Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment

273 Pages·2016·14.45 MB·English

by  Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi

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 21st Century: Governmentality, Biopolitics and Discipline in the
New Millennium, ed. Sam Binkley and Jorge Capetillo, 270– 90 (New Castle:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009). Published with the permission
of Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Copyright 2016 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
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Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
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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, 1926–1984—Influence. | Iran—History—Revolution, 1979. |
Iran—History—Revolution, 1979—Historiography.
Classification: LCC B2430.F724 G52 2016 | DDC 955.05/42—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015036894
TO GOLROKH
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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?
— Jürgen 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
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contents
preface xi
introduction
Foucault’s 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, Women’s Issues, and
Feminist Politics 113
5. Was ist Auf klärung? The Iranian Revolution as a
Moment of Enlightenment 159
conclusion
Writing the History of the Present 187
acknowledgments 193
notes 197
index 231