern for Khomeini to declare in an interview with the Leba-
nese paper Amal:
Today Muslim women participate in political struggles and rallies against

the Shah. I was informed that in different Iranian cities women have
initiated political meetings. Under the Islamic system, women and men
enjoy the same rights, the right of education, the right to work, the right
of ownership, the right to vote and get elected.... However, there are
instances for both men and women that they are prohibited from en-
gagement in sinful acts that would lead to corruption and decadence.
The desire of Islam is to protect the dignity of men and women. In
Islam, men must not objectify women. This is mere propaganda that
Islam allows violence against women. This is a conspiracy to taint the
face of Islam.29
But the assumption of political power introduced a new frame within

which the militant Islamists began to institutionalize their politics of gen-
der. Womens issues and gender politics became particularly central to
radical Islamists because it constituted an important marker that could
distinguish their anticolonial revolution in revolution from the Marx-
ist Left.
Six Days in March: Womens Protest without Womens Movement

On February 26, 1979, only two weeks after the victory of the revolu-
tion, Ayatollah Khomeini annulled the Family Protection Law of 1967
and its 1975 amended version.30 Khomeini knew that the unity and uni-
formity that his leadership afforded the revolutionary movement would
not remain uncontested for long after the triumph of the revolution. He
knew that the spirit of Islam and the symbolic revolutionary language
with which it inspired millions of Iranians of many creeds and classes
needed to be translated into a body of institutional projects of postrevo-
lutionary state-building.
Despite the popularity of his revolutionary Islam and the indisput-
able charismatic leadership he had enjoyed during the revolutionary
movement, Khomeinis political philosophy and his brand of liberation
theology remained marginal within the seminaries. Therefore, he asserted
his authority over gender politics and womens issues so soon after the
revolution not only to stress the Islamic character of the revolution against
liberal and communist contenders of power (as it is often highlighted in
the literature) but also to reestablish his authority among the seminari-
ans, by placating the conservative clerical establishment in order to con-
solidate his power. The abrogation of the long-disputed Family Protection
Law, which had limited and later eliminated the authority of the clergy
in matters of marriage, divorce, custody, and alimony, sent a strong sig-
nal to both possible sources of contention.
One week later, on March 3, Khomeini also declared that women
could no longer serve as judges in civil or criminal courts. But what
brought Khomeinis serial declarations on womens issues to the general
attention in newspapers and political parties was his announcement about
hejab. On March 6, 1979, addressing a group of seminary teachers and
their students, Khomeini criticized the persistence of westoxication in
the country even in government offices. I am told, he proclaimed, that
in our government offices the old ways continue, the way things were
under the Shah. Sinful acts should not be committed in the Islamic states
ministerial offices. Naked women should not appear in ministerial build-
ings; women should go, but they must respect hejab. They should go and
work, but with hejab.31
In spite of those overt assaults on womens rights, womens issues
continued to be addressed in the frame of revolutionary politics, nation-
alism, class struggle, and anti-imperialism. With the exception of the
National Front, the oldest liberal organization in Iran, and small Trotsky-
ist groups, the members of which had mostly returned to the country
from Europe and the United States, Left and liberal parties remained
ambivalent about womens issues. In a manner typical of so many radical
political movements of the time, they considered it to be a diversion
from the essential objectives of the revolution.32 The majority of wom-
ens organizations operated as an appendix to different political parties
to further anti-imperialist struggles and demands for social justice.
On March 29, 1979, after the first few weeks of protests, the main
womens organization, the National Union of Women, declared its estab-
lishment with a statement that began with tribute to the women martyrs
of the revolution, who all belonged to armed guerilla resistant fighters.
In their mission statement, they further explained that they would not
cooperate with organizations with links to China or the Soviet Union.
The statement continued: We will cooperate neither with those groups
that assemble women against revolutionary forces nor with those reac-
tionary groups who mobilize women during these sensitive times around
divisive and digressive issues.... We consider the struggle against imperial-
ism to be our most essential goal.33
Even influential independent public intellectuals and literary fig-
ures who published the literary and political magazine The Book of Friday
(Ketab-e Jomeh),34 who did not follow a particular party politics, used the
same frame of anti-imperialist struggle for justice to address womens
issues. In a special issue celebrating the International Womens Day on
March 8, 1980, while different authors criticized the patriarchal policies
of the new regime, they also emphasized that the revolution failed to
achieve its deep anti-imperialist objectives. One author called the
uprising of Siahkal, the birthplace of the communist Fadaian guerilla
organization, the most glorious moment in the Iranian womens move-
ment. The Left-leaning intellectuals of Ketab-e Jomeh even discussed
the Family Protection Law and its nullification in relation to capitalist
development and colonial ambitions. A commentator with the pseud-
onym Diana wrote:
The Shah and his imperialist planners introduced the Family Protec-
tion Law, and other articles of the White Revolution, in order to
strengthen the foundations of capitalism. After successive defeats of the
global imperialism, their strategists began to advance plans to expand
capitalisms reach through new programs in the Third World. They
implemented a series of social reforms in order both to impede the inev-
itable rise of liberation movements and to ease the expansion of capi-
talist market economy. The land reform initiatives in Iran as well as
laws such as Family Protection were examples of this new policy. In
reality, the Family Protection Law was designed to release women
from family bonds in order to satisfy the needs of capitalist relation of
production for cheap labor.35
Even those who openly challenged the abrogation of the Family Protec-
tion Law in February or made their dissatisfaction known about compul-
sory hejab regarded these decisions as diversions from the true objectives
of the revolution. One of the most famous women writers and a secular
social critic, Homa Nateq, a respected member of the Writers Associa-
tion, called the entire project of womens emancipation of the Pahlavi
era cosmetic. In a speech she delivered at a rally at Tehran University
on February 8, 1979, she declared that womens liberation is an indis-
pensable part of the emancipation of the entire society. Women will be
free when the revolution is realized.36
In a series of essays in the main Tehran newspaper, Kayhan, titled
Iranian Women and the National Revolution, Nasser Takmil Homa-
yun, one of the influential leaders of the National Front, a self-proclaimed
secular liberal party, began his first installment with the title They
Wanted the Iranian Woman to Be a Western Doll. Further, he chastised
those who exaggerate the issue of womens right in Islam and called
that a source of divisionary politics among the revolutionary forces. He
ridiculed Pahlavi-era policies on womens affairs, calling them a plot to
Westernize Iranian women. He concluded his article by stressing:
Under the pretense of womens emancipation from the medieval dun-

geons, the goal of this destructive, predatory, and dissolute group [the
Pahlavi regime] was to pave the road for the Westernization of wom-
ens social life, particularly with its most degenerate cultural expres-
sions. Fortunately, with the blessing of our nations colossal social and
political movement, and with the massive participation of the brave
women of our subjugated people, this conspiracy failed. Undoubtedly,
the new national struggle and cultural self-reliance will terminate the
calamity that once threatened the Iranian family.37
Despite earlier assurances, on the eve of March 8, Ayatollah Khomeini

called on the provisional government to uphold Islamic dress codes in
its offices. His pronouncement scandalized many who played a signifi-
cant role in the revolutionary movement, including a number of mem-
bers of his own Revolutionary Council. This was the second time, after
the abrogation of the Family Protection Law, in three weeks that issues
of womens rights had become a point of contention in the postrevolu-
tionary power struggle. That was the reason why the festive preparations
for the first postrevolutionary International Womens Day turned into a
rally with specific womens rights demands such as the recognition of
women judges and, most importantly, a call against compulsory hejab.
The main newspapers in Tehran carried Khomeinis caution against
naked women38 in government offices as their front-page headline with
responses from government officials, high-ranking clerics, and a diverse
group of political personalities. Plans for the March 8 rallies, one of the
first mass events after the young revolution, were thrown into confusion
when the rallies unexpectedly turned into a protest against compulsory
hejab. Thousands of women gathered in Tehran University and the next
day in front of and inside the hallways of the Ministry of Justice chant-
ing, In the spring of freedom, absent is the rights of women.
Although the liberal provisional government endorsed Khomeinis
remark on the necessity of hejab in government offices, it also tried to
highlight the distinction between hejab and chador (the veil). State-owned
newspapers tried to temper their reportage of the womens rallies with
assurances that the leaders proclamation was not tantamount to a new
law. While defending Khomeini, in an op-ed in Kayhan, Hojjat al-Islam
Eshraqi, his son-in-law, called for calm and respect for the Islamic codes
of ethics. He wrote,
It is true that we are obliged to follow Islamic regulations, but we need

to consider that hejab does not mean the chador. We ask women to
appear with dignity in covering their body and hair. Chador is a com-
mon and respectable way, but there are other ways of decency that
correspond to the nature of the work women do and that must be
respected.39
Three days later, after streams of rallies in Tehran and a number of

other cities around the country, Kayhan published an interview with
Ayatollah Taleqani, the most revered religious and political authority
after Khomeini. The front-page headline read: Ayatollah Taleqani:
Hejab Is Not Compulsory. Taleqani, using the language of benign pater-
nalism, tried to introduce hejab in a cultural context rather than a reli-
gious obligation. He compared it with the Indian sari and encouraged
women to look at it as a matter of identity and national pride. There
must be no coercion even on Muslim women [to observe the hejab]. This
is not what Ayatollah Khomeini suggested; he offered his fatherly guid-
ance like a father who advises his child, nothing more.40
In order to defuse the rising tension and violence on the streets,
Mojtahed Shabestary, an advisor to the director of the National Radio
and Television, added a political dimension to Taleqanis cultural twist.
He connected the Iranian struggle to the utility of the veil during the
famous Algerian liberation movement. Let us not forget, he remarked,
that it was the same veil that was a cover to hide our weapons from the
view of the SAVAK.41 And finally, while stressing the significance of
hejab, one of the most respected sources of emulation, Ayatollah Mahalti,
condemned any form of violence against women.
While the religious establishment and political leaders of the repub-
lic tried to give the hejab a national and political significance, political
parties and independent actors on the Left continued to accentuate
national unity against imperialism , referring to issues such as hejab detri-
mental to the revolutionary energy that had just toppled the monarchy.
On March 10, 1979, next to her hejab-less photograph, Kayhan pub-
lished a commentary by Simin Danshvar, an influential writer and Jalal
Al-e Ahmads widow, entitled Lets Build Our Wrecked Iran. After
already three days of unrest and womens protest on university campuses
and in front of the Ministry of Justice, Daneshvar exhorted the oppo-
nents as well as the advocates of compulsory hejab not to give the coun-
terrevolutionaries excuses to derail the revolution. The following lengthy
excerpt captures the core of the way the majority of Left and liberal
intellectuals who defended the revolution perceived the question of the
hejab and the protests triggered by Khomeinis declaration at the time.
I did not intend to write solely about women, because I consider women,
men, and children a single unit of human family. In our country this
family has been subjected to colonialism, exploitation, and powerless-
ness, we have all experienced this oppression together. Many times
women of divergent groups have invited me to join their womens orga-
nization. Their rationale was that women were subjected to double
oppression. I did not accept their invitations. My reasoning was that if
a just regime is established, men, women, and children will enjoy its
protection. The problem of patriarchy must be addressed directly with
men with the hope that together we reach a common understanding.
These are our husbands, sons, and brothers, and exclusive womens
organizations might appear as a mobilization against them. I hope that
these organizations will not cause divisions, especially during this time
that what we need is unity (vahdat-e kalameh42). I fear that these asso-
ciations would distract the people and cause dispersion and confusion.
I fear that it would throw a wrench into the wheel with the power of
which the revolutionary justice, independence, and freedom turns.
[...] I regard Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian peo-
ples revolution, as the very essence of justice. I consider him to be a man
who has stepped into the field of battle with his word and with it he has
destroyed an unparalleled arsenal. I know him as a man of a new his-
tory, a new air, a new morality, a man who believes in what he preaches.
[...] But unfortunately, visible and invisible hands are at work to
muddle the pure face of the peoples revolution with unwarranted divi-
sions and trepidations. And which division would be better than the
separation of vast groups of toiling women and intellectuals from the
revolution? What kind of schism would be greater than spreading
doubts and despair in their hearts and pushing them toward extremist
ideas of the Left or Right?
[...] Let me put everyones mind at rest. Hejab in the form of a
chador is not an Islamic but a traditional issue. Our sisters stepped into
the arena of revolution with that particular cover because they consid-
ered it as a signifier against servitude to consumption and the insolent
dolls of the Pahlavi era. But those privileged women with bottomless
dollars of their supporters escaped this land and now we are left with
those who enjoy to make something out of nothing and to turn a whis-
per into a scream.
[...] Any time we were able to rebuild this ruined house, sort
out its economy, take care of its agriculture, establish the rule of justice
and liberty, whenever all of our people have a safe roof over their
heads, enjoy universal education and health, then we can busy ourselves
with unessential issues and matters of jurisprudence. Then we can sit
in a home with solid foundations and think with ease about the way
women appear in public.43
Meanwhile, protests continued on March 10 and 11. An estimated

fifteen thousand women gathered inside and in front of the Ministry of
Justice building, asking the provisional government to guarantee the right
of women to work with equal pay without compulsory hejab. Groups of
club-wielders and militant supporters of the new regime attacked women
protesters. Four women were hospitalized for injuries they sustained after
they were assaulted by knife.44 Two key liberal/Left figures addressed
the crowd at the Ministry of Justice, the respected historian and public
intellectual Homa Nateq, who a few weeks earlier had castigated the
Pahlavi-era womens emancipation as a cosmetic reform, and Hedayat
Matin-Daftari, the grandson of Mohammad Mosaddeq, the founder of
the newly established National Democratic Front, one of the most vocif-
erous advocates of democratic rights during the early postrevolutionary
period. Both speakers, however, struck a conciliatory tone and reiter-
ated that the womens question should not distract the revolution from
its main responsibilities. Nateq began her address with these words:
Rather than weakening the provisional government, my intention is to

strengthen it.... Revolutionary struggle is gender blind. In recent years,
many women, from the Fadai or Mojahed organizations, have been jailed
and endured torture. They did not fight or lose their lives because of
womens issues, they struggle on behalf of the Iranian people. We have
no separate demands from those of the toiling classes; at least I dont....
We believe that womens emancipation cannot be achieved indepen-
dently from the emancipation of all toiling classes, and Imam Khomeini
is a defender of the toiling classes.... We have heard that they say that
we are counterrevolutionaries; that we are anti-hejab; that we are defend-
ing the old constitution; that we incite division. We reject all these accu-
sations. We have never denounced hejab.... We are against coercion
of any kind, Reza Khans coercion to remove the hejab, and coercion to
reinstitute it.
Those who assaulted us on the street were agents of the old regime
and the defenders of the Pahlavi monarchy. We hear that they say we
have arisen on behalf of the old Family Protection Law. That law was
one of the most reactionary laws of the Pahlavi era. Women do not
need these kinds of safeguards. If we are equal we dont need a family
protection law. We shall not defend this law.
They have reported that we visit the government offices naked.
I ask you who can go to these offices naked in this cold winter? Intro-
ducing the woman question in this period is a diversionary tactic. Under
current circumstances, we must not have a question called the wom-
ans issue. They said something about the hejab and took it back imme-
diately. We must not create friction over this. We must accompany the
Mojahedin, even at the expense of wearing a headscarf. We need to know
that no one will conspire on our behalf in order to bring back the monar-
chical order. We protested for two days and I believe that we have
achieved our goal.45
The other speaker, Matin-Daftari, a human rights lawyer, had earlier

split from his grandfathers organization, the National Front, because
he believed that its leadership had betrayed the organizations founding
liberal principles. For him, and for many other activists of the earlier
generation, the experience of the 1953 CIA-led coup against Mosaddeq
was fresh and pertinent. Despite his reservations about the emerging
changes in the judicial system, Matin-Daftari also tried to lessen the ten-
sion and steer the rally toward a quick resolution. In my political and
social lexicon, he told his strident audience, there is no specific topic
under womens rights. From a social, political, and spiritual standpoint,
I see no difference between men and women.
In this period, we need unity more than any other time. We need to
maintain the same kind of solidarity that we had achieved during the
revolution. We should not forget that our main, deceitful, and cunning
enemy is vigilant. They are the same counterrevolutionaries whose pres-
ence we have seen during these past few weeks. What could the plan
and strategy of the imperialists be? They intend to create domestic con-
flicts, conflicts between brothers and sisters, fathers and sons, and com-
rades against comrades.46
Islam Kazemieh, a leading secular figure in the Writers Association

and one of the main organizers of the famous poetry nights at the Goethe
Institute in 1977, added his voice in a scathing critique of those who pri-
oritized hejab and womens issues. He dismissed the idea of the primacy
of womens issues as an intellectual exercise far from the needs and tra-
ditions of common Iranian women. Furthermore, he repeated others
denunciation of Pahlavi reforms as a phony (qolabi) charade (namayeshi)
that led to nothing but turning women into Western dolls.47
In her book on the womens rights movement in Iran, Eliz Sanasarian,
who witnessed and interviewed women during the same period, reported
that during the months before and after the revolution, even the mem-
bers and employees of the Womens Organization of Iran (WOI), the
main office of womens affairs under the Shah, joined the revolutionary
movement. These women did not view Khomeini, Sanasarian writes,
as contradictory and vague figure, but as a savior, a solution to the Ira-
nian dictatorship. A WOI official confided to her that it was a real
movement and we couldnt help but to think the best of him, all the
groups were trying to give him the best of credits.48 In her encounters
with educated women, Sanasarian discovered that they viewed with skep-
ticism the rumors that Khomeini and other religious leaders were anti
womens rights. They thought such rumors were a plot to null womens
support of the revolution. She further noted that all of the female univer-
sity students she interviewed supported the revolution and Khomeinis
leadership.49 And these were not only daughters of the underprivileged
who attended public universities. This was a political attitude also shared
by elite Westernized women. I still recall, Sanasarian continues, the
comments of an upper-class woman who told me, two months before
the Shahs overthrow, that she would sacrifice herself at Khomeinis feet.
Indeed, an outlandish comment from a woman whose wardrobe consisted
of the latest European fashions!50
On March 10, 1979, at the conclusion of a rally of more than fif-
teen thousand people at the Ministry of Justice in downtown Tehran,
the provisional government issued its official new policy on hejab. Its
spokesperson, Amir Abbas Entezam, released a short statement that the
Prime Minister and other gentlemen in the government firmly believe in
the Quranic verse la ikraha fid-Din (there is no compulsion in religion).
Thereby, the government will not issue an order for mandatory hejab.51
The provisional governments statement ended six days of womens ral-
lies, from March 8 to March 13, which were mostly centered in Tehran.
In an editorial in Kayhan, one of the leaders of the womens protests,
Badri Taher, wrote:
Now that all the revolutionary leaders have declared the official posi-
tion of the government in regard to the Islamic hejab, and even have
called those who assaulted the protesting women counterrevolution-
aries, the continuation of rallies is meaningless. The truth is that the
ousted Pahlavi regime yearns for dividing the county into religious
and nonreligious, it wishes to foment a civil war... Loudly, and with
all sincerity, we must declare that if womens rallies were justifiable and
correct till yesterday, under present circumstances, they are unaccept-
able and wrong. To continue the rallies is tantamount to treason, yes,
treason!52
While the leaders and many of the participants of the hejab rallies
believed that the issue was put to rest by mid-March 1979, the revolu-
tionary leaders continued to view the issue as an instrument of the con-
solidation of power. In the summer of 1980, after Ayatollah Khomeini
delivered another critical sermon on the official policy of hejab in the
country,53 the government announced that its offices will no longer admit
women visitors and employees without the observance of proper hejab.
What the government considered proper was unspecified. What was
clear then was that women were not allowed to wear short-sleeve dresses
and at the least were required to cover their hair with a headscarf. It
took another three years before, in the summer of 1983, the parliament
finally passed legislation codifying hejab and banning women from enter-
ing any public spaces without observing it.
While navigating the postrevolutionary political landscape and nego-
tiating the demands of all those who participated in the revolutionary
movement, a great majority of political parties considered the stability
of the provisional government to be an important feature of the conti-
nuity of the revolution. Rather than a mere conspiratorial abstraction,
all those who had invested in the revolutionary movement considered the
threat of a coup or a counterrevolutionary resurgence to be a concrete
historical possibility. The majority of political parties of the Left and the
women organizations they had established immediately after the revo-
lution either refused to support womens rallies or participated in them
reluctantly. None put forward a platform in which womens issues were
articulated independently from the general issues of social justice or anti-
imperialist demands. It was that very context to which the global soli-
darity movement that spread in Tehran, Paris, and New York in March
1979 remained inattentive.
White Womens Burden: Kate Millett Goes to Iran

After the collapse of Pahlavi monarchy, in late February and early March
of 1979 a spate of women organizations surfaced. With the exception of
professional associations, such as the Association of Women Jurists, these
organizations were the an extension of their respective parties and oper-
ated as their womens branch.54 The Women Organization of the Tudeh
Party, the Iranian Womens Association (Jamiat-e zanan-e Iran), the Rev-
olutionary Union of Militant Women (Ettehadieh-ye enqelabi-ye zanan-e
mobarez), the Association of Womens Awakening (Jamiat-e bidari-ye
zanan), the Provisional Committee for the Celebration of the International
Womens Day, the Association of Militant Women (Jamiat-e zanan-e
mobarez) were among the newly established organizations that entered the
postrevolutionary political theater. None of these organizations emerged
inside the country during the revolutionary struggle. Despite the fact
that a great majority of these organizations founders had just returned
from the United States or Western Europe, they failed to articulate a fem-
inist politics outside the binaries of objectified versus militant women,
Western blas dolls versus modest committed revolutionaries, the cham-
pions of embourgeoisement versus the defenders of toiling women.
Those who wished to advance a feminist politics set their sights on
the first International Womens Day after the revolution, March 8, 1979.
They hoped to turn the celebration into a day of solidarity between Euro-
pean and American activists and their Iranian sisters. The key organiz-
ers of the Provisional Committee for the Celebration of the International
Womens Day were members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a
Trotskyist group with a meager influence in the Iranian Left. Members
of the SWP also had just returned from Europe and the United States
where they had successfully forged relations with feminist writers and
activists. They had generated these connections through another organi-
zation they established in the mid-1970s called the Committee on Artistic
and Intellectual Freedom in Iran (CAIFI). CAIFI organized press con-
ferences and actions in the defense of the Iranian Revolution and gener-
ated sympathy among American writers and other intellectuals, among
them Kate Millett.
The author of Sexual Politics, a key text in American second-wave
feminist literature, and an influential figure in womens rights activism,
Millett was originally invited by the CAIFI office in New York to speak
at a Womens Day rally in Tehran. The phone rang, Millett recalls
the day the CAIFI organizer conveyed to her, Kate, your sisters in Iran
need you.55 The controversy over hejab only two days before March 8,
however, complicated her trip and its main objective. Suddenly, the plan
to deliver a message of solidarity to the Iranian women at a rally in the
Figure 9. Kate Millett, still image from the short documentary Mouvement de
Libration des Femmes Iraniennes, Anne Zero. Directed and produced by Sylvina
Boissonnas, Claudine Mulard, and Michelle Muller.
Figure 10. Kate Millett, Claudine Mulard, and Sylvina Boissonnas at a press
conference in Tehran, March 11, 1979. Associated Press Photo.
university, turned into a mission to rescue the Iranian sisters from the
emergent hejab oppression. Millett documented her ordeal in Iran in a
hastily produced book called Going to Iran.
In her book, far from a feminist with a clear message of solidarity,
Millett appears fraught with doubts and confusion. I was scared, she
writes, I was angry nobody was there [at the airport to greet us], after
traveling all this way, all that trouble.... There we were, stranded, hope-
less. Helpless (55). Unlike Foucault, who claims no particular role in
advancing the causes of the revolution and writes his essays as a self-
described philosopher-journalist, Millett declares: I am not in fact going
to Iran as a journalist.... Im going on a mission to and for my sisters
in Iranand I want that designation (39). By and large, the American
media reflected the same sentiment and offered significant coverage to
her trip, which was cast as Kate Millett in Iran to Aid Feminists.56
But with her first encounter with those Iranian sisters at the airport
the colonial roots of her mission to Iran surfaces with almost predictable
Orientalist mockery:
The first sight of them was terrible. Like black birds, like death, like
fate, like everything alien. Foreign, dangerous, unfriendly. There were
hundreds of them, specters crowding the barrier, waiting on their own.
A sea of chadori, the long terrible veil, the full length of it, like a dress
descending to the floor, ancient, powerful, annihilating us.... Look
at them and they do not look back, even the friendly curiosity with
which women regard each other. Still wearing the cloth of their maj-
esty, they have become prisoners in it. The bitterness, the driven rage
behind these figures, behind these yards of black cloth. They are closed
utterly. The small, hardly visible men in their suits have absolute con-
trol here. (4050)
It is highly unlikely that she had encountered a sea of chadori women at

the airport. Keeping in mind that it was only four weeks after the revo-
lution, there could have not been many women with full chador present
at the airport. Muslim women who took part in security operations at
the time were mostly young women who wore baggy pants, long-sleeved
loose dresses, and headscarf. Perhaps there was a small number of chadori
women greeting their relatives returning to the country. The fact that
the women she encountered at the airport generated the kind of oppres-
sive anxiety she expresses in the above passage only shows how ill-prepared
she was for this trip. Millett saw the revolution through her unwavering
white Western feminism, colored by the influence of the Iranian Trotsky-
ists who had arranged her trip. In her mind, the armed militia of the Rev-
olutionary Committee, which had assumed the security of the airport
and the city, represented the counterrevolutionary forces who had
stolen the revolution and with Khomeinis leadership were successful in
exploiting the failure of the Left to snatch away the triumph of the
insurrection (56).
Milletts account typifies the kind of dated feminism whose mission
was to save brown women, in Gayatri Spivaks words, from brown
men.57 Western women have interpreted the local and heterogeneous
practices of the veil in the societies of the Middle East and South Asia as
direct, incontrovertible evidence of womens subjugation. They straight-
forwardly link womens liberation with unveiling.58 Millett claims a priv-
ileged insight into the subjugated chadori womans consciousness, a privilege
afforded by her feminist standpoint.
I saw the women in veils afraid to talk to usthat woman I asked a ques-
tion, actually just how to use the telephone. Waiting for her husband
whod gone off for a moment and was coming back. She was afraid to
death of being seen with me. Yet theres a silent kind of communication: she
knew that I knew she was intimidated. And when she left she snuck me a
little glance and a smile. Like, forgive me, I cant manage any more than
this now. Its familiar, isnt it? From home, from women everywhere.
(57, my italics)
With the familiarity Millett expresses with the chadori womans plight,
she situates herself as an insider, albeit without any comprehension of
cultural, class, and colonial complexities that shaped the revolutionary
politics in Iran and, more specifically, that fleeting moment at the air-
port. She speaks of a common oppression, from home, from women
everywhere, without realizing that it was primarily bourgeois white
women, as bell hooks observes, both liberal and radical in perspective,
who professed belief in the notion of common oppression.59 Perhaps
there is no merit in my scrutinizing Milletts disregard of the historicity
of her position or how she disguises the true character of womens varied
and complex social realities. Many feminist scholars since the mid-1970s
have been exposing and exploring the problems with the essentialization
of womens experiences. As Donna Haraway so aptly remarks:
There is nothing about being female that naturally binds women.

There is not even such a state as being female, itself a highly com-
plex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and
other social practices. Gender, race, or class consciousness is an achieve-
ment forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contra-
dictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism.60
It took a few days for Millett to realize that the invitation she received
to join feminist Iranians was extended to her by the CAIFI office man-
ager in New York without careful coordination with his Iranian feminist
comrades. I feel I am running after feminism in Iran, she writes on the
third day of her visit, despite their invitation, I have yet to meet even
one sister.... I want to stay with women, feminists, sisters. Where are
they? (6869). After she finally meets her handler in Iran, Millett real-
izes that she represents a very small group of women, mostly expatriates,
who are desperately trying to make their presence known to other, more
established, parties inside the country. We may get nothing and so we
might be forced to tail on to a big rally of the Communist Party held
tomorrow, Kateh Vafadari, the leader of the group, informs Millett.
Millett disagrees with their strategy after one day of knowing the group:
That would be terrible.... It wouldnt even be doing it on the right
day, tomorrows the seventh, International Womens Day is the eight.
Why cant we celebrate our day the right time; why isnt there anything
in the whole city for women? (72).
Although critical of their strategy, Millett goes along with the plan
and realizes that in order to attract a crowd they needed to invite a famous
poet, Sylvashore Khasroe [sic], (presumably she means Siyavosh Kasrai).
Hes very popular, they tell Millett, and will draw a good crowd. Even
when she develops an affinity toward her feminist comrades, she adopts
the patronizing language of approval. They are nave, but sincere; young,
but committed. Here she talks about Vafadaris skills and devotion to the
cause:
And her optimism is infectious. I find myself persuaded as well as
charmed. Part of me also thinks shes daft to trust the deals shes made;
I smell betrayal already, they will say yes and then say no. But how can
you resist her rejoicing? Or frown on her achievement, for that mat-
ter? This has been a heroic struggle.... There is something about this
young woman that is heroic, that commands respect. Something com-
manding in her, even; you know shes a leader. She carries that when
she speaks to you, a certain authority shes won, worked for, suffered
for during years of apprenticeship in CAIFI [in the United States]. Now
here, among women, she wears her years in the other cause with mod-
esty, but also with certain assurance; she is a foundress. Years abroad in
exile, in danger and under threat of solitary confinement should she
return.... And now she has nearly alone, with only ten or eleven comrades,
dared to establish a womens liberation movement. (79, my italics)
Millions of Iranian women marched on the streets during the revolution-

ary movement. Yet in Milletts mind, their liberation now hinges on the
imported, daring actions of an expatriate who is a seasoned veteran of
apprenticeship in a meagerly influential political cell based in the United
States. Good material for a romantic revolutionary novella with a sympa-
thetic heroine, objectionable when used as a historical point of reference.
As Milletts narrative unfolds, increasingly Iranian womens role in
this international day of solidarity fades. Finally the day of the rally arrives.
She remembers a 1970 rally in Bryant Park on the fiftieth anniversary of
womens suffrage. Thousands of people in a good mood sitting on the
grass as the dusk came over the Park. That was a fete, a true celebra-
tion. But this one, she seethes, is no festival, no celebration. This is an
unpleasant paranoid mass, and I am a foreigner whom they would hardly
enjoy in good mood, or with good feelings between nations. But trans-
lated, female, inferior to themmale, overwhelmingly make, and what
women there are attached to a male as by a cord (98). She becomes ever
more cynical as the event progresses. The affinity she felt on her arrival
at the airport with the chadori woman, whose oppression she sensed, gives
way to sarcasm and a sense of unconcealed civilizational superiority.
But the women so ruled, even as they sit and listen; next to the man,
leaning to instruct now and again. How all the language of their wom-
ens bodies is deference; the very headscarf, nunlike, modernworse
than a chador, updated and without the ancient beauty. These are women
closed to us. To see them is to feel defeated. Hard to believe that this patri-
archal bullying atmosphere could even associate with revolutionary,
socialist ideas. In fact, it doesnt. The revolution, in this place, is only
a word for tribal patriotism, tribal patriarchy. Revived in the fierce arro-
gance of the men, the frightened docility of the women. (99, my italics)
The more days Millett spends in Tehran the more alienated she feels from
the intense postrevolutionary political landscape. Vafadari and others also
begin to realize the awkwardness of the presence of Millett and other
foreign feminists. She shows reservations about the wisdom of feminist
delegations from France, Germany, and Scandinavia joining the rally at
the Ministry of Justice. Simone de Beauvoir is to lead the delegation.
What impression, Vafadari wonders, will it make among people here?
(152). The foreign dignitaries and Vafadari and her comrades debate
whether they should grant an interview to Claude Servan-Schreiber, the
editor of Effe (a slick magazine, chic). Once more Vafadari objects: Its
insufficiently political. They might just come for a story, as reporters, or
as superfeminists, to colonize. Millett responds: I argue uselessly for
sisterhood. I am alone, pumping away for international feminism, an idea
which has brought us all together and whose full ramifications I still hardly
grasp (153).
Finally signs of self-doubt appear more pronouncedly in Millett dur-
ing the press conference in which Iranian women presented their case to
the world on March 8, 1979. She enters the press conference thinking
about the words of a woman who has asked her earlier that everyone must
know that the women are denied their right, that at the very moment
when they had won their freedom, it is being taken from them. That
American women, that women in every country in the world must hear
this. Must see it on television. Tell all the women for us. Keep telling it.
I will. Vafadari arrives late to the press conference without her com-
rades. She is torn, Millett observes, between being angry and being scared.
Two of her comrades were arrested outside Tehran University and oth-
ers were afraid to participate. Nervously, Vafadari reads her groups state-
ment. We, Millett confesses, are looking a bit stupid now; the purpose
of this farce was to introduce the world press to Iranian feminists, a few
international feminists being done the honor of acting as go-between
and we can only produce one Iranian feminist (15859).
Nevertheless, Millett remains unperturbed about the absurdity of
the international sisterhood in solidarity with the overwhelmingly absent
Iranian women. Miss Millett [she makes sure to register the mispro-
nunciation of her name], an American reporter forces the issue, given
the fact that the revolution was to overthrow the Shah, it was also to repel
foreign interests and influences, including American influences and inter-
ests; given the delicate state of affairs heredo you feel it proper for you
to involve yourself in an Iranian issue? But with the contradictions she
has witnessed, the fact that her own Iranian comrades insist not to intro-
duce her as an American, but only generically as a foreign dignitary,
Millett seems unmoved and pays no heed to the significance of the ques-
tion. We chuckle along the tablethe man himself is an American; the
hypocrisy of this question is wonderful.... Here is the emissary of an
American capitalist corporation, a major television network, rebuking
me for being in Iran at the moment of its emancipation (172).
Vafadari rises above the ruckus to defend her comrade: Kate Mil-
lett (even she does it) [Milletts comment] came here for the eighth of
March. And we were glad to have her here. But that does not satisfy the
audience. To Milletts chagrin, the few Iranian women in the conference
room, who have been critical of the whole event, object. Its not a ques-
tion of loving her, the Iranian woman challenges Vafadari, how many
people know Kate Millett? (Oddly enough, Millett interjects here, she
pronounced it correctly.) How many women here know Simone de
Beauvoir? We dont.61
During the same news conference, a veteran reporter pressed her to
take a position on Ayatollah Khomeini. The next day, in their coverage
of the news conference, one of Tehrans newspapers quotes Millett as
calling Ayatollah Khomeini a male chauvinist. The day after, the mem-
bers of the Revolutionary Committee carried out a deportation order
issued by the provisional government for Millett and her companion
Sophie Keir, whose photographs later would illustrate Milletts book.
In a variety of ways, Milletts mission recalls the colonial anxiety of
diffrance. She does not shy away from situating herself as a part of an
internationalist movement that began in the nineteenth century. It is
interesting, she says in response to the question of foreign intervention
in Iranian womens affairs, how international the womens movement
has always been historically; in the nineteenth century and in this cen-
tury as well (173). Alas, she derives her internationalism from the natu-
ralization of the not-to-be-veiled female body, universalizing Western,
white, and professional middle-class life experiences, and rendering all
other forms deficient. Such a stance has authorized interventionism of
Western feminism and imbued them with confidence in their position.62
Through such interventions, not only do Western feminists reaffirm their
own emancipation but, more importantly, they universalize the cultures
and values that inform those experiences as the point of reference for the
universal, essentialized, and singular liberated woman.63
This feminist interventionism, particularly in that contested moment,
further reinforced the spurious choices between working-class politics,
Islamism, anti-imperialism, feminism, and counterrevolutionary Western-
ized elitism. This moment of cross-cultural feminism, Naghibi observes,
was overdetermined by the colonial history of the international femi-
nist project.64 As Milletts narrative shows, this interventionist feminist
ideology further marginalized Iranian women despite their momentous
role in the revolutionary movement. It forced on them a fictitious choice
between enduring patriarchal nationalisms or liberal-Western feminisms.
An overwhelming majority of Iranian women were absent subjects in
the feminist universe in which Millett and her contacts in Iran resided.
Milletts Orientalist feminism did not allow her, and other international
feminist interventionists, to recognize the intricate assemblages of revo-
lutionary politics, anticolonial sensibilities, nation-building, and religious
sentiments within which womens issues were articulated.65
Thanks, But No Thanks, Iranian Womens Groups
Tell Foreign Feminists
During her two-week stay in Iran, Milletts polarizing presence made
even those who were actively involved in demonstrations uneasy.66 In an
interview published in the New York Times, four women who participated
in the rallies told the Times reporter that they did not appreciate the inter-
ference of feminists from other countries. All four women (Mrs. Mirmaj
lessi, a set designer, married to a physician and mother of two children;
Farideh Garman, an architect who had just returned from fourteen years
in Italy; Nasrin Farrokh, a musician, stage director, and opera singer; and
a chemist who preferred to remain anonymous) agreed that they made
their discontent known to the government about the possibility of com-
pulsory hejab and now wanted a return to calm. I think we made too big
a thing of the demonstrations, Garman said. We made our point and
received the answer we sought, but then it began to look like the women
were against the Imam [Khomeini]. Now is not the time for a split here.
We should keep what we have gained and strengthen it, not weaken it.67
They all also agreed that the issue is not the hejab, We have spent
enough time talking about the chador, the chemist said, and everyone
agreed. If anyone tries to [take away] our rights, women will fight again.
In this fight, they insisted, they do not need the interference of feminists
in other countries. They singled out one name: Kate Millett. I think
she has no right to talk for Persian women, the chemist said. We have
our own tongues, our own demands. We can talk for us. The set designer
Ms. Mirmajlessi echoed the same sentiment: She and no one else who
is not Iranian can say anything that we should listen to about Iranian
women. She does not know us. I do not know what she is doing here.68
Despite reports about the dissatisfaction of Iranian women who
participated in the March 813 rallies, most Western media depicted
Milletts sojourn as a valiant act of feminist solidarity. The Washington
Post, in its Style section, printed the story of how Milletts visit was marred
by divisions among Iranian feminists who lacked proper understanding
of womens rights. The Post reported that American feminist Kate Millett
yesterday ran into her stiffest opposition since arriving here a week ago.
Paradoxically, the trouble came from the embattled Iranian women shes
here to help in their fight for equality.69 The article featured a photograph
of the pensive Millett, with thick black-frame glasses and a distant gaze,
smoking a cigarette, under a picture of chador-covered women in an un-
specified demonstration to highlight the stark contradiction between
a forward-looking feminist defender of womens rights and backward
defenders of tradition.
A group of hecklers, the article reports, contested Milletts and her
Iranian sponsors credentials during a press conference in Tehran and
Figure 11. Sexual Politics in Iran: Kate Millet Finds That Tehrans Feminists
Are Not United, Washington Post, Monday March 12, 1979, p. B1.
their right to speak in the name of Iranian women. The often confused
proceedings were suffused with an underlying hostility. It appeared
directed more toward Milletts thesis of international feminist solidarity
than her presence here as a foreignerand a suspect American at that
in these xenophobic postrevolutionary times. Here the reporters conclu-
sion is illuminating, speaking about a nation that just three weeks earlier
had toppled the Pahlavi regime, he opines: Talking out problemsand
the techniques of consciousness-raisinghave not caught on in Iran,
where many of the Western-educated women leaders are split among
orthodox communist, Maoist, democratic and Trotskyite tendencies.70
Despite numerous occasions that Iranian women involved in protests
told Western reporters that they support Khomeini and their intention
was not to instigate unrest and division in the ranks of revolutionary
forces, the headlines continued to depict the rallies in Tehran along the
line of Women March against Khomeini.71 Frustrated by foreign fem-
inist interventions, in another interview with a Baltimore Sun correspon-
dent, Nasrin Farrokh calls these visits embarrassing and provocative.
A graduate of the University of Florida in music, Farrokh reiterated that
the government has so many serious problems to sort out that to pres-
ent them with fresh demands at this stage is stupid.72 Nevertheless, the
rallies were naturalized as a part of the inevitable transformative womens
universal politics. The confusion confronting Iranian women, an op-ed
piece in the New York Times declared, is the same confusion that confronts
most of us. Refusing the veil is a first step on the long road to liberating
women from being responsible for everyone elses behavior.... Ameri-
can women may feel further along this road than Iranian women, but, in
the historical context, that distance is not very significant.... We who
care obviously hope that the modern women of Tehran will prevail.73
Many commentators, both inside and outside academe, now brushed
aside the justification of hejab as a signifier of protest and revolutionary
politics. Now that the revolution has triumphed over tyranny, they argued,
those instrumental apologies for the hejab had to give way to an explicit
defense of secular-modern-democratic politics. Now that the revolution
has been achieved, a respected historian of modern Iran advised the
Iranian woman in the pages of Newsday, the chador reverts to its earlier
symbolic meaning: her subjugation.74 The illustration that accompanied
the op-ed left nothing opaque about the standpoint based on which
feminists of the global sisterhood viewed the events in Iran. An oversized
man in a suit, with his upper body outside the frame, pulls the leash of a
woman, covered in the chador, who follows him submissively.
In words and images, the conflict between modern and traditional
women became the centerpiece of the feminist solidarity politics in the
West. A small number of professional, open-minded, secular, Western-
looking, cigarette-smoking women in Iran became the vanguards of an
Figure 12. Illustration by Gary Viskupic. Newsday, March 29, 1979, p. 94.
emancipatory politics, which might fail without the help of their West-
ern sisters. In ten days, from March 12 to March 21, different womens
organizations organized rallies in defense of their Iranian sisters in New
York, Paris (and ten other cities in France), Madrid, Barcelona, Rome,
Milan, and Montreal.
On March 15, 1979, in New York, two hundred women demonstrated
in what the New York Times dubbed the first large-scale [!] show of soli-
darity with those agitating for womens rights in Iran. The report men-
tioned that the demonstration was held at a time when all sides in the
Iranian revolution are sensitive to suggestions of Western influence in
the new Government. But that caution was qualified by Gloria Steinems
assertion that American feminists had sought assurances from womens
rights leaders in Iran that support from Americans was welcome.75
Steinem made the assertion in the midst of her own legal battle against
Random House to prevent the publication of a chapter in Redstockings
Feminist Revolution titled Gloria Steinem and the CIA.76
On the same day, in a crowded hall in Paris, Simone de Beauvoir an-
nounced the formation of the Comit International du Droit des Femmes
(CIDF). She declared that the main inspiration behind her initiative was
the struggles of Iranian women and their postrevolutionary plight. She
also told the audience that a delegation of feminist activists was planning
to depart for Tehran in a few days. During the meeting, a group of Ira-
nian activists objected to de Beauvoirs plan and argued that such a mission
was ill-conceived and that the time for such an intervention by Western
women was not right. De Beauvoir responded angrily, Ive seen many
revolutions in many different countries. Whenever we talk about defend-
ing women, we are told that the time is not right.77
After Kate Milletts controversial visit, a number of Iranian women
contacted the Comit and asked them at least not to include any Amer-
icans in their delegation. The Comit agreed and sent one German, one
Egyptian, one Belgian, one Italian, and fourteen French women on a
mission to Iran. The Egyptian member of the delegation was Laila Said.
Although she was not a Muslim, being from Egypt could offer more legit-
imacy to the visit. On March 8, 1979, she wrote a few years later in
her memoir, a demonstration against the obligatory wearing of the veil
was staged in Iran, and some of the demonstrators were imprisoned or
put under house arrest. Yet this memory was based on rumor, not fact.
Figure 13. Simone de Beauvoir (with Elisabeth Salvaresi) announcing the
formation of Comit International du Droit des Femmes, in response to the
Iranian situation. Paris, March 1979. Photo by Martine Franck. Courtesy of
Magnum Photo.
The news of the rallies in Tehran had spread through feminist networks
with particular inaccuracies to make the foreign intervention imperative
and indispensable. At the time, no one was arrested; no one was under
house arrest. But the situation in Iran appeared to be critical. Urgent
pleas for help were sent to Western feminists, she recalls. Simone de
Beauvoir was mobilized as was Gloria Steinem, who called to see if I would
join the delegation that was leaving for Tehran from Paris. I did not hes-
itate to say yes.78
Inside Iran, women who participated in the rallies continued to object
to foreign feminists instrumental appropriation of their demands. Rather
than being concerned with the clergy stealing the revolution, they began
to fear the might of their international sisters. These Iranian women
protestors were concerned that their sincere efforts may be undermined
by foreign women who have aggravated the conflict by joining their dem-
onstrations and shouting anti-Khomeini slogans.79 One of them, Minou
Moshiri, drafted an open letter to Simone de Beauvoirs committee on
route to Tehran for another solidarity visit. Please stop worrying us,
Moshiri wrote, and please try to understand that womens liberation,
Western-style, is irrelevant, inapplicable, unacceptable and distasteful in
our country.... No moral support, no economic support, and above all,
no delegation of hysterical females to enlighten us, if you please.80
Iranian womens reservations for these solidarity visits created a rift
in the French delegation and changed the objective of the trip from
helping their Iranian sisters to a fact-finding mission. Instead of organiz-
ing press conferences or participating in rallies, the delegation limited
its work in a three-day visit to meeting with a number of women activ-
ists and journalists, the provisional prime minister, and clerical leaders
of the revolution, including Ayatollah Khomeini. The majority of mem-
bers of the delegation objected to the visit to Qom, where Khomeini
resided at the time. They argued that wearing a headscarf to visit Kho-
meini would defeat the purpose of their visit. After four hours of debate,
and after consulting with de Beauvoir in Paris via telephone, only four
members of the group decided to make the two-hour trip to visit the
undisputed leader of the revolution.81
Claire Brire, who reported for Libration during the revolutionary
struggles in 1978, made all the arrangements for these high-level meet-
ings for the CIDF delegation. In an interview with Mahnaz Matin in
2008, Brire recalls how unprepared and ignorant of the situation in Iran
the members of the committee were.
I thought they were a group of journalists who were interested in
reporting the news from Iran. But they intended to do some kind of
political work, which did not leave a good mark. Even Kate Milletts
work was not good. Iranian feminists were worried about her presence.
Because of being an American, she should not have gone to Iran. She
should have thought about what she could really do for Iranian femi-
nists; not just go there and give lectures! The French delegation also
had the same problem. They were egotistical Parisians who went there
just to say here we are. A number of them belonged to affluent and even
aristocratic classes. They had no idea what was going on in Iran, how
the poor and the religious lived in Iran. Their predicament was not
Iran! They did not care about the social environment there.82
Brire describes how puzzled she was when members of the committee
argued that they were not willing to meet with Khomeini if they were
required to observe the hejab.
They said, Why should we comply with this? Iranian women are strug-
gling against the hejab, why should we observe it? Some were saying
that we will go to see Khomeini with the hejab, but will take it off in
front of him! The German reporter, Alice Schwartzer, said: We will
take off our pants! I asked them: Do you take your panties off when
you meet other dictators? Why do you want to do this in front of
Khomeini? Not only is this kind of act disrespectful, it is also blasphe-
mous. They would kill you. They said that they would call and ask
Simone de Beauvoir. Right in front of my eyes, they called Paris and
talked to her. And she agreed with that plan. Can you believe that? I
told them that such a behavior would harm Iranian women, because
they will say that this is what women demonstrating on the streets are
asking for, the same thing that these European women do: to take their
panties off! They could not understand this issue. They did not know
that in a religious town like Qom, the issue was not only the Ayatollah,
the concern comes from the entire population.83
By the time the French delegation arrived in Tehran, womens dem-

onstrations had already been dissipated. The provisional government re-
assured women that there was no plan to institute a regime of compulsory
hejab, at least not in the near future.84 No one intended to jeopardize the
increasingly tenuous unity of the revolutionary movement, neither those
ayatollahs who saw an opening to advance their patriarchal and at times
misogynistic readings of the sharia law nor those who feared that the
new gender restrictions might only be the beginning of a total consoli-
dation of power by the clergy.
Western media reported womens retreat with chagrin and amuse-
ment. Two months later, the Chicago Tribune reported: The demonstra-
tions stopped. Not so much as a whisper came from the feminist camp.
And what of the women? a friend writes me from New York. From here,
they seem to have disappeared completely. Now that the excitement of
rallies was over, the French and American feminists were back home writ-
ing books about their Iranian ordeal, the Iranians had to see with sober
eyes their social and political role in the postrevolutionary Iran. They
rightfully feared that counterrevolutionaries would exploit the wom-
ens issue. Having made their point, they fell into quiet discussions....
There is no single person who speaks for the women of Iran, nor is there
a formal group one can learn upon to check the movements direction.
Movement might even be stretching a happening.85
For the first time, outside the milieu of the opera singer, the set de-
signer, and the chemist, Goli Dahri also appears in the pages of the Tri-
bune. An illiterate woman, as are about three-quarters of the 17 million
women in Iran, who lives on the southern edges of the city in a rented
room with her family of eight. She makes daily trips to a nearby street
gutter to wash dishes and the apparel of her family, carrying her infant
in a sling across her bosom. She wears the chador, but not when she is
washing. It would get in the way. When she is washing, she wears a scarf.
She could not care less about the heavily publicized struggle for wom-
ens rights in this country, and in that regard, she is in an overwhelming
majority. Her highest hopes are for more food, more income, and more
than a single room in which to live out her life. These are the common
goals of that majority.86
By contrast, Susan Kamalieh, who studied the arts in Michigan and
at New York University, sees the reason for the plight of women in Iran
in Iranian mens sexuality. The real truth is that Iranian men havent
had enough women, Kamalieh remarked. The tradition, the customs,
lead to a high level of sexual frustration. After maneuvering on a down-
hill slope of the Alborz Mountains on the outskirts of northern Tehran,
ahead of two male skiing companions, she informs the interviewer that
she has made up her mind to quit her job at the cultural center in the
city and to move with her Iranian boyfriend to Paris, where they will live
together. She may be gone for two months; she may be gone for good.87
Kamalieh and other women whose ways of life had turned them into
strangers in their own land faced an existential predicament.
The Right to Speak, the Right to Represent

In his essays on the Iranian Revolution, Foucault intended to introduce
the possibility of thinking outside the universal referent on questions of
governmentality and power. This is not to suggest that he was inatten-
tive to the questions of rights. Quite the opposite, he was more con-
cerned with how issues of rights and authority could be articulated from
a standpoint particular to the Islamic-Shii-Iranian experience. Unlike
Kate Millett and other feminist internationalists who disregarded in toto
the particularities and contingencies of the Iranian experience, Foucault
believed it was crucial to highlight the weight of the Iranian actors and,
correspondingly, to downplay the importance of what Westerners regarded
as the proper objectives for Iranian aspirations. He began his open let-
ter (April 14, 1979) to the provisional prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan,
in objection to the postrevolutionary summary trial with these words:
Today, many Iranians are angry that they are being given such noisy lec-
tures. As to their rights, they showed that they knew how to make them
prevail, they alone.88 He ends the letter by reminding Bazargan that he
does not address him as a Frenchman who possesses the right of criti-
cism bequeathed to him by the project of the Enlightenment. Mr. Prime
Minister, he wrote in utter contrast to de Beauvoir, Millett, and other
feminist interventionists patronizing language, I do not have any author-
ity to address myself in such a manner to you, except the permission that
you gave me, by helping me understand, at our first meeting, that for you,
governing is not a coveted right, but an extremely difficult obligation.
You have to do what is necessary in order that the people will never regret
the uncompromising force with which it has just liberated itself.89
We hear muted voices from Iran in the chorus of international con-
demnation of the treatment of women in Iran. While the main actors of
the March protests emphasized the nuances and cultural complexities of
gender politics, major newspapers in Europe and the United States and
feminist publications, such as Des femmes en mouvement, Ms. Magazine,
Choisir, F Magazine, Histoires delles, and others, continued to represent
the rallies as womens struggle to control their own lives, as a pamphlet
published in Libration (March 14, 1979) claimed, and against an Islamic
normalization.
In Paris, on March 21, 1979, Gisle Halimi, the editor of the popu-
lar feminist magazine Choisir, announces the rise of a new feminist inter-
nationalism that has grown from the solidarity with Iranian women. A
month later, Histoires delles declares: In Iran, the Chador Goes On, in Paris
It Burns.90 In Tehran even the Trotskyist associates of Kate Millett, women
and men who had recently returned from exile and, in their own words,
were few in number and limited in influence, tried to distance themselves
from foreign interventions and the kind of feminism that the interna-
tionalists advocated. In Iran we see an evolving tale of navigating across
the plains of revolution, nationalism, anti-imperialism, womens rights,
and class politics. Whereas in Paris, in total disregard and frank igno-
rance of this cautious negotiation of gender politics, feminist interven-
tionists rallied to burn the veil as an act of liberating womens shared
essentialized body that somehow could be extricated from the contin-
gencies of history, culture, and politics. In order for this interventionist
approach to legitimize itself, its proponents constituted an individual
female subject outside history, one who is not only an autonomous indi-
vidual but, as Spivak once observed, also individualist.91
The dominant feminism of the Second Wave during the 1970s situ-
ated the female body as the universal referent for womens emancipatory
politics. If womens actions or beliefs appeared to be inconsistent with
this normative construct, they were construed either as emanations of
false consciousness or coerced words and deeds that subverted their true
interests. In all the numerous reports about the March 1979 protests in
Iran, the same selected few (the opera singer, the set designer, the chem-
ist, the architect) appeared, whether in the Irish Times or the New York
Times, the Guardian or the Washington Post, representing the voices of
Iranian women. But one could not hear even those voices in feminist
proclamations of solidarity with Iranian women. Something novel was
happening in Iran, something to which Foucault called attention and
feminist internationalists utterly dismissed: women sought to legitimize their
gender politics with references to nonpatriarchal interpretations of Islam. They
situated their demands in a culturally specific and historically contingent
frame.
Unlike their feminist sisters from the West, they tried to look at the
question of chador not merely as a signifier of oppression but more from
a sociological and historical standpoint. Nasrin Farrokh, the opera singer,
insisted that womens rights could and should be derived from the teach-
ings of Islam. Under Islam, women are economically independent. If a
woman gets married, she can keep her own wealth... she can keep her
own name. She does not have to breast-feed her babies if she does not
want. Its time for these things to come out. Mirmajlessi, the set designer,
followed up, The Koran gives us freedom, but we were never told this.92
They all disputed the past understandings of Islam and its prescribed
views on women and believed that the revolution had called for a new
reading of religion. The unnamed woman, the chemist, reiterated that
during the time of Mohammad, there was no chador. In many of our
villages today no one wears the chador. The women work with men. The
chador is an urban thing about 100 years old. Poor women put it on when
they came into the city to conceal the rags they were wearing. Somehow
it became a fanatic thing with religious leaders. The chador, Farrokh
said, adding more class analysis to the chemists historical view, became
a part of life for poor women.93
Feminist Premonitions and Womens Status under the

Islamic Republic
In practice, during the past three decades since the revolution, gender pol-
itics and policy under the Islamic Republic have been far from the mere
enactment of literal readings of the Quranic verses or a replication of
the repression of women in Saudi Arabia on which those feminist pre-
monitions had originally relied. There is no doubt that for the consoli-
dation of power, the postrevolutionary regime instituted formal and legal
apparatuses in order to constitute a Homo Islamicus. But at no point in its
history was there a consensus among the ruling elite on what determines
the Islamicity of their subjects, particularly in regard to gender relations.
Issues of womens education, employment, access to abortion, inheritance,
public participation in the arts, sports, and many other activities in civil
society foment heated discussions in the legislative and executive branches
of the government.94 More importantly, these policy and legislative issues
encouraged serious hermeneutical engagement with Islamic theology,
prophetic tradition, and Iranian Shiism.95 And they opened up debate
about the content and meanings of Islam to the people through the elec-
toral politics of the new republic. In its realpolitik, the Islamic Republic
negated the essentialist premonitions that it would implement a literal
reading of the Quran and expunge women from the public and restrict
them to the domestic sphere.
Second Wave feminists have always argued that education and em-
ployment are the two most important material conditions for womens
autonomy and liberation.96 But the interdependent and meritorious
principles of autonomy and liberty as the indicator of womens status in
any particular society must be understood within the historical trajecto-
ries and cultural contingencies in which the very notions of womanhood,
autonomy, domesticity, and public sphere are meaningfully construed.
Despite the fact that feminist theory locates the differences between men
and women in a social context, and not in biological distinctions, by and
large it remains essentialist and monocausal. Second Wave feminist the-
ory was primarily based on a common distinction between public and
private spheres. Ignoring the cultural and historical conjunctions that
give rise to the meaning and significance of domesticity, it advanced a
general theory of patriarchy in which it linked womens oppression directly
to their activities in the domestic sphere. In effect, as Nancy Fraser and
Linda Nicholson aptly observe,
the theory falsely generalized to all societies an historically specific con-

junction of properties: womens responsibility for early childrearing,
womens tendency to spend more time in the geographical space of the
home, womens lesser participation in the affairs of the community, a
cultural ascription of triviality to domestic work, and a cultural ascrip-
tion of inferiority to women. The theory thus failed to appreciate that,
while each individual property may be true of many societies, the con-
junction is not true of most.97
Not only did this universalist approach fail to appreciate the historical
conjunction and specific revolutionary moment that shaped gender pol-
itics in 1979 Iran, it continues to disregard major changes (and womens
political role in propelling those changes) that have occurred since the
time of the revolution in the status of Iranian women in relation to edu-
cation, health, employment, artistic and cultural production, and civic
engagement. These changes were not the result of top-down state poli-
cies but rather the consequence of a contentious engagement between
different factions within the polity, the womens community and civic
institutions, and political parties and activists.
During the first two decades of the Islamic Republic, despite a dev-
astating eight-year war with Iraq, which claimed half a million lives on
both sides, the literacy rate among women rose from 35 percent in 1976
to 74 percent in 1996. By the year 2006 only 4 percent of young women
remained illiterate. Women made up 60 percent of the incoming class of
university students for the school year 20067, and that trend continues.
The conservatives of the Eighth Parliament introduced legislation for
affirmative action for men to catch up with women in higher education.
As part of the new legislation, which was partly ratified, women who use
resources of free public universities had to commit to a ten-year employ-
ment (public or private) after graduation.
Between the years of 1986 and 1996, womens employment also rose
sharply. The percentage of female employment as a portion of the total
female population rose 6 percent from 19.8 to 26 percent and another 7
percent by the end of the next decade.98 Womens health and prenatal
care has seen the most dramatic change. Womens life expectancy rose
from 57.60 on the eve of the revolution to 72.12 by 1999. Infant mortal-
ity decreased more than fourfold in 15 years from 109 per 1000 to 25.99
An aggressive family planning and population control program was also
instituted in 1989. The program successfully reduced the population
growth rate from the high of 3.4 percent in 1986 to 0.7 percent in 2007.
During the same period, the fertility number per family dropped from
6.5 to less than 2. Although the Islamic Republic repealed the family plan-
ning and protection laws of the old regime soon after assuming power,
in a significant shift, in 1988, the government introduced and carried
out one of the most efficient family planning programs in the economi-
cally developing world. Before his death in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini
endorsed the new program, thus affording religious legitimacy to this
ideological revision. As Homa Hoodfar argues, without national consensus-
building, a massive mobilization of women (both by government agencies
as well as nongovernmental agents), effective religious justification, an
efficient delivery service in birth control and contraceptives (such as dis-
tribution of free condoms), and premarital sex-education programs, this
ambitious family planning project could not have been realized.100
The purpose of this sketchy report is not to draw a sanguine picture
of womens conditions in contemporary Iran. The complexities of how
governmental and nongovernmental actors interact on these issues, how
the expansion and containment of state power shape the social realities
of women of different classes and ethnicities, or how religious doctrines
and convictions hinder or facilitate womens mobility cannot be fully
appreciated here. Nor is it to deny the claims of those Iranian women
today who experience the hejab as repressive and find the dominant
Islamic regulations an obstacle to their mobility. My overriding purpose
here is to show that it was through an engagement with, rather than an
abandonment of, religious text and lived traditions that a vibrant gender
politics emerged in postrevolutionary Iran. I mention these changes in
womens status in Iran to illustrate how historical, political, and cultural
contingencies (the interaction between different political actors of the
postrevolutionary period), and not a transhistorical Islam inherently hos-
tile to civil liberties and womens rights, determined the outcome of the
revolution.
What happened in postrevolutionary Iran was not far from what a
high-ranking cleric told Foucault in one of his visits in October 1978.
A religious authority, Foucault wrote, explained to me that it would
require long work by civil and religious actors, scholars, and believers in
order to shed light on all the problems to which the Quran never claimed
to give a precise response.... In pursuit of this ideal, the distrust of
legalism seemed to me to be essential, along with a faith in the creativity
of Islam.101 Foucault recognized this moment of historical rupture that
opened up possibilities of new forms of social and historical engagement.
He also realized that the dignity of revolutionary actors and the forma-
tion of historical subjects, in contradistinction to subjects of history, could
only materialize by retreating from the Enlightenments universal refer-
ent. In the next chapter, I will demonstrate how Foucault rereads Enlight-
enment and a subject-centered history through what the Iranian Revolution
taught him.
5
was ist aufklrung?
The Iranian Revolution as a Moment
of Enlightenment
Enlightenment is mans release from his self-incurred tutelage.

Immanuel Kant
Argue as much as you will, and about what you will, only obey.
Frederick II
The movement through which a lone man, a group, a minority,

or an entire people say, I will no longer obey, and are willing
to risk their lives in the face of a power that they believe to be
unjust, seems to me to be irreducible.
Michel Foucault
Foucault revisited the question of enlightenment not because of

a late conversion to humanism but because his experience of the Iranian
Revolution offered him a novel context to rethink it. Rather than a sign
of remorse from his defense of the revolution, Foucault read the Iranian
Revolution back into Kants Was ist Aufklrung?
In his letter to the provisional prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan, Fou-
cault made it clear that he was under no illusion that the postrevolutionary
state would be the agent for the realization of the spirituality of the rev-
olutionary uprising. Whereas the opposition was scandalized by the very
notion of an Islamic Republic and tried to draw an indubitable link between
the Islamic nature of the new regime and the atrocities committed by the
supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini in the course of consolidating their
power after the revolution, Foucault distinguished himself by confessing
to Bazargan: Concerning the expression Islamic government, why cast
immediate suspicion on the adjective Islamic? The word government
suffices, in itself, to awaken vigilance. No adjectivewhether democratic,
socialist, liberal, or peoplesfrees it from its obligations.1
159
160 | Was ist Aufklrung?
But Foucaults haphazard and rather aimless critique of the newly
born regime did little to satisfy his querulous detractors who continue
to call upon him to acknowledge his errors. They turned a misunder-
stood and misappropriated rendition of the spirituality he found in the
revolutionary movement into an indictment of his radical philosophy.
No, penitent former Maoists Claudie and Jacques Broyelle wrote in
March 24, 1979,
the philosopher is not responsible for the blood that flows today in Iran.
It is not he who invented Islam and the ayatollahs. It is not he, sitting
cross-legged in Qom... like Mao, not long ago, [who issues] supreme
directives. The philosopher contents himself with painting and offer-
ing images, holy images: the abridged illustrated imam, sequel to the
hurried marabout of peoples justice.... The philosophers of peoples
justice should say today, Long live the Islamic government! and it
would be clear that they are going to the final extreme of their radical-
ism. Or they should say, No, I did not want that, I was mistaken. Here
is what was wrong with my reasoning; here is where my thinking is in
error. They should reflect. After all, that is their job.2
Fresh from their own recantation and disillusionment with Maoism, the
Broyelles showed the same carelessness and historical negligence in their
interrogation of Foucault as they demonstrated in their condemnation
of Maoist China. In Deuxime rtour de Chine,3 originally published in
1977, they detail how their life experiences in China from 1972 to 1975
spoiled their earlier enthusiasm for the Chinese Revolution. The Broy-
elles and their coauthor Evelyne Tschirhart taught French in Beijing and
helped the Chinese official publishing house in editing French texts.
Their passion began to fade as they tried to navigate the impenetrable,
meandering bureaucratic halls in which their hosts expected them to
operate. In China: A Second Look, one learns in a succession of anecdotes
about the cultural incompatibilities of three French intellectuals frus-
trated by the restrictions imposed upon their movement by the govern-
ment. They also write with a sarcastic wit about the Chinese idiosyncratic
understanding of Marxism and their peculiar revolutionary ideas, albeit
without knowing Chinese or through a meaningful engagement with Chi-
nese history. As one reviewer suggested, Broyelle, Broyelle, and Tschir
hart are perhaps most profoundly upset by the failure of the Chinese to
Was ist Aufklrung? | 161
implement the authors own European notion of what a proper revolu-
tion should be.4
The general tone of Foucaults critics reflected the same kind of un-
ease among French intellectuals who remained indifferent about the
cultural particularities and historical contingencies of the Iranian revo-
lution. The editors of Le Matin invited Foucault to respond to the mount-
ing critique of his writings on the Iranian revolution. In a short piece, he
declined their invitation. I am summoned to acknowledge my errors.
This expression and the practice it designates remind me of something
and of many things, against which I have fought. I will not lend myself,
even through the press, to a maneuver whose form and content I detest.
You are going to confess, or you will shout long live the assassins. Some
utter this sentence by profession, others by taste or habit. Similar to his
response to Atoussa H., he reminded his critics that Blanchot teaches
that criticism begins with attention, good demeanor, and generosity.5
Foucaults critics castigated him for thinking about the possibility of
a transformative politics and mode of living in and relating to the present
outside of Enlightenment teleological schemes. They misconstrued his
notion of political spirituality to be an endorsement of theocracy. Simi-
larly, they regarded his refusal to condemn the Islamic Revolution to be
an expression of his ambivalence toward the formal and institutional rec-
ognition of rights.
Yet Foucault saw in revolutionary Iran an instance of what he per-
ceived to be the essence of Kants definition of enlightenment: Mans
release from his self-incurred tutelage.6 Through their revolt, Iranians
put forward an example of what he considered to be a true critique
namely, the art of voluntary insubordination, that of reflected intracta-
bility.7 Moreover, the revolution he had witnessed, and tried to understand,
had a transformative effect and shaped his rereading of the project of
Enlightenment in his later work.
The hostility and sarcasm of Foucaults critics compelled the philoso-
pher to abandon any direct engagement with the topic after his last piece,
Is It Useless to Revolt? appeared on May 11, 1979, in Le Monde. In it,
he characterized the French intelligentsia as being trapped in a form of
enlightenment that enclosed them in a tribunal of Reason, of setting
rational limits on what we can legitimately know.8 In later years, on
a number of occasions, he evoked his displeasure with the way he was
derided and decided to close the book on the Iranian Revolution. A year
later, in April 1980, Le Monde asked him to participate in a series of inter-
views with philosophers on the condition of intellectuals in France. He
accepted the invitation with the proviso that he remain anonymous. With
a mask of anonymity, he returned to his grievance against the French
intellectuals, castigating them for turning the practice of critical engage-
ment into a vogue of condemnation, judgment of guilt, and attempts to
silence and ultimately to destroy the object of criticism.9
I cant help, the masked philosopher lamented, but dream about
a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a
sentence, an idea to life. He criticized the ambivalence of those intel-
lectuals who failed to imagine the consequences of their destructive crit-
icism in reality. When they criticize someone, he pleaded, when
they denounce his ideas, when they condemn what he writes, I imag-
ine them in the ideal situation in which they would have complete power
over him. I take the words they usedemolish, destroy, reduce to silence,
buryand see what the effect would be if they were taken literally.10 In
a romantic tone, more reminiscent of Whitman than Foucault, he yearned
for a critical discourse that
would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch
the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply not judg-
ments but signs of existence.... Criticism that hands down sentences
sends me to sleep; Id like a criticism of scintillating leaps of the imag-
ination. It would not be sovereign or dressed in red. It would bear the
lightning of possible storms.11
Earlier, in another essay first published in Le Nouvel Observateur on

April 23, 1979, ten days after he wrote the open letter to Prime Minister
Bazargan, Foucault underlined his discontent with the arrogance of
wanting to impose ones law on others. Speaking without reference to
the way he was chastised by the critics, he noted, God knows, police
patrols of ideology are not lacking; one hears their whistle: right, left,
here, move on, right away, not now.... The pressure of identity and the
injunction to break things up are both similarly abusive.12
Foucaults unwillingness to revisit his essays on the Iranian Revolu-
tion by no means signals an implicit renunciation of his earlier critique
of Enlightenment rationality. Rather, I argue that neither did the Iranian
revolutionary movement negate his earlier conceptions of the subject nor
did the postrevolutionary atrocities force him to reconsider the conse-
quences of his radical antihumanism or retreat to the bosom of the lib-
eral or existential fold.13
In his later writings, Foucault shifted the historical context of his the-
ory of the subject from the post-Enlightenment to antiquity. His lectures
on The Hermeneutics of the Subject at the Collge de France (198182),
his extensive writing and lectures on the care of the self and ethics, and
more broadly on what he called the critical ontology of ourselves, show
a distinct emphasis on the historical significance of the subject, which, I
propose, is a reflection of the Iranian Revolution in his later writings.
How to Reconcile the Early and Late Foucault

Many scholars regard Foucaults earlier work through the lens of his
haunting evocation on the vanishing of mankinds historical authorship
in the final passage of The Order of Things: Like a face drawn in sand at
the edge of the sea.14 A commonplace reading of Foucault, particularly
among feminist theorists, found his theory of invasive disciplinary power
and networks with constitutive authority over the subject to be imper-
meable to the possibility of resistance. Although he stressed that power
also produces resistance, that haphazard nod never satisfied his most
ardent critics.15 For them, as Alain Badiou writes,
[Foucaults] problem then became that of accounting for the source of

such resistance. If the subjectright down to its most intimate desires,
actions, and thoughtsis constituted by power, then how can it be a
source of independent resistance? For such a point of agency to exist,
Foucault needs some space that has not been completely constituted
by power or a complex doctrine on the relationship between resistance
and independence.16
The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, published in 1994,17 was largely

conceived on the premise that Foucaults thinking swerved markedly in
the late 1970s and early 1980s. Roy Boyne locates this shift between the
first and second volumes of The History of Sexuality. Whereas in his ear-
lier writings, genealogies of power/knowledge seem to exclude all notion
of truth, enlightenment, self-understanding or effective political strategy,
in his later work, this doctrine gives way to a sense of renewed ethical
and social engagement.... There is the suggestion of a certain Utopian
residue.18 Many feminist theorists also questioned Foucaults concern
in his later writings with subjectivity as puzzling and even embarrassing.
His new position appeared on the surface, as Jana Sawicki opined, to fly
in the face of his earlier proclamation of the death of man and his anti-
authoritarian predilections for anonymous authorship. Sawicki then raises
the question: Had Foucault, the notorious post-humanist, recanted?19
There is no doubt that Foucault was (and I will argue later, remained)
critical of Kantian Enlightenment and the humanist tradition it inspired.
In his view, humanist rationality presupposed an autonomous (or authen-
tic, in the case of Sartre) subject with inherent abilities and natural impulses
for emancipation from the domination of others. How could a subject
constituted by normative rational disciplinary technologies suddenly insti-
gate resistance constituting new subjectivities and seeking the transfor-
mation of his or her own existence and the world he or she lives in?
Foucaults docile bodies that are generated through a microphysics of
power, it has been generally believed, are incapable of and impervious to
emancipatory politics.
Foucaults impassioned support of the Iranian Revolution did little
to cast skepticism on such an interpretation of his genealogical method
as subject-less history. His detractors continue to emphasize the nihilism
they perceive to be at the center of his critical stand against normative
universalism, transcendental Reason, and the autonomous individual as
the source and the point of reference for all oppositional politics.
It is precisely here that Foucaults writings on the Iranian Revolu-
tion offer a possible clue that can help resolve the irreconcilability of the
Man in revolt with the docile subject of disciplinary power. In a num-
ber of interviews in the 1980s, he tried to correct this misconception of
his earlier works by explaining: I am far from being a theoretician of
power,20 and Thus, it is not power, but the subject, that is the general
theme of my research.21
What his critics failed to detect in Foucaults genealogical scheme
was not the very possibility of politics but a political project with a norma-
tive and universal Referent. He understood modern disciplinary power as
being ubiquitous but not inescapable, so long as the exit routes were
envisaged on the outer boundaries of the possibilities in the present. In
other words, the subject could not emancipate herself by deriving the
principles of her politics from the same rationality that has constituted
the conditions of her subjugation. This position does not necessarily lead
to political defeatism or philosophical nihilism. Did Foucault raise a
question whether or not there is such a thing as a way out? Charles
Taylor answers his own question, Foucaults analyses seem to bring evils
to light; and yet he wants to distance himself from the suggestion that
would seem inescapably to follow, that the negation or overcoming of
these evils promotes a good.22 Although Taylor analyzes Foucault from
a more sympathetic position, he voices a general consensus that a criti-
cal standpoint is not credible unless it relies on what Habermas calls a
normative yardstick.23 A whole host of critics follow the same logic:
namely, that without the introduction of normative notions of right and
wrong, as Nancy Fraser argues, one cannot oppose the modern power/
knowledge regime.24 Nancy Hartsock expands on this idea and further
situates Foucault as part of a repressive patriarchal system, which writes
from a position of male domination and, with his theory of ascending
power, condemns women and other modern subjects to perpetual oppres-
sion. Despite his objection to the project of Enlightenment, Foucault
remains, Hartsock stresses, within its boundaries because he fails to put
anything in its place.25
The novelty of Foucaults critique of the Enlightenment and univer-
sal Reason coincides with the same point that his critics identify as his
failure. He did not imagine the exit from modern disciplinary power as
being a strategy of escaping from the prison house of one epistemic regime
(i.e., the Enlightenment) into the haven of another. He found in the
ambiguity he encountered in the Iranian Revolutionits nonprogram-
matic discourse of negation, and the unfamiliar concept of an Islamic
governmenta historical illustration of his genealogical project. The
revolution, he wrote in February 13, 1979, two days after the collapse
of monarchy, showed, at certain moments, some of its familiar traits,
but things are still astonishingly ambiguous.... Maybe its historic sig-
nificance will be found, not in its conformity to a recognized revolution-
ary model, but instead in its potential to overturn the existing political
situation in the Middle East.... Its singularity, which has up to now
constituted its force, consequently threatens to give it the power to ex-
pand.26 In Iran he found a revolutionary movement that instantiated the
critical attitude he associated with enlightenment, an attitude with a sin-
gular universality and a distinctive relation to the present, lactuel.
Whereas his critics mistakenly read him as a universal thinker,
whether that meant being a nihilist or an irrationalist, Foucault situates
himself as a specific intellectual who does not speak in the voice of Rea-
son, Justice, Progress, Objectivity, or any other discourse rooted in the
prophetic traditions of the Good Society.27 Thus the singularity and ambi-
guity he associates with the Iranian Revolution represents an important
feature of his critical genealogy. In a 1977 interview, more than a year
prior to his Iranian Revolution writings, he remarks:
I dream of the intellectual who destroys evidence and generalities, the

one who, in the inertias and constraints of the present time, locates and
marks the weak points, the openings, the lines of force, who is inces-
santly on the move, who doesnt know exactly where he is heading nor
what he will think tomorrow for he is too attentive to the present;
who, whenever he moves, contributes to posing the question of know-
ing whether the revolution is worth the trouble, and what kind (I mean,
what revolution and what trouble), it being understood that the ques-
tion can be answered only by those who are willing to risk their lives to
bring it about.28
Foucault did not know that soon after he would be writing the same lines
not as an abstract concept but with reference to a particular historical
actuality, some of whose constitutive events he was able to observe first-
hand. The collective will is a political myth.... Its a theoretical tool....
I thought that the collective will was like God, like the soul, something
one would never encounter. I dont know whether you agree with me,
but we met in Tehran and throughout Iran, the collective will of a peo-
ple.29 And later, in May 1979, after witnessing the radical transforma-
tive acts of ordinary Iranians, he writes wonderingly, The man in revolt
is ultimately inexplicable. There must be an uprooting that interrupts the
unfolding of history, and its long series of reasons why, for a man really
to prefer the risk of death over the certainty of having to obey.30
Foucaults genealogical analysis has led his critics to read his work
as a subject-less historythus inconsistent with his passionate defense
of the revolutionary movement in Iran. However, in his genealogy, he
was skeptical of the notion of the subject per se, the reference to which
is either transcendental in relation to the field of events or runs in its
empty sameness throughout history.31 His historiography is inimical to
the conception of a subject that is situated in a progressive historical tele-
ology. Rather, he links his genealogical studies to a modality of social
critique that he describes as a critical ontology of the present that at the
same time considers the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed
on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.32
For Foucault, a critical ontology of the present introduces a new
manner of posing the question of modernity, a manner that he saw as
consistent with the philosophical attitude but not the doctrinal reifica-
tion of Enlightenment. This question is raised no longer in a longitu-
dinal relationship to the Ancients but in what could be called sagittal
relationship with its own present.33 Here Foucault uses the medical term
sagittal, literally meaning arrowhead, as a spatial image to emphasize
the self-referential character of post-Enlightenment history and the
Kantian impulse to recognize the problems of our time with reference
to the time and place of its first appearance. As Deleuze and Guattari
point out:
It is not that the actual is the utopian prefiguration of a future that is still
part of our history. Rather, it is the now of our becoming. When Fou-
cault admires Kant for posing the problem of philosophy in relation not
to the eternal but to the Now, he means that the object of philosophy
is not to contemplate the eternal or reflect history but to diagnose our
actual becomings: a becoming-revolutionary that, according to Kant
himself, is not the same as the past, present, or future revolutions.34
But in order for one to think about the question of becoming, one needs
to pose another critical question about our own actuality: that is, the way
we engage and experience our life circumstances. This is not an issue of
analyzing the truth, rather one of what we could call an ontology of
ourselves.35 By no means do the relationship to and the primacy of the
present indicate Foucaults inclination toward what his critics often con-
strue as a radical relativism of anything goes. Through this ontology, he
tries to recognize and promote a spiritual and ethical self who is willing
to pay the price of a transformative engagement with his or her actual-
ity. For Foucault, Paul Rabinow observes, in order to establish the
right relationship to the presentto things, to others, to oneselfone
must stay close to events, experience them, be willing to be effected and
affected by them.36
Foucaults engagement with the Iranian Revolution offered an impor-
tant historical link between his earlier critical genealogy and his later phi-
losophy of the present, ethical self, and the hermeneutics of the subject.
The following is the way he captures this constellation of ideas:
One sees that for the philosopher to ask the question of how he belongs
to this present is to no longer ask the question of how he belongs to a
doctrine or a tradition. It will also no longer simply be a question of
his belonging to a larger human community in general, but rather it
will be a question of his belonging to a certain us, to an us that relates
to a characteristic cultural ensemble of his own actuality.37
Belated Liberal or the Unrepentant Philosopher of the Present?

Was Foucaults essay What Is Enlightenment?, published before his
death in 1984, a masked conversion to liberalism? Did the atrocities com-
mitted by the Islamic Republic during its reign of terror (198183) force
him to curb his eagerness to experiment with transcending the histori-
cal limits imposed upon us? Should we read What Is Enlightenment?
as his long awaited admission that he erred in his search for spirituality
in politics?
According to Afary and Anderson, the answer to these questions is
an unqualified yes. They interpret the essay to be an indirect apology for
his mistaken enthusiasm. They base their reading on the following pas-
sage, in which he suggests that
the historical ontology of ourselves must turn away from all projects
that claim to be global or radical. In fact we know from experience that
the claim to escape from the system of contemporary reality so as to
produce the overall programs of another society, or another way of
thinking, another culture, another vision of the world, has led only to
the return of the most dangerous traditionalism.38
By italicizing experience, another culture, and dangerous tradition-

alism, Afary and Anderson conclude that it is likely that Foucault was
referring to his own earlier writings on the Iranian Revolution. Not only
do they misread him, but more importantly, in order to prove their point,
they also alter the original English translation and change the word tra-
dition at the end of the citation to traditionalism. A term often associ-
ated with religious movements. Not a single translation of his essay uses
the term traditionalism here. Even the translation they have cited from
Paul Rabinows collection uses the word tradition and not tradition-
alism. It is evident in the text that the totalitarian traditions of which
he speaks are references to fascism and Stalinism, and not, as Afary and
Anderson would have it, the Iranian Revolution.
In contrast to Afary and Anderson, I argue that not only did Foucault
refrain from reversing his position on the Iranian Revolution, he expanded
his reportage into a more coherent philosophy of enlightenment, ethics,
and spirituality.
Foucaults commentary on Kants Was ist Aufklrung? was not the
first and only time that he directly addressed the question of enlighten-
ment. Collected in a single volume under the title The Politics of Truth,
the first published instance of this series of essays appeared in early 1978
and the last is a modified version of the same text published in 1984.39 If
there is a single common theme in all of his writings on the enlighten-
ment, it must be the distinction he makes between enlightenment as
a critical attitude in the present and the Enlightenment (or even Les
Lumires) as a philosophical-period concept characteristic of modernity
as a fixed mature sociological state.40 He saw the Iranian Revolution in
light of the first form of enlightenment, a critical attitude in the present,
and as a possible exit from the congealed and doctrinal rationality it came
to represent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In Foucaults reading of Kant, a critical attitude, which is made pos-
sible by mans release from his self-incurred tutelage, gives rise to an
autonomous subject. But this autonomy affords the subject neither inde-
pendence from the conditions of its constitution nor a possibility for
moral and historical transcendence. For Foucault, the subject is autono-
mous, as Anita Sepp argues, in the sense that it is capable of critique,
but this critique has no purely transcendental or ahistorical value because
it is always historically situated and contextual.41
Commenting on Jean Daniels LEre des rupture, Foucault observes that
the skepticism toward grand historical schemes is no longer a philosophi
cal speculation. One sought, he writes, less and less to position one-
self according to the great geodesics of history: capitalism, the bourgeois
class, imperialism, socialism, the proletariat. Bit by bit, people began to
give up pushing the logical and historical consequences of choices to
inadmissible and intolerable limits.42 This assertion offers a clue that
the dangerous tradition to which he refers in his What Is Enlightenment?
essay has nothing to do with the Iranian Revolution. Rather, given the
tenor of his entire corpus on enlightenment, he remains skeptical toward
global and radical emancipatory politics he associates with Enlightenment
rationality. He makes his point more explicitly in the paragraph imme-
diately following the passage I cited earlier as an alleged proof of his
recantation. Foucault declares:
I prefer the very specific transformations that have proved to be pos-

sible in the last twenty years in a number of areas that concern our way
of being and thinking, relations to authority, relations between sexes,
the way in which we perceive insanity or illness; I prefer even these par-
tial transformations that have been made in the correlation of histori-
cal analysis and the practical attitude to the programs for a new man
that the worst political systems have repeated throughout the twentieth
century.43
It is important to note that Foucault wrote his first installments (What

Is Critique? and What Is Revolution?) on enlightenment before his
involvement in the Iranian Revolution. More significantly, he was writ-
ing during a post-1968 period when the idea of the end of revolutions
dominated the European intellectual milieu.44 Foucaults meditations on
enlightenment in 1978 were motivated by a series of questions about the
possibility of critical thought and reinvention of the political, after the
hopes of a revolution had, as he put it, gone astray in a despotic ratio-
nality.45 Moreover, in all his writings on enlightenment, including the
ones he wrote after the Iranian Revolution, Foucault wonders about how
the despotic lumire of the pitiless twentieth century supplanted the hope-
ful revolutionary impulse that motivated Kants Aufklrung.
Rather than a search for formal structures with universal value,
critical philosophy must correspond to a historical investigation into the
processes and events that have shaped every minute detail and particu-
larities of our life experiences. Neither is this kind of critical philosophy
transcendental nor is its purpose the realization of a metaphysics of free-
dom that operates like science. This critical philosophy is seeking to
give new impetus, as far and wide as possible, to the undefined work of
freedom.46
In his two Dartmouth lectures about the beginning of the herme-
neutics of the self in 1980, one can recognize a subtle but evident sign of
the mark the revolutionary movement in Iran left on Foucaults thought.
He argues that philosophy loses its critical character if it seeks to deter-
mine the conditions and limits of our possible knowledge of an object.
Instead, we must advance a critical philosophy that seeks the conditions
and indefinite possibilities of transforming the subject, of transforming
ourselves.47 The latter point becomes significant in Foucaults reassess-
ment of Kants view on enlightenment and the emphasis he places on Aus-
gang, a way out, as a constitutive feature of the modern subject. Rather
than a nod to Kantian formalism, Foucaults emphasis on Ausgang inverts
Kant from appealing to universal norms and values to particular inde-
terminate possibilities. Rather than a simple call upon Reason, Foucault
considers sapere aude (dare to know, have the courage, the audacity, to
know) to signify a process in which men participate collectively and an
act of courage to be accomplished personally.48 In a rare attempt to define
modernity, Foucault read the Iranian Revolution back into Kants Was ist
Aufklrung? Here he deviates from speaking of modernity as an epoch
or set of features characteristic of an epoch.
Thinking back on Kants text, I wonder whether we may not envisage

modernity rather as an attitude than as a period of history. And by
attitude I mean a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a volun-
tary choice made by certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and
feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at one and the same time
marks a relation of belonging, and presents itself as a task.49
In describing what he means by an attitude, Foucault shows a closer

affinity with Baudelaires conception of modernity than that of Kant. For
Baudelaire, Foucault writes in the same essay, modernity is the attitude
that makes it possible to grasp the heroic aspect of the present moment...
it is the will to heroize the present. Foucault understood the heroic
aspect of the present as a counter-Kantian end to the transcendental
illusions that had shaped an elective self-image of the enlightenment sub-
ject. Here, along with Baudelaire, Foucault throws doubts on the image
that modern Man is in search of himself, to discover his hidden truth.
To heroize the present means to strive for incessant invention and
creation of the self without connecting that self to a transcendental subject. In
this context, Foucault distanced himself from the kind of humanism to
which his critics claim he subscribed toward the end of his life.
Also, here Foucault looks at modernity as rupture and unremitting
discontinuity of time, distancing himself yet again from the Kantian pro-
gressive vision of modernity as growth from immaturity (Unmndigkeit)
to enlightenment (Aufklrung).50 This rupture situates the present not
as a link between the past and a historically inevitable future but rather
as a heroic moment of possibilities. Possessing an enlightened attitude,
Foucault says in echoing Baudelaire, consists in recapturing something
eternal that is not beyond the present instant, nor behind it, but within
it.51 Similar to his antidoctrinal defense of the Shiite character of the
revolutionary movement in Iran, Foucault regards enlightenment as an
attitude without normative proclivities. The thread that connects us with
the Enlightenment, he reiterates, is not faithfulness to doctrinal elements,
but rather a permanent reactivation of an attitude... a philosophical ethos
that could be described as a permanent critique of our historical era.52
Foucault emphasizes that we must recognize ourselves as beings who
are, to a certain extent, historically determined by the Enlightenment.
But that determination also renders the question of being for or against
the Enlightenment irrelevant.
You either accept the Enlightenment and remain with the tradition of
its rationalism (this is considered a positive term by some and used by
others, on the contrary, as a reproach); or else you criticize the Enlight-
enment and then try to escape from its principles of rationality (which
may be seen once again as good or bad). And we do not break free
of this blackmail by introducing dialectical nuances while seeking
to determine what good and bad elements there may have been in the
Enlightenment.53
Did Foucault see a moment of a different kind of modernity brought into

being in the Iranian Revolution? Did the revolution elicit a reevaluation
of his thoughts about the Enlightenment? In my opinion, the answer on
both accounts is yes. Consider this: rather than projecting the doctrinal
premises of the Enlightenment onto Islam, or depicting Islam as the ide-
ology of the vanguard clergy, Foucault identified religion itself for Iranians
to be a phenomenon through which they have constructed new modes
of subjectivity, authority, and political identity. For Foucault, Islam was
neither a burden of the past nor a blueprint for the future. Shii Islam was
the context for a creative reinvention of the self, without reference to an
a priori, transcendental subject (the very foundation of Foucaults theory
of ethics). In a later work, without a direct reference to it, Foucault re-
affirmed his earlier antiteleological position on the Iranian Revolution.
Never mind whether [a revolution] succeed[s] or fail[s], that has nothing
to do with progress, or at least the sign of progress we are looking for.54
Whether revolutions are destined to realize the totalitarian potential
of their utopian discourse, whether revolutions can really carve out a
space that escapes the instrumental rationality of a spiritless world, is a
matter of history. In response to critics who chastised him for failing to
anticipate the postrevolutionary reign of terror in Iran, Foucault empha-
sized the beautiful indeterminacy of human action. I cannot write the
history of the future, and I am also rather clumsy at foreseeing the past.
However, I would like to grasp what is happening right now, because these
days nothing is finished, and the dice are still being rolled.55 The kind
of ambiguity that he ascribes to human action, particularly in his later
writings, remains a core element of his philosophy. The main interest
in life, he would later propose in an attempt to define the meaning of
truth and spirituality, is to become someone else that you were not at
the beginning.... The game is worthwhile insofar as we dont know what
will be the end.56
Spirituality and the Ethical Subject

Foucaults later concerns with how the subject constitutes itself through
the spiritual practices of care of the self might appear as a retreat from
the margins of irrationality to the center of rational liberalism. This view,
put forward by James Miller in his popular biography The Passion of Michel
Foucault, links Foucaults belated interest in liberalism57 with the events
of postrevolutionary Irana view largely replicated by Afary and Ander-
son.58 Miller wonders why, despite his newly found sympathies toward
liberalism, Foucault remained uncritical of his earlier obsession with the
revolution. The furies that now gripped Iran, Miller writes, went far
beyond anything that Foucault, or almost any other observer, had dreamed
possible. Exaggerating the atrocities committed by the postrevolutionary
regime during the first few months of its reign, he further remarks that
homosexuals were dispatched to firing squads. Adulterers were stoned to

death. The chimera of a political spirituality was dispelled by the real-
ity of a ruthless theocracy.... In this context, Foucault could, in princi-
ple, have expressed his newfound sympathy to a certain style of liberal
reasoning, perhaps even applying the maxim that one always governs
too much to a critique of Khomeinis new Islamic regime. In practice,
he did nothing of the sort. Unrepentant, he stood by his enthusiasm
for the revolution in Iranand justified it in no uncertain terms.59
Although Miller points out that by the time he wrote his last essay Fou-
caults so-called liberal awakening had already occurred, he does not
question why he remained unrepentant about his support of the revolu-
tion. By default, he concludes, much of the French leftincluding
Foucault, despite his momentary enthusiasm for the Iranian revolution
found itself embracing a kind of liberal (and chastened) vision of what
politics might achieve, a vision given its most dramatic expression in the
human rights movement that was then still gathering momentum in
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.60
Rave reviews of Millers biography and the ardent reception it en-
joyed illustrate how a commonplace view epitomizes Foucaults project
as the triumph of liberalism over the critique of universal Reason.61 Not
only did Miller depoliticize Foucault by aestheticizing him as a Nietzs-
chean samurai obsessed with death, he further misconstrued his oeuvre
as a failed attempt to think and act outside of universal enlightenment
rationality. Reading Foucaults later interest in ethics and the constitutive,
rather than the fabricated, subject as a liberal/humanist conversion relies
on a misconception of both his earlier and later works.62
Foucaults later engagement with Kant and the Enlightenment was
neither celebratory nor derogatory. He tries to carry critical enlighten-
ment in a new direction away from the tribunal of Reason, in which
Kant had enclosed it.63 In this new direction, he traverses Kants pecu-
liar notion of public and private reason by collapsing it into a single act
of critique as praxisthe courage to know and the courage to act. Kant
offers a counterintuitive description of public and private reason in the
distinction he makes between the freedom to reason and the duty to fulfill
social obligations. He writes:
The Public use of ones reason must always be free, and it alone can
bring about enlightenment among men. The private use of reason, on
the other hand, may often be very narrowly restricted without particu-
larly hindering the progress of enlightenment. By the public use of
ones reason I understand the use which a person makes of it as a
scholar before the reading public. Private use I call that which one may
make of it in a particular civil post or office which is entrusted to him.
Many affairs which are conducted in the interest of the community
require a certain mechanism through which some members of the
community must passively conduct themselves with an artificial una-
nimity, so the government may direct them to public ends, or at least
prevent them from destroying those ends.64
In his famous example of tax collection, Kant argues that in his pri-
vate affair the citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes imposed on him.
But the same citizen, as his public duty, may express his thoughts on
the inappropriateness or even the injustice of these levies. Similarly,
the clergyman, Kant points out, delivers his sermon, as a teacher, to
ensure that his congregation conform[s] to the symbol of the church
which he serves, for he has been accepted on this condition. But in
public, as a scholar, he has the freedom to critique the same symbols
and to make suggestions for the better organization of the religious
body and church.65
The use which an appointed teacher makes of his reason before his
congregation is merely private, because this congregation is only a
domestic one (even if it be a large gathering); with respect to it, as a
priest, he is not free, nor can he be free, because he carries out orders
of another. But as a scholar, whose writings speak to his public, the
world, the clergyman in the public use of his reason enjoys unlimited
freedom.66
Kant, as Foucault notes, regards the unrestricted exercise of reason as

public when it circulates among peers, scholars, and critics in newspa-
pers and other publications. But at the same time, Kant calls the private
use of reason the responsibility of conforming to the duties of an office
by a government functionary, teacher, or religious leader. Curiously, as
Foucault remarks, what Kant defines as private use is each individuals
obedience, inasmuch as he is a part of the State, to his superior, to the
Sovereign or his representative. In this context, Kant makes the public
display of discontent in the form of I will not obey you and your order
is absurd inconceivable.67
Foucault argues that in Kants Aufklrung there are limits to the man-
ifestation of courage.68 But courage stands at the center of Foucaults con-
ceptions of critique and the way he defines spirituality and ethics. For
Foucault, by having the courage to know, the subject offers himself the
right to question truth on its effects of power and question power on its
discourses of truth. Thereby, he considers critique to be the art of vol-
untary insubordination, that of reflected intractability. Critique would
essentially insure the desubjugation of the subject in the context of what
we could call... the politics of truth.69
The experience of the Iranian Revolution generated a major shift in
Foucaults thinking regarding the politics and games of truth. Whereas
in his earlier writings he highlighted regimes of truth in relation to con-
stitutive discourses and coercive practices, in his later works, he explores
ascetic practices, not in the sense of a morality of renunciation but as
an exercise of the self on the self by which one attempts to develop and
transform oneself, and to attain to a certain mode of being.70 We need
to be mindful here that Foucault inverts the notion of asceticism from
its early Christian practices of disengagement from the world and adopts
an idiosyncratic interpretation in which he understands ascetic practices
as the condition of the exercise of freedom.
He also distinguishes between the exercise of freedom and liberation.
The concept of liberation, he argues, presupposes a human nature that
has been concealed, alienated, or imprisoned in and by mechanisms of
repression.71 But he views freedom as a ceaseless act of becoming, which
is realizable only through the care of the self.
But here also Foucault advances a radical pragmatist view in which
neither the self nor ones obligations to others are conceived with any
reference to a transcendental notion of humanity. Foucault sees no con-
tradiction in the way he promotes the exercise of freedom through the
care of the self and the necessary intersubjectivity that political action
requires. Like many others who speak of the significance of ethics in
social life, Foucault regards the self in a perpetual interactive, generative
state. He considers ethics to be the act of self-creation, ones desire and
ability to transform oneself. In that regard, his theory of care of the self
has a closer affinity to Levinass conception of the ethical subject than
any form of utilitarian individualism. Levinas, like many others who speak
of the significance of ethics in social life, regards the self in a perpetual
interactive state. In his view, the selfs exercise of freedom is only realizable
through the acts of justice toward others.72 Foucaults critics emphasize
that self-creation, which according to Richard Rorty constitutes private
reason, posits an irreconcilable act with the care of others and social jus-
tice, which compose public reason. There is no way, Rorty observes, to
bring self-creation together with justice at the level of theory. The vocab-
ulary of self-creation is necessarily private, unshared, unsuited to argu-
ment. The vocabulary of justice is necessarily public and shared, a medium
for argumentative exchange.73 It is this irreconcilability that Foucault
tries to overcome.
It is not farfetched to interpret Foucaults care of the self as a form
of utilitarian individualism. Particularly when he attempts to illustrate
how a perpetual care of the self would generate communal and social
transformation. For example, in response to the question whether care
of the self, separated from care for others, runs the risk of becoming an
absolute, he suggests that in care of the self, one thinks of others.74 He
who takes care of himself, Foucault maintains, to the point of know-
ing exactly what duties he has as a master of a household and as a hus-
band and father will find that he enjoys a proper relationship with his wife
and children.75 Divorced from the historical context of its production,
his assertion could be easily understood as a form of self-centered eth-
ics and cult of self.76
Foucault distinguishes the Stoic notion he advances in his care of the
self as something inherently relational. He argues that the separation
between care of the self and social activitiesthat is, all the responsi-
bilities one ought to fulfill as subject, those activities that Greek thought
grouped together as economicdeveloped after the advent of Chris-
tianity. In the Stoics, Foucault insists, there is an intricate connection
between care of the self and the economic, which they try to make as
strong as possible.77 Care of the self and access to the truth not only
impose demands on the self, they also rearrange and reshape ones rela-
tion with others and with ones environment. That is why Foucault poses
this question as a founding question, particularly in the Platonic tradition,
of all philosophy: What is the price I have to pay for access to the truth?
This price is situated in the subject himself in the form of: What then
is the work I must carry out on myself... to be able to have access to
truth?78
Foucaults incessant reminder of the price one has to pay in order to
become an ethical subject offers the best clue that for him care of the self
does not simply imply a blithe private life. Given the fact that he had
already spoken of the spirituality of the revolutionary movement in Iran
and had witnessed the transformative effect of the revolutionary act on
the streets of Tehran, one can easily situate his concern with the price one
has to assume in order to be an ethical subject in the Iranian Revolution.
Foucault describes care of the self as a spiritual act, the purpose of which
is access to truth. But one must not understand this access, as he expli-
cates in his very first lecture on the hermeneutics of the subject at the
Collge de France on January 6, 1982, as a problem of knowledge. Fou-
cault expounds:
We could call spirituality the search, practice, and experience through

which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself
in order to have access to truth.... We will call spirituality then the
set of the these researches, practices, and experiences, which may be
purifications, ascetic exercises, renunciations, conversions of looking,
modifications of existence, etc., which are, not for knowledge but for
the subject, for the subjects very being, the price to be paid for access to the
truth. (15)
In this lecture, Foucault identifies three characteristics for spirituality, in

all of which again one may detect the residues of his observations of Ira-
nians marching on the streets of Tehran. The first is that, rather than a
simple act of knowledge, spirituality postulates that having access to the
truth requires the subject to change, transform, and shift and become,
to some extent and up to a certain point, other than himself... there can
be no truth without a conversion or a transformation of the subject
(ibid.). The second characteristic also has to do with this conversion,
which may take place in the form of a movement that removes the sub-
ject from his current status and condition. Foucault calls this movement,
quite conventionally, the movement of eros (love). This movement is
not complete unless it is sustained by an elaboration [and transforma-
tion] of the self by the self for which one takes responsibility in a long
labor of ascesis (askesis). These are the modalities, Foucault argues, by
which the subject must be transformed in order finally to become capa-
ble of truth. Last, and more importantly, spirituality assumes that truth
will have a consequence on the subject. He calls the effects of the truth
on the subject rebound (de retour) (1516).
The truth enlightens the subject; the truth gives beatitude to the sub-
ject; the truth gives the subject tranquility of the soul. In short, in the
truth and in access to the truth, there is something that fulfills the sub-
ject himself, which fulfills or transfigures his very being. In short, I think
we can say that in and of itself an act of knowledge could never give
access to the truth unless it was prepared, accompanied, doubled, and
completed by a certain transformation of the subject; not of the indi-
vidual, but of the subject himself in his being as subject. (16)
Although this passage on the significance and consequence of truth bears

resemblance to the Gnostic movements, Foucault insists that his con-
ception is motivated by acts of spirituality and not concerns with access to
knowledge (connaissance), which is the characteristic of gnosis. Now, not
only does Foucault describe the subject in its historical milieu, but he
also emphasizes its ethical dimension. We should remember, Frdric
Gros comments on The Hermeneutics of the Subject, for a long time Fou-
cault conceived of the subject as only the passive product of techniques
of domination. It is only in 1980 that he conceives of the relative auton-
omy, the irreducibility, anyway, of the techniques of the self.79
But within realities of life, who can legitimately and practically en-
gage in self-creation and transformation of the self? Are Foucaults ethical
subjects the great men of history who shape the direction and condition
of others lives? Is a common man capable of taking care of his self? In
his second Collge de France lecture, Foucault addresses the basic limi-
tation of the Stoics and Cynics in their call for the care of the self. To
take care of the self, he cautions against the generalization of the Stoic
principle, one must have the ability, time, and culture, etcetera, to do
so. It is an activity of the elite (75). Also, one needs to bear in mind that
for the Athenian Stoics the aim and meaning of taking care of oneself is
to distinguish the individual who takes care of himself from the crowd,
from the majority, from the hoi polloi [the majority as opposed to the com-
petent elite] who are, precisely, the people absorbed in everyday life
(75). The care of the self in its ancient context was also a deeply political
action not in the way Foucault rearticulates it, but as an answer to the
question: How can one govern well? Being concerned about the care
of the self is a privilege of governors, or it is also a duty of governors
because they have to govern (74).
I would like to argue that witnessing the revolutionary movement in
Iran had a profound impact on his thought, helping Foucault to envision
the care of the self and spirituality as the real possibility for and the respon-
sibility of the common man. For him, at the time he was delivering his
lectures on the hermeneutics of the subject, only months after his passion-
ate writings on the Iranian Revolution, spirituality was no longer merely
a property of the selected elite. As he repeated on numerous occasions
in his reportage, he had seen how Iran became the spirit of a spiritless
world and how ordinary people transformed themselves into irreducible,
fearless, and spiritual subjects. More importantly, one can easily identify
the reflection of this encounter in the way Foucault identifies two impor-
tant features of the spiritual subject: first, the ability to create an ethical
distance from ones functionary responsibilities (that is, the ability not
to feel deprived of what will be taken from him by circumstances) (540);
and second, the audacity to speak truth to power.
Parrhesia: From Dare to Know to Dare to Act

In his last entry on the Iranian Revolution on May 1112, 1979, Foucault
reiterated the historical significance of the revolutionary movement. One
must recognize the transformative character of a moment when an entire
people say, I will no longer obey, Foucault wrote, and are willing to
risk their lives in the face of power that they believe to be unjust....
There must be an uprooting that interrupts the unfolding of history, and
its long series of reasons why, for a man really to prefer the risk of death
over the certainty of having to obey.80 In his later writing, Foucault devel-
ops his observation into a theory of fearless acts of truth-telling. After
a massacre had happened a few days prior to his arrival in Tehran in
September 1978, he thought that he would find a terrorized city, but
what he witnessed was an absence of fear and an intensity of courage.81
Much like his first observations in Tehran, in his last lectures in Berkeley
in 1983, he chose the theme of the audacity to speak and of acting cou-
rageously. In a seminar entitled Discourse and Truth, Foucault offered
six lectures in which he delves into the Greek and Roman rhetorical tra-
dition and revives and redefines the concept of parrhesia, loosely trans-
lated as fearless speech.82
Despite the topic of the series, in his concluding lecture he remarks:
My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the
problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. Foucault empha-
sizes that he did not intend to develop a sociological description of truth-
tellers in different societies, but rather he wanted to show how Greek
philosophy has reworked the problem of truth and viewed it from the
standpoint of the act of truth-telling. The lectures were organized around
four key questions:
Who is able to tell the truth? What are the moral, the ethical, and the
spiritual conditions which entitle someone to present himself as, and
to be considered as, a truth-teller? About what topics is it important to
tell the truth? (About the world? About nature? About the city? About
behavior? About man? ) What are the consequences of telling the truth?
What are its anticipated positive effects for the city, for the citys rul-
ers, for the individual, etc.? And finally: what is the relation between
the activity of truth-telling and the exercise of power, or should these
activities be completely independent and kept separate? Are they sepa-
rable, or do they require one another?83
Here Foucault revives a well-known preoccupation of Socrates in an activ-

ity that involves politics, rhetoric, ethics, and questions such as who is
able to tell the truth, about what, with what consequences, and with what
relation to power. In order to engage these questions, Foucault intro-
duces the term parrhesia and defines it as a verbal activity in which a
speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life be-
cause he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other peo-
ple (as well as himself).84 He recovers parrhesia from Euripidess plays,
particularly from Ion, in which Foucault situates the most obvious exam-
ple of parrhesiastic games and easily identifiable acts of the parrhesiastes.
Whereas in his lectures later the same year at the Collge de France,
Foucault focuses on parrhesia as a moral virtueyou admit the truth to
yourself even if it threatens your self-image, and associates it with care
of the selfin his Berkeley talks he highlights its political virtue: You
tell the Prince the truth even if it costs your head.85 Although the accents
are different in these two occasions, one can easily identify in Foucaults
articulation that the moral virtue of speaking plainly and directly to the
self is both the point of departure as well as the consequence of truth-
telling of parrhesiastes and fearless speech addressing the Prince.
Thereby, Foucault links moral and political virtue in parrhesiastic acts
of transformation.
Although Foucault collects examples from Greek and Roman rhe-
torical traditions, he turns parrhesia into an act far beyond a rhetorical
gesture. In his etymological description, he locates the root of the word
in pan (everything) and rhema (that which is said). With that refer-
ence, he defines the concept as a type of relationship between the speaker
and the speech act without shrouding it in any rhetorical forms. Here
Foucault makes an important distinction between rhetoric, which affords
the speaker the means of capturing audiences minds, and parrhesisates
acts, which allows the audience to learn directly what the speaker believes
without fear of its consequences. By making parrhesia a human activity
of dangerous and risky speaking, Foucault strips the rhetorical tradi-
tion of its foremost trope of advocacy.86 What is embedded in Fou-
caults use of parrhesia is its confrontational feature in situations of social
inequality and asymmetry of power. The commitment, Foucault elab-
orates, involved in parrhesia is linked to a certain social situation, to a
difference of status between the speaker and his audience, to the fact that
the parrhesiastes says something which is dangerous to himself and thus
involves risk.87
Situating Foucaults Last Lectures

For Foucault, Paul Rabinow reminds us, in order to establish the right
relationship to the presentto things, to others, to oneselfone must
stay close to events, experience them, be willing to be effected and affected
by them.88 One should always be conscious of the complexities of how
ones life circumstances shape and condition ones ideas and thought. In
this chapter, I tried to illustrate how Foucaults encounter with and reflec-
tions on the Iranian Revolution informed his later writings on ethics and
spirituality. In this, neither do I want to draw a perfunctory and unme-
diated connection between events and his thoughts nor do I intend to
follow Heideggers view on the irrelevance of biographical information,
illustrated most infamously by the way he opened his course on Aristo-
tle with the words, Aristotle was born, worked, and died.89
Although many commentators have argued that the Iranian Revo-
lution left a mark on Foucaults writing, this mark is either dismissed as
a fleeting moment of infatuation or as a transformative lesson in the per-
ils of forsaking the Enlightenments normative yardstick. In this chap-
ter, I demonstrated that despite the fact that he does not explicitly refer
to the Iranian Revolution, it deeply affected his later writings in which
he reaffirms his ideas of the revolutionary subject, and its inexplicability.
Rather than a conversion to Enlightenment humanism as an unsaid ad-
mission to his error, Foucaults later writings represent a revisionist read-
ing of the Enlightenment and Greco-Roman ethics in light of the Iranian
Revolution.
The fact that he shifted the emphasis of his philosophy to the con-
stituting acts of the subject (i.e., care of the self and parrhesia) is not dis-
puted in Foucault scholarship. But the arena in which this shift occurs
most often receives either a cursory treatment or no treatment at all. For
example, in The Cambridge Companion (edited by Gary Gutting), only one
reference exists in the entire book to the Iranian Revolution.90 In describ-
ing the context of Foucaults 198182 lectures on The Hermeneutics of the
Subject, the only revolution to which Frdric Gros refers is the one in
Foucaults mind. What is philosophy today, Gros quotes Foucault, if
it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what
does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it
might be possible to think differently. Gros continues:
We should understand, then, precisely what it was that changed from

1976 to 1984. And for this the 1982 course turns out to be critical,
located at the living heart of a change of problematic, of a conceptual
revolution. But to speak of a revolution is no doubt too hasty, since
what is involved, rather, is a slow maturation, of a development with
neither break nor commotion, which brought Foucault to the shores
of the care of the self.... This course constitutes a first reorientation
in the general plan of his work, since we find in it, clearly expressed
and conceptualized for the first time, the project of writing history of
truth activities understood as regulated procedures which tie a sub-
ject to a truth, ritualized activities though which a certain subject estab-
lishes his relationship to a certain truth.91
Nothing could be more un-Foucauldian than a contextualization that
has nothing to do with actual eventsonly the transformation of thought
and the problematization of new concepts. How else can one compre-
hend Foucaults reflections on the Iranian Revolution except as prece-
dents in writing history as ritualized activities though which a certain
subject establishes his relationship to a certain truth?
Although John Rajchman does situate Foucaults ideas in actual his-
torical events, he shows no interest in contemplating any connection
between Foucaults writings on the Enlightenment, his reengagement
with Kant, and his thoughts about the Iranian Revolution. No doubt
Foucaults trips to Poland during this period, he writes in the introduc-
tion to The Politics of Truth, and, more generally, his philosophical sym-
pathies with East European dissidence (with its own complicated relations
with Enlightened Germany or France) together with his on-going dis-
cussions with the autonomous movements in Italy (and the issue of red
terrorism), anticipate this event he did live to see and its role in the
larger post-Marxist character of the debate over enlightenment.92 Rajch
man insists, rightly, that in returning to Kant, Foucault intended to show
that the critical attitude of enlightenment belong to no already-given
civilization or preconceived notions of politics. Further, Rajchman aptly
points out that the crucial point in Foucaults writings on the politics of
truth is that while it thus belongs to no prior group and is contained
in no prior form of knowledge, the critical attitude is essential for the
very idea of the political.
Rajchman also stresses the significance of Foucaults interest in critical
attitudes and social forces that emerge from outside previously circum-
scribed situations and those movements that introduce new arrange-
ments of life outside the given possibilities.93 Each of the important
elements of Foucaults attempt to invent a new style of critique, a new
kind of critical philosophy94 bears close resemblance with the core ideas
of his oeuvre on the Iranian Revolution. Yet here again Rajchman fol-
lows the lead of many others in failing to show this clear connection.
As one of the most important scholars who introduced Foucault to
English readers, Paul Rabinow is more conscious of situating Foucaults
last lectures on ethics and his writings on the care of the self in a histori-
cal context. He is one of the very few who speak of Iran and the Iranian
Revolution as one of the arenas in which Foucault delivers his later work.
Although Rabinow highlights the significance of the Iranian Revolution
for Foucault, he does not extend and link this importance substantively to
his later writings. He argues that Foucault formulated an imperative that
went beyond overthrowing yet another corrupt, Western-supported
authoritarian regime, an imperative he formulated thus: above all we
have to change ourselves. Our way of being, our relationships with others,
with things, with eternity, with God.95 In Rabinows contextualization
the Iranian Revolution is there but without a meaningful connection to
Foucaults concomitant preoccupation with ethics and the care of the self.
The Iranian Revolution was not the only political event to which
Foucault paid close attention. For many years, he considered himself a
part of a movement against penal injustice and for prisoners rights, he
supported the dissident Solidarity union movement in Poland and par-
ticipated in activities in their defense, and he marched with protesters
defending the rights of Vietnamese refugees. But no singular event in
Foucaults history generated such a distinct transformation in his thought
as the Iranian Revolution. His writings on Iran remain controversial and
largely ignored in relation to the development of his thought, except by
those who want to baptize him posthumously as a born-again liberal who
had learned the painful lesson of divesting himself from the universal ref-
erent of the Enlightenment in the reign of terror in Iran.
Conclusion
writing the history

of the present
One of the important sources that inspired the writing of this book
was Susan Buck-Morsss controversial essay Hegel and Haiti, published
in the summer of 2000.1 I had already read a Persian translation of Fou-
caults writings on the Iranian Revolution in a book published in Tehran
in 1998, before I dis covered her essay.2 Reading Foucault on the Iranian
Revolution in Persian did not initially generate any serious intellectual
curiosity in me. But reading Buck-Morss and the questions she raised on
the origins of Hegels idea of lordship and bondage led me back to Fou-
cault and the Iranian Revolution with fresh interests. Hegel and Haiti
raised significant conceptual questions that could similarly be raised in
relation to Foucault and Iranquestions not only regarding the signifi-
cance of Foucaults writings about the revolution but also on the profound
mark that the event left on his thought. A response to those questions
became more exigent as Foucaults essays found a second life in academic
and political circles after the September 11 attacks and the inauguration
of the War on Terror.
Conventionally, intellectual historians draw the genealogy of Hege-
lian thought in connection with the writings of other philosophers, from
ancient Greece (Plato or Aristotle) to other German philosophical tra-
ditions, most significantly that of Fichte. But Buck-Morss locates the
famous metaphor of struggle to death between master and slave, which
for Hegel provided the key to the unfolding of freedom in world history,
which has since its conception influenced political philosophers of the
Left and the Right in a very concrete and empirical fashion. Hegel wrote
The Phenomenology of Mind in 18056 during his residence in Jena, she
writes, where he closely followed the events of the Haitian Revolution as
it was reported and discussed in Minerva, a journal that covered the
187
188 | Conclusion
French Revolution and later covered the revolutionary uprisings in Saint-
Domingue from its inception in the early 1790s. The Eyes of the World
Are Now on St. Domingo, a Minerva headline read in 1804. And so were
Hegels, Buck-Morss argues.3
Although Hegel himself does not offer any clues as to how he con-
ceived masterslave dialectics and their insertion into the historical strug-
gle for freedom, Buck-Morss speculates that given the timing and his
intellectual milieu in Jena in 1803, Hegel knew about real slaves revolt-
ing successfully against real masters, and he elaborated his dialectic of
lordship and bondage deliberately within this contemporary context.4
What is the significance of treating Hegels lordship and bondage
dialectics as an abstract device of historical interpretation or as a refer-
ence to a concrete historical experience? For Buck-Morss, concretizing
Hegels conceptual universe is a way out of the inherent paradox between
the discourse of freedom and the practice of slavery, so prevalent in
Eurocentric views of history and justified by the prevalent Enlightenment
rationality. Buck-Morss makes this crucial connection between Hegel
and Haiti to bestow on the rebellious slaves of Saint-Domingue not only
the mission of liberating the Haitians from the tyranny of the French but
also, and perhaps more importantly, the responsibility of rescuing the
universal History. The Haitian Revolution was the crucible, the trial by
fire for the ideals of the French Enlightenment.5
By situating Foucault in Iran, I have reached a different conclusion.
In his writings on the Iranian Revolution, Foucault tried to be attentive
to a constitutive paradox of the revolutionary movement. He thought
that Iranians desired to make history and at the same time to be free
from it, to be historical subjects without being subjected to its determin-
ist logic, to be included in and exit from History. He found the display of
this paradox in the singularity he observed in the revolutionary move-
mentin its religious expression, in the ambiguity of its assenting de-
mands, in its distinct uncompromising rhythm, and in its inexplicable
transformative power, which shrouded the whole rebellious nation. He
coined the concept of political spirituality to capture that singularity.
He thought that the revolutionary movement did not yield to the demands
of a universal History and refused to make itself readily legible with ref-
erences to foundational binaries of premodern/modern, secular/religious,
reactionary/progressive, male/female, and subjugated/emancipated.
Conclusion | 189
Understanding the Iranian Revolution requires a temporal map that
recognizes the contingencies and indeterminacies within which the rev-
olutionary movement unfolded. The revolution and its outcomes appear
inevitable only to those who expunge those contingencies in and con-
ceptualize the revolutionary movement in a historical narrative in which
the colonized appears as the European past and Europe shows the colo-
nized its own future. Foucault saw in the Iranian Revolution an instance
of his antiteleological philosophya revolution that did not simply fit
into the normative progressive discourses of history. What attracted him
to the Iranian Revolution was precisely the same feature for which his
critics ridiculed him: its ambiguity. For him, the revolutionary movement
begot a new subject with an indeterminate relation to himself and to his-
tory. Rather than his fascination with death or his absorption in the aes-
thetics of violence, it was the inexplicability of the man in revolt that
motivated much of his writing on the Iranian revolution.
Foucault conceptualized political spirituality not in defense of the
establishment of an Islamic theocracy but rather in praise of the trans-
formative power of the revolution. The spirituality he witnessed in the
streets of Tehran had nothing to do with either doctrinal commitments
to Islam or devotion to the undisputed leader of the revolution, Ayatol-
lah Khomeini. As he elaborated in his later works, by spirituality he meant
the acts and practices through which one could transform oneself into a
new subjecta subject that one could never imagine capable of becoming.
In an elaborate and detailed series of lectures during the last few years
of his life, Foucault linked the idea of spirituality to ethics and fearless
speech. The revolutionary subjects in the streets of Tehran taught him
the possibility of a transformative politics one can exercise outside nor-
mative conventions of the Enlightenment. The revolution showed him
that in the care of self, rather than self-absorption, the ethical subject
perpetrates self-creation and agrees to pay the price of it.
The postrevolutionary power struggles that gave rise to the consoli-
dation of power by the clergy and the ensuing reign of terror should not
cast doubt on the significance of Foucaults endorsement of the revolu-
tion. In response to his critics, he insisted that the manner in which the
revolution was lived must remain distinct from its success or failure. We
need to remind ourselves that it was the realpolitik of the postrevolu-
tionary state that colonized the spiritual novelty of the revolt.
190 | Conclusion
Ultimately, how one assesses Foucaults writings on the Iranian Rev-
olution depends on the narrative through which one tells the story of
the revolution and its outcome. In this book, I tried to debunk two com-
monplace assertions.
First, I disputed the view that the revolutionary movement unfolded
with an internal friction between the secularist and Islamist forces, which
eventually allowed the clergy to steal its leadership. There is no doubt
that communists and liberal political organizations played an important
role in the revolution. But they never understood themselves as the rep-
resentatives of secular forces in the revolutionary movement. Indeed,
a significant majority of communist organizations considered liberalism
to be the main internal adversary of the revolutionary movement. Until
a very late stage of the revolutionary movement, the liberals advocated:
Let the king reign but not govern! To realize the full revolutionary
potential of the masses, the communists believed, they had to prevail over
liberal plots to save the monarch. For the entire period of the revolution-
ary movement of 197879, the Iranian Left remained firmly on the side
of the anti-Shah and anti-imperialist radicalism, the undisputed leader
of which was Ayatollah Khomeini.
Both conceptually and in practice, only in a Whiggish history did
there exist a binary opposition between seculars and Islamists among
the revolutionary forces. Political objectives were not expressed in those
terms. Seculars as such were only those who resisted the revolution. So,
in the Iranian context of 197879, to defend secularism politically meant
to support the monarchy. During the same period, there were observers
outside Iran who warned about the religious feature of the revolution.
But Foucault tried to remain attentive to the revolutionary expressions
inside Iran with all its ambiguities rather than projecting a normative
European discourse of revolution back onto the Iranian uprising.
The tension between what a proper revolution should look like and
the realities of the Iranian experience also shaped the representations of
gender politics after the revolution. As I tried to illustrate in this book,
the March 1979 rallies in Tehran against compulsory hejab reflected a
distinct rift between the way Iranian women who participated in these
rallies understood their plight and the way Western feminists justified
their intervention on behalf of their Iranian sisters. The French and
American feminists convened in Tehran and Paris to save Iranian
Conclusion | 191
women, with whom they had neither an organic nor a discursive con-
nection. They stood in support of their Iranian sisters because they rep-
resented the universal demands of feminism and liberty. By contrast, in
all cases in his reports, Foucault deliberately privileges the singularity of
the Iranian voices over the tropes of universality and the indiscriminate
language of Progress.
Second, I also tried to question the common assertion that the reign
of terror was the inevitable result and the natural progression of Islamism.
Without exception, those who criticized Foucault in 1978 to 1980 saw
Islamism as a political movement for the realization of an essentialized
Islam without significant distinction in its application in Iran or Saudi
Arabia. They chastised him for his failure to distance himself from this
archaic fascism, and they linked this failure to Foucaults critical view
of the Enlightenment rationality.
As a political ideology, Islamism has always been informed by the
contingencies of time and place and has reflected particular historical
trajectories of its emergence. As I showed in the preceding chapters, even
Khomeini conceived distinct political theologies in different periods of
his life. Once he advocated classical Shii political quietism and defended
the monarchical order against chaos and unruliness; another time, toward
the end of life, he adopted the principle of republicanism and electoral
politics. Once he was against womens involvement in public life; later
he insisted that without womens participation the revolution would fail.
One cannot regard Islamism as a transhistorical ideology of oppression
and identify its tenets with literal references to the Quran.
Foucault was indeed one of those subjects that the Iranian Revolu-
tion transformednot to become a penitent liberal, as many have argued,
but to recognize and commit to the possibility of a new form of subjec-
tivity and political virtue in parrhesiastic acts of transformation. The revo-
lutions of the periphery, Haiti or Iran, have always burst asunder with
a double consciousness: a demand to claim the universals and a desire to
assert their singularity. It is in this underarticulated singularity of the
revolutionary Iranians where I empirically situate Foucaults enthusiasm
toward the end of his life about the care of the self and ethics.
Like Hegel before him, who never acknowledged the real slaves and
the real masters in the struggle for freedom in world history, Foucault
remained silent about the origins of his newfound interest in ethics and
192 | Conclusion
the hermeneutics of the self. His silence gave rise to a commonplace asser-
tion that the critic par excellence of modern governmentality saw its pru-
dence before the end of his life. By locating the origins of his conceptual
shift in the revolutionary Iranian subjects, I have argued it was the thread
of singularity that sewed Foucaults late work together, and not a latent
appreciation of Enlightenment universality. We might call this, as has
iek, a defense of lost causes. But that precisely is the point of think-
ing about history without preaching its end.
Foucaults reports on the Iranian Revolution are not documents for
understanding Islamism. He might have been fascinated by the aesthet-
ics of the revolution or its death rituals, but what motivated his writing
was his conviction that the Enlightenment rationality has not closed the
gate of unknown possibilities for human societies. Such a conviction is
unsettling and perilous, as the atrocities committed by the Islamic Repub-
lic attest. But nonetheless, how the present unfolds and what the future
holds must not remain in the prison house of the past, be it in the instru-
mental rationality of the Enlightenment or in other kinds of fundamen-
talisms, religious or otherwise.
acknowledgments
I have written this book with various sets of audiences in mind. As

such, I am indebted to a diverse set of intellectual traditions and those
who make these traditions possible, in their writings and in the networks
that sustain these exchanges.
Much of this manuscript was written in Berlin during the magnifi-
cent year of 201011 as a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
The staff at Wiko made the institute the fantastic place that it is with their
generosity and cordiality. Julie Livingston, Kamran Ali, Syema Muzaffar,
Tanja Petrovic, Karen Feldman, Niklaus Largier, Nancy Hunt, Iruka
Okeke, Vikram Sampath, Fred Cooper, Jane Burbank, Steven Feierman,
Vera Schulze-Seeger, Katarzyna Maria Speder, Georges Khalil, Toshio
Hosokawa, Claire Messud, and Elias and Najla Khouri made life in Berlin
even more pleasant and engaging.
My colleagues in the history department at the University of Illi-
nois are just masters of creating the best working environment one can
desire. Special thanks go to Diane Koenker, who oversaw this well-oiled
machine during her chairwomanship and offered me invaluable solicited
and unsolicited support. Antoinette Burton has always been a source of
inspiration and encouragement; I have learned plenty from her and hope
to continue to do so. For some unwarranted reasons, Maria Todorova
has always championed my work. I thank her for that and, more impor-
tantly, for doing it so graciously. And Terri Barnes is the one colleague
and friend everyone should wish for. The list of friends and colleagues is
too long to be mentioned here. I also need to thank my dear friend Zsuzsa
Gille for decades of friendship. Zohreh Sullivan makes life in the prairie
simple and attractive. Faranak Miraftab, Ken Salo, Hadi Esfahani, Asef
193
194 | Acknowledgments
Bayat, Linda Herrera, Niloufar Shambayati, Ken Cuno, Angelina Cotler,
Jane Kuntz, Richard Powers, Usha and Rajmohan Gandhi, Jesse Ribot,
Allyson Purpura, Michael Rothberg, Yasemin Yildiz, Emanuel Rota,
Elenora Stoppino, and James Kilgore all know the value of a good com-
munity, into which they offered me a membership.
I am grateful to my colleagues at the Department of Sociology for
their support, to Tim Liao for always being the voice of reason, and to
Brian Dill, Anna Marshall, and Assata Zerai and all others for their tire-
less effort to bring life back to our small community. In addition, the
Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies has always been an
amazing source of support, particularly under the directorship of Valerie
Hoffman. The center could not exist without the dedication and exper-
tise of Angela Williams.
I have been influenced by the incredible works of many great think-
ers, some of whom Ive had the privilege of knowing: Afsaneh Najmabadi,
Minoo Moallem, Saba Mahmood, Asef Bayat, Raewyn Connell, Moham-
med Bamyeh, Talal Asad, Niloofar Haeri, Ervand Abrahamian, Sad
Amir Arjomand, Edmund Burke (III), Donna Haraway, James Clifford,
and Michael Burawoy are just a few among these.
I am especially indebted to all of those who read different versions of
this manuscript and made invaluable suggestions, corrections, and com-
ments. Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, Mohammed Bamyeh, and Jason Wei-
demann read earlier versions and helped me to advance a much clearer
and more grounded argument. The anonymous readers and Nasrin
Rahimiehs comments were amazingly extensive and thought-provoking.
I also extend my thanks to the series editors, Junaid Rana and Sohail
Daulatzai, for their careful reading and recognition of the contribution
of this book. Danielle M. Kasprzak followed through so carefully the
whole process of the review and production of the book. She presented
the manuscript to the editorial board and magically persuaded them that
there indeed is something worthwhile in this book. Special thanks to
Anne Carter for her logistical assistance.
I have taken a winding road to get to this privileged place of writing
books and teaching at a university. This could not have been possible
without the everlasting encouragement of my amazing family and friends,
who never held back their support and love. My brothers, Bijan and Beh-
dad, and my sister, Behjat, know how important they are in my life and
Acknowledgments | 195
how without them nothing in my life could have been possible. I thank
my friends who have always been there for me whose names need to
remain unmentioned here.
I cannot say enough about how patiently and judiciously Julie Liv-
ingston has read different versions of this manuscript and commented
on them with unparalleled insight. How can one thank a pure labor of
love and the generosity with which it has been delivered?
Finally, I dedicate this book to the memory of my mother, who passed
away during its writing. I have never known a person who had such a
faith in the power of hope. I dedicate this book to her memory because
this is also a book about hope, about possibilities. I always wondered about
the sources of her amazing resilience, the way she carried on marching,
kept her feet on the ground, with her head high, her back straight, her
mind focused, and her integrity intact. I hope she is looking down and
can see a tiny portion of that integrity in the book I am dedicating to her.
notes
Introduction
1. Charles Krauthammer, The Arab Spring of 2005, Seattle Times, March
21, 2005.
2. Alain Badiou, The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings (New
York: Verso, 2012), 48.
3. For an insightful account, see Yasmin Moll, The Wretched Revolu-
tion, Middle East Report 273 (2014): 3439.
4. See Anthony Alessandrini, Foucault, Fanon, Intellectuals, Revolutions,
Jadaliyya, April 1, 2014, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/17154/foucault
-fanon-intellectuals-revolutions.
5. See, for example, Georg Stauth, Revolution in Spiritless Times: An Essay
on Michel Foucaults Enquiries into the Iranian Revolution, International Soci-
ology 6, no. 3 (1991): 25980; Craig Keating, Reflections on the Revolution in
Iran: Foucault on Resistance, Journal of European Studies 27 (1997): 18197;
Michiel Leezenberg, Power and Political Spirituality: Michel Foucault on the
Islamic Revolution in Iran, Arcadia 33, no. 1 (1998): 7289.
6. Janet Afary and Kevin Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gen-
der and the Seductions of Islamism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
7. For discussion on Foucaults Orientalism, see Ian Almond, The New Ori-
entalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard (London:
I.B.Tauris, 2007). Michael Walzer coined the term infantile leftism to describe
Foucaults endorsement of the Iranian Revolution in his essay The Politics of
Michel Foucault, in Foucault: A Critical Reader, ed. David Hoy (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1986), 5168.
8. See Afary and Andersons epilogue, particularly the section Western
Leftists and Feminist Responses to September 11, in Foucault, 16872.
9. Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 136.
10. Ibid., 137.
197
198 | Notes to Introduction
11. Slavoj iek, In Defense of Lost Causes (New York: Verso, 2009), 115.
13. I have borrowed this line from iek and his description of the clichs
of intellectuals revolutionary sentiments in Lost Causes, 107.
14. The controversy began after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten
published twelve cartoons on September 30, 2005, in most of which the Prophet
Muhammad was depicted as a terrorist, with a ticking-bomb turban or promis-
ing virgin angels to suicide bombers. After the cartoons appeared in the news-
paper, Muslims in Europe and elsewhere held large demonstrations against its
publication. The demonstrations sparked a passionate debate about the limits of
the freedom of expression and the place of the growing Muslim population of
Europe in its liberal democratic landscape. See my commentary for further
analysis: When a Cartoon Is Not Just a Cartoon, Iranian, February 4, 2006,
http://iranian.com/Ghamari/2006/February/Cartoon/index.html.
15. For a full text, see Writers Statement on Cartoons, BBC News, March
1, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4764730.stm.
16. Bruce Cumings, Black September, Infantile Nihilism, and National
Security, in Understanding September 11, ed. Craig Calhoun, Paul Price, and
Ashley Timmer (New York: New Press, 2002), 198.
17. Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History (New York: Random House,
2011), 15153.
18. Bruce Cumings, Some Thoughts Subsequent to September 11, Novem-
ber 2001, http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/cumings.htm. The Social Science
Research Council (SSRC) created a website for a wide range of views on the
historical, sociological, and theoretical significance of 9/11. Cumings deleted
this part from the published and more tempered version of his earlier contribu-
tion on the SSRCs website.
19. Many of these essays are collected in a two-volume book that came out
of the SSRC website collection: Calhoun et al., Understanding September 11; Eric
Hershberg and Kevin Moore, eds., The Critical Views of September 11: Analyses
from around the World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002).
20. The following passage from an op-ed Michael Ignatieff wrote for the
Guardian on October 1, 2001, captures the core of this political philosophy: What
we are up against is apocalyptic nihilism. The nihilism of their meansthe indif-
ference to human coststakes their actions not only out of the realm of politics,
but even out of the realm of war itself. The apocalyptic nature of their goals
makes it absurd to believe they are making political demands at all. They are
seeking the violent transformation of an irremediably sinful and unjust world.
Terror does not express a politics, but a metaphysics, a desire to give ultimate mean-
ing to time and history through ever-escalating acts of violence which culminate
Notes to Introduction | 199
in a final battle between good and evil. People serving such exalted goals are not
interested in mere politics. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/01/
afghanistan.terrorism9.
21. As it became clear a few weeks later, the anthrax attacks had nothing to
do with any Jihadi groups. The FBI later disclosed that its agents had identified
a disgruntled American microbiologist who worked at Fort Detrick as the sus-
pect. He committed suicide before his official indictment. In the published ver-
sion of her contribution to the SSRC series on 9/11, Benhabib revised this passage
to The attacks unleashed by these groups, especially the continuing threat to use
biological and chemical weapons against civilian populations... Seyla Ben-
habib, Unholy Wars: Reclaiming Democratic Virtues after September 11, in
Calhoun et al., Understanding September 11, 241.
22. Seyla Benhabib, Unholy Politics, SSRC, November 2001, http://www
.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/benhabib.htm.
23. Tariq Ali, Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihad and Modernity (New
York: Verso, 2003), 3.
24. Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Moder-
nity (London: Verso, 1983), 347.
25. Jrgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Fred-
erick G. Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 7.
26. For more on the conception of the West as the producer and non-West
as the consumer of modernity, see Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
27. David Held, Violence, Law, and Justice in a Global Village, in Calhoun
et al., Understanding September 11, 104.
29. See Edward Rothsteins furious attack on cultural relativists in his oft-
cited editorial Attacks on U.S. Challenge the Perspectives of Postmodern True
Believers, New York Times, September 22, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/
09/22/arts/connections-attacks-us-challenge-perspectives-postmodern-true
-believers.html.
30. James Der Derian, 9/11: Before, After, and In Between, in Calhoun
et al., Understanding September 11, 177. Also on the same topic, see Judith Butler,
Explanation and Exoneration; or, What We Can Hear, Social Text 20, no. 3
(2002): 17788. She argues that by rehabilitating the term excuseniks, the just
war liberal Left suggests that those who seek to understand how the global
map arrived at this juncture through asking how, in part, the United States has
contributed to the making of this map, are themselves, through the style of their
inquiry, and the shape of their questions, complicitous with an assumed enemy
(182).
200 | Notes to Introduction
31. Salman Rushdie, Lets Get Back to Life, Guardian, October 6, 2001,
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/oct/06/fiction.afghanistan.
32. Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought: Montesquieu, Comte,
Marx, Tocqueville, the Sociologists, and the Revolution of 1848 (New York: Penguin
Books, 1969), 19.
33. David Rieff, There Is No Alternative to War, Salon, September 25,
2001, http://www.salon.com/2001/09/26/modernity/.
34. The title of Mincs editorial was an apparent inversion of Jean Baudril-
lards editorial Lesprit du terrorisme, which had appeared in the same paper
five days earlier on November 3, 2001. Baudrillard ended his essay with this
piercing passage: In the terrorist attack the event eclipsed all of our interpretive
models, whereas in this mindlessly military and technological war we see the
opposite: the interpretive model eclipsing the event. Witness, thus, the artificial
stakes, the non-place. War as a continuation of the absence of politics by other means
(my italics). Alain Minc, Le terrorisme de lesprit, Le Monde, November 7,
2001; translated by Donovan Hohn, Harpers Magazine, February 2002, 18.
35. Minc, Le terrorisme.
36. They argued that in France, the controversy over Foucaults writings
on Iran is well known and continues to undercut his reputation. For example,
during the debate over the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York
and Washington, a prominent French commentator referred polemically and
without apparent need for any further explanation to Michel Foucault, advo-
cate of Khomeinism in Iran and therefore in theory of its exactions in a front-
page op-ed article in Le Monde. Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 6.
37. Fred Dallmayr, Alternative Visions: Paths in the Global Village (Lanham,
Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998). Dallmayr aptly observed that, faced with
the realities of global hegemony, non-Western cultures have to engage in a com-
plex double gesture, to affirm or defend cultural traditions and identities while
simultaneously opening the latter up to critical scrutiny and revision (270).
38. Rothstein, Attacks on U.S.
39. Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason, and Religion (London: Routledge,
1992), 75.
40. Gellner, Postmodernism, 95.
41. Der Derian, 9/11, 184.
43. Ibid., 173.
44. Even the hostile Bush administration admitted that Iran played a con-
structive role in toppling the Taliban. A June 2002 brief for Congress, Iran:
Current Developments and U.S. Policy, highlighted that Iran pledged search
and rescue assistance to the United States and pledged to allow U.S. humanitarian
Notes to Chapter 1 | 201
aid for the Afghan people to transit Iran en route to Afghanistan. U.S. officials
initially called Irans role in the anti-Taliban/al-Qaeda effort, including efforts
to form a new government at the Bonn conference (ended in agreement Decem-
ber 5, 2001) constructive. Kenneth Katzman, Congressional Research Service,
The Library of Congress, June 2002, CRS 6.
45. For a detailed analysis of this transformation, see Behrooz Ghamari-
Tabrizi, Islam and Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran: Abdolkarim Soroush, Religious
Politics, and Democratic Reform (London: I.B.Tauris, 2008).
1. Thinking the Unthinkable

1. James Millers The Passion of Michel Foucault (New York: Doubleday, 1993)
is a key text that reimagines Foucaults life and lifework around limit-experiences.
Miller depoliticizes Foucaults encounter with the Iranian revolution and relates
it to his use of drugs and participation in sado-masochistic sexual rituals as an
instance of his fascination with limit-experience.
2. For an insightful discussion of the notion of Sittlichkeit and its relation
to the expressions of justice, see Weigang Chen, Peripheral Justice: The Marx-
ist Tradition of Public Hegemony and Its Implications in the Age of Globaliza-
tion, Positions 13, no. 2 (2005): 32978.
3. See the brilliant analysis of Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolu-
tion in Iran (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).
4. Amir Parviz Pouyan, one of the leaders of a communist urban guerrilla
group called the Fadaian-e Khalq (The Devotees of People), advanced this the-
ory in late 1960s, which came to be known as the thesis of two absolutes. In
his 1969 manifesto on the necessity of armed struggle, On the Refutation of the
Theory of Survival, Pouyan identified the two chief causes that prevented the
working class from rising against their oppression. [Workers] presume, he
wrote, the power of their enemy to be absolute and their own inability to
emancipate themselves [to be] absolute. And then he asked, How can one
think of emancipation while confronting absolute power with absolute weak-
ness? (4).
5. Although Jazani was one of the first theorists of armed struggle, he revised
his position in prison. He criticized the leadership of the Fadaian for their blind
devotion to armed struggle without a critical analysis of Iranian society. For fur-
ther examination of the Fadaian movement, see Maziar Behrooz, Rebels with a
Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran (London: I.B.Tauris, 1999) and Peyman
Vahabzadeh, A Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy, and the
Fadai Period of National Liberation in Iran, 19711979 (Syracuse: Syracuse Uni-
versity Press, 2010).
202 | Notes to Chapter 1
6. Reza Baraheni, Terror in Iran, New York Review of Books, October 28,
1976, 2123.
7. For a chronology of the events in Qom Seminary, see Ancheh dar 14
17 Khordad-e 54 dar Qom gozasht [The events of June 47, 1975, in Qom],
Faslnameh Motaleat-e Tarikhi [Journal of historical studies] 6 (2005): 15972;
and Ali Shirkhani, Harkat-e 17 Khordad 1354 Feizieh [Qom seminarys move-
ment of June 7, 1975], 15 Khordad Journal 6, no. 25 (1997): 3356.
8. Ancheh dar, 162.
9. Shirkhani, Harkat-e 17 Khordad, 4546.
10. Ibid., 4648.
11. Ancheh dar, 171.
12. Cited in ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Taheri Khoram-Abadi in Savak va Ruhaniyat [Savak and the clergy] (Teh-
ran: The Office of the Islamic Revolution Literature, 1992), 128.
15. See Emadaddin Baqi, Forudastan va faradastan [The downtrodden and the
dominant: An oral history of the revolution] (Tehran: Neda-ye Emruz, 2001).
16. See the BBCs interview with Becker: http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/
arts/2012/10/121013_l41_book_goethe_becker_interview.shtml.
17. In describing the events of ten nights at the Goethe Institute, I have
consulted the following sources: Writers Association, Dah shab [Ten Nights] (Teh-
ran: Amir Kabir, 1978); Mohammad Qobadi, Kanun-e nevisnadegan-e Iran [The
Iranian Writers Association], Faslnameh Motaleat-e Tarikhi [Journal of historical
studies], 2 (2004): 24281; Baqer Parham, Az kanun-e nevisandegan taanjoman-e
senfi-ye nevisandegan [From a writers center to a writers professional associa-
tion] Rah-e No [New way], 1, no. 14 (1998): 1824; The Research Office of Kayhan,
Kanun-e nevisandegan-e Iran, az zohur tasoqut [The rise and fall of the Iranian
Writers Association], Kayhan Fargangi 144 (JulyAugust 1998): 422.
18. SAVAK documents, 325/23824 and 312/3067. In Qobadi, The Ira-
nian Writers Association, 25152.
19. See Mahmoud Etemadzadeh (M. A. Behazin), Az har dari [From here
and there] (Tehran: Jam, 1991), 3233.
20. Cited in Qobadi, Kanun-e nevisandegan, 13.
21. Mahmoud Enayat, Roshanfekran va enghelab [Intellectuals and the revo-
lution] (Los Angeles: Negin, 1991), 32. The Lawyers Guild also launched a
letter-writing campaign around the same time, focusing on the question of the
judiciarys independence and respect for human rights. Their letters were more
critical and assertive in tone but did not have the same kind of societal impact at
the time. For a more detailed discussion, see Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between
Two Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 500504.
22. Fereidun Tonkaboni, interview with BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/
arts/2012/10/121020_l41_book_tonekaboni_goethe_nights.shtml.
23. Transcribed from an audio recording and translated by the author.
24. Mohammad Ali Sepanlou, Sargozasht-e kanun-e nevisandega n-e Iran [A
history of the Iranian Writers Association] (Stockholm: Baran, 2002).
25. Javad Taleei, Shab-ha-ye sher-e Goethe ertebati ba voque enqelab
nadasht [Goethe Institutes poetry nights had no connection to the Revolu-
tion], T arikh-e Irani [Iranian history], October 12, 2012, http://www.tarikhirani
.ir/Modules/News/Phtml/News.PrintVersion.Html.php?Lang=fa&TypeId=4&
NewsId=2700.
26. Ruhollah Khomeini, Sahifeh-ye nur [The collected speeches and decla-
rations of Imam Khomeini] (Tehran: Institute for the Publishing of Imam Kho-
meinis Works, 1999), 3:254.
27. Islamic Revolution Documentation Center Archive, Ayatollah Mustafa
Khomeini Files, no. 393, 13.
28. Mehdi Bazargan, Enqelab-e Iran dar do harkat [The Iranian Revolution
in two movements], 5th ed. (Tehran: Nehzat-e Azadi Iran, 1984), 24.
29. Cited in Emad Baqi, Tehrir-e shafahi-ye enqelab-e eslami [Writing the oral
history of the Islamic Revolution] (Tehran: Tafakor Press, 1994), 261.
30. For a discussion of the differences between these two historical moments,
see Charles Kurzman, The Qum Protests and the Coming of the Iranian Rev-
olution, 1975 and 1978, Social Science History 27, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 287325.
31. Mustafa Khomeini Files, no. 393, 91.
32. Taqvim-e tarikh-e enqelab-e eslami: Mordad 1356-Farvardin 1358 [The
calendar of the Islamic Revolution: August 1976March 1979] (Tehran: Soroush
Publishers Research Group, 1989), 40.
33. Sajjad Rai, Payamad-ha-ye margi asrar-amiz [Consequences of a mys-
terious death], Etemad, no. 2084, Supplement (October 21, 2009): 2.
34. Taqvim, 4849.
35. Ettelaat, January 7, 1978, reprinted in Taqvim, 5457.
36. Taqvim, 58.
37. Khomeini, Sahifeh, 3:33049.
38. For a detailed report on (including the long-term effects of) the Tabriz
uprising, see Rahim Nikbakht, Qiam-e 29 Bahman Tabriz [Tabriz February 18
uprising], 15 Khordad, 1, no. 28 (1997): 162207. The number of casualties, like
all other events of revolutionary period, is greatly exaggerated.
39. The statement is reprinted in Ali Davani, Nehzat-e ruha niyun-e Iran
[The movement of Irans clergy: A collection of documents and events, vol. 7]
(Tehran: Imam Reza Foundation, 1981), 7981.
40. Cited in Nikbakht, Tabriz, 18889.
41. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Pasokh beh tarikh [An answer to history] (Teh-
ran: Motarjem, 1992), 332.
42. Cited in Nikbakht, Tabriz, 200.
43. The fourteen-point manifesto also called for the return of Ayatollah
Khomeini from exile and a radical redistribution of wealth in the country. See
the document in Davani, Nehzat, 7:12123.
44. Taqvim, 86.
46. Ibid., 36775.
47. Taqvim, 96.
48. Claire Brire interview with Ayatollah Shariatmadari, Libration, May
22, 1978, reprinted in Davani, Nehzat, 7: 16467. Brire was critical of Foucaults
conception of the revolutionary movement (see chapter 2), but she also was skep-
tical of the French feminists mission to Iran (see chapter 4).
49. Mardom 6, no. 201 (March 20, 1978): 1. The op-ed pieces and news
items in Mardom, from early 1976 to the end of the summer of 1978, when mar-
tial law was declared in Tehran, primarily reflected the interests of the Soviet
Union in Iran. For example, in almost every issue of Mardom, Irans exit from
the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) military pact was presented as one
of the main demands of the revolutionary movement. CENTO was a cold war
military alliance between Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, the UK, and the United States.
People in Moscow were more concerned about Irans membership in CENTO
than people on the streets of Tehran.
50. Ettelaat, June 1, 1978, in Taqvim, 97.
51. Taqvim, 111.
52. Ibid., 112.
53. Fereydoun Hoveyda, The Fall of the Shah (New York: Simon and Schus-
ter, 1980), 1620.
54. Qoba was established in the early 1970s and operated under the imam-
ate of Mohammad Mofatteh, one of the favorite disciples of Ayatollah Khomeini.
For the significance of Qoba Mosque in the revolutionary movement, see Ghol-
amreza Goli-Zavvareh, Zendegi-Nameh shahid Mofatteh [A biography of Mofat-
teh the Martyr] (Qom: Daftar-e Aql, 2010). The book also includes copies of
SAVAK reports on Qoba Mosque.
55. Gholamreza Karbaschi, ed., Haft-hezar ruz tarikh-e Iran va enqelab-e
eslami [Seven thousand days of Iranian history and the Islamic Revolution] (Teh-
ran: Center for the Documentation of the Islamic Revolution, 1992), 2:886.
56. Baya nieh-ye moshtarek [Joint statement], collection of documents in
H. Movahhed, Do sal-e akhar: Reform ta enqelab [The last two years: Reform to
revolution] (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1983), 152.
57. For the complete text of Bazargans message, see Movahhed, Do sa l-e
akhar, 15657.
59. Davani, Nehzat, 7:265.
60. Ibid., 268.
61. Masoud Behnoud, Dolatha-ye Iran az Sayyed Zia ta Bakhtiyar [The Ira-
nian states from Sayyid Zia to Bakhtiyar] (Tehran: Javidan, 1985), 77678.
63. Behnoud, Dolatha -ye Iran, 774.
64. Movahhed, Do sal-e akhar, 168.
65. Taqvim, 125.
66. For a fascinating collection of eyewitness accounts, see Davani, Nehzat,
8:5485.
2. How Did Foucault Make Sense of the Iranian Revolution?

1. Hamid Algar, The Roots of the Islamic Revolution (Oneonta, N.Y.: Islamic
Publications International, 2011), 104. Algar points out that Massignon had his
own personal reasons to believe, erroneously, that Hallaj represented the typical
Sufi mystic in Islamic tradition. Shariati was very much influenced by Massignon
and for political reasons he never questioned the validity of Massignons claim.
2. Ali Shariati, An Approach to the Understanding of Islam (Lesson 1): http://
www.shariati.com/english/lesson/lesson1.html.
3. Michel Foucault, Iran: The Spirit of a World without Spirit, in Afary
and Anderson, Foucault, 257. For the sake of consistency, I have used Afary and
Andersons translations of Foucaults essays on the Iranian Revolution. Four
thousand dead was an inflated number that circulated after Black Friday. Wildly
overstated numbers circulated effectively during the Shahs reign in order to
exaggerate the extent of the brutality of the regime. An official and true estimate
put the dead at 88 and wounded at 205. The Martyrs Foundation confirmed these
numbers after the revolution. For a report on the actual numbers of casualties
incurred by the political oppression of the Shahs regime, see Emad Baqi, Barresi-
ye Enqelab-e Iran [An analysis of the Iranian Revolution] (Tehran: Sarabi, 2003).
4. Foucault, Iran, 253.
5. Ibid., 251.
6. Michel Foucault, Is It Useless to Revolt?, in Afary and Anderson,
Foucault, 266.
7. Edward Said, Beginnings: Invention and Method (New York: Basic Books,
1975), 290.
8. Michel Foucault, The Order of Discourse, in Untying the Text, ed.
Robert Young (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 67.
9. Leezenberg, Power and Political Spirituality.
10. Cited in ibid., 76.
11. Michel Foucault, The Shah Is a Hundred Years behind the Times, in
Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 194.
12. The term was coined by the French Marxist Orientalist Maxime Rodin-
son in his critique of Foucault. See Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 99102.
13. Foucault, The Shah, 198.
14. Michel Foucault, A Revolt with Bare Hands, in Afary and Anderson,
Foucault, 211. Foucault identified three paradoxes in the revolutionary movement:
first, the ineffectiveness of one of the mightiest militaries in the world against
peaceful demonstrators; second, the absence of internal conflicts; and third, the
lack of future plans.
15. This is a reference is to the important strike of the oil workers in the
Khuzestan that played a key role in the economic collapse of the Pahlavi regime.
16. For a discussion on Foucaults eschatological view, see Melinda Cooper,
The Law of the Household: Foucault, Neoliberalism, and the Iranian Revolu-
tion, in The Government of Life: Foucault, Biopolitics, and Neoliberalism, ed. Vanessa
Lemm and Miguel Vatter (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 2958.
17. Foucault, A Revolt, 212.
19. Michel Foucault, What Are the Iranians Dreaming [Revent] About?,
in Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 209.
20. Dialogue between Michel Foucault and Baqir Parham, conducted in
September 1978, in Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 185.
21. Foucault, Dialogue, 186.
22. See Michel Foucault, Questions of Method, in The Foucault Effect: Stud-
ies in Governmentality, ed. G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1991), 7386.
23. Jeremy R. Carrette, Prologue to a Confession of the Flesh, in Religion
and Culture: Michel Foucault, ed. Jeremy R. Carrette (New York: Routledge, 1999),
149.
24. Cited in Carrette, Prologue, 1.
25. Michel Foucault, On the Genealogy of Ethics, in The Foucault Reader,
ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 352 (my italics).
26. James Bernauer, Michel Foucaults Force of Flight: Toward an Ethics for
Thought (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1991). For Foucaults view
on religion and the paradoxical effects of the death of God and death of Man,
see his selected writings in Jeremy Carrette, Religion and Culture.
27. James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault (New York: Doubleday, 1993).
28. Foucault explains: The pastoral, the new diplomatic-military tech-
niques and, lastly, police: these are the three elements that I believe made pos-
sible the production of this fundamental phenomenon in Western history, the
governmentalization of the state. Governmentality, in G. Burchell et al., The
Foucault Effect, 104.
29. Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Self, in Carrette, Religion
and Culture, 16263.
30. Carrette, Religion and Culture, 42.
31. Foucault, Questions of Method, 82.
33. Most vociferous among those was the French Marxist Orientalist Max-
ime Rodinson, whose writings are translated by Afary and Anderson: Islam
Resurgent?, 22339; Khomeini and the Primacy of the Spiritual, 24145;
Critique of Foucault on Iran, 26777.
34. Michel Foucault, Tehran: Faith against the Shah, in Afary and Ander-
son, Foucault, 200.
35. Foucault, Tehran, 202.
37. See chapter 5 for a more detailed elaboration on the notion of care of
the self.
38. Foucault, Tehran, 201.
39. For an elaboration on this point, see Armando Salvatore, Islam and the
Political Discourse of Modernity (Berkshire: Ithaca Press, 1997), 15254.
40. Foucault, Iranians Dreaming, 208.
41. Ghamari-Tabrizi, Islam and Dissent.
43. Salvatore, Islam,152.
44. Cited in Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 91.
45. Franois Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, trans. Elborg Forster
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
46. iek, Lost Causes, 158.
47. Foucault, A Revolt, 212.
48. Foucault, Revolutionary Action: Until Now, in Michel Foucault, Lan-
guage, Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1980), 230.
49. Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1989), 33.
50. Derrida famously remarked in an interview, Indeed, I cannot conceive
of a radical critique which would not be ultimately motivated by some sort of
affirmation, acknowledged or not. See Richard Kearny, Dialogue with Jacque
Derrida, in Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, ed. Richard Kearny
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 118.
51. William Connolly, Politics and Ambiguity (Madison: University of Wis-
consin Press, 1987), 107 (my italics).
52. Figuratively perplexity, from A-poria in Greek, meaning literally no
passage.
53. In the preface to Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno
argue that Enlightenment is both necessary and impossible: necessary because
humanity would otherwise continue hurtling towards self-destruction and unfree-
dom, and impossible because enlightenment can only be attained through ratio-
nal human activity, and yet rationality is itself the origin of the problem. This
was the aporia that led Horkheimer and Adorno to become ever more circum-
spect about the concrete political aims of critical theory. Adornos faith in the
capacity of any theory to guide social, political, or moral emancipation soon
waned to the point that he considered almost any collective political action to be
premature, arbitrary, and futile. Gordon Finlayson, Habermas: A Very Short Intro-
duction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 8.
54. Jrgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1990), 283.
55. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 142.
56. Richard Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991), 173.
57. Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 142.
58. Ibid., 133.
59. Foucault, On the Genealogy of Ethics, in Michel Foucault: Beyond
Structuralism and Hermeneutics ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 23132 (my italics).
60. Foucault is borrowing the concept of absolutely absolute from Amir
Parviz Pouyan, one of the leaders of a communist urban guerilla group called the
Fadaian-e Khalq (The Devotees of People), which was established in 1970. See
chapter 1, note 4.
61. Foucault, Is It Useless to Revolt?, 6364.
62. iek, Lost Causes, 109.
63. Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations: 19721990, trans. Martin Joughin (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 171.
65. Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York:
Grove Press, 1965).
66. Fanon, Dying Colonialism, 60.
67. John McSweeney, Religion in the Web of Immanence: Foucault and
Thinking Otherwise after the Death of God, Foucault Studies 15 (2013): 90.
3. Misrepresenting the Revolution, Misreading Foucault

1. Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 105 (my italics). It is not clear at what
point this displacing had happened in the revolutionary movement. Was there
a period during the revolutionary movement that Marxists and the nationalist
Left led the revolutionary movement?
2. Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 19061911: Grassroots
Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1996).
3. Transcribed and translated by the author from a YouTube posting of the
trial.
4. See Akbar Ganjis essay Ostureh-ye Khomeini cheguneh sakhteh shod
[How was Khomeinis legend constructed], posted on http://news.gooya.com/
politics/archives/2014/06/181080.php. Ganji revisits the writings of key intel-
lectual and literary figures, such as Reza Baraheni, Ehsan Naraqi, Daryush Shay-
gan, Bijan Jazani, Forough Farrokhzad, and many others, to show how they all
romanticized a notion of revolutionary Islam and how Khomeini came to repre-
sent the embodiment of that romantic revolutionary ideology.
5. Majid Sharif- Vaqefi was gunned down in 1975, and his body was
burned to prevent identification by SAVAK.
6. Cited in Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin (New Haven: Yale
9. Bonnie Honig, What Foucault Saw in the Revolution: On the Use and
Abuse of Theology for Politics, Political Theory 36, no. 2 (2008): 30112.
10. Ashura is the tenth day of the month of Muharram in the Islamic lunar
calendar and the day that Shiites third Imam was martyred in the battle of
Karbala. The battle of Karbala, which took place in what is now Iraq, happened
in AD 680 (year 61 of the Islamic calendar). Shiites believe that knowing that
his victory was in his martyrdom, Imam Hussein fought against the mighty army
of Yazid, the second caliph of the Umayyad dynasty, with only seventy-two of
his companions.
11. For a historically informed and theoretically sophisticated study of Muhar
ram rituals, see Babak Rahimis Theater State and the Formation of Early Modern
Public Sphere in Iran: Studies on Safavid Muharram Rituals, 15901641 (Leiden:
Brill, 2012). In the brief introduction to chapter 1, Rahimi shows how Foucault
consciously distinguished his reading of Muharram carnivalesque transgressions
from Christian rites of penitence in the display of shame and sorrow for the loss
of a sacred ideal. Foucault highlights the feeling of the intoxication of sacri-
fice that leads the Shiite people [to] become enamored with extremes. As
Rahimi observes, The reference to intoxication plays a critical role in this inter-
pretive thrust. By this, Foucault wants to draw attention to that which exceeds
boundaries, especially everyday subjective ones (31).
12. On Shariatis ideas, see Ali Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian: A Political
Biography of Ali Shariati (London: I.B.Tauris, 2000); and Ghamari-Tabrizi, Islam
and Dissent, chapter 5.
13. Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 54. The reference for the scene described
in the alleyway is from Michel Mazzaoui, Shiism and Ashura in South Leba-
non, in Taziyeh, Ritual and Drama in Iran, ed. Peter Chelkowski (New York
14. Rahnema, Islamic Utopian, 27275.
15. Ibid., 26676.
16. In addition to Ali Rahnemas Islamic Utopian, see Kingshuk Chatterjee, Ali
Shariati and the Shaping of Political Islam in Iran (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2011). For a very short review of Shariatis political significance, particularly in
relation to the question of xenophobia, see Ervand Abrahamian, Ali Shariati:
Ideologue of the Iranian Revolution, MERIP Reports 102 (January 1982): 2224.
Abrahamian writes: Westerners commonly perceive the Iranian Revolution as
an atavistic and xenophobic movement that rejects all things modern and non-
Muslim, a view reinforced by the present leaders of Iran.... This conventional
wisdom, however, ignores the contributions of Dr. Ali Shariati, the main ideo-
logue of the Iranian Revolution. Shariati drew his inspiration from outside as well
as from within Islam: from Western sociologyparticularly Marxist sociologyas
well as from Muslim theology; from theorists of the Third Worldespecially
Franz Fanonas well as from the teachings of the early Shii martyrs (22).
17. Ali Shariati, Marxism and Other Western Fallacies: An Islamic Critique,
trans. R. Campbell (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1980).
18. Abu Dharr was one of the warriors of Imam Ali. Shariatis first published
work (1956) was a translation from Arabic of a book by Joudah Al-Sahhar called
Abu Dharr Ghaffari, which had been originally published in Mashhad. Abu Dharr,
Collected Works, vol. 3 (Tehran: Hosseiniyyeh Ershad, 1978).
19. For a detailed account of these campaigns, see Naser Minachi, T arikh-e
Hosseinieh-ye Ersha d [A history of Hosseinieh-ye Ershad] (Tehran: Ershad Publi-
cations, 2005),12023; Rahnema, Islamic Utopian, 27176.
20. Ali Shariati, Nameh beh Ayatollah al-Uzma Milani [Letter to the Grand
Ayatollah Milani], in Collected Works (Tehran: Qalam, 1996), 34:98103.
21. Rahnema, Islamic Utopian, 12324.
22. He died in 1977 in the UK of a heart attack at the age of forty-four. His
followers attributed his sudden death to the Shahs intelligence officers. That is
why they called him our martyred teacher.
23. Mansur Hallaj (d. 922), who proclaimed Ana al-Haqq (I have merged
with, I am, the Truth) was executed as a heretic. This verse is attributed to him:
Kill me, O my trustworthy friendsfor in my being killed is my life (translated
by Annemarie Schimmel in her work Islam: An Introduction [Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1992], 108). Shariati transformed Hallajs mystic
death through love into martyrdom for the cause.
24. For a full account of Shariatis agonistic moments, see chapter 11, Mys-
tical Murmurs, in Rahnema, Islamic Utopian, 14460.
25. Umar succeeded Abu Bakr as the second caliph after the Prophets death.
26. The direction toward which Muslims face during their daily prayer:
Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
27. Shariati, ari inchenin bud baradar [Yes, brother! This is how it was], in
Collected Works (Tehran: Entesharat-e Sabz, 1982), 24:30913.
28. A term they borrow from the French Marxist Orientalist Maxime Rodinson.
29. See, for example, Vanessa Martins comprehensive commentary, Reli-
gion and State in Khumainis Kashf al-asra r, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies, no. 1 (1993): 3445; Michael Fischer, Imam Khomeini: Four
Levels of Understanding, in Voices of Resurgent Islam, ed. John Esposito (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 15074; Gregory Rose, Velayat-e Faqih
and the Recovery of Islamic Identity in the Thought of Ayatollah Khomeini, in
Religion and Politics in Iran: Shiism from Quietism to Revolution, ed. Nikki Keddie
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).
30. Ruhollah Khomeini, Kashf al-Asra r [Revealing the secrets] (n.p.: [1943]),
23042. For a more detailed analysis of the evolution of Khomeinis ideas, see
Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Divine, the People, the Faqih: On Khomeinis
Theory of Sovereignty, in A Critical Introduction to Khomeini, ed. Arshin Adib-
Moghaddam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 21139. Adib-
Moghaddams volume is an important contribution to a critical understanding
of Khomeinis legacy. Also, for a detailed analysis of competing interpretations
and appropriation of Khomeinis ideas and practices, see Babak Rahimis Con-
tentious Legacies of the Ayatollah in the same volume.
31. See Vanessa Martins commentary, p. 40. For a comprehensive discus-
sion on the transformation of Khomeinis views on governance, see Jamileh
Kadivar, Tahavvol-e gofteman-e siyasi-e Shii dar Iran [The transformation of Shii
political discourse in Iran] (Tehran: Tarh-e No, 2000) and Mohsen Kadivar,
Hokumat-e vela i [Governance by guardianship] (Tehran: Nay Publishers, 1999).
32. Nuri was one of the most influential clergymen during the Constitu-
tional Revolution of 19056. He insisted on the irreconcilability of the sharia
with constitutional laws. An early supporter of the Constitutional Revolution,
Nuri became more suspicious of its premises and eventually declared it funda-
mentally antagonistic to the spirit of Islam. See Mohammad Torkman, ed.,
Rasael, elamiyeh-ha, maktubat, va ruznameh-ha [Creeds, pronouncements, cor-
respondences, and papers] (Tehran: Rasa Publishers 1983), 1:103. He berated
the constitutionalists for writing a document of perdition (64) based on two
principles of liberty and equality, both of which emanated from the West
and were alien to Muslims (106).
33. Ayatollah Khomeini, Formation of the Council of the Islamic Revolu-
tion, in Islam and Revolution, Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, trans.
and annot. Hamid Algar (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981), 24647.
34. Afary and Anderson compare Muharram rituals and passion plays with
the fascist anti-Semitic appropriations of Christian passion plays, a claim that is
hard to substantiate. They also make unsubstantiated references to Khomeinis
hostility to an ambiguous group generically called Irans minorities: [Kho-
meini] rekindled dormant religious biases that progressive intellectuals had tried
to erase for decades. He said that the Shah was carrying the wishes of the Jewish
state, a government that planned to uproot Islam and seize the economy with
the help of Irans minorities [!] (58). Shariati, they claim, was influenced by
the most virulent forms of Christian anti-Semitism (62). They quote Khomeinis
interview on October 8, 1978, in which he rejects reformist attempts to save
monarchy from the revolution. They interpret whenever Khomeini emphasizes
the Islamic revolution and the will of God as the depth of his hostility towards
the National Front, the Left, ...[and] Irans religious minorities (including Zoro-
astrians) (86). Here, Khomeini was continuing his earlier attacks on Jews,
Bahais, and other non-Muslim Iranians (86).
35. For a detailed account, see Mahdi Ahouei, Iranian Anti-Zionism and
the Holocaust: A Long Discourse Dismissed, Radical History Review 105 (Fall
2009): 5878.
37. Ghamari-Tabrizi, Islam and Dissent, 5053.
38. Khomeinis message, cited in Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 86 (italics
added by Afary and Anderson).
40. Michel Foucault, The Challenge to the Opposition, in Afary and Ander-
son, Foucault, 21314.
41. According to Habibi, the five jurists who authored the first draft of the
constitution were Ahmad Sadr Hajj Seyyed Javadi, Naser Katuzian, Mohammad
Jafari Langarudi, Abdolkarim Lahiji, and Abbas Minachi. For more, see Asghar
Schirazi, The Constitution of Iran: Politics and the State in the Islamic Republic, trans.
John OKane (London: I.B.Tauris, 1997), 38. In an interview, Ezzatollah Sahabi
recalled that Fathollah Bani Sadr, another liberal jurist, was also a member of
the committee. See Bahman Ahmadi Amui, Eqtesa d-e siya si-ye Jomhuri-ye Islami:
Dar goftegu ba Ezzatollah Sahabi [The political economy of the Islamic Republic:
In conversation with Ezzatollah Sahabi] (Tehran: Jam-e No, 2003).
42. For a brief history of the period, see Schirazi, The Constitution, 2238
and Mehdi Moslem, Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse
43. See Amui, Eqtesad-e siyasi. Also, for a detailed report on the drafting of
the new constitution, see Ghamari-Tabrizi, Islam and Dissent, chapter 3.
44. Kayhan, June 18, 1979, cited in Schirazi, The Constitution, 23.
45. Volumes 2 and 3 of Ayatollah Khomeinis Sahifeh-y Nur are largely
devoted to his assertions about the meaning of an Islamic Republic and the role
of the ruhaniyat in its affairs. For specific references to his position on the advi-
sory role of the ruhaniyat, see Khomeini, Sahifeh, 2:250; 3:7578, 11011. Typi-
cal of these statements were: I, and other ruhaniyun, will not hold a position in
the future government, the duty of ruhaniyun is to guide, I shall only take upon
myself the responsibility of guiding the future government (3:135). On another
occasion, he reiterated that he never said that ruhaniyun are going to be in charge
of the government, ruhaniyun have other responsibilities (3:140).
46. Cited in M. Kadivar, Hokumat-e vela i, 183.
48. Ibid.
49. Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essay on the Islamic Republic (London:
I.B.Tauris, 1993), 3.
50. Claudie Broyelle and Jacque Broyelle, What Are the Philosophers
Dreaming About? Was Michel Foucault Mistaken about the Iranian Revolu-
tion?, in Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 24748.
51. Michel Foucault, Foucaults Response to Claudie and Jacques Broy-
elle, in Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 249.
52. John Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (New York:
Oxford, 2002).
53. Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation (London: I.B.Tauris,
2002).
54. Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003).
55. See Bermans New York Times op-ed piece in which he defends the inva-
sion of Iraq but questions the incompetence of the Bush Administration in exe-
cuting it efficiently. For a thoughtful review of his book, see Anatol Lievens
Liberal Hawk Down, in the Nation, October 7, 2004, http://www.thenation
.com/article/liberal-hawk-down. Lieven correctly argues that Berman, this
man of the Left, offers a portrait of Islamic fascism that is hardly distinguish-
able from that of such hard-line right-wing members of the Israeli lobby as Dan-
iel Pipes. In terms of historical literacy, the argument is the equivalent of suggesting
that because nineteenth-century European socialism and clerical conservatism
shared a deep hostility to bourgeois liberalism, they somehow formed part of the
same ideological and political tendency.
56. Rubin Barnett and Sara Batmanglich, The U.S. and Iran in Afghani-
stan: Policy Gone Awry, MIT International Studies, October 2008, 3.
57. James Dobbins, After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan (Wash-
ington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2008).
58. Cited in Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 19.
59. Ibid.
60. Michel Foucault, The Minimalist Self, in Politics, Philosophy, Culture:
Interviews and Other Writings, 19771984, ed. Lawrence Kritzman (London:
Routledge, 1988), 3.
61. For an insightful discussion of Foucault and silence, see Jeremy R. Car-
rette, Silence and Confession, in Foucault and Religion: Spiritual Corporeality
and Political Spirituality, 2543 (London: Routledge, 2002).
62. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans.
Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon, 1977), 293.
63. In his 1982 Vermont lectures, Foucault also speaks positively of the
Pythagorean pedagogical value of silence developed as an art of listening in oppo-
sition to the dialogic form found in Plato. Technologies of the Self, in Tech-
nologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. L. H. Martin, H. Gutman,
and P. H. Hutton (London: Tavistock, 1988), 1649.
64. Foucault specifically talks about this notion in two lectures: one at the
Collge de France on March 3, 1982 (Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the
Subject: Lectures at the Collge de France, 19811982 [New York: Picador, 2001],
33155), and the other in October of the same year in Vermont (Foucault, Tech-
nologies of the Self, 1649).
65. Foucault, Hermeneutics, 341.
66. Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, in Michel Foucault:
Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. D. F. Bouchard
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, [1971] 1977), 139.
67. Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collge de
France, 197778, trans. Graham Bruchell, ed. Michel Senellart (New York: Pic-
ador, 2009).
68. Norma Claire Moruzzi, review of Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, by
Afary and Anderson, International Journal of Middle East Studies 38, no. 3 (2006):
49294.
69. Michel Foucault, The Mythical Leader of the Iranian Revolt, in Afary
and Anderson, Foucault, 220.
4. The Reign of Terror, Womens Issues, and Feminist Politics

1. Letter by Atoussa H., in Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 20910.
2. See Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2010); Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and
the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); and more
recently, Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 2013).
3. Another critic who took political Islam seriously and began to think
about its revolutionary significance was Norman O. Brown. Between 1980 and
1981 Brown delivered seven lectures on Islam, which eventually were collected
and published thirty years later as The Challenge of Islam: The Prophetic Tradition,
ed. Jerome Neu (Santa Cruz: New Pacific Press, 2009). In his first lecture he
admits: An essential ingredient in the impetus that leads to my being here offer-
ing to lecture on the challenge of Islam comes from the Ayatollah Khomeini,
and my discovery of my total inability to situate what was happening... and
relate what was happening to our understanding of what was going on in the
world.... There is a truth in saying that I owe it to Ayatollah Khomeini to have
been, as it were, woken up from my dogmatic slumber, and required to consider
the subject of these lectures (1). In contrast to the dominant Orientalist per-
ception of Islam, Brown considers Islam to be a part of Western tradition rather
than a barbarism from outside. Islam, he argues, is not another Oriental
cultural tradition. It is an alternative, a rival interpretation of our tradition. That
perhaps is the most controversial claim that Brown advances in these lectures:
that Islam can also offer a political path for Westerners. One needs to keep in
mind that these lectures were delivered right after the Iranian Revolution and in
the wake of the American hostage crisis. This, in turn, adds to the significance of
Browns bold intervention. Islam, Brown remarks, is a wager that Christian-
ity has gone wrong (3). Under the influence of the Iranian Revolution, Brown
also became more interested in Shii Islam and its interpretive approach to Pro-
phetic tradition. He points out how through Shiism Islam became realpolitik. As
Jay Cantor writes in his introduction to these lectures, The existential nature of
prophecy... is inevitably intertwined with the problem of succession, of inter-
pretive (which is to say political) authority. It is in this context that Brown
concludes his first lecture with these piercing words: I end with a vision of two
kinds of social criticism alive in the world today: Marxism and Islam. Two still-
revolutionary forces. Two tired old revolutionary horses. Neither of them doing
very well, but it would be a mistake to take any comfort from their failure. The
human race is at stake. And they both, Marxism and Islam, would agree on one
proposition: There will be one world, or there will be none (12).
4. Abdallah Laroui, The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual: Traditionalism or Histori-
cism?, trans. Diarmid Cammell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 60.
5. Foucaults Response to Atoussa H., in Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 210.
6. Ibid.
7. There is a wealth of literature that demonstrates that gender relations
and the situation of women in Iran must be understood in practice, not merely
based on a formal reading of legal codes and rights. The seminal work of Parvin
Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1997), is the best example of such an approach. For a
nuanced study of the changes in religious discourses on women and gender rela-
tions, see Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contem-
porary Iran (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). For a detailed study
of womens social and economic status under the Islamic Republic, see Roksana
Bahramitash and Shahla Kazemipour, Myths and Realities of the Impact of
Islam on Women: Changing Marital Status in Iran, Middle East Critique 15, no.
2 (2006): 11128; Roksana Bahramitash, Market Fundamentalism versus Reli-
gious Fundamentalism: Womens Employment in Iran, Middle East Critique 13,
no. 1 (2004): 3346; Homa Hoodfar, Iranian Women at the Intersection of
Citizenship and the Family Code: The Perils of Islamic Criteria, in Gender
and Citizenship in the Middle East, ed. Suad Josef (Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press, 2000); Homa Hoodfar and Samad Assadpour, The Politics of Popula-
tion Policy in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Studies in Family Planning 31, no. 1
(2000): 1934.
8. See Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender. For a more general discussion of
historical changes in Islamic discourse on women, see Leila Ahmed, Women and
Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1992), particularly part 3.
9. Paidar, Women and the Political Process, 359.
10. For two excellent examples of how patriarchal ideologies generate par-
adoxical objective realities in the American context, see Rebecca Klatch, Women
of the Right (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); and Kathleen Blee,
Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1991).
11. Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution.
12. There existed four major tendencies in the Iranian Left. The first, rep-
resented by the Tudeh Party (Peoples Party, est. 1941), followed a pro-Soviet
platform. The party supported the Islamic Republic so long as it followed an anti-
American policy and allowed the Tudeh Party to continue its legal operation.
The second, represented by the Organization of the Fadaian (Devotee) Guer-
rillas (est. 1970), advocated armed struggle and was critical of Tudeh Partys con-
ciliatory and reformist agenda against the Shah. After the revolution the two
tendencies followed the same strategy in defending the new regime. The third
tendency, much smaller than the first two, represented by the Organization of
Peikar (Struggle) for the Liberation of the Working Class (est. 1978), was the
Marxist faction of the radical Islamist organization Peoples Mojahedin. It followed
an independent line and promoted the same radicalism against both capitalism
and its American supporters as well as the Soviet social-imperialist expansionism.
The fourth tendency, represented by Ranjbaran (Toilers) Party, followed a Maoist
line. Ranjbaran was the only party on the Left that defended the liberal policies
of the provisional government.
13. Published in Kar [Labor], no. 3 (March 23, 1979): 8. The number of
martyrs of the revolution is highly exaggerated. The total number of people killed
during the Shahs regime ranged between three to four thousand.
14. In a lecture two years after his forced resignation, Bazargan lamented,
As much as our revolution was grand and succeeded with the speed of light, the
postrevolutionary transformationswhich was dubbed as permanent revolu
tionalso happened with firework and radicalism. But in a sense, it also was a
revolution against the revolution. All the elementssuch as pride in nation-
hood, humanism, and freedomthat created a national unity during the revolu-
tion turned into excuses for unfounded accusations, animosity, and frenzy. See
Mehdi Bazargan, Enqelab-e Iran dar do harkat [The Iranian Revolution in two
movements], Collected Works (Tehran: Bazargan Foundation, 2012), 23:304.
15. Shariati directly used the term on many occasions in his lectures with-
out making a reference to its Marxist origins. There is a thesis called perma-
nent revolution that demonstrates how it is possible to intervene in the seemingly
inevitable process of stagnation of a society. It is conceivable to exert a vanguard
leadership over a society to sustain a permanent revolution by constantly rein-
venting the means of its livelihood. See Islamology (Tehran: Entesharat-e Shariati,
1981), 2:65. Shariati might have also been inspired by Rgis Debrays Revolution
in the Revolution, which had significant currency in French Left intellectual cir-
cles during his residence in Paris from 1960 to 1965.
16. Peikar, no. 3 (May 14, 1979): 1.
17. Published in Peikar, no. 5 (May 27, 1979): 5.
18. Kar 1, no. 12 (May 23, 1979): 12.
19. Rodinson, Critique of Foucault on Iran, 27072.
20. There was never an imposition of chador (the black head-to-toe veil-
ing) after the revolution, but this is often the way feminist critics of Foucault
frame the issue. I will discuss this later in this chapter.
21. Cited in Rosemarie Scullion, Michel Foucault the Orientalist: On Rev-
olutionary Iran and the Spirit of Islam, South Central Review 12, no. 2 (1995):
1640.
22. Nima Naghibi, Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Western Feminism and Iran
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 65.
23. Afsaneh Najmabadi, Hazards of Modernity and Morality: Women, State
and Ideology in Contemporary Iran, in Women, Islam and the State, ed. D. Kan-
diyoti (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 4876.
24. Najmabadi, Hazards, 49.
25. Afsaneh Najmabadi, Veiled Discourse-Unveiled Bodies, Feminist Studies
19, no. 3 (1993): 487518.
26. Najmabadi, Hazards, 65.
27. Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Gharbzadegi [Westoxication] (Tehran: Ravaq, 1962),
56. Al-e Ahmad does not advocate a return of women to domestic responsibili-
ties. Rather, he believed that the changes in womens status were cosmetic and
that in order to have meaningful gains women needed to enjoy equal opportuni-
ties with men and take part in fulfilling their social responsibilities. He contin-
ues: Until the day that the contribution of men and women are recognized in
society, they gain equal pay for their labor and women assume positions of respon-
sibility in society, and equality in its true material and spiritual meaning is not
established between men and women, womens emancipation remains an empty
slogan. It only would add to the masses of consumers of facial powder and lip-
stick, products of western industries. This is another face of gharbzadegi. What
is at stake is the leadership of the nation, the path on which women are not tak-
ing (57).
28. Ayatollah Montazeri, Kayhan, January 16, 1979, 3.
30. The law was enacted in 1967 and gave women more rights in divorce
and custody matters. Since its conception, the clergy by and large opposed its
basic premises, which many believed violated the Islamic views on womens role
in the family. To appease traditionalist clerics who remained skeptical of the rev-
olution and the promised Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini annulled the law
in February 1979. But in October of the same year, the Revolutionary Council
passed the Bill on Special Civil Courts, which restored the prerevolutionary ordi-
nances. Shortly after the Revolutionary Council passed the new bill, emphasiz-
ing the central role women played in the revolution, Khomeini called upon women
to think of marriage as a contract in which they could stipulate even the right to
initiate divorce. Accordingly, while the law instituted mens unilateral right to
divorce their wives, it also recognized in practice the right of citizens to include
provisions in the marriage contract that could undermine the same laws. In 1982
a ministerial order reinstated all the provisions of the 1967 law. See Ziba Mir-
Hosseini, Marriage on Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law (London: I.B.Tauris,
1993), 5456; and Schirazi, The Constitution of Iran, 217.
32. For a more detailed history of the Iranian Lefts position, see Haideh
Moghissi, Populism and Feminism in Iran: Womens Struggle in a Male-Defined
Revolutionary Movement (New York: St. Martins Press, 1994), 13958. Although
I disagree with Moghissis conclusions, there is good documentary evidence in
her narrative of womens protests during this period. Also see Mahnaz Matin and
Naser Mohajers invaluable two-volume collection of documents in Khizesh-e
zanan dar Esfand 1357 [Iranian womens uprising in March 1979] (Paris: Noqteh,
2013).
33. The statement of the National Union of Women, published in Jaha n-e
Novin 5 (March 29, 1979): 8 (my italics).
34. Ahmad Shamlou, the influential Iranian poet and cultural critic, founded
the magazine in the summer of 1979. It was shut down in May 1980 after the
publication of its thirty-sixth issue. The majority of the contributors to this lit-
erary and political magazine were Left-leaning intellectuals.
35. Diana, Gerayesh-e zanan beh sazman-dehi dar mobarezat-e ejtemaei
[Womens propensity toward organizing in social struggles), Keta b-e Jomeh 1,
no. 30 (1979): 41.
36. Cited in Nima Namdari, Dastan-e ejbari shodan-e hejab dar Iran: Gam-e
avval, chador bara-ye arusak-e farangi [The story of making Hejab compulsory:
First step, veil for the Western doll), http://www.meydaan.com/Showarticle.aspx
?arid=438.
37. Naser Takmil Homayun, Mikhastand zan-e Irani arusak farangi bashad
[They wanted the Iranian woman to become a Western doll], Kayhan, February
5, 1979, cited in Namdari, Hejab.
38. The nakedness of women was a common reference to fashionable
women who dressed in Western style and wore heavy makeup. The naked woman
was not only a concept limited to the political lexicon of the clerical Islamists. In
the moving account of his pilgrimage to Mecca, Khasi dar meiqat [Lost in the
crowd], 10th ed. (Tehran: Ferdows, 2005), Al-e Ahmad reports that in Saudi
Arabia he realized that gharbzadegi was not a plague only inflicting Iranians. He
writes that glossy magazines from Egypt and Lebanon were filled with stories of
tanks, drinking-wine, and naked women (48). Samad Behrangi (193967), a
Marxist social critic and influential writer of childrens literature, also uses the
same terminology to identify Western-looking women. He considered the
newly fashionable womens magazines to be a place for gossip about Western
movie stars and erotic secrets for women on how to attract men. See Kand-o ka vi
dar masael-e tarbiyati-ye Iran [An inquiry into the educational upbringing prob-
lems in Iran] (Tabriz: Mohammadi, 1965), 126.
39. Kayhan, no. 10656 (March 8, 1979): 2, cited in Namdari, Hejab.
41. Ibid.
42. She is using here Khomeinis famous expression for the need for unity:
unison of the word.
44. See a detailed report in Matin and Mohajer, Khizesh, 1:5196.
45. Kayhan, no. 10658 (March 11, 1979), reprinted in Matin and Mohajer,
Khizesh, 1:8182.
Khizesh, 1:82.
48. Eliz Sanasarian, The Womens Rights Movement in Iran: Mutiny, Appease-
ment, and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini (New York: Praeger, 1982), 117.
49. Ibid., 11719.
50. Ibid., 120.
Khizesh, 1:96.
54. For an earlier discussion of white womens burden in the South Asian
context, see Kumari Jayawardenas edited volume The White Womans Other Bur-
den: Western Women and South Asia during British Rule (New York: Routledge,
1995). For another thoughtful account of the colonial context of feminist soli-
darity with colonial subjects, see Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British
Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 18651915 (Chapel Hill: Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press, 1994), particularly chapters 5 and 6.
55. Kate Millett, Going to Iran (New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghe-
gan, 1982), 19.
56. Kate Millett in Iran to Aid Feminists; Calls Khomeini Chauvinist,
Chicago Tribune, March 12, 1979, 2.
57. Gayatri Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?, in Marxism and the Inter-
pretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: Univer-
sity of Illinois Press, 1988).
58. Almost half a century before Millett, another American woman, a Chris-
tian missionary named Ruth Frances Woodsmall, wrote: Undoubtedly the barom-
eter of social change in the Moslem world is the veil. Where the veil persists
without variation, the life of the Moslem woman is like the blank walled streets
of Bhopal, India, which afford no outlook from within and no contact from
without. Cited in Naghibi, Rethinking Global Sisterhood, 37. See chapter 3 of
this work for an insightful analysis of Kate Milletts journey.
59. bell hooks, Sisterhood: Political Solidarity between Women, Feminist
Review 23 (Summer 1986): 12538.
60. Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
(New York: Routledge, 1991), 155.
61. Millett, Going to Iran, 177. For a person who is so attentive to how oth-
ers pronounce her name, it is quite disturbing to read how, like the old colonial
habits, Millett reproduces the names of the characters in her narrative phoneti-
cally without any attempt to verify their correct spelling. Almost none of the
names of the people she refers to is spelled correctly. Not only does she show in
her narrative how Iranian actors exist only in relation to her, but in her con-
spicuous disregard for the correct spelling of their names she further marginal-
izes them. A few examples of her phonetic spelling: The famous Iranian poet
Siyavosh Kasraei appears as Sylvashroe Khasroe (78); Ayatollah Taleqani as
Tolerani (22); her contacts Taraneh as Terranie (189), Fereshteh as Fer-
dosheh (128), Hormoz as Hermoz, Niloufar as Nelufar (134), etc.
62. Meyda Yegenoglu, Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Ori-
entalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 95120.
63. For an insightful discussion on the topic, see Antoinette Burtons The
White Womens Burden: British Feminists and the Indian Woman, 1865
1915, Womens Studies International Forum 13, no. 4 (1990): 295308. Burton
argues that British feminists deliberately cultivated the civilizing responsibility
as their own modern womanly burden because it affirmed an emancipated role
for them in the imperial nation state (295).
64. Naghibi, Rethinking Global Sisterhood, 6061.
65. For a thorough discussion of Orientalist feminism, see Joseph Massad,
Women and/in Islam: The Rescue Mission of Western Liberal Feminism,
chapter 2 in Islam in Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
66. Title of a news report by Michael Burns, Baltimore Sun, March 27, 1979.
67. John Kifner, Irans Women Fought, Won, and Dispersed, New York
Times, March 16, 1979.
68. Ibid.
69. Jonathan Randal, Sexual Politics in Iran: Kate Millett Finds That Teh-
rans Feminists Are Not United, Washington Post, March 12, 1979 (my italics).
Despite the fact that Milletts press conference resembled a scene from a theater
of the absurd, it received considerable press coverage in the United States. All
the major newspapers ran stories about the event. Many wondered, without a sense
of irony, about Iranian women who showed no interest in associating themselves
with Millett and her entourage. In a story entitled Hassled, Heckled Kate Mil-
lett Not Leaving Iran, Yet, printed in the Los Angeles Times (March 16, 1979),
we learn that Milletts press conference was interrupted by a hostile Iranian
woman, who said: We dont need foreign women to come here to solve our
problems. She does not have the right to decide what is happening in Iran.
70. Randal, Sexual Politics in Iran.
71. Women March against Khomeini, Newsday, March 9, 1979, 13Q. This
report, as many others, repeated the same fiction that women were chanting
Down with Khomeini, something that was utterly inconceivable only a few
weeks after the revolution. Foes of Khomeini Focusing on Issue of Womens
Rights was another front-page headline in the New York Times by Youssef Ibra-
him, published on March 12, 1979. Khomeinis Ballot Attacked as Iranian Women
Continue Protests was the headline in the Irish Times on March 12, 1979.
72. Michael Burns, Thanks, but No Thanks, Baltimore Sun, March 27, 1979.
73. Betsy Amin-Arsala, In Iran, to Veil or Not to Veil? New York Times,
April 21, 1979. The author is introduced as a Peace Corps volunteer in Afghan-
istan in the 1960s who says that while she is not technically a practicing Mus-
lim, she married that world and has been a participant-observer for 15 years.
74. Mangol Bayat, The Iranian Womans Long March, Newsday, March
29, 1979, 94.
75. Judith Cummings, Demonstrations in City Back Iranian Womens
Rights, New York Times, March 16, 1979.
76. In May 1979 the Village Voice revealed that Steinem and the powerful
sponsors of Ms. Magazine pressured Random House to delete the entire chapter
in which it was documented that Steinem worked for the CIA beginning in
1958, spying on Marxist students in Europe and disrupting their meetings.
Steinem has repeatedly defended her collaboration with the CIA, and argues: I
was happy to find some liberals in government in those days who were far-
sighted and cared enough to get Americans of all political views to the festival,
she told the New York Times. And to the Washington Post, she said: In my experi-
ence the agency was completely different from its image: it was liberal, nonvio-
lent and honorable. See Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA
Played America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 14648.
77. Claude Servan-Schreiber, Nous sommes toutes des Iraniennes, cited in Matin
and Mohajer, Khizesh, 2:87.
78. Laila Said, A Bridge through Time: A Memoir (New York: Summit Books,
1985), 219.
79. Burns, Thanks, but No Thanks.
80. Ibid.
81. For a detailed account of the itinerary of the delegation, see Servan-
Schreiber, Nous sommes toutes des Iraniennes, 8695. The four members who made
the trip were Katia Kaupp, a Le Nouvel Observateur journalist; Maria Antonietta
Macciocchi; Micheline Pelletier- Latts, an independent photographer; and
Claire Brire, a former Libration reporter.
82. Interview with Claire Brire, in Matin and Mohajer, Khizesh, 250.
83. Ibid., 251.
84. Observing the hejab in public became compulsory three years later.
85. Gregory Jaynes, Future Veiled for Iranian Women, Chicago Tribune,
May 6, 1979 (my italics).
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid.
88. Michel Foucault, Open Letter to Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, in
Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 261.
89. Ibid., 263.
91. Gayatri Spivak, Three Womens Texts and a Critique of Imperialism,
Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1986): 24361.
92. Kifner, Irans Women.
93. Ibid.
94. For a discussion on changes in abortion rights and womens inheri-
tance, see Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Womens Rights, Sharia Law, and the
Secularization of Islam in Iran, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Soci-
ety 26, no. 3 (2013): 23753.
95. I have outlined and discussed all these developments in religious knowl-
edge in my book Islam and Dissent.
96. The topic is discussed in Lydia Sargents edited volume Women and
Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: South End Press, 1981). Although contributors to Sargents vol-
ume primarily debate the issue from a neo-Marxist view and try to delink womens
emancipation from production and labor processes, they share with liberal fem-
inists the sentiment of the universality of womens bodies and feminism as the
site for unmediated political expression. For a critique, see Judith Butlers semi-
nal Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge,
1999), chapter 1.
97. Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson, Social Criticism without Philos-
ophy: An Encounter between Feminism and Postmodernism, Theory, Culture, Soci-
ety 5, no. 2 (1988): 384.
98. Roksana Bahramitash, Islamic Fundamentalism and Womens Economic
Role: The Case of Iran, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 16,
no. 4 (2003): 55268.
99. Bahramitash, Market Fundamentalism versus Religious Fundamental-
ism, 3346.
100. For a detailed analysis of the politics of reproduction in Iran, see Homa
Hoodfars various studies, including: Volunteer Health Workers in Iran as Social
Activists: Can Governmental Non-governmental Organizations Be Agent of
Democratization?, Women Living under Muslim Laws, Occasional Papers no.
10, 1998; (with Samad Assadpour) Where Religion Is No Obstacle: The Poli-
tics of Making a Successful Population Policy in the Islamic Republic of Iran,
Studies in Family Planning 31, no. 1 (2000): 117; Devices and Desires: Popula-
tion Policy and Gender Roles in the Islamic Republic, in Political Islam, ed. Joel
Beinin and Joe Stork, 22033 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
5. Was ist Aufklrung?

1. Foucault, Open Letter, 261.
2. Broyelle and Broyelle, Philosophers Dreaming, 24849.
3. Claudie Broyelle, Jacques Broyelle, and Evelyne Tschirhart, China: A
Second Look, trans. Sarah Matthews (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press,
1980).
4. Richard Curt Kraus, Review of Broyelle, Broyelle, and Tschirhart,
China: A Second Look, Journal of Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (1981), 573.
5. Foucaults Response to Claudie and Jacques Broyelle, in Afary and
Anderson, Foucault, 24950.
6. Immanuel Kant, Was ist Aufklrung?, in Michel Foucault, The Politics
of Truth, trans. Lysa Hochroth and Catherine Porter (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e),
2007), 29.
7. Michel Foucault, What Is Critique?, in The Politics of Truth, 47.
8. John Rajchman, Enlightenment Today, introduction to The Politics
of Truth, 25.
9. For a background context, see Paul Rabinows introduction to his edited
volume of Foucaults Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth (New York: New Press, 1997),
xxxxi.
10. Michel Foucault, The Masked Philosopher, in The Politics of Truth, 322.
11. Ibid., 323.
12. Michel Foucault, For an Ethics of Discomfort, in The Politics of Truth, 122.
13. There is a large body of literature on Foucaults late transformation and
his so-called death-bed confession of his earlier mistakes. Afary and Anderson
interpret Foucaults short essay on the Enlightenment according to this view (I
shall discuss this later). Among more explicit advocates of Foucaults recantation
are Eric Paras, Foucault 2.0: Beyond Power and Knowledge (New York: Other Press,
2006); Geoff Danaher, Tony Schirato, and Jen Webb, Understanding Foucault (New
York: Sage, 2000); Lois McNay, Foucault and Feminism (New York: Polity Press,
1992); Timothy OLeary, Foucault and the Art of Ethics (New York: Continuum,
2002). For an insightful critique of the conventional periodization of Foucaults
oeuvre, see Jeffrey Nealon, Foucault beyond Foucault: Power and Its Intensification
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007).
14. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage, [1966] 1973),
387. His earlier writings are also marked by a shift from his focus on the archeol-
ogy of knowledge to the development of his genealogy of the modern individual
as subject in The Order of Discourse, in Untying the Text, ed. Robert Young (Lon-
don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, [1970] 1981); Discipline and Punish: The Birth of
the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, [1975] 1995); and the first volume of The
History of Sexuality (New York: Vintage Books, [1976] 1990).
15. Similar to his theory of power, Foucault did not have a hierarchical
conception of resistance. He saw power as generative and not something that
could be abolished, but at the same time, power creates its own resistance. Fou-
cault, Discipline and Punish, 73.
16. Alain Badiou, Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy, trans.
Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens (New York: Continuum, 2005), 6.
17. Gary Gutting, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Foucault (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994).
18. Roy Boyne, Foucault and Derrida: The Other Side of Reason (London: Unwin
Hyman, 1990), 144.
19. Jana Sawicki, Foucault, Feminism, and Questions of Identity, in Gut-
ting, Cambridge Companion, 28687.
20. Michel Foucault, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, in The Essen-
tial Works of Foucault, 19541984, ed. J. D. Faubion, vol. 2, Aesthetics, Method,
and Epistemology (New York: Free Press, 2000), 452.
21. Michel Foucault, The Subject and Power, in Faubion, ed., Essential
Works, 3:327.
22. Charles Taylor, Foucault on Freedom and Truth, Political Theory 12,
no. 2 (1984): 152.
23. Jrgen Habermas, Taking Aim at the Heart of the Present, in Foucault:
A Critical Reader, ed. David Couzens Hoy (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 93.
24. Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contempo-
rary Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), 29.
25. Nancy Hartsock, Foucault on Power: A Theory for Women?, in
Feminism and Postmodernism, ed. L. Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1990),
159.
26. Michel Foucault, A Powder Keg Called Islam, in Afary and Ander-
son, Foucault, 240 (my italics).
27. For Foucaults discussion of the universal and specific intellectuals,
see Truth and Power, in Rabinow, The Foucault Reader, 5175.
28. Michel Foucault, Power and Sex, in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Inter-
views and Other Writings, ed. L. Kritzman (New York: Routledge, 1988), 124.
31. Foucault, Truth and Power, 59.
32. Michel Foucault, What Is Enlightenment?, in Rabinow, The Foucault
Reader, 50.
33. Michel Foucault, What Is Revolution?, in Rabinow, The Politics of
Truth, 86.
34. Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? (London: Verso,
1984), 11213.
35. Foucault, What Is Revolution?, 94.
36. Rabinow, introduction, xviii.
37. Foucault, What Is Revolution?, 85.
38. Foucault, What Is Enlightenment?, cited and italicized in Afary and
Anderson, Foucault, 137.
39. See Rajchman, Enlightenment Today, 18. There are five other essays
on enlightenment in The Politics of Truth: What Is Critique?, What Is Revo-
lution?, What Is Enlightenment?, For an Ethics of Discomfort, and What
Our Present Is.
40. Rajchman, Enlightenment Today, 22.
41. Anita Sepp, Foucault, Enlightenment, and the Aesthetics of the Self,
Contemporary Aesthetics 2 (2004), http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/
pages/article.php?articleID=244.
42. Foucault, On the Ethics of Discomfort, 124. This essay later was pub-
lished as the preface to Jean Daniels LEre des rupture (Paris: Grasset, 1979).
43. Foucault, What Is Enlightenment?, 114.
44. The most relevant discussion of the end of revolutions was put for-
ward by Franois Furet in his widely debated book in 1978, called Interpreting
the French Revolution, trans. Elborg Forester (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981).
45. Michel Foucault, cited in Rajchman, Enlightenment Today, 11.
47. Michel Foucault, Subjectivity and Truth, in Rabinow, The Politics of
Truth, 15253.
49. Ibid., 39.
50. Unmndigkeit and Aufklrung have largely been appropriated in civili-
zational/colonial contexts. Garrett Green argues that the English translation of
Unmndigkeit as immaturity subtly shifts the underlying analogy from a legal
to a psychological context. What Kant had in mind with the concept Unmn-
digkeit, Green posits, was not only being a minor, but more generally, a state
of being in need of representation or guardianship. For example, in his com-
mentary on the fair sex, Kant viewed women as unmndig, and therefore, prime
candidates for enlightenment. Garrett Green, Modern Culture Comes of Age:
Hamann versus Kant on the Root of Metaphor of Enlightenment, in What Is
Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, ed.
James Schmidt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 291305.
52. Ibid., 42.
53. Ibid., 43.
54. Michel Foucault, Kant on Enlightenment and Revolution, trans. Colin
Gordon, Economy and Society 15, no. 1 (1983): 8896, 94.
55. Michel Foucault, The Mythical Leader of the Iranian Revolt, in Afary
and Anderson, Foucault, 220.
56. Michel Foucault, Truth, Power, Self, in Technologies of the Self, ed. Luther
Martin et al. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 9.
57. Miller, Passion, 312.
58. They prefer Millers intellectual genealogy of Foucault and the way he
links Foucaults personal life to his philosophy. From Miller they also borrow
the notion that Foucaults interest in the Iranian Revolution stemmed from his
fascination with death. Afary and Anderson, Foucault, 7
59. Miller, Passion, 312. Miller situates Foucaults last essay, Is It Useless to
Revolt?, written in May 1979, within a language of hyperbole and sensational-
ism about the casualties of the postrevolutionary summary trials during its first
three months. The point is not to discount the magnitude of these summary
executions, but one needs to situate these atrocities in the context of postrevo-
lutionary politics, not merely as Khomeinis plan. The majority of secular leftist
groups demanded swift justice in Jacobin-style public trials, and hundreds of
thousands demonstrated in front of Khomeinis residence and called for the
execution of military chiefs and SAVAK operatives. At the time Foucault wrote
his essay, two hundred high-ranking officers and cabinet members of the old
regime had been executedhomosexuals had not been dispatched to firing squads
nor had adulterers been stoned to death. Stoning for adultery was added to the
Islamic Penal Code much later, in 1983. It is true that during the reign of terror
from 1981 to 1985, and later in 1989, thousands of members of opposition groups
were executed in the Iranian prisons. But one should not read the dynamics of
the postrevolutionary power struggle and the Islamic regimes bloody project of
the consolidation of power back into the revolutionary movement that toppled
monarchy in Iran. It was this movement that Foucault wrote about, not its post-
revolutionary institutionalization.
60. Miller, Passion, 314.
61. While mostly rebuked by Foucault scholars, the book received glowing
reviews in almost all major newspapers, news magazines like the Nation and New
Republic, and other media. There were few notable exceptions to this overwhelm-
ing celebratory response. See Wendy Brown, The Passion of Michel Foucault,
difference 5, no. 2 (1993): 14050. Also, on Millers misconception of Foucaults
ethics, see William Connolly, Beyond Good and Evil: The Ethical Sensibility
of Michel Foucault, Political Theory 21, no. 3 (1993): 36589. Connolly wrote
this article as a response to one of the prepublication presentations Miller deliv-
ered on his book.
62. For a good discussion of the continuity between Foucaults conception
of the subject in his early and late work, see Sebastian Harrer, The Theme of
Subjectivity in Foucaults Lecture Series LHermneutique du Sujet, Foucault
Studies 2 (May 2005): 7596. Harrer argues: A popular view on [Foucaults] late
period holds that at some point his oeuvre, Foucault turned away from analyz-
ing the power/knowledge mechanisms that fabricate subjects, and turned to ana-
lyzing how subjects constitute themselves. This view sometimes implies the idea
that these notions, constitution and fabrication, refer to two distinct phenom-
ena (76).
64. Kant, Was ist Aufklrung?, 31.
65. Ibid., 32.
66. Ibid., 33.
67. Foucault, What Is Critique?, 78.
68. Ibid., 79 (my italics).
69. Ibid., 47.
70. Michel Foucault, The Ethics of the Concern for the Self as a Practice
of Freedom, in Rabinow, Ethics, 282.
71. Ibid.
72. Emmanuel Levinass conception of the ethical subject is primarily a
critique of Heideggers ontological philosophy. He believes that rather than
being an ontological realization of its authenticity, the self must constitute itself
through interaction with others as an ethical subject. Ethics, Levinas argues,
must be liberated from an ontological imperialism that has transformed human-
kind into the position of slaves to an anonymous Being. See Levinas, Totality
and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 4446. To affirm
the priority of Being, over the existent, Levinas remarks, is to subordinate the
relation with someone who is an existent (the ethical relation) to a relation with
the Being of the existent, which, impersonal, permits the apprehension, the dom-
ination of the existent and subordinates justice to freedom (45). For a precise
and illuminating critique of Levinas, see Steven Gans, Ethics or Ontology:
Levinas and Heidegger, Philosophy Today 16 (Summer 1972): 11721. For a
stimulating discussion of the topic, see Karl Simms, ed., Ethics and the Subject,
special volume of Critical Studies 8 (1997).
73. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Iron, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), xiv.
74. Foucault, Ethics, 28889.
75. Ibid., 289.
76. David Hiley uses this phrase to identify the problem he associates with
Foucaults critique of power/knowledge normativity. Hiley points out the con-
tradictions in Foucaults rejection of the binary opposition of individualsociety
and offers an insightful reading of how Foucault situates himself vis--vis the
Enlightenment. David Hiley, Foucault and the Tradition of Enlightenment,
Philosophy and Social Criticism 11 (1985): 6383. Also, for an engaging assessment
of the problem of politics in Foucaults radical pragmatism, see Jon Simons,
Foucault and the Political (London: Routledge, 1995), particularly chapters 69.
77. Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collge
de France, 19811982, ed. Frdric Gros (New York: Picador, 2005), 59.
78. Foucault, Hermeneutics, 189.
79. Frdric Gros, Course Context, in Foucault, Hermeneutics, 525.
82. Foucaults lectures were published in a volume called Fearless Speech, ed.
Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001).
83. Foucault, Fearless Speech, 16970.
84. Ibid., 19.
85. Thomas Flynn, review of Fearless Speech, in Notre Dame Philosophical
Reviews 4 (2002), http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=1223.
230 | Notes to Conclusion
86. Thomas Goodnight, Parrhesia: The Aesthetics of Arguing Truth to
Power, in Dissensus and the Search for Common Ground, ed. H. V. Hansen (Wind-
sor: OSSA, 2007), 5.
87. Foucault, Fearless Speech, 13.
88. Rabinow, introduction, xviii.
89. Hannah Arendt quotes this passage from Heideggers lectures in Mar-
tin Heidegger at Eighty, in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, ed. M. Murray
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 297.
90. James Bernauer and Michael Mahon, The Ethics of Michel Foucault,
in Gutting, Cambridge Companion, 14158. When he was criticized, they
argue, for his initial sympathetic analysis of the revolution, Foucault refused to
dismiss the moral achievement of those who made the revolution when it resulted
in new political repression (144). Bernauer and Mahon recognize the link be-
tween Foucaults conception of ethics and his political views on the revolution-
ary movement in Iran. But this chapter is a rare exception.
91. Frdric Gros, Course Context, 509.
93. Ibid., 1416.
94. Ibid., 19.
95. Rabinow, introduction, xxiii.
Conclusion
1. Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel and Haiti, Critical Inquiry 26, no. 4 (Sum-
mer 2000): 82165.
2. Michel Foucault, Irani-ha cheh royai dar sar darand? (What are the
Iranians dreaming about?), translated into Persian by Hossein Masumi Hamed-
ani (Tehran: Hermes, 1998).
3. Buck-Morss, Hegel and Haiti, 83738.
4. Ibid., 844.
5. Ibid., 837.
index
Abrahamian, Ervand, 102, 202n.21, Al-e Ahmad, Jalal, 12324; Daneshvar,

209n.6, 210n.16, 213n.49 widow of, 12931; on westoxication,
Abu Bakr, 211n.25 12324, 218n.27, 219n.38
Abu Dharr Ghaffari, 88, 92, 210n.18 Alessandrini, Anthony, 197n.4
Abu-Lughod, Lila, 215n.2 Algar, Hamid, 205n.1
activism, pessimistic, 7072 Algeria, revolution in: Fanon on
Adib-Moghaddam, Arshin, 211n.30 revolution in, 72, 73; Shabestary
Adorno, Theodor, 208n.53 on utility of the veil during, 129;
adultery, stoning for, 228n.59 Shariati on French atrocities in, 89
Afary, Janet, 56, 75, 197n.6, 197n.8, Ali, Ayaan Hirsi, 10
209n.12; earlier work on Iranian Ali, Imam, 79, 80, 88
constitutional revolution, 7677; Ali, Tariq, 12, 199n.23
on Islamism, 56, 16, 7682, 87, Alleg, Henri, 89
104; misreading of Foucault and Almond, Ian, 197n.7
misrepresentation of revolutionary al-Qaeda, 6; Afary and Anderson on
events, 56, 8, 1315, 75, 16869, rise of, 14; American strategic
173, 209n.1, 225n.13 (see also interests giving rise to, 13; post-
Foucault and the Iranian Revolution); 9/11 Enlightenment moralists
on roots of 9/11, 6, 1316, characterization of, 12
200n.36 Al-Sahhar, Joudah, 210n.18
Afghanistan: Islamic Republics assis- Althusser, Louis, 29
tance in agreement on transitional Amal (Lebanese newspaper), 124
government of, 105, 201n.44; ambiguity: as core element of
Taliban regime in, 13, 16, 105, Foucaults philosophy, 173; in
200n.44 vision of future, revolutionary
Ahmed, Leila, 216n.8 movement and, 5859, 61,
Ahouei, Mahdi, 212n.35 16566, 189
Alavid Shiism, 25, 62, 86, 87, 92 Amin-Arsala, Betsy, 222n.73
231
232 | Index
Amini, Ali, 98 Asharf, Hamid, 21
Amnesty International, 2122 Ashura: Muharram rituals of reenact-
Amui, Bahman Ahmadi, 213n.41 ment of events of, 83, 8587,
Amuzegar, Jamshid, 27, 46 209n.1011
Anatomy of Revolution, The (Brinton), Assadpour, Samad, 216n.7
111 Assembly of Experts, 101
Anderson, Kevin, 197n.6, 197n.8; Association of Iranian Lawyers, 29
on Islamism, 56, 16, 7682, 87, Association of Militant Clergy, 49;
104; misreading of Foucault and manifesto, 40, 204n.43
misrepresentation of revolutionary Association of Militant Women, 135
events, 56, 8, 1315, 75, 16869, Association of Women Jurists, 135
173, 209n.1, 225n.13. See also Association of Womens Awakening,
Foucault and the Iranian Revolution 135
anthrax attacks, 11, 199n.21 atrocities of Islamic Republic. See
anti-imperialist struggle: as frame to reign of terror
address womens issues, 122, 126 Attacks on U.S. Challenge the
27, 12930; of Muslim and Marxist Perspective of Postmodern True
revolutionaries, 5253, 7879, 81; Believers (Rothstein), 15
paradigm of, 11, 12 attitude, modernity as, 17172
anti-Semitism, Khomeini and, 9596, Aufklrung. See Enlightenment
212n.34 Ausgang (a way out), Foucaults
aporia, 69 emphasis on, 171
Arab uprisings of 201011 (Arab autonomous subject, 164, 169;
Spring), 14; discourse of historical womens autonomy, feminism and,
inevitabilities regarding, 24; 154, 156
emergence of, 2; naming of, signif- Avicenna, 92
icance of, 2; similarity with and ayatollahs: caution in critique of
differences between Iranian Revo- Shahs regime, 42, 4546, 47;
lution of 197879 and, 14 protest against anti-Khomeini
Aragon, Louis, 29 op-ed in Ettelaat (1978), 37;
Archeology of Knowledge (Foucault), Shariatis revolutionary discourse
107 and, 25, 87, 89; statements
Arendt, Hannah, 230n.89 condemning communism after
Aristotle, 187 Qom protests of 1975, 24. See also
Ark Mosque in Tehran: memorial specific ayatollahs
service for Mustafa Khomeini at,
3233 Badiou, Alain, 3, 163, 197n.2, 225n.16
Aron, Raymond, 14, 200n.32 Bahaism, 9596
ascesis (askesis), labor of, 178 Bahonar, Mohammad Javad, 45;
asceticism, 176 assassination of, 103
Index | 233
Bahramitash, Roksana, 216n.7, bin Laden, Osama, 14, 15; Iranian
224n.9899 government and, 16, 105
Baltimore Sun, 146 Black Friday, massacre of (September
Bani Sadr, Abolhasan, 56 1978), 4753; declaration of
Bani Sadr, Fathollah, 213n.41 martial law and, 4951; number
Baqi, Emadaddin, 202n.15, 203n.29, of people killed during, 51, 57,
205n.3 205n.3; rallies leading up to,
Baraheni, Reza, 22, 202n.6 4849, 51; as turning point in
Barnett, Rubin, 214n.56 revolutionary movement, 57
Barthes, Roland, 29 Blanchet, Pierre, 65, 84
Bataille, Georges, 63 Blee, Kathleen, 216n.10
Bathai, Teifour, 79 Boissonnas, Sylvina, 137
Batmanglich, Sara, 214n.56 Book of Friday, The (literary and polit-
Baudelaire, Charles, 171, 172 ical magazine), 12627
Baudrillard, Jean, 1415, 200n.34 Boyne, Roy, 163, 225n.18
Bayat, Mangol, 222n.74 Brire, Claire, 42, 65, 84, 15051,
Bazargan, Mehdi, 3233, 37, 45, 204n.48, 223n.8182; on Foucaults
203n.28, 205n.57; entreaty to Kho- enthusiasm for Iranian Revolution,
meini to slow pace of revolution, 5859
46, 98; Foucaults open letter to, Brinton, Crane, 111
153, 159; provisional government British influence in clerical establish-
of, 100, 119; on revolution against ment, commonplace belief about,
the revolution, 119, 217n.14 36, 37
BBC, 202n.16; Khomeinis interview Brown, Norman O., 215n.3
with (1978), 97 Brown, Wendy, 228n.61
Becker, Hans, 26, 202n.16 Broyelle, Claudie and Jacque, 104,
becoming: freedom as ceaseless act 16061, 213n.50, 224n.3
of, 176; revolutionary, 71, 167 Buck-Morss, Susan, 18788, 230n.1
Beheshti, Ayatollah, 101, 103 Burns, Michael, 221n.66, 222n.72
Behnoud, Masoud, 205n.61 Burton, Antoinette, 220n.54, 221n.63
Behrangi, Samad, 219n.38 Bush, George W.: and Bush adminis-
Behrooz, Maziar, 201n.5 tration, 2, 105, 200n.44, 213n.55
Behshahr Textile Factory: strike at, 45 Butler, Judith, 199n.30, 223n.96
Benhabib, Seyla, 11, 12, 199n.2122
Berkeley: Foucaults last lectures in, CAIFI, 136, 139, 140
18082; situating, 18285 Cambridge Companion to Foucault, The
Berman, Marshall, 13, 199n.24 (edited by Gutting), 163, 183
Berman, Paul, 1045, 213n.5455 Cantor, Jay, 215n.3
Bernauer, James, 206n.26, 230n.90 capitalism: nullification of Family
Bill on Special Civil Courts, 218n.30 Protection Law and, 127; women
234 | Index
as embodiment of westoxication Cold War mentality, support for
under, 12324, 218n.27, 219n.38 crackdown on Qom protests of
Carrette, Jeremy R., 63, 206n.23, 1975 and, 24
206n.26, 214n.61 collective will, Foucaults witnessing
Carter, Jimmy, 20; administration, of, 19, 5758, 61, 166
2021; human rights policy, 21; Collge de France, Foucaults lectures
Shahs visit to White House, at, 9, 163, 17880, 181
protest against, 30; state visit in colonialism: colonial anxiety of
Tehran (1977), 35 diffrance, 143; colonial roots of
Cedar Revolution of 2005, 2 Milletts mission to Iran, 13739,
Central Treaty Organization 141, 220n.54; female body as site
(CENTO), 204n.49 of negotiating modernity and its
chador (the veil), 144, 218n.20; boundaries in Iran and, 123;
hejab vs., 124, 128, 129, 13031; nullification of Family Protection
Iranian womens view of, 155; Law and, 127; as real force of
Milletts and Western womens emasculation for Iranian men, 122;
interpretation of practice of, red and black, 3647
13739, 221n.68; subjugation colonization of revolutionary ideals
as symbolic meaning of, 13839, by postrevolutionary realpolitik,
14647 xxi, 72, 189
Challenge of Islam: The Prophetic Comit International du Droit des
Tradition, The (Brown), 215n.3 Femmes (CIDF), 14852
Charlie Hebdo (French weekly), 10 Committee on Artistic and Intellectual
Chatterjee, Kingshuk, 210n.16 Freedom in Iran (CAIFI), 136, 139,
Chatterjee, Partha, 199n.26 140
Chen, Weigang, 201n.2 Communist Manifesto (Marx), 13
Chicago Tribune, 152 communist opposition to Shah:
China: A Second Look (Broyelle, decapitation of, 21; Islamic Marx-
Broyelle and Tschirhart), 16061 ism concept, 4142; Marxist Lefts
Chinese Revolution, the Broyelles response to Khomeini and revolu-
on, 160 tionary movement, 5253, 190;
Choisir (feminist magazine), 154 postrevolution executions, support
Chomsky, Noam, 5, 106 of, 11920; provisional government
Christianity, treatment in classical and, 118; Qom protests of 1975
Islamic terms, 95 and, 2324; red and black colonial-
CIA: coup against Mosaddeq (1953) ism, 3647; revolutionary move-
and, 25, 91, 132; Islamic Republic ment characterized as communist
cooperation with, 105; Steinem conspiracy by Shahs regime, 39,
and, 148, 222n.76 4142; Tudeh Party, 30, 36, 43,
CIDF, 14852 118, 217n.12
Index | 235
Connolly, William, 69, 208n.51, de Beauvoir, Simone, 29, 89, 141,
228n.61 142, 150, 151, 153; formation of
Constitution: of Islamic Republic, Comit International du Droit des
100101, 118, 212n.41; of 19067, Femmes, 148, 149
97, 98, 99 Debray, Rgis, 217n.15
Constitutional Assembly, 101 Deleuze, Gilles, 67, 167, 208n.63,
Constitutional Revolution of 19056, 226n.34; on history and revolu-
46, 7677, 212n.32 tions, 71
Cooper, Melinda, 206n.16 Der Derian, James, 14, 15, 199n.30
Corbin, Henry, 56, 65, 73 Derrida, Jacques, 69, 207n.50
Corriere della Sera (Italian daily), desert contemplations (kaviriyat) of
feature written by Foucault for, Shariati, 91
55, 6061, 66 Des femmes en mouvement (newspaper),
critical philosophy, Foucault on, 154
17071, 184; courage at center of Deuxime Rtour de Chine (Broyelle,
Foucaults conceptions of critique, Broyelle and Tschirhart), 16061
174, 176; ideal critical discourse, 162 developmentalist discourse: Foucaults
cultural relativism: Afary and Ander- rejection of, 58; Shahs moderniza-
sons misreading of Foucault and, tion schemes and, 58, 6061, 77
56, 10511; antitotalitarian mani- Dialectic of Enlightenment, 208n.53
festo rejecting, in reaction to Danish diffrance, colonial anxiety of, 143
cartoon affair, 9; intellectuals view- Discipline and Punish (Foucault), 107
ing 9/11 as irrefutable indictment Discourse and Truth (seminar),
of, 14, 15, 199n.29 18082; situating, 18285
culture, knowledge beyond, 15 divorce, womens rights in, 218n.30.
Cumings, Bruce, 1011, 198n.1618 See also Family Protection Law
Cummings, Judith, 222n.75 (1967)
Cynics, limitation of in call for care Dobbins, James, 105, 214n.57
of the self, 17980 domesticity, feminist theory of patri-
archy and, 156
Dahri, Goli, 152 Dying Colonialism (Fanon), 73
Dallmayr, Fred, 15, 200n.37
Danaher, Geoff, 225n.13 Eastern Europe revolutions of 1989, 2
Daneshian, Karamat, 79 education of women, 157
Daneshvar, Simin, 12931 Effe (magazine), 141
Daniel, Jean, 169 Egypt: liberal discourse of Arab
Danish cartoon affair, antitotalitarian Spring and, 34; military coup
manifesto published in reaction to, (2013) in, 3, 4
910, 198n.14 Elghanian, Habib: execution of,
Davani, Ali, 203n.39 11920
236 | Index
employment of women, 157 revolt as ethical concern, 70;
Enayat, Mahmoud, 27, 202n.21 situating Foucaults later writings
Enlightenment: as both necessary on, 18285, 19192, 230n.90;
and impossible, Horkheimer and spirituality and the ethical subject,
Adorno on, 208n.53; enlightenment 17380, 189, 228n.62
as critical attitude in the present, ethnic minorities, Khomeini and,
16970, 184; Foucaults criticism of 9697, 212n.34
Kantian, 164, 165, 169, 17172, Ettelaat (state newspaper): Iran and
191; Foucaults later writings as the Red and Black Colonialism
revisionist reading of ethics of, 183; editorial in, 3637
Haitian Revolution as crucible for Euripides, 181
ideals of French, 188; interpretation Eurocentrism, xi
of Arab Spring as discovery of, in Europe: revolutions of 1848 in, 2, 3
Arab world, 3; Kants definition of, Evin Prison (Tehran): execution of
revolutionary Iran as instance of leaders of opposition to Shah in, 21
essence of, 161, 169; Kants notion exceptionality of 9/11, struggle to
of public and private reason and, define case for, 1015, 198n.20,
17476; post-9/11 Enlightenment 199n.21
moralists, 12, 1516; rationality, executions in Iran, postrevolution,
13, 1517, 111, 169; rationality, 19920. See also reign of terror
critics on fallacies of abandoning,
121; rationality, Foucaults critical Fadaian, 42, 118, 119, 201n.5; killing
view of, 17, 111, 16263, 170, 172, of leadership, 21; postrevolution
174, 188, 191, 192; rationality, executions, support of, 120; on
global and radical emancipatory provisional governments amnesty
politics associated with, 170; ratio- plan, 11819
nality, universal, 5, 6, 12, 15, 16; Fadaian-e Khalq (The Devotees of
as Universal Referent, 5, 6, 121 People), 201, 208n.60
Entezam, Amir Abbas, 134 family planning and population con-
Ere des rupture, L (Daniel), 16970 trol program under Islamic Repub-
eros (love), movement of, 178 lic, 15758, 224n.100
Eshraqi, Hojjat al-Islam, 129 Family Protection Law (1967), 125,
Esposito, John, 104, 213n.52 132; abolition of, 122, 125, 127,
Etemadzadeh, Mahmoud, 202n.19 128, 218n.30
ethics: as act of self-creation, 17677; Fanon, Frantz, 7274, 208n.65,
care of the self as ethical imperative, 210n.16; limited knowledge of
63, 66, 173, 17677; Levinass con- Islam and Algerian society, 73; new
ception of ethical subject, 17677, Man of, 72
229n.72; price paid to become eth- Farabi, al, 92
ical subject, 17778; significance of Farrokh, Nasrin, 144, 146, 155
Index | 237
fascism, Islamism and, 1045 229n.77, 230n.2; Afary and Ander-
fatwa against Rushdie, 105 son on, 56, 8, 1315, 75, 16869,
Fearless Speech (Foucault), 229n.82. 173, 209n.1, 225n.13 (see also Fou-
See also parrhesia (fearless speech) cault and the Iranian Revolution);
feminist politics, 8, 111, 13558, antiteleological genealogy of, 58,
19091; female body as universal 1089, 173, 189; Atoussa H.s
referent for womens emancipatory critique of, Foucaults response to,
politics, 15455, 223n.96; feminist 115, 161; Atoussa H.s critique of,
internationalism, 154; feminist in An Iranian Woman Writes,
premonitions and womens status 11314; as belated liberal or unre-
under Islamic Republic, 15558, pentant philosopher of the present,
19091, 224n.100; Iranian womens 16873, 185; on collective will, 19,
groups rejection of foreign inter- 5758, 61, 166; course of reading
ventionism, 14453, 222n.69; on Islam and Iranian history,
Milletts visit to Iran, 13543; 5557; essays on Iranian Revolution,
modern-yet-modest, Iranian xi, 47, 8, 1617, 5972, 153;
feminist view as, 123; Second Wave essays on Iranian Revolution, as
feminism during 1970s, 154, journalism about ideas, 60; essays
15657; Western white womens on Iranian Revolution, main thrust
interventionism and, 13543, of critique of, 19, 5859, 75, 76,
19091; womens protests against 16062, 200n.36; Fanonian predic-
mandatory hejab during Interna- ament of, 7274; gendered ambiva-
tional Womens Day (1979), 8, lence toward question of rights
12122, 128, 14850, 151, 190. and civil liberties, 8, 153, 15455;
See also Millett, Kate; women grievance against French intellec-
Feminist Revolution (Redstockings), tuals, 16162; indictment as main
148 poststructuralist culprit of cultural
Fichte, Johann G., 187 relativism, 56, 10511; on irre-
Finlayson, Gordon, 208n.53 ducibility of uprisings, 84, 159; on
Fischer, Michael, 211n.29 Islamic government, 6667, 1012,
Flynn, Thomas, 229n.85 115, 159, 165; on Kants notion of
F Magazine, 154 public and private reason, 17476;
Foucault, Michel, ix, 205n.3, 205n.6, last lectures, situating, 18285,
206n.8, 206n.11, 206n.14, 206n.19, 19192, 230n.90; later writings on
206n.22, 206n.25, 207n.2829, ethics and spirituality, common
207n.34, 208n.55, 210n.11, misinterpretations of, 67, 160,
212n.40, 213n.51, 214n.60, 16369, 17374, 18385; later
214n.6267, 215n.69, 223n.88, writings on ethics and spirituality,
224n.7, 225n.1015, 225n.2021, effect of Iranian Revolution on,
226n.2633, 227n.5456, 228n.70, 163, 168, 17273, 176, 178, 180,
238 | Index
18285; on liberal constitutionalist analysis, 111; misreading of
solution as untenable, 99; misread- Foucault in, 7576, 10511;
ing of, 7576, 10511, 16467, misrepresentation of Shii rituals
225n.13; nihilism of, criticism for, and Ali Shariatis Islamist political
69, 72, 1089, 164; open letter to ideology, 8593, 212n.34; as revi-
Bazargan, 153, 159; Orientalism sionist history, 7578; secular versus
of, 5, 19, 107, 197n.7; pessimistic Islamist politics in, 7682
activism, paradoxical notion of, Fourest, Caroline, 10
7072; political spirituality, concept Frankfurt School, 69
of, xi, 1, 6, 8, 19, 62, 6367, 72, Fraser, Nancy, 69, 156, 165, 207n.49,
7374, 75, 108, 117, 161, 188, 189; 224n.97, 226n.24
power and governmentality, con- Frederick II, 159
ception of, 6970, 109, 207n.28, freedom: liberation as distinct from
225n.15; recognition of revolution exercise of, 17677; masterslave
opening up possibilities of new dialectics, Hegel on, 18788, 191
forms of social and historical Freedom Movement, 30, 37, 52
engagement, 158, 18082; recon- French Revolution: Furets revisionist
ciling the early and late, 16368, account of, 68
225n.14; response to critics, Frere Tariq (Fourest), 10
16162, 230n.90; response to fundamentalism: Afary and Anderson
Khomeinis grande terreur, 89, 104, on Khomeinis, 94, 95, 97, 101;
227n.59; revolution as phenomenon Afary and Andersons characteriza-
of history and phenomenon that tion of Shariati and, 8788, 95;
defies history, 2, 3, 6, 7; on silence Enlightenment rationalist, 1516,
as mode of expression, 1068, 192
214n.63; skepticism of Enlighten- Furet, Franois, 68, 207n.45, 226n.44
ment rationality, 17, 111, 16263,
170, 172, 174, 188, 191, 192; spiri- Ganji, Akbar, 209n.4
tuality and the ethical subject, 173 Gans, Steven, 229n.72
80, 189, 228n.62; support of Ten Garman, Farideh, 144
Nights at Goethe Institute, 29, Gaullism: influence on Islamic
55; travel to Iran and witnessing of Republics constitution, 100
revolution, 52, 5558 Gellner, Ernest, 200n.39
Foucault and the Iranian Revolution gender politics: authority over, Kho-
(Afary and Anderson), 56, 1315; meinis postrevolutionary reestab-
atrocities of Islamic Republic in, lishment of, 12526; engagement
1025; depiction of revolutionary with religious text and lived tradi-
events, 7778, 8284; Khomeini as tions, 157, 158; feminist premoni-
dogmatic ideologue in, portrayal tions and womens status under
of, 93102, 212n.34; major flaw in Islamic Republic, 15558, 19091,
Index | 239
224n.100; historical changes in Guardian Council, 100
Shii discourse on gender relations, guardianship of the jurist (velayate
116. See also feminist politics; hejab faqih), governance by, 84, 94, 101
(veiling) Guattari, Pierre-Flix, 29, 167,
George, Lucien: interview with Kho- 226n.34
meini, 4042 Gueyras, Jean, 122
German Cultural Mission, ix Gurvitch, George, 89, 90
Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz, 201n.45, Gutting, Gary, 183, 225n.17
210n.12, 211n.30, 223n.9495
gharbzadehgi (westoxication), 12324, H., Ms. Atoussa, 11314, 115, 116,
126, 218n.27, 219n.38 117, 121, 161, 215n.1
Ghazali, Muhammad al, 94 Habermas, Jrgen, 13, 69, 165,
Ghazal of Our Times, The (Soltan- 199n.25, 208n.54, 226n.23
pour), 2829 Habibi, Hassan, 100, 101, 212n.41
gheirat (masculine pride), 122 Haitian Revolution, Hegel and,
Gnostic practices (irfan): Foucaults 18788
conception of spirituality as distinct Halimi, Gisle, 154
from gnosis, 179; Shariatis Hallaj, Mansur al, 56, 91, 92,
immersion in, 91 205n.1, 211n.23
God-worshipping Socialists move- Halliday, Fred, 104, 213n.53
ment, 91 Haraway, Donna, 139, 221n.60
Goethe Institute in Tehran, ix, x; Hariri, Rafik, 2
The Ten Nights of, ix, 2630, 55, Harrer, Sebastian, 228n.62
110, 133, 202n.17 Hartsock, Nancy, 165, 226n.25
Going to Iran (Millett), 13743, 221n.61 health of women, 157
Golesorkhi, Khosrow, 7880 Hegel, Georg W. F., 20, 201n.2; on
Goli-Zavvareh, Gholamreza, 204n.54 masterslave dialectics, 18788, 191
Golpaipani, Grand Ayatollah, 46 Hegel and Haiti (Buck-Morss),
Golpaygani, Ayatollah, 24 18788
good life: customs, norms, and expec- Heidegger, Martin, 18283, 229n.72,
tations inherent in conception of, 20 230n.89
Goodnight, Thomas, 230n.86 hejab (veiling), 12225, 136; attacks
governmentality, Foucaults concept on women without, 124, 131;
of power and, 6970, 109, 207n.28, CIDF delegations stance on, 151;
225n.15 clergys view of, 124, 129; Danshvar
Green, Garrett, 227n.50 on, 13031; difference between
Gros, Frdric, 179, 183, 229n.79 chador (the veil) and, 124, 128, 129,
Groupe dInformation sur les 13031; Khomeini on, 126, 128
Prisons, 55 29, 134; legislation codifying, 134,
Guardian, 198n.20 151, 223n.84; Milletts visit to
240 | Index
Iran and, 136, 137; negation of Hoveyda, Prime Minister Fereydoun,
modernist assumption about, 27, 204n.53
12223; womens demonstrations Howard, Richard, 27
against, 8, 12122, 12835, 144, humanism: Atoussa H. on Western
14850, 151, 190 Left and, 114; Foucaults stance
Hejazi, A., 34 toward, 6, 159, 163, 164, 172, 174,
Held, David, 13, 199n.27 183; Marxist, 88; polemics of Uni-
Hermeneutics of the Self, The (Foucault), versal Humanism in antitotalitarian
6364; Dartmouth lectures about manifesto of 2006, 9. See also
beginning of (1980), 17172 Enlightenment
Hermeneutics of the Subject, The (Fou- human rights organizations, Pahlavi
cault), 163, 179; lectures on (1981 regime as target of, 2122
82), 17880, 183 human rights violation, condemna-
Hiley, David, 229n.76 tion of executions in Iran as, 120
Histoires delles (magazine), 154 Hussein, Imam, 8, 80, 88; Golesork-
history, Deleuze on, 71 his use of, in defense at show trial
history, Foucault on: definition, 58; in (1973), 7879; martyrdom in
inaugural lecture (1970), 59; Iranian Karbala of (680 CE), 35, 77,
Revolution as instance of anti 8586, 209n.10
teleological view, 5862, 1089,
189; revolutionary movements Ibrahim, Youssef, 222n.71
inclusion and exit from history, 3; idealization of premodern societies,
subject-less history, critics read- accusations of Foucaults, 1057
ing of Foucaults genealogical ideas, Foucaults journalism about, 60
method as, 164, 16667; universal Ignatieff, Michael, 198n.20
History, defiance of, 3, 4, 7, 17, 74, Imam Hussein Mosque in Tehran,
75, 18889 SAVAK report on M. Khomeinis
History of Sexuality, The (Foucault), 6, memorial service in, 34
1078, 16364 imperialism: anti-imperialist Muslim
Homayoun, Dariush, 33 and Marxist revolutionaries, 5253,
Homayun, Nasser Takmil, 12728, 7879, 81; British, 3637; Kho
219n.37 meinis stance against, 41, 52;
Honig, Bonnie, 209n.9; on predica- 9/11 attacks and anti-imperialist
ment of reductionism, 84 struggles, 1112, 13; ontological,
Hoodfar, Homa, 216n.7, 224n.100 229n.72; Shahs Resurrection
hooks, bell, 139, 221n.59 and new, 21, 2526; womens
Horkheimer, Max, 208n.53 anti-imperialism, 122, 12627,
Hosseinieh Ershad, 57; processions 12930
of ashura in front of (1977), 35; infantile nihilism, 9/11 as, 10, 12
Shariatis lecture at (1968), 5657 infant mortality, 157
Index | 241
International Womens Day: on 188, 191, 192; as unthinkable,
March 8, 1980, 126; in Tehran 2026. See also revolutionary move-
(March 8, 1979), Milletts mission ment in Iran (197879)
to Iran for, 13536, 14043; in Iranian Revolution, misrepresenta-
Tehran (March 8, 1979), womens tion of, 75111; atrocities of
protests against mandatory hejab Islamic Republic, 1025; depiction
during, 8, 12122, 128, 14850, of revolutionary events, 8284;
151, 190 Khomeini as dogmatic ideologue,
Interpreting the French Revolution portrayal of, 93102; misreading
(Furet), 226n.44 Foucault and, 7576, 10511; revi-
interventionism, feminist, 13543; sionist history, 4, 7577; secular
Iranian womens groups rejection versus Islamist politics and, 7882,
of, 14453, 222n.69; legitimization 110, 190; Shii rituals and Ali
of, 154. See also feminist politics; Shariatis Islamist political ideol-
Millett, Kate ogy, misrepresentation of, 8593,
Ion (Euripides), 181 95, 212n.34; stolen revolution,
Iran and the Red and Black Colo- myth of, 19, 53, 75, 138, 190
nialism (editorial), 3637 Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps,
Iran as island of stability, Carter 105
administrations assumption of, Iranian Women and the National
2026 Revolution (Homayun), 12728
Iranian Committee for the Defense Iranian Womens Association, 135
of Freedom and Human Rights, 29 Iranian Writers Association, 127,
Iranian Peoples Mujahedin, 25, 133; formation and main objective
217n.12 of, 26; Ten Nights at Goethe
Iranian Revolution: Afary and Ander- Institute (1977) organized by, ix,
son on 9/11 as inevitable outcome 2630, 55, 110, 133, 202n.17
of, 6, 1316, 200n.36; differences Iraq, war with, 157
between Arab Spring in Egypt and, Irish Times, 222n.71
34; dramaturgy of events of, 78; irreducibility of uprisings, Foucault
Foucaults later writings on ethics on, 84, 159
and spirituality, effect on, 163, 168, Irshad Islamic Center, 45
17273, 176, 178, 180, 18285; Isfahan, declaration of martial law in
Foucaults writings on (see under (1978), 44, 45
Foucault, Michel); generative con- Is It Useless to Revolt? (Foucault),
ceptual significance of, xi; research 7071, 161, 227n.59
on, challenges of, ixx; similarity Islam: Browns perception of, 215n.3;
between uprisings of 201011 in Fanons perception of, in Algeria,
North Africa and Middle East and, 73; globalization of radical, chal-
1; singularity of, 74, 75, 16566, lenges posed by globalization of
242 | Index
modernity and, 13; Golesorkhi on 84; feminist premonitions and
true, 79; ideological significance womens status under, 15558,
of political, liberal celebration of 19091, 216n.7, 223n.94,
Arab Spring as end of, 34; Orien- 224n.100; guardianship of the
talist view of, 11415; as part of jurist (velayate faqih) as center-
Western tradition, Browns lectures piece of governance, 84, 94, 101;
on, 215n.3; romantic notion of Khomeinis introduction of,
revolutionary, 209n.4; Shariatis 98102; postrevolutionary con
theology and revolutionary dis- tingencies of power struggles of
course, 25, 45; womens rights state-building, 1023, 117, 11822,
derived from teachings of, 155. 189, 227n.59; postrevolutionary
See also Shiism view of revolutionary movement
Islam and Dissent in Postrevolutionary as instance of bifurcated Islamist
Iran (Ghamari-Tabrizi), 118, versus secular politics, xxi, 7682;
223n.95 war with Iraq, 157
Islamic government, concept of, Islamic Republic Party, 101; head-
6667; Atoussa H. on, 11314; as quarters blown up by opposition
form of political will, 67; Foucault (1981), 103
on, 6667, 1012, 115, 159, 165; Islamic Republic Television, 80
Khomeinis notion of, 95, 9899 Islamic Revolution Documentation
Islamic Law, 66 Center Archive, 203n.27
Islamic-Marxists: Khomeini on term Islamic Revolution of 1979, 19. See
Islamic Marxism, 4142: Qom also Iranian Revolution; revolution-
protests of 1975 and fear of, 2324; ary movement in Iran (197879)
unrest in Isfahan blamed on, 44. Islamic sharia, 7677, 152, 212n.32
See also Marxist revolutionaries Islamism: Afary and Anderson on,
Islamic mysticism, 5657, 91 56, 16, 7682, 87, 104; antitotali-
Islamic Penal Code, 228n.59 tarian manifesto in reaction to
Islamic Republic, 16, 19; atrocities of Danish cartoon affair and, 910;
(reign of terror), 1025, 111, 117, civilizational alliance in the West
121, 168, 173, 174, 189, 191, against, 9/11 attacks and, 7, 1013;
227n.59; collapse of Taliban regime contingencies of time and place
and, 105, 201n.44; colonization of informing, 191; distinctions
revolutionary ideals by postrevolu- between varieties of Islamist move-
tionary realpolitik, xxi, 72, 189; ments, 104; fascism and, 1045;
constitution of, 100101, 118, importance of understanding, 16;
212n.41; distinction between other during Iranian Revolution, as
forms of republics and, Khomeini response to and consequence of
on, 100; emergence from postrevo- modern conditions, 16; red and
lutionary power struggle, 67, 72, black colonialism and apparent
Index | 243
collaboration between communists Kant, Immanuel, 6, 159, 167, 224n.6;
and Islamists, 3647; reign of ter- definition of Enlightenment,
ror as inevitable result and natural revolutionary Iran as instance of
progression of, common assertion essence of, 161, 169; Foucaults
of, 1023, 121, 191; secular versus reading of, 169, 170, 17475,
Islamist politics, 7682, 110, 190 184; notion of public and private
Islamo-fascism: Bermans theory of, reason, 17476; Unmndigkeit,
1045 concept of, 172, 227n.50. See also
Israel: Khomeinis opposition to Enlightenment
Shahs accord with, 96 Kapuscinski, Ryszard, 19
r (Labor), 217
Ka
Jafarian, 39 Karbala, battle of (680 AD), 35, 77,
Jafari Langarudi, Mohammad, 8586, 209n.10
213n.41 Karbaschi, Gholamreza, 204n.55
Jaleh Square (Tehran): Black Friday Kasrai, Siyavosh, 140, 221n.61
massacre in, 4951 Katuzian, Naser, 212n.41
Jameson, Fred, 11 Katzman, Kenneth, 201n.44
Javadi, Colonel, 23 Kaupp, Katia, 223n.81
Javits, Jacob, 120 Kayhan (state newspaper), 21, 101,
Jayawardena, Kumari, 220n.54 124; articles on hejab, 12931, 134;
Jaynes, Gregory, 223n.85 Homayuns essays on Iranian
Jazani, Bijan, 21, 201n.5 Women and the National Revolu-
Jews: execution of Elghanian, 119 tion, 12728; on Qom protests of
20; Khomeini on, 9596 1975, 2324
Jihad: indiscriminate use of conception Kazemieh, Islam, 133
of, 12 Kazemipour, Shahla, 216n.7
journalism about ideas, 60 Kearny, Richard, 208n.50
Judaism: treatment in classical Islamic Keating, Craig, 197n.5
terms, 9596 Keir, Sophie, 143
justice: Hegels notion of Sittlichkeit Kemalist modernization project, 60
and expression of, 20, 201n.2; Khamenehi, Ali, 45
Islamic Law and, 66 Khamenei, Ayatollah Ali, 16, 103
Jyllands-Posten (Danish newspaper): Khan, Reza, 132
demonstrations against cartoons in, Khatami, President, 111
910, 198n.14 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 3, 14,
30, 138, 189, 203n.26, 204n.43,
Kadivar, Jamileh, 211n.31 212n.33, 215n.3; abolition of
Kadivar, M., 213n.46 Family Protection Law, 122, 125,
Kadivar, Mohsen, 211n.31 127, 128, 218n.30; authority over
Kamalieh, Susan, 15253 gender politics and womens issues,
244 | Index
postrevolutionary reestablishment womens views of, 130, 13132,
of, 12526; Bahaism viewed as 133, 144, 146, 222n.71
heresy by, 9596; Black Friday and Khomeini, Mustafa, death of (1977),
leadership of revolution, 48, 5153; 3035; alliance between university
CIDF delegations planned meet- students, religious institutions, and
ing with, 15051; death of son the Bazaar over, 33; memorial ser-
Mustafa, 3035; distinct political vices for, 3235
theologies conceived by, 191; as Khomeinism, 102; Afary and Ander-
dogmatic ideologue, Afary and son on, 97; Minc on continuity
Andersons portrayal of, 93102, between Baudrillards critique of
212n.34; earlier writings of, 9394; war on terror and Foucaults
ethnic minorities and, 9697, defense of, 1415, 200n.34; politi-
212n.34; evolution of ideas of, cal agenda of, 85
211n.3031; in exile, as voice of Khoram-Abadi, Taheri, 202n.14
dissent against Shah, 22, 3738, Khuzestan, strike of the oil workers
4042, 46; fatwa against Salman in, 206n.15
Rushdie, 105; on hejab, 126, Kifner, John, 221n.67
12829, 134; informal grassroots Klatch, Rebecca, 216n.10
network in favor of, 33; interview knowledge beyond culture, 15
with Le Monde, 4042; Iran and Korea: napalm bombs dropped
the Red and Black Colonialism on, 11
editorial against, 3637; Millett Kraus, Richard Curt, 224n.4
on, 143; political transformation Krauthammer, Charles, 2, 197n.1
during 197879 revolutionary Kuhn, Thomas, 15
movement, 9495; recognition as Kurdistan: war in, 119
leader of resistance movement, 39, Kurzman, Charles, 118, 201n.3,
41, 77, 78, 82, 125, 190; reign of 203n.30
terror, 8, 1025, 111, 117, 121,
159, 168, 173, 174, 189, 191, Lahiji, Abdolkarim, 213n.41
227n.59; republicanism, notion language of Shii Islam, voice of
of, 98102, 213n.45; revolutionary revolution in, 78, 83
discourse invented by, 4142; Laroui, Abdallah, 11415, 216n.4
revolutionary movement led by Lawyers Guild, 43, 52, 202n.21
clergy following, 1920; on Rex Lebanon, Cedar Revolution in, 2
Movie Theater massacre, 46; Leezenberg, Michiel, 60, 197n.5
Shii-Islamic symbolism woven Left, the. See Marxist revolutionaries
into revolutionary movement by, legislative reforms under Shah,
3738; White Revolution in 1963 4344, 132. See also Family Protec-
and political emergence of, 36, 80; tion Law (1967)
on womens rights, 12426, 128; Lenin, V., 89
Index | 245
Lets Build Our Wrecked Iran Maoism: Broyelles recantation and
(Daneshvar), 13031 disillusionment with, 16061
Levinas, Emmanuel, 17677, 229n.72 Marashi, Grand Ayatollah, 46
liberalism: Arab Spring interpreted as Mardom (The People), 43, 204n.49
triumph of, 3; common liberal view martial law: in Isfahan, declaration of
of transcendental individual, 109; (1978), 44, 45; in Tehran, Black
Foucault as belated liberal, 16869, Friday massacre and, 4951, 52
173, 185; triumph over critique of Martin, Vanessa, 211n.29, 211n.31
universal Reason, view of Fou- Martyrs Foundation, 205n.3
caults project as, 174 Marx, Karl, 12, 13, 89
liberal nationalists, 46, 48; belief in Marxism, 160, 216n.3; Chinese,
constitutional monarchy, 60, 98, 16061; Shariati and, 8889
190; concession plan of, 98, 99; Marxism and Other Western Fallacies:
Freedom Movement, 30, 37, 52; An Islamic Critique (Shariati), 88
on issue of hejab, 12933; National Marxist revolutionaries: four major
Front, 30, 33, 46, 52, 98, 99, 126, tendencies in Iranian Left,
127, 131, 132; revolutionary move- 217n.12; of Mojahedin, 8182;
ment and, 52, 82, 99, 190 Muslim revolutionaries and, 7882;
Libration (newspaper), 42, 150, 154 perpetual radicalization of revolu-
liberation, exercise of freedom as tion promoted by, 119; radical
distinct from, 17677 Islamists mistrust of, 8082;
Liberation Movement, 46, 47, 98 response to Khomeini and revolu-
Lieven, Anatol, 213n.55 tionary movement, 5253, 190.
life expectancy of women, 157 See also Islamic-Marxists
limit-experience of revolutionary masculine pride (gheirat), 122
Iranians, Foucaults, 19, 201n.1 Mashhad: protests of 1978 in, 3637;
literacy rate among women, 157 Shahs pilgrimage to, 43
lordship and bondage dialectics, Massad, Joseph, 221n.65
Hegel on, 18788 Massignon, Louis, 56, 65, 73, 205n.1
Los Angeles Times, 222n.69 masterslave dialectics, Hegel on,
18788, 191
Macciocchi, Maria Antonietta, Matin, Le, 161
223n.81 Matin, Mahnaz, 15051, 219n.32
Madness and Civilization (Foucault), Matin-Daftari, Hedayat, 131, 13233
107 Mauriac, Claude, 29, 67
Mahalti, Ayatollah, 129 Mazzaoui, Michel, 210n.13
Mahmood, Saba, 215n.2 McNay, Lois, 225n.13
Mahon, Michael, 230n.90 McSweeney, John, 209n.67
Makarem Shirazi, Naser, 87 media, Western: depiction of Milletts
Manji, Irshad, 10 visit to Iran, 142, 14447; dominant
246 | Index
explanations of Arab uprisings, Foucaults reports as philosophical
24; on international demonstra- commentary on, 6061; hejab as
tions of solidarity for womens one of key signifiers of, 122; revo-
rights in Iran, 148; naming of lution as regressive denunciation
Arab Spring, 2; on womens of, Afary and Andersons reading
demonstrations in Iran, 144, 152, of, 75, 106 (see also Foucault and
154. See also specific newspapers and the Iranian Revolution); structural
other media position of the West as sole pro-
Milani, Ayatollah, 8990 ducer and non-West as everlasting
Militant Muslim Students of Tabriz consumer of, 13, 199n.26
University, 38 modernization project, Shahs, 58,
Miller, James, 63, 68, 17374, 201n.1, 6061, 77
207n.27, 227n.5859, 228n.61 Mofatteh, Mohammad, 45, 204n.54
Millett, Kate, 13543, 144, 148, 151, Moghaddam, General, 43
153, 154, 220n.5556; colonial Moghissi, Haideh, 219n.32
roots of her mission to Iran, Mohajer, Naser, 219n.32
13739, 141, 220n.54; deportation Moharram, month of, 35
order issued against, 143; Going to Mojahedin, 42; adoption of Marxism
Iran, book on her ordeal in Iran, by Islamist leadership (1975), 8182;
13743, 221n.61; invitation from assassinations between 1981 and
CAIFI to speak at Womens Day 1983 by, 103; Shariati and, 9192
rally in Tehran, 136, 13940; press Moll, Yasmin, 197n.3
conference, 137, 14143, 222n.69; monarchy: legitimacy of, 2425;
Western medias depiction of visit liberal nationalists belief in consti-
of, 142, 14447 tutional, 60, 98, 190; revolutionary
Minachi, Abbas, 213n.41 movement and, 30, 5152, 98.
Minachi, Naser, 210n.19 See also Shah of Iran
Minc, Alain, 1415, 200n.34 Monde, Le (newspaper), 14, 70, 100,
Minerva (journal), 18788 122, 161, 162; Khomeini interview,
Mir-Hosseini, Ziba, 216n.7, 219n.30 4042
Mirmajlessi, Mrs., 144, 155 Montazeri, Ayatollah, 124, 218n.28
Mirza Yusef Mosque (Tabriz), 38 Moqaddam-Salimi, Manuchehr, 79
modernity: critical ontology of the Morsi, Mohamed, 34
present introducing new manner Moruzzi, Norma Claire, 111,
of posing question of, 16768; 215n.68
displacement of tradition of, in Mosaddeq, Mohammad, 131; CIA-
Iranian Revolution, 67; female designed coup toppling (1953), 25,
body as site of negotiating, in Iran, 91, 132
123; Foucaults attempt to define, Moshiri, Minou, 150
as attitude and rupture, 17172; Moslem, Mehdi, 213n.42
Index | 247
Mouvement de Libration des Femmes Nealon, Jeffrey, 225n.13
Iraniennes, Anne Zero (documen- neoconservative messianic politicians,
tary), 136 10, 11
Movahhed, H., 204n.56 new Man, Iranians reinvention of
Ms. Magazine, 154 selves through transformative
Muharram, fall of (1978), 7778 political spirituality and, 72
Muharram rituals of reenactment of Newsday, 222n.71; op-ed on chador and
events of Ashura, 83, 209n.1011; subjugation of women in, 14647
Afary and Andersons misrepresen- New York Times, 222n.73, 222n.76;
tation of, 8587, 212n.34; distinc- articles on Millett and Iranian
tion between traditionalist and women, 144, 146; on demonstra-
political, 8687 tions showing solidarity for Iranian
mujtahid: Naraqi on, 94 womens rights, 148, 222n.71
Mulard, Claudine, 137 Nicholson, Linda, 156, 224n.97
Muqtadir, Abbasi Caliph al, 56 nihilism: apocalyptic, 11, 198n.20;
Muslim Brotherhood, 34; military criticism of Foucault for Nietz
coup against (2013), 4 schean, 69, 72, 1089, 164; 9/11
Muslim culture, 9 infantile, 10, 12
Mutazila scholasticism, Shariatis Nikbakht, Rahim, 203n.38
critique of, 9091, 92 9/11, terrorist assaults of, 5, 187; civi-
mysticism, Islamic, 5657; Shariatis lizational alliance in the West
immersion in, 91 against Islamism honed by, 7, 1013;
as irrefutable indictment of cultural
Naghibi, Nima, 143, 218n.22 relativism, 14, 15, 199n.29; roots
Najaf, Iraq: death of Mustafa Kho- of, Afary and Anderson on, 6,
meini in, 3035; Khomeinis exile 1316, 200n.36; struggle to make
in, 22, 4042 sense of its politics and define case
Naji, General, 44 for its exceptionality, 1015,
Najmabadi, Afsaneh, 123, 218n.2326 198n.20, 199n.21
Namazie, Maryam, 10 noumenon, 71
Namdari, Nima, 219n.36 Nouvel Observateur, Le, 66, 67; Fou-
napalm bombs, 11 caults essay on abuses of critics,
Naraqi, Ehsan, 99 162; Iranian Woman Writes, An,
Naraqi, Mullah Ahmad, 94 by Ms. Atoussa H., 11314
Nassiri, General, 43 Nuri, Sheikh Fazlollah, 76, 94,
Nateq, Homa, 127, 13132 212n.32
National Front, 30, 33, 46, 52, 98,
99, 126, 127, 131, 132 OLeary, Timothy, 225n.13
National Union of Women, 126, On the Genealogy of Ethics (Fou-
219n.33 cault), 70
248 | Index
On the Refutation of the Theory of Sur- 165; of postrevolutionary Islamic
vival (Pouyan), 201n.4 Republic, 115, 116, 12223, 126,
ontological imperialism, 229n.72 130, 141, 143, 152; Second Wave
Order of Things, The (Foucault), 163, feminist theory of, 15657
225n.14 pedagogical silence, 108
Organization of Iranian Peoples Peikar (communist group), 118,
Devotee Guerrillas, The, 21 217n.12
Organization of Peikar (Struggle) for Peikar (communist newspaper), 120
the Liberation of the Working Pelletier-Latts, Micheline, 223n.81
Class, 217 PEN, 27
Organization of the Fadaian (Devotee) permanent revolution, 119, 121,
Guerrillas, 217n.12 217n.14, 217n.15
Orientalism, 65, 68, 74, 107, 111, Persian Empire: Shahs imperial ambi-
121; Browns perception of Islam in tions of reviving ancient, 2526
contrast to, 215n.3; common themes pessimistic activism, paradoxical
in, 66, 68; feminist, of Millet, 137 notion of, 7072; manifestation
43; of Foucault, 5, 19, 107, 197n.7; in inexplicable insurrectionary
hallmark of classical, 11415 individual and irreducible subject,
Other, women as double, 123 7172
Phenomenology of Mind, The (Hegel),
Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza. See Shah 187
of Iran Pipes, Daniel, 214n.55
Paidar, Parvin, 116, 216n.7 Plato, 187, 214n.63
PalestineIsraeli conflict: Shariati political liberalization policy, Shahs,
on, 90 26; Ten Nights at Goethe Insti-
Paras, Eric, 225n.13 tute as test of, 2630
Parham, Baqer, 202n.17 political spirituality: as alternative
Paris, burning of veil in, 154 to historical determinism, 62; as
Parmelin, Hlne, 29 bridge to totalitarianism, Foucaults
parrhesia (fearless speech), 18082, critics on, 12122, 161, 174;
191; etymological description of, Fanonian predicament and, 7274;
182; moral and political virtue in Foucaults concept of, xi, 1, 6, 8,
acts of, 18182 19, 62, 6367, 72, 7374, 75, 108,
Passion of al-Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr 117, 161, 188, 189; Foucaults
of Islam, The (Massignon), 56 delinking of, from establishment of
Passion of Michel Foucault, The Islamic government, 117; Shii
(Miller), 17374, 201n.1; reviews Islam as source of, 63, 72, 7374
of, 174, 228n.61 politics: binary conception of secular
patriarchy, 216n.10; Foucault as part versus religious, 4; governmental-
of patriarchal system, Hartsock on, ization of the state, 6364; 9/11
Index | 249
seen as defying, 11, 12; possibility Provisional Council of Ministers, 100
of transformative, 189; secular ver- provisional government, 11819;
sus Islamist, 7682, 110, 190. See also Islamic dress codes in its offices,
feminist politics; gender politics Khomeinis call for, 128; official
Politics of Truth, The (Foucault), 169, new policy on hejab, 13334, 151;
184, 226n.39 revolution against the revolution
postmodernists/postcolonialists, and end of, 119, 121; stability of,
Rothsteins attack on, 15 as important feature of continuity
poststructuralism, 56, 106, 111 of revolution, 13435; women pro-
Pouyan, Amir Parviz, 201n.4, testers and their demands, 131
208n.60 public and private spheres, distinction
power, Foucaults conception of, 64, between, 156
69, 109, 225n.15; critics of, 6970,
72; critique of power/knowledge Qazi Tabatabaei, Ayatollah, 38
normativity, 177, 229n.76; parrhesia Qobadi, Mohammad, 202n.17
in situations of social inequality Qoba Mosque (Tehran), 204n.54;
and asymmetry of power, 182; clerical opposition headquarters
Pouyans thesis of two absolutes in, 45
and, 201n.4; theory of invasive Qom protests: communist infiltra-
disciplinary power, 163, 16465 tion, fear of, 2324; Khomeinis
Power/Knowledge (Foucault), 70 commemoration of fortieth day
Prague Spring of 1968, 2, 3 of Qom massacre, 3738; of 1975,
premodern societies, Afary and 2225, 202n.7; of 1978, 3637
Andersons misreading of Foucaults
idealization of, 10511 Rabinow, Paul, 16768, 169, 182,
present, philosophy of the, 16768; 224n.9; situating Foucaults last
enlightenment as critical attitude lectures, 18485
in the present, 16970, 184; radical Islamism as singular move-
heroizing the present, 17172 ment, Afary and Anderson on, 16
primacy of order over chaos, political Rafsanjani, Hashemi, 103
doctrine of, 94 Rahimi, Babak, 209n.10, 211n.31
protests: during month of Ramadan Rahnema, Ali, 210n.12
of 1978, 4445; Qom (1975), Rai, Sajjad, 203n.33
2225, 202n.7; Qom and Mashhad Rajaei, President Ali: assassination of,
(1978), 3637; student, on university 103
campuses, 25, 2930, 78; womens, Rajchman, John, 184, 224n.8
12535 Ramadan, month of: Eid-e Fitr cele
Provisional Committee for the Cele bration at end of (Black Friday),
bration of the International 4753; protests in 1978 coinciding
Womens Day, 135 with, 4445, 47
250 | Index
Ramadan, Tariq, 10 republicanism: Gaullist French, influ-
Rambod, Holaku, 39 ence on Islamic Republics consti-
Randal, Jonathan, 221n.69 tution, 100; Khomeinis notion of,
Random House, 148, 222n.76 98102, 213n.45. See also Islamic
Ranjbaran (Toilers) Party, 217n.12 Republic
rationality, Enlightenment, 13, resistance, Foucaults theory of inva-
1517, 111, 169; fallacies of aban- sive disciplinary power and possi-
doning, Foucaults critics on, 121; bility of, 163
Foucaults critical view of, 17, 111, Resistance (Iranian Students Associa-
16263, 170, 172, 174, 188, 191, tion, USA), 31
192; global and radical emancipa- Resurrection Party, 21, 22, 39
tory politics associated with, 170; revolution: Furets revisionist account
humanist rationality and, 164 of French Revolutions place in his-
reason, public and private: irreconcil- tory, 68; historical significance of,
ability of, Foucaults efforts to 71; permanent, Marxist and mili-
overcome, 17780; Kants notion tant Islamists promoting, 119, 121,
of, 17476 217n.14, 217n.15; post-1968 idea of
Redstockings Feminist Revolution, end of, 170; against the revolution,
148 end of provisional government and,
reforms under Shah, 4344, 128, 132, 119, 121; usefulness of, 6872
133 revolutionary becoming, 71, 167
reign of terror, 8, 1025, 111, 117, Revolutionary Committee, 138, 143
159, 168, 173, 174, 189, 227n.59; Revolutionary Council, 100, 101,
as inevitable result and natural 118, 128, 218n.30
progression of Islamism, critics Revolutionary Guardians of the
view of, 1023, 121, 191; from Islamic Revolution, 119
revolution to, 11822; Western revolutionary movement in Iran
condemnation of, 117 (197879), 1953; ambiguity in its
relativism: cultural, 5, 9, 14, 15, 105 vision of future, 5859, 61, 16566,
11, 199n.29; Rothsteins censure of, 189; binary history curtailing
15, 199n.29 understanding of dynamics of,
religion(s): Abrahamic, principle of 10911; Black Friday, 4753, 57,
unity of all in struggle for social 205n.3; brutality of Pahlavi regime
justice, 89, 90; Foucault on role in and, 2122; coalition of progressive-
revolutionary movement, 6467. See democratic-secular factions in, 77;
also Islamism; political spirituality; colonization of ideals of, by post
Shiism revolutionary realpolitik, xxi, 72,
reproduction in Iran, politics of, 157 189; defined through Shiism, 20,
58, 224n.100. See also Family Pro- 2425; demise of Mustafa
tection Law (1967) Khomeini and, 3035; depiction of
Index | 251
revolutionary events by Afary and Rex Movie Theater massacre (1978),
Anderson, 7778, 8284; develop- 4647
mentalist discourse on, 58; escha- Rieff, David, 200n.33
tological temperament of riots: in Qom and Mashhad (1978),
revolutionary subject itself, 61; 3637; in Tabriz (1978), 3839.
forceful expression of a negation See also protests
in, 68, 165; Foucaults Fanonian Rodinson, Maxime, 121, 206n.12,
predicament, 7274; hejab, nega- 207n.33, 211n.28
tion of modernist assumption Ronchant, Michel, 29
about, 12223; historical signifi- Rorty, Richard, 15, 69, 177, 208n.56,
cance of, 18082; Iran as island of 229n.73
stability, Carter administrations Rose, Gregory, 211n.29
assumption of, 2021; Khomeinis Rosenzweig, Franz, 84
leadership as key element of, 39, Rothstein, Edward, 15, 199n.29
41, 77, 78, 82, 125, 190; liberal ruhaniyat (clergy): role in Islamic
nationalists and, 52, 82, 99, 190; Republic of, 101, 213n.45
paradoxical effects of, 61, 68, Rumi, 91
206n.14; political spirituality of rupture, modernity as, 172
(see political spirituality); Qom Rushdie, Salman, 10, 200n.31; fatwa
protests and, 2225, 3637, 202n.7; against, 105
radicalization of, 4547; as realiza-
tion of condition of possibilities, Sadr Hajj Seyyed Javadi, Ahmad,
17, 61, 68; Red and Black Colo- 212n.41
nialism editorial and, 3647; Safavid Shiism, 25, 86
reformist agenda in earlier days of, Sahabi, Ezzatollah, 213n.41
4243; religious rituals and Shii- Sahabi, Yadollah, 100
Islamic symbolic language, signifi- Said, Edward, 59, 205n.7
cance of, 78, 3738, 4445, 51, Said, Laila, 14850, 223n.78
77, 78, 83, 110; Shia clerics and, Saladin, 87
2425 (see also ayatollahs); social Salvaresi, Elisabeth, 149
justice and dignity issues motivat- Salvatore, Armando, 207n.39
ing, 110; stolen revolution, myth Sanasarian, Eliz, 133, 220n.48
of, 19, 53, 75, 138, 190; Ten Nights Sanjabi, Karim, 99
at Goethe Institute and, ix, 2630, Sargent, Lydia, 223n.96
55, 110, 133, 202n.17; womens Sarkozy, Nicolas, 14
issues seen as diversion from Sartre, Jean Paul, 29, 89, 164
essential objectives, 126, 127, SAVAK (secret police), 21, 26, 30, 42,
13033 72, 129, 209n.5; Mustafa Khomeinis
Revolutionary Union of Militant death attributed to, 3035; provi-
Women, 135 sional governments amnesty plan
252 | Index
for, 11819; Qom protests of 1975 seminaries: Khomeinis reestablish-
and, 2223; replacement of General ment of authority within, 12526;
Nassiri with General Moghaddam, Qom and Mashhad, 2225, 3738,
43; report on Iranian Writers 39, 4546, 87, 202n.7; Shariatis
Association, 26; reports on memo- critique of, 9091, 92, 93
rial services for Mustafa Khomeini, Sepanlou, Mohammad Ali, 203n.24
32, 3334; reports on political Sepp, Anita, 169, 226n.41
mobilization and organization by September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
mosques, 4445; Shariatis death of. See 9/11
blamed on, 25 Servan-Schreiber, Claude, 141,
Sawicki, Jana, 164, 225n.19 222n.77, 223n.81
Schirato, Tony, 225n.13 sexuality, plight of women in Iran and
Schirazi, Asghar, 213n.41 Iranian mens, 15253. See also
Schwartzer, Alice, 151 feminist politics; gender politics;
Scott, Joan Wallach, 215n.2 women
Scullion, Rosemarie, 218n.21 Sexual Politics (Millett), 136
Second Wave feminism, 154, 156; Shabestary, Mojtahed, 129
general theory of patriarchy, 15657 Shah Is a Hundred Years behind the
secularism: secular versus Islamist Times, The (orig. The Shah and
politics, 7682, 110, 190; as univer- the Dead Weight of Modernity)
sal right, in Together Facing the (Foucault), 6061, 99
New Totalitarianism, 9 Shah of Iran, 2026, 204n.41; accord
Security, Territory, Population (Foucaults with Israel, Khomeinis opposition
lectures at Collge de France), 109 to, 96; Black Friday and fate of, 51,
self, the: heroizing the present and 52; Carter administration and,
striving for incessant invention and 2021; efforts to save regime, 46;
creation of, 172; Levinass concep- establishment of Resurrection and
tion of ethical subject, 17677, power of, 21; Family Protection
229n.72; religion and radical change Law under, 125, 127, 128, 132;
of subjectivity, 6566; transforma- imperial ambitions of reviving
tion of the self by, 17879 ancient Persian Empire, 2526;
self, the, care of, 189; access to truth Khomeini in exile as voice of dis-
and, 17779; as ethical imperative, sent against, 22, 3738, 4042, 46;
63, 66, 173, 17677; exercise of liberal nationalists appeal to Kho-
freedom promoted through, 176 meini to save throne, 98; modern-
77; as form of utilitarian individu- ization schemes, developmentalist
alism, 177; limitation of Stoics and discourse on revolution and, 58,
Cynics in their call for, 17980; 6061, 77; number of people killed
parrhesia and, 18182; situating during Shahs regime, 21, 217n.13;
Foucaults last lectures on, 18285 pilgrimage to Masshad, 43; political
Index | 253
liberalization policy, 26, 39, 43; Shariatmadari, Grand Ayatollah, 24,
protest in front of White House 42, 46, 204n.48; on Rex massacre, 47
against Shahs visit, 30; Qom pro- Sharif-Emami, Prime Minister,
tests of 1975 against, 2225, 202n.7; 4748; conciliatory politics
reforms under, 4344, 128, 132, attempted by, 49
133; revolutionary movement char- Sharif-Vaqefi, Majid, 209n.5
acterized as communist conspiracy Shiism: Afary and Andersons mis-
by, 39, 4142; Tabriz massacre and, representation of rituals of, 8587;
39; Ten Nights at Goethe Insti- Alavid (of action, resistance, and
tute as test of political liberalization martyrdom), 25, 62, 86, 87, 92;
policy of, 2630; White Revolution Brown on, 215n.3; Foucaults
in 1963, 36, 80, 96, 123, 127; wom- knowledge and understanding of,
ens issues and, 12728 56, 6566, 173; Golesorkhis
Shamlou, Ahmad, 55, 219n.34 defense and, 79, 80; Muharram
sharia, Islamic, 7677, 152; struggle ritual of Ashura, 83, 8587,
between constitutionalism and 209n.1011, 212n.34; political
shariatism, 77, 212n.32 activism of Shia clerics in Iran,
Shariati, Ali, 45, 56, 65, 66, 78, 24; revolutionary movement
205n.12, 210n.1618, 210n.20, defined through, 20, 2425; ritual
211n.2324, 211n.27; admiration of mourning fortieth day of the
for other Abrahamic faiths, 88, 89; dead, political significance of,
Afary and Andersons misrepresen- 35, 37, 3940, 47, 83; role in the
tation of Islamist political ideology position of women, 116; Safavid
of, 8593, 95, 212n.34; ayatollahs (of the court and the ceremonial),
defamation campaign against, 25, 25, 86; Shii-Islamic symbolism
87, 89; conception of Alavid and language, revolutionary
Shiism, 62, 86, 87, 92; critique of movements inspirational associa-
Mutazila scholasticism and Sufis tion with, 78, 3738, 4445, 51,
detachment from worldly affairs, 77, 78, 83, 110
9091, 92; death of, 25, 211n.22; silence as mode of expression, Fou-
desert contemplations, 91; on Jews, cault on, 1068, 214n.63; forms of
Afary and Andersons treatment of, silence, 1078
9596; letter to Ayatollah Milani, Simms, Karl, 229n.72
8990; on permanent revolution, Sittlichkeit, Hegels concept of, 20,
217n.15; secular political philoso- 201n.2
phy influencing, 8890, 210n.16; Socialist Workers Party (SWP),
theology of, 25, 35, 45, 5657, 62, 13536
8793; unity of all Abrahamic reli- Social Science Research Council
gions in their struggle for social (SSRC) website, 198n.1819
justice, principle of, 89, 90 Socrates, 181
254 | Index
solidarity, womens. See feminist change of, 6566; spirituality and
politics the ethical subject, 17380, 189,
Soltanpour, Said, 28 228n.62
Sontag, Susan, 11 Submission (video), 10
Soviet Union: expansionist ambitions, Sufism: Shariatis critique of detach-
36; interests in Iran, 204n.49. See ment from worldly affairs advocated
also communist opposition to Shah by, 9091, 92; systematization of
spirituality: ethical subject and, 173 Gnosticism in Sufi Orders, 91
80, 189, 228n.62; Foucaults notion Sukarno, 89
of, 63; important features of spiri-
tual subject, 180; as real possibility Tabriz, riots and massacre in (1978),
for and responsibility of common 3840, 203n.38
man, 180; three characteristics for, Tabriz Industrial Machine Factory,
17879. See also political spirituality strike of workers of (1978), 40
Spivak, Gayatri, 138, 154, 220n.57, Taher, Badri, 134
223n.91 Taleei, Javad, 30, 203n.25
Stauth, Georg, 197n.5 Taleqani, Ayatollah, 81, 101, 129,
Steinem, Gloria, 148, 150, 222n.76 221n.61
Stoicism: connection between care of Taleqani, Mojtaba, 81
the self and the economic in, 177 Taliban regime in Afghanistan, 16;
78; limitation of, in call for care of destruction of Buddha statues in
the self, 17980; pedagogical Bamyan, 105; fall in 2001, 13, 105,
silence and, 108 200n.44
stolen revolution, myth of, 19, 53, 75, Taylor, Charles, 165, 225n.22
138, 190. See also Foucault and the Tehran: Black Friday massacre,
Iranian Revolution 4753, 57, 205n.3; Carters state
strikes, worker, 40, 45 visit in, 35; CIDF delegation to,
student protests, 78; in Qom, 2225; 14852; Foucaults arrival at, 57;
in Tabriz (1978), 3839, 40; at Millett in, 13643; six days in
Tehran Technical University of March (1979), womens protest
Aryamehr, 2930 during, 12535, 190; slum dwellers
students abroad, Iranian: protesting riots (1977) against forced evictions
Shahs visit to White House, 30; in, 2728
revolutionary movement and, 30, Tehran Preachers Society, 101
33, 37 Tehran Technical University of
subjectivity: autonomous subject, Aryamehr, Writers Association
164, 169; Foucaults concern in his event at, 2930
later writings with, 16466, 191, teleological history, Foucaults
228n.62; religion and radical response to, 5862, 1089
Index | 255
Ten Nights at Goethe Institute, ix, Turkman Valley, armed conflict in,
2630, 55, 110, 133, 202n.17 119
terror, war on, 1415, 187, 200n.34 two absolutes, thesis of, 201n.4
terror and virtue, period of, 111
Terror in Iran (Baraheni), 22 Umar, 92, 211n.25
Terrorisme de lesprit, Le (Minc), UNICEF, 115
1415, 200n.34 Unification Conference, The, 120
terrorist attacks of 9/11. See 9/11 universal History, defiance of, 3, 4, 7,
theocracy, 117, 161; Islamic govern- 17, 74, 75, 18889
ment vs., 6667. See also Islamic Universal Humanism, 9
Republic universal Reason, Foucaults critique
Thermidor period under President of, 165
Khatami (19972005), 111 Universal Referent(s): Enlightenment
They Wanted the Iranian Women and humanism as, 5, 6, 121, 158,
to Be a Western Doll (Homayun), 185; female body as, for womens
127 emancipatory politics, 15455,
Together Facing the New Totalitari- 223n.96; possibility of thinking
anism (manifesto), 910 outside, 153
Tonkaboni, Fereidun, 203n.22 Unmndigkeit (immaturity), Kants
Torkman, Mohammad, 212n.32 concept of, 172, 227n.50
transcendental individual, common Unveiling of Secrets, The (Kashfal
liberal view of, 109 al-Asrar) (Khomeini), 93, 94
Trotsky, Leon, 89 U.S. Special Operation Forces, Islamic
Trotskyist groups, 126, 154; Milletts Republic cooperation with, 105
trip to Iran arranged by, 136, 138 utilitarian individualism, Foucaults
Trouble with Islam Today, The (Manji), care of the self as form, 177
10
truth: care of the self and access to, Vafadari, Kateh, 13940, 141, 142
17779; price to be paid for access Vahabzadeh, Peyman, 201n.5
to, 178; rebound (de retour) as Val, Philippe, 10
effects of, on the subject, 179; shift veil. See chador (the veil); hejab (veiling)
in Foucaults thinking regarding velayate faqih (guardianship of the
politics and games of, 176; jurist), 84, 94, 101
truth-telling, Foucaults theory of Vieille, Paul, 56
fearless acts of, 18082 Village Voice, 222n.76
Truth-seeking revolutionary, ideal Viskupic, Gary, 147
type of, 5657
Tschirhart, Evelyne, 160, 224n.3 Wahhabi Saudis, 16
Tudeh Party, 30, 36, 43, 118, 217n.12 Walzer, Michael, 197n.7
256 | Index
War on Terror, 187; Baudrillards sisters, 148; Kants view of,
critique of, 1415, 200n.34. See 227n.50; Khomeinis annulment of
also 9/11 Family Protection Law and, 122,
Washington Post, 222n.76; coverage of 125, 127, 128, 218n.30; literacy
Milletts visit to Iran, 14446 rate among, 157; naked woman,
Was ist Aufklrung? (Kant), 159, 169, concept of, 219n.38; political and
17172. See also Enlightenment social participation, revolutionary
Webb, Jen, 225n.13 movement and, 115, 116; postrevo-
Western interventionist feminism. lutionary participation in public
See interventionism, feminist life, 122, 125; premodern silences
westoxication (gharbzadehgi), 12324, imposed on, 108; in revolutionary
218n.27, 219n.38; Khomeinis criti- movement, Afary and Anderson
cism of, 126 on, 76, 77; rights, Khomeini on,
What Is Critique? (Foucault), 170 12426, 128; rights derived from
What Is Enlightenment? (Fou- teachings of Islam, 155; rights under
cault), 6, 168, 170 constitution of Islamic Republic,
What Is Revolution? (Foucault), 170 100, 101; right to speak and right
White Revolution of 1963, 36, 80, to represent, 15355; status under
96, 123; Family Protection Law Islamic Republic, 15558, 19091,
introduced under, 127 216n.7, 223n.94, 224n.100; womens
white womens burden, 13543, protest without womens move-
220n.54, 221n.63 ment, 12535; womens views of
Wilford, Hugh, 222n.76 Khomeini, 130, 13132, 133, 144,
women, 11358; anti-imperialist 146, 222n.71. See also feminist poli-
struggle for justice as frame to tics; gender politics; Millett, Kate
address womens issues, 122, 126 Women Organization of the Tudeh
27, 12930; as double Other, 123; Party, 135
as embodiment of westoxication, women organizations, 135; rejection
12324, 218n.27, 219n.38; essen- of foreign feminists, 14453
tialization of womens experiences, womens movement, 8; Western-style
problems with, 139, 143, 154, 156 womens liberation and, 13839,
57; Fanon on gender relations in 140, 150; womens protest without,
Algeria, 73; hejab, demonstrations 12535. See also feminist politics
against, 8, 12122, 12835, 144, Womens Organization of Iran
14850, 151, 190; hejab, issue of, (WOI), 133
12225, 136; improved develop- Woodsmall, Ruth Frances, 221n.58
ment indicators in postrevolution- World Bank, 115
ary Iran, 11516; international Writers Association. See Iranian
rallies in defense of their Iranian Writers Association
Index | 257
Yazd, riots and massacre in (1978), Zen Buddhism, 107, 108
40 Zinn, Howard, 5, 106
Yazid, Umayyad Caliph, 35, 79, 83; in Zionism, Khomeinis opposition to,
Muharram ritual of reenactment of 96
Ashura, 8586, 209n.10 iek, Slavoj, 6, 11, 68, 192, 198n.11,
Yegenoglu, Meyda, 221n.62 198n.13
Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi is associate professor of history and
sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the
author of Islam and Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran: Abdolkarim Soroush,
Religious Politics, and Democratic Reform.

Foucault in Iran

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foucault in iran

Sohail Daulatzai and Junaid Rana

Copyright 2016 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota

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Published by the University of Minnesota Press

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Modernity can and will no longer borrow the criteria by

If philosophy of the future exists, it must be born outside

1. Thinking the Unthinkable: The Revolutionary

2. How Did Foucault Make Sense of the Iranian

3. Misrepresenting the Revolution, Misreading Foucault 75

4. The Reign of Terror, Womens Issues, and

5. Was ist Aufklrung? The Iranian Revolution as a

I remember vividly that cold, rainy Friday in October 1977 when,

Is it possible for a people to envision and desire futures uncharted

The Danish Cartoons, September 11, and the Mishap of Relativism

Nothing in recent history has prepared us for such a contemptible fusion

Nobody has ever seen the collective will and, personally,

The main thrust of the critique of Foucaults writings on the Ira-

Iran, the Island of Stability

People! We are your children. We have risen up to defend Islam and

Shia clerics had a century-old history of political activism in Iran. Although

The Ten Nights at the Goethe Institute

The Ghazal of Our Times

A song of blood grew in one uproar after another,

The eyes of every seeking star, searching in blood,

The beloved whom they call the red sedition,

The Demise of Mustafa Khomeini and the Revolutionary Movement

Figure 1. Front page of Resistance, a publication of the Iranian Students

SAVAK conspiracy. Despite the fact that it quickly became an accepted

Dariush Homayoun, the Shahs influential minister of intelligence, aptly

The anonymous columnist also claimed that [Khomeinis] associates

While students at university campuses and religious centers, bazaar

After the Tabriz massacre, in coordinated messages, a group of high-

On the day that the Divine commandments are violated,

Khomeinis humble residence is situated in the bend of one of the nar-

The Black Friday

With Khomeinis orders, the movement continues!

Estimates varied significantly of how many people marched on that day

Military join us!

Figure 5. Michel Foucault arriving in Tehran, September 1978. Photo courtesy

Figure 6. Rally in Tehran, December 1978. Source: Islamic Revolution

each with different justification, promoted and recognized the leadership

Foucault was deeply engaged with the prisoners rights movement

Commenting on the unprecedented presence of the masses men,

Foucault turned the transformative moment he experienced during the

It is in response to this common teleological view that Foucault empha-

In a more sociological report, originally called The Shah and the

Foucault recognized the competing interests of a variety of political par-

At a certain moment, he observes, without precipitating social or polit-

How can one analyze the connection between ways of distinguishing

Contrary to a commonplace reading of Foucaults enthusiasm about the

Foucault thought Shiism was particularly conducive to the kind of

In Iran, Foucault recognized the possibility in Islam of a continuous

The paradoxical notion of pessimistic activism captures the core of

Foucaults Fanonian Predicament

both in their interpretation of Foucault and their representation of Islam-

Afarys earlier work on the Iranian constitutional revolution heavily

1. Thinking the Unthinkable: The Revolutionary

2. How Did Foucault Make Sense of the Iranian

4. The Reign of Terror, Womens Issues, and

5. Was ist Aufklrung? The Iranian Revolution as a

1.The formation of a Constituent Assembly composed of the elected