Foucault, Neoliberalism, and the Iranian Revolution
Claudia Castiglioni
Foucault delivered the first of his lectures at the Collège de France on “The Birth of Biopolitics” shortly upon his return from Iran in early January 1979, while the conclusive one, addressed in early April, preceded his last piece on the revolution by just a few weeks. His analyses of the Iranian events thus took place against the immediate background of his analysis of governmental rationality from pastoral power to American neoliberalism. However, a definitive connection between the philosopher’s writing on Iran and his broader views on politics, religion, and power relations is still to be established.
Foucault’s initial enthusiasm for the movement that led to the ousting of the Pahlavi regime has been at the center of a lively debate for more than a decade. Yet the general tendency among scholars has been that of considering his journalistic reporting of the revolution as an extravagant parenthesis that had little or no connection with the philosopher’s theoretical itinerary, “a mistake to be forgotten,” in the words of Alain Beaulieu.1 As a result, most of those who have dealt with Foucault and his later works on spirituality, ethics, and governmentality have tended to pass over these articles “in a slightly embarrassed silence.”2 The reasons are twofold: first, the fact that many commentators found the philosopher’s praising of the revolution rather problematic, especially in light of the later establishment of the Islamic Republic, and, therefore, find it difficult to address without openly criticizing Foucault’s naïveté and his superficial knowledge of the revolt he so quickly seemed to endorse; and second, the tendency to look at Foucault’s engagement with the Iranian Revolution as a brief digression that stemmed from the philosopher’s attraction for political experiences that challenged the conventional myth of the “march of History” and its normative, progressive discourse. Those who followed this orientation have tended to refrain from value judgments, preferring instead to view Foucault’s reportage as valuable simply insofar as they reveal lesser-known aspects of his work.3
The most relevant exception is represented by those who have interpreted the Iran reports as a step in the philosopher’s movement toward humanism, a reorientation of his political thought that originated from the disappointment for the outcome of the revolution and from the resulting desire to recant his earlier enthusiasm for the role of spirituality in politics. This, in turn, is considered to have paved the way for Foucault’s turn toward liberalism in the later phase of his life. In the words of Ghamari-Tabrizi: “His writing on Iran remain controversial and largely ignored in relation to the development of his thought, except by those who want to baptise him posthumously as a born-again liberal who had learned the painful lesson of divesting himself from the universal referent of the Enlightenment in the reign of terror in Iran.”4 The allusion of Ghamari-Tabrizi is, first and foremost, to Eric Paras and Alain Beaulieu, who have argued that, when faced with the atrocities of the Islamic Republic established in Tehran, Foucault realized the advantages offered by liberalism, especially if compared to “theocratic regimes like the one led by Khomeini.”5 The other notable exception is that of those who are generally considered to be the harshest critics of Foucault’s writing on Iran: Janet Afary and Kevin Anderson, the authors of the first book-length study on the philosopher’s approach to the Iranian Revolution.6 Their work triggered controversy in the field of Foucauldian studies as it presented Foucault’s support for the Iranian Revolution as the first step of a wider phenomenon of rejecting the Enlightenment that eventually led to the success of radical Islam in challenging the Western political system.
The purpose of this chapter is neither to enter into this rather animated debate nor to provide a normative assessment of Foucault’s engagement with Iranian events. It is rather to explore the possible connection between Foucault’s engagement with the Iranian Revolution and his late works and, more specifically, with the issues of governmentality and liberalism. In order to do so, the essay analyzes Foucault’s experience in Iran and the major features of his writing on the topic. Although the emphasis here is on the role played by the Iran reports in the evolution of the philosopher’s views on liberalism, a brief account of his exposure to the revolution and of his assessment of it seems useful insofar as it highlights the prism through which Foucault approached the Iranian events and processed them in the framework of his intellectual development. The study then links his engagement with the revolution to the redefinition of his approach to issues such as power, resistance, and population, issues that figured prominently in his 1977–1979 lectures at the Collège de France. Finally, it explores the relation between the philosopher’s conceptualization of the Iranian revolt and how his position on liberalism was broadly conceived. In addressing these topics, the essay engages with the works of those authors who have viewed Foucault’s interest in the revolution as seminal to his late works, stressing the differences in their interpretations, along with their limits. It tries to escape from both the simplistic logic put forward by Afary and Anderson and the overly sympathetic views recently expressed in some revisionist accounts.7 Particular attention is therefore paid to two aspects: first, the historical and theoretical framework in which we can situate Foucault’s remarks on Iran and the consequent caution in extrapolating universal features of his political thought from opinions articulated regarding a very specific and historically grounded event; second, the constant dialogue between Foucault’s political engagement and the evolution of his views on power.8
Foucault and the Iranian Reportage
In autumn 1978 Foucault made two trips to Iran to report on the unfolding revolution. A few months earlier, Italian publisher Rizzoli, shareholder of the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, had suggested that Foucault collaborate with the newspaper and write a series of opinion pieces to appear in its columns under the title “Michel Foucault investigates.” The philosopher accepted the proposition and put together a team of intellectuals-journalists who would prepare a series of reports he described as “reportage of ideas” (les reportages des idées). Their aim, in Foucault’s words, was to describe “how ideas generated and how they get articulated, not only in the books that shape them, but also in the events in which they show all their strength, in the struggles they animate.”9 Foucault’s report on Iran was the first of the series to appear. Eventually only three of these reportage pieces saw the light: Foucault’s on the revolution, one by Alain Finkielkraut on Jimmy Carter’s America, and one by André Glucksmann on the boat people in Vietnam. The Iranian reportage consisted of nine articles written between September and December 1978. The articles first appeared in the Corriere della Sera and then, in some cases, were translated into French and published in Le Monde and Le nouvel observateur. A few letters, opinion pieces, and interviews that dated from September 1978 to May 1979 completed Foucault’s production on Iran. The last piece, entitled “Inutile de se soulever?” (“Is It Useless to Revolt?”), appeared in Le Monde on May 11–12, 1979.
Before traveling to Iran, Foucault had already shown interest in the mounting crisis there. Earlier in 1978 he had expressed his support to the opposition to the Shah, and had begun closely following the events as the crisis unfolded. Furthermore, the philosopher was in touch with French human right lawyers such as Thierry Mignon, with whom he had already worked with in the context of the Groupe d’Information sur le Prisons (GIP), and his wife, Sylvie Mignon. Nonetheless, Foucault’s familiarity with the country and its sociopolitical situation remained limited. In the weeks before his departure, Paris-based Iranian dissident and co-founder of the Committee for the Defence of Freedom and Human Rights, Ahmad Salamatian, provided the philosopher with reading material on Iran and relevant contacts of members of the opposition both in France and in Iran. The contacts he obtained through Salamatian, who was to become deputy minister of foreign affairs in the post-revolutionary government, allowed Foucault to meet with some of the most influential leaders of the forces that opposed the Shah’s regime, such as the future president of the Islamic Republic, Abolhassan Banisadr. Foucault’s readings on Iran included the works of French sociologist Paul Vieille, who had previously collaborated with Banisadr on some studies about Iranian social and economic development, of Orientalist Henry Corbin and of his mentor Louis Massignon. The works of Massignon and Corbin on Iranian Islamic philosophy and spirituality profoundly shaped Foucault’s understanding of Shi’a Islam, especially of its ritualistic and spiritual dimensions. Some commentators have argued that Massignon and Corbin’s works and the emphasis they put on the mystical aspects of Islam played a decisive role in shaping Foucault’s views on Iran’s religiosity10 This, in turn, significantly contributed to the philosopher’s conception of political spirituality as one of the distinctive features displayed by the Iranian Revolution. Their studies also increased his interest for one of the most influential figures of Iranian intellectual history: Ali Shariati, whose ideas on exploitation, justice, and martyrdom had a profound impact on Foucault’s experience in Iran.
In his new role of philosopher-journalist, Foucault visited Iran in September and in November 1978. His first visit coincided with the intensification of the tensions between the population and the Shah’s police that followed the massacre in Jaleh Square in Tehran, later known as Black Friday. While in Iran, he witnessed the mounting protests and interviewed some of the people who took part in them, as well as high-ranking members of the Iranian Army and former guerrilla fighters. He also traveled to some Iranian cities, most notably Qom, where he met influential Shi’a cleric Ayatollah Shariatmadari, who would later emerge as one of the major critics of Khomeini’s ideas regarding the role of the clergy in the political sphere. Thanks to his Parisian network, he was also able to meet Iranian intellectuals, such as the writer Baqir Paham, and some prominent members of the revolutionary movement, including the future prime minister of the provisional government, Mehdi Bazargan. During his second stay in Iran in November, Foucault visited the city of Abadan, where he met and interviewed some oil workers. After his return to Paris, he also traveled with François Ewald and Liberation journalists Pierre Blanchet and Claire Brière to Neauphles-le-Château, a village outside Paris where Khomeini was spending the last part of his exile, even though no meeting with the ayatollah took place.
Though spending little time in the country, Foucault showed keen interest in the unfolding revolution from afar. In his articles, he offered a rather sympathetic appraisal of the events he was witnessing. The philosopher’s initial curiosity stemmed from various features he identified in the revolution. First, he considered its singularity, the open challenge it posed to the teleological reading of past and present put forward by scholars and intellectuals, especially of Marxist orientation. According to Foucault, the Iranian Revolution “belonged to history, but in a certain way escaped it.”11 As Ghamari-Tabrizi remarks concerning Foucault’s views, “Iranians desired to make history and, at the same time to be free from it, to be historical subjects without being subjected to its deterministic logic, to be included in and exit from History.”12 The overthrow of the Pahlavi regime not only challenged the normative progressive narrative of past and present, but also put into question the very notion of revolution. The Iranian revolt did not fit into the Western paradigm of revolutionary change conceived as the means whereby a population rises up to depose a heteronomous (and largely religious) form of government and replace it with an autonomous, enlightened, and secular one: its outbreak and evolution openly defied such basic assumptions, challenging the dichotomies on which it was based, most notably those of religion and secularism, modernity and tradition.13 It is in these paradoxes, in this ambiguity, and in the possibility of new patterns of relationship between religion and politics, where the philosopher’s interest in the revolution resided. “Shi”ism”—Foucault argued in one of his articles—“breathes into them [the protesters] an ardor wherein the political and the religious lie side by side.”14 Second, Foucault was fascinated by the phenomenon of resistance, by the decision by the Iranian people to challenge the Pahlavi authority up to the point of sacrificing their life in the fight. Such display of ultimate courage contributed to the philosopher’s reassessment of the relation between state and population. “If societies persist and survive,”—Foucault wrote in May 1979—“that is to say if power in these societies is not absolute, it is because […] 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.”15 Thus defined, the notion of resistance seems to indicate a partial reassessment of the philosopher’s earlier conception of power as articulated in Discipline and Punish.16 This, in turn, opened the way for a new role of the subject in its relationship with the authority of the state. Third, Foucault attached particular relevance to the role played by Shi’a Islam in such processes of resistance to power. The importance of Shi’ism according to Foucault was threefold: as an element of cohesiveness for the revolutionary front; as provider of shared revolutionary language and symbolism; and as a crucial resource that allowed the people who joined the fight to experience a transformation of the self. Religion afforded the revolution a vocabulary through which a people could redefine its existence.17 It induced the protesters to forsake their individuality. It “transformed thousands of forms of discontent, hatred, misery, and despair into a force.”18 It “gave to its people infinite resources to resist state power.”19 “For Foucault Islam was neither a burden of the past nor a blueprint for the future—Ghamari-Tabrizi has commented—Shi’a Islam was the context for a creative reinvention of the self, without reference to an a priori, transcendental subject.20 “It was through Islam”—Craig Keating has added—“that Iranians could gain access to the dormant forces within them that made revolution possible.”21 In the close connection Foucault drew between Shi’a Islam and the transformation of the subjectivity, one finds the influence of Iranian revolutionary thinker Ali Shariati. Fourth, Foucault’s interest focused on the practice of political spirituality, seen by the philosopher as the distinctive feature of the revolution.22 Foucault coined the expression in narrating the events taking place in Iran to describe the process whereby the protagonists of the revolution made history through the transformation of the self.23 Yet, the aspect that probably attracted Foucault the most was the asymmetry of the struggle and, at the same time, its global impact. He saw the revolution as “the insurrection of men with bare hands” on whom bore down “the weight of the entire world.”24 In this sense, according to Foucault, the Iranian Revolution represented “the first, great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.”25
The significance Foucault attached to the Iranian events proved that the philosopher was not immune to the type of illusions that so many Western leftists had developed toward the Soviet Union, Maoist China, or Castro’s Cuba. Yet a significant difference existed between Foucault’s interest for the Iranian Revolution and his fellow intellectuals’ fascination for the Chinese cultural revolution or the Cuban one: it was not the utopian ambitions that animated the political struggle that attracted the philosopher’s curiosity, but rather the revolutionary experience per se, the (perceived) absence of any affirmative agenda in the Iranian protests, and the resulting creation of a greater space for political creativity and imagination. Furthermore, Foucault’s praising of the religious dimension of the Iranian Revolution, especially for the pivotal and unifying role played by Shi’a Islam, stemmed not from the social empathy for the oppressed but rather from the type of spirituality it represented and for the new form of insurrection it inspired. In general, what distinguished Foucault’s attitude toward the revolution was his defense of it not only in spite of but also because of its Islamic character.26 To this extent, the philosopher showed more insight than many of his fellow commentators, especially those who hoped to see in the Iranian events the beginning of a socialist revolution.27
Iranian Revolution and Liberalism
Foucault’s journeys to Iran and his reportage on the revolution coincided with his exploration of governmental rationality in the framework of his governmentality lectures at the Collège de France. In the context of his 1977–1979 courses, “Security, Territory, Population” and “The Birth of Biopolitics,” Foucault undertook a critical analysis of a selected number of historical experiences, examined through the lens of power relations. His study included the scrutiny of postwar forms of neoliberal thought in Germany, the United States, and France, considered as ways of rethinking the conduct of government.28 This latter aspect and, more specifically, the appreciation he seemed to show for some features of the neoliberal model, is at the core of this volume.
As stated before, the aim of this chapter is to participate in this discussion by exploring the role played by the Iranian experience in the intellectual development of Foucault’s theories on governmental rationality and liberalism. The analysis proposed here starts from the assumption of the connection between Foucault’s political and militant activities and his appraisal of power, as put forward by Marcelo Hoffman. According to Hoffman, such relation could be seen as a dialectic interplay, which provided a more refined and discriminate view of the various permutations of power throughout the development of Foucault’s philosophy. “Foucault’s political experiences and practices [including that in Iran]”—Hoffman argues—“invariably informed, stimulated, and structured his thinking about power and his reflections on power invariably carried over into his political practices, even if they were not ‘applied’ in any strict or rigid sense.”29 Far from suggesting the existence of a rigorous correlation between Foucault’s exposure to the revolution and his views on liberalism, Hoffman’s claim is important insofar as it stresses the relevance of the Iranian experience within the evolution of Foucault’s broader theories of power. This, in turn, appears essential when questioning the widespread tendency mentioned in the introduction toward downplaying the role of the writings on Iran in the context of the philosopher’s oeuvre.
As suggested throughout this volume, Foucault’s relationship to liberalism is hardly unambiguous. This chapter explores this relationship in the context of the Iranian Revolution by building off of Michael Behrent’s convincing argument that the subject “cannot be discussed in terms of adhesion or conversion; it is characterized, rather, by moments of distance and proximity, from which emerged occasional terrains d’entente.”30 Behrent therefore suggests exploring the “bridges” that opened up between Foucault’s thought and liberalism. In our case, we confine the search for such “bridges” to three critical areas: Foucault and liberalism as an ideology that emphasizes rationality and individualism; Foucault and the search for alternative forms of governmentality; and Foucault and the concept of resistance. An additional note of caution seems in order before approaching the topic: even though these bridges are important and indicate some encounters between Foucault’s intellectual itinerary, his experience in Iran, and the theory of liberalism, such convergences should not be overestimated. They signal the importance of understanding and taking into account the cultural climate that served as a background of Foucault’s later works. Such cultural background provided intellectual inspiration for the evolution of his views on power and politics. Some of its features echoed Foucault’s critique on the dominant models of society as envisioned by European social democracy. Nonetheless, as it has been observed, the overlapping between Foucault and the liberal revival remained of partial and limited character.31
The first part of the analysis focuses on Foucault and political liberalism as ideology that claims the primacy of Reason, the centrality of individual freedoms, and the universal quest for modernity. Foucault’s notorious hostility toward secular humanism has traditionally precluded any affinity between Foucault and liberalism. Nevertheless, some studies have challenged this assumption by suggesting the existence of a solid connection between the philosopher’s views on the events taking place in Iran and his assessment of the Enlightenment and, along with it, his views on human rights and individual freedom. Alain Beaulieu has advanced the idea that the philosopher’s experience in Iran and the disappointment for the revolt’s outcome contributed to his late discovery of the positive potential of liberalism. While recognizing that “Foucault did not suddenly become an immoderate supporter of liberalism,” Beaulieu has argued that the painful lesson of Iran showed the philosopher that collective action in the form of political spirituality was misguided or at least unnecessary and that “there is no radical Other who will save us, but we can find resources for a change within the western tradition.”32 This renewed interest for liberalism, combined with the realization that his praising of Shi’a spirituality was “hazardous and romantic,” would explain, according to Beaulieu, Foucault’s scrutiny of the Enlightenment and of Kant in his later publications.33 In this sense Beaulieu belongs to those scholars who wish to see Foucault’s later texts as a return to the liberal (or neoliberal) self. What distinguishes Beaulieu’s work from the other studies that have advanced this theory is the role he attributes to the Iranian writing in Foucault’s turn to liberalism. Far from looking at them as an embarrassing parenthesis to be neglected, Beaulieu sees them as a crucial step in the evolution of the philosopher’s thought, an evolution that found full expression in his essay on the Enlightenment. The connection between the Iranian reportage and Foucault’s interest in individualism and liberalism also emerges in Eric Paras’s controversial volume Foucault 2.0: Beyond Power and Knowledge. Anticipating some elements later put forward by Beaulieu, Paras contended that Foucault’s writing on the Iranian Revolution could be ascribed to the philosopher’s reassessment of the role of the subject in his later works. “Foucault created the twentieth century’s most devastating critique of the free subject, Paras argued, and then, in a voice that by the end trembled from pain and debility, liquidated it.”34 The scholar contended that Foucault’s experience in Iran and the disillusionment over the outcome of the revolution, together with his exposure to the nouveau philosophes, were at the origins of his increasing interest for ethics and reengagement with human subjectivity.35
The interpretations of Beaulieu and Paras have been harshly criticized by Ghamari-Tabrizi. According to him, both analyses are mistaken in their claims that the atrocities that occurred under the Islamic Republic forced the philosopher to reconsider the consequences of his radical anti-humanism or retreat to the bosom of the liberal or existential fold.36 Ghamari-Tabrizi’s remarks are not only directed against Beaulieu and Paras, but also to Afary and Anderson. In their highly critical work on Foucault’s engagement with the Iranian Revolution, the two authors have argued that the exposure to the Iranian events induced the philosopher to adopt a position on the Enlightenment that was more nuanced than before. The two authors read Foucault’s essay on the Enlightenment as an implicit reassessment of his earlier critique of the eighteenth century’s rationality and a renunciation to the search of political spirituality.37 Critical dismissal of these theories does not mean that he rejects any connection between Foucault’s writing on Iran and his views on power. He has claimed that, despite the disappointment for the outcome of the revolution, Foucault remained critical of the Enlightenment and of the idea that Reason should be considered synonymous with truth. Yet the singularity of the Iranian Revolution and its distinctiveness from other revolutionary experiences, he has argued, are crucial insofar as they show, in Foucault’s view, the possibility of revolt and political transformation outside the progressive discourse of history and the normative conventions of the Enlightenment.38
Ghamari-Tabrizi’s interpretation brings us to the second level of our analysis: the connection between Foucault’s assessment on the revolution and its search for alternative forms of governmentality. This aspect has been thoroughly discussed by Marcelo Hoffman in his study on Foucault and the Iranian Revolution. According to Hoffman the major contribution of the Iranian experience in the development of the philosopher’s views on power and sovereignty lies in the introduction of the notion of people as distinct from population. The topic had been the object of Foucault’s scrutiny since the mid-1970s and acquired further relevance with the 1977–1978 course, “Security, Territory, Population.” In these lectures he admitted the possibility of another conception of population beyond that of a mere object of regulations. According to Hoffman, “this sudden reorientation in his approach to population clearly derived from his newfound engagement with liberalism.”39 The role of the Iranian Revolution in this passage was, according to Hoffman, crucial: “The very fact that the Iranians were revolting signaled their transformation into a people opposed to population, a people that could not be reduced to the mere sum of the individuals with their economic and political interests.”40 The Iranian people, thus defined, were bound together by a collective will and were determined to put into question every form of political sovereignty and to open the space for alternative forms of governmentality. Foucault’s reflections as interpreted by Hoffman provide the chance to escape from the idea of population as a mere object of regulations. In addition, they offer the possibility of identifying those who protested in the streets of Tehran as people who challenged the state’s monopoly of power to advance an alternative pattern of power relations. This latter aspect is particularly important in light of Foucault’s distinctive criticism for the centrality accorded to the state in the representations and theorizations of power.
Here lies another key feature of Foucault’s approach to the revolution and, to some extent, of his relationship with neoliberalism. Foucault looked at the set of ideas put forward by the economists from the Chicago School as a provocative, refreshing, courageous alternative to European social democracy, as a series of arguments that shook the social, political, and economic foundations of the modern Western state. Similarly he found himself attracted by the Iranian experience as a phenomenon that proved the possibility of a new beginning, of innovative redefinition of the very notion of power, and of an alternative to the kind of political rationality that has been predominant since the Enlightenment.41 He saw the revolution as an example of political creativity conceived as the ability of the people to look for new answers to traditional patterns of governmentality, for alternatives to the preconceived schema of power. Foucault expressed this connection between his curiosity for the Iranian events and his disappointment with the Enlightenment and with Marxism in his conversation with Iranian writer Baqir Parham in September 1978. “From the point of view of political thought”—Foucault argued—“we are, so to speak, at point zero. We have to construct another political thought, another political imagination, and teach anew the vision of a future. I am saying this so that you know that […] any Western intellectual with some integrity, cannot be indifferent to what she or he hears about Iran.”42 Shi’a Islam has a crucial role in creating the political space required by the Iranians’ search of new forms of sovereignty. Far from being “the opium of the people,” Shi’a Islam was instrumental in the process of political awakening and in that of inciting and fomenting political awareness.43 This, in turn, facilitated the transformation of the self, provided a doctrinal platform for people to change their subjectivity, and promoted the critical passage from the population as objects of regulations to people as subjects-objects of power.
A third level, connected to the second one, in which we can identify some elements of affinity between Foucault’s experience in Iran and his engagement with liberalism is the one that revolves around the concept of resistance. As suggested by Michael Behrent, Foucault’s interest in the limitations of and resistance to power are among the elements of his political thought that seem to possess a liberal dimension.44 In this framework, the choice of the Iranian people to confront the apparently invincible power of the Pahlavi regime with resistance constituted one of the major features that triggered Foucault’s interest in the unfolding revolution. He identified in the experience of the revolt that of the reinvention of the subject through the transformative potential of political spirituality.45 Ghamari-Tabrizi has elaborated on this point, observing that according to Foucault, the revolt should be considered as an ethical concern, in spite of the fact that it would result in giving rise to other institutions of disciplinary power. “What is more important from the point of view of the subject”—he has contended—“is not the level of success or failure of the revolutionary movement but the manner in which it was lived.”46 In this sense “the major distinction of Foucault’s writing 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.”47 This conceptualization of resistance in Foucault’s political thought requires the acknowledgment of the people, as opposed to population, as subjects who can enjoy some freedom, including that of defying the authority of the state.48 The role of Islam in this transition is crucial. “At the dawn of history, Persia invented the state and conferred its models on Islam”—Foucault wrote in October 1978—“but from the same Islam, it derived a religion that gave to its people infinite resources to resist state power.”49 In this sense Foucault’s fascination for the revolution as a moment of political creativity, his admiration for the Iranians’ revolt against the power of the state, his admission of the possibility of people as subjects of power, and his belief that the Iranian events showed the possibility of transformation and reinvention of the self through Islam, all represent facets of the same phenomenon.
A recent and rather provocative contribution to the debate regarding Foucault and neoliberalism should be mentioned here. The sociologist Melinda Cooper, who had previously worked on the relationship between capitalist restructuring and bio-scientific innovation from a Marxist perspective, is the author of a recent analysis of Foucault and Iran that focuses on the so-called neoliberal biopolitics. According to Cooper, one of the aspects that attracted the philosopher’s attention for the revolution was the contrast between “neoliberal economics that dissolve[d] the boundaries between private and public space” and “political Islam that [sought] to re-establish the foundational value of the household by submitting the transaction of pleasure and money to the dictates of divine law.”50 Foucault, in Cooper’s analysis, identified in some of the new norms introduced by the Islamic revolution a response to the transformation of the individual into the entrepreneur of his or her own body and sexuality, a trend that to some extent had marked Iranian economic and social development in the 1960s and 1970s. Foucault thus saw the restoration by Khomeini and his followers of divine law what Cooper calls “the law of the household” (oikonomia): a bulwark against neoliberalism, especially in its domestic dimension as elaborated by Chicago School economist Gary Becker. In other words, according to Cooper, Foucault was “so disturbed by the general diffusion of the oikos into the polis that defines neoliberalism […] that he found the Iranian Revolution interesting precisely because it focused on restoring some sort of classic oikonomia.”51 “In response to Becker’s iconoclastic philosophy of household transactions”—Cooper has affirmed—“Foucault turns to the pre-modern tradition of Western philosophy to retrieve a deeply nostalgic ethics of the noble, patriarchal household.”52 This offered a point of contact with the criticism by the Iranian Shi’a clergy directed at the phenomenon of “Westoxication” (Gharbzadegi).
The interpretation provided by Cooper on Foucault’s views of the Iranian Revolution presents significant elements of novelty compared to those provided by Paras and Beaulieu. It reverses the relationship between Foucault’s attention for the revolution and the evolution of his position on liberalism. It argues that the philosopher looked at the events taking place in Iran not as an experiment of alternative mechanisms of power, but rather as an attempt to return to traditional family patterns. More importantly, it contends that Foucault’s interest for the efforts carried out by the Islamic forces to reestablish classic oikonomia stemmed from his concern for the neoliberal understanding of family relations. Far from identifying in his Iranian reports the starting point for a late recanting of his anti-liberal positions, Cooper’s work argues that Foucault’s experience in Iran actually inspired the philosopher’s negative stance of the transformations underway in family and other kinship structures as promoted by neoliberal thinkers such as Gary Becker. According to Foucault, such transformations deserved close attention for they were later exported to the governance of the state and reconfigured as management of population.
Cooper’s analysis of Foucault has raised some criticism from Colin Gordon. One of Foucault’s principal translators and commentators in the Anglo-Saxon world, Gordon has voiced his skepticism toward the general claim of Foucault’s late endorsement or embrace of liberalism and neoliberalism. With regard to Cooper’s analysis, he has stressed the tendency of recent scholarship to overemphasize Foucault’s attention to biopolitics in his governmentality lectures and expressed his discomfort with its use as the key to understanding neoliberalism.53
Conclusions
The analysis so far presented has tried to answer an innovative, and yet already controversial, research question: what is the role of Foucault’s writing on Iran in the philosopher’s intellectual development and, more particularly, in his (re)assessment of (neo)liberalism?
An appraisal of the views expressed by Foucault on the revolution as well as of the context in which they were enunciated has allowed us to identify three critical connections between the philosopher’s views on the Iranian events and the broader reorientation of his political thought in the late phase of his career. Probably the most important of these connections is constituted by Foucault’s critique to the “monstrosity we call the state.”54 Foucault saw in the Iranian Revolution a manifestation of a new way of interpreting and conducting politics, far from the existing forms of governmentality. The victory of the protesters against the world’s fifth strongest army was the triumph of a movement that succeeded in “remaining in touch with the old dreams that were once familiar to the West, when it too wanted to inscribe the figures of spirituality on the ground of politics.”55 It was a challenge to politics as emerged from the two painful experiences of the past centuries: Enlightenment and Marxism, “a strike in relation to politics.”56 The Iranian Revolution should serve, according to Foucault, as a memento that alternatives are possible, that the search for new governmental rationalities should animate any political initiative.
Here lies the parallel with the philosopher’s interest in liberalism, especially in its 1970s configuration. The protesters who took the streets of Tehran to ask for the departure of the Shah and the establishment of an Islamic government and the proponents of a liberal alternative to statism as exemplified by the postwar France, as distant as they might appear, are brought together by the open challenge they both posed to modern European politics. Both the Iranian Revolution and the theories advanced by the Chicago School Economist represented for Foucault “critical tools” in the words of Serge Audier or “theoretical weapons” in those of Michael Behrent.57 The philosopher’s interest toward these phenomena should be considered in the framework of his anti-statism that, by the 1970s, had evolved into the argument that “the state should cease to be the primary focus of engaging in politics”58 and that “it became essential to develop a way of thinking about that did not consider the meaning and nature of the state.”59 In this framework, not only the men who fought the Iranian army “with bare hands” but also the neoliberal economists who dared to challenge the old mechanism of the welfare state captured Foucault’s attention. In this regard, Pierre Rosanvallon’s program of autogestion (self-management) prompted the philosopher’s curiosity as a political proposal that questioned the dogmatism of the left and the conventional role of the state. Foucault shared little with these theories, the same way he shared little with Khomeini’s message or the ideas voiced by the protesters in the streets of Tehran. Yet he saw in them the sources for “a critical activity,” “a permanent critique of governmental policy.”60
With regard to the Iranian experience, Foucault repeatedly stated his interest in the phenomenon as it unfolded and took shape, refusing intentions of seeing an explanation of the past or a premonition of the future in it. He never aimed at locating the emergence of political Islam into the path of history. Far from it, he thought he could use the singularity of the revolution to challenge such a path. Similarly, he never argued that (neo)liberalism would represent the key to the future of European economic recovery after the crisis of the 1970s. His intent was to raise attention to the theoretical hypotheses that challenged the paradigm of politics as conceived and conducted in his time, most notably in France. As persuasively argued by Serge Audier, Foucault’s interest for the neoliberal theories and, we can add, for the revolution unfolding in Iran, does not at all mean that he modelled his position on that of the “new economists” or that he endorsed the program of Islamic government put forward by Khomeini and his followers. “He took from them what he needed to construct his analysis of power relations in partially post-disciplinary societies.”61 His exposure to these two, challenges to postwar European politics, contributed to the search of alternative forms of governmentality that animated the last phase of his career. Little did he know that the Islamic Republic would soon display the same statist and repressive features of the regime it replaced. As it has been observed:
The encounter between Foucault and Islam was not the analysis by a maître à penser of an important phenomenon of his times . . . rather, on the contrary, an adventurous, strategic encounter between a political reflection [that of Foucault] that was changing and taking shape at vertiginous pace, and an opaque, bizarre event, that attracted him for its anomalous nature rather than for an objective identification [of the revolution] as a sign of the [changing] times.62
The recent flourishing of scholarship of Foucault’s alleged support to (neo)liberalism seems to suggest that the relationship between the philosopher and the theory of Becker and Friedman is facing the same fate as that of his interest in the Iranian Revolution. Terms such as “fascination,” “flirtation,” “seduction,” and “endorsement” have appeared with growing frequency, implying a connection between the philosopher and the theory much closer than the former would claim. Michel Foucault remains a controversial thinker, a philosopher who never hid his discomfort toward conventional answers and never ceased to search for alternative ones. He was an intellectual who adamantly refused labels and who changed his views as frequently as he saw fit. As one of his most famous quotes puts it, “Do not ask me who I am, and do not ask me to remain the same.”63 More than ten years after the publication of the controversial study of Afary and Anderson, we are now finally entering into a new phase of the debate on Foucault’s reports on the Iranian Revolution, characterized by a more nuanced and multifaceted approach to his appraisal of the events.
In keeping with the spirit of this moment and the ambitions of this volume, this chapter does not aim at providing a definitive answer on the relationship between Foucault and liberalism and on the role played by the Iranian Revolution in it. Its, more limited, goal is to suggest some affinities, some “bridges” between the philosopher’s exposure to the Iranian event and his intellectual development in the late 1970s. In so doing, it also tries to advise some caution in pinning easy labels on a philosopher who was sensitive to ideas that emerged in the rapidly changing world in which he lived, who absorbed them without prejudice, and who constantly searched for new perspectives, sometimes adopting provocative stances, dialoguing with provocative ideas, or engaging with anti-conventional causes.
NOTES
1. Alain Beaulieu, “Toward a Liberal Utopia: The Connection Between Foucault’s Reporting on the Iranian Revolution and the Ethical Turn,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 36 (2010): 802.
2. Michiel Leezenberg, “Power and Political Spirituality: Michel Foucault on the Islamic Revolution in Iran,” in John Neubauer, ed. Cultural History After Foucault (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1999), 63.
3. See, among others: Georg Stauth, “Revolutions in Spiritless Times: An Essay on Michel Foucault’s Enquiries into the Iranian Revolution,” International Sociology 6 (1991); Craig Keating, “Reflections on the Revolution in Iran: Foucault on resistance,” Journal of European Studies 27 (1997); Jeremy Carrette, Foucault and Religion (New York: Routledge, 2000).
4. Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 185.
5. Eric Paras, Foucault 2.0: Beyond Power and Knowledge (New York: Other Press, 2006); Beaulieu, “Toward a Liberal Utopia,” 806.
6. Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005).
7. The reference here is mostly to Ghamari-Tabrizi, Foucault in Iran.
8. This is an aspect recently explored by Marcelo Hoffman in Foucault and Power. The Influence of Political Engagement on Theories of Power (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014).
9. “I ‘reportages’ di idee,” Corriere della Sera, November 12, 1978, in Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits, vol. 3, 1976–1979 (Paris: Gallimard, 1994): 707.
10. For example Leezenberg, “Power and Political Spirituality,” 73; Ghamari-Tabrizi, Foucault in Iran, 55–57.
11. Michel Foucault, “Is It Useless to Revolt?” Le Monde, May 11–12, 1979, in Afary and Anderson, eds., Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 263.
12. Ghamari-Tabrizi, Foucault in Iran, 188.
13. For a classic analysis of the modern theory of revolution see Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin, 1963).
14. Michel Foucault, “Tehran: Fight against the Shah,” Corriere della Sera, October 8, 1978, in Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 201.
15. Foucault, “Is It Useless to Revolt?”, 263.
16. On this point see, among others Michael C. Behrent, “Liberalism Without Humanism: Michel Foucault and the Free-Market Creed, 1976–1979,” Modern Intellectual History 6 (2009): 558–59.
17. Michel Foucault, “Iran: The Spirit of a World Without Spirit,” in Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 252.
18. Foucault, “Tehran,” 202.
19. Michel Foucault, “What Are the Iranians Dreaming About?” Le Nouvel Observateur, October 16–22, 1978, in Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 208.
20. Ghamari-Tabrizi, Foucault in Iran, 173.
21. Keating, “Reflections on the Revolution,” 186.
22. Ibid., 209.
23. Ghamari-Tabrizi, Foucault in Iran, 58.
24. Michel Foucault, “The Mythical Leader of the Iranian Revolt,” Corriere della Sera, November 26, 1978, in Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 222.
25. Ibid.
26. Ghamari-Tabrizi, Foucault in Iran, 270.
27. On this point see David Greason, “Embracing Death: The Western Left and the Iranian Revolution, 1978–83,” Economy and Society (34) (2005).
28. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 3.
29. Hoffman, Foucault and Power, 149.
30. Ibid., 156.
31. Ibid., 161.
32. Beaulieu, “Toward a Liberal Utopia,” 806.
33. Ibid., 815.
34. Paras, Foucault 2.0, 158.
35. In this regard, Paras quotes the letter Foucault wrote to Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan in April 1979. The letter, which was published in Le nouvel observateur, calls Bazargan to increase his government’s efforts to protect human rights in the new regime and the importance of the rule of law in the exercise of power. See Michel Foucault, “Open Letter to Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan,” Le nouvel observateur, April 14–20, 1979, in Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 260–62.
36. Ghamari-Tabrizi, Foucault in Iran, 163.
37. Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 137.
38. Ibid., 189.
39. Hoffman, Foucault and Power, 102.
40. Ibid., 113.
41. Leezenberg, “Power and Political Spirituality,” 74.
42. “Dialogue between Michel Foucault and Baqir Parham,” September 1978, in Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 185.
43. Ibid., 186.
44. Behrent, “Foucault and France’s Liberal Moment,” 162.
45. On this point, see Keating, “Reflections on the Revolution in Iran.”
46. Ghamari-Tabrizi, Foucault in Iran, 72.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., 113.
49. Foucault, “What are the Iranians Dreaming About?,” 208.
50. Melinda Cooper, “The Law of the Household: Foucault, Neoliberalism and the Iranian Revolution,” in The Government of Life: Foucault, Biopolitics and Neoliberalism, eds. Vanessa Lemm and Miguel Vatter (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 33.
51. Gordon Hull, “Cooper on Foucault and Neoliberalism,” http://www.newappsblog.com/2015/10/cooper-on-foucault-on-iran-and-neoliberalism.html. Accessed March 15, 2017.
52. Cooper, “The Law of the Household,” 43.
53. Fabiana Jardim, “A brief genealogy of governmentality studies: the Foucault effect and its developments. An interview with Colin Gordon,” Educação e Pesquisa 39 (2013): 1077.
54. “Dialogue between Michel Foucault and Baqir Parham,” 185.
55. Foucault, “Is It Useless to Revolt?” 265.
56. Michel Foucault, “A Revolt with Bare Hands,” Corriere della Sera, November 5, 1978, in Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 212.
57. Serge Audier, “The French Reception of American Neoliberalism in the Late 1970s” in Stephen Sawyer and Iain Stewart, eds. In Search of the Liberal Moment: Democracy, Anti-totalitarianism, and Intellectual Politics in France since 1950 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2016), 546.
58. Behrent, “Liberalism Without Humanism,” 545.
59. Behrent, “Foucault and France’s Liberal Moment,” 158.
60. Audier, “The French Reception,” 184.
61. Ibid., 187.
62. Andrea Cavazzini, “Foucault e l’Islam,” in Andrea Cavazzini, ed. Michael Foucault, L’Islam et la révolution iranienne – L’Islam e la rivoluzione iraniana (Milano: Mimesis Edizioni, 2005), 13.
63. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge; Behrent, “Foucault and France’s Liberal Moment,” 164.