Foucault and the Iranian Revolution
A Talk by Kevin B. Anderson
Wednesday, October 25 at 7:00 pm
Suggested Donation: $7 - $10
Beginning in 1978, Michel Foucault covered the mass unrest against the Shah in
Iran as a journalist for Italian and French publications. He paid particular
attention to the Islamic wing of the Iranian Revolution, which he rightly
identified as a major new force in world politics. His search for an alternative
to Western liberal democracy led him to favorably judge the first major victory
of radical Islam as a new "political spirituality." His support for this
movement raises an important question about how Foucault, a major theorist of
modern power, could have overlooked the repressive nature of Khomeini’s
movement. With Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions
of Islamism, Janet Afary and Kevin Anderson have written the definitive
English account and analysis of this episode. They suggest some troubling
connections between Foucault's political judgment and his theoretical critique
of modernity. They also discuss the sharp differences between his position on
the Iranian Revolution (and radical Islamism) and those of the feminist
philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, the Marxist historian Maxime Rodinson, and the
feminist writer Kate Millett. As Iran and its allies grow in prestige as a
counter power to American hegemony, what relevance might the relation of this
major Western critical theorist to the political Islamist movement have for
today?
Kevin B. Anderson, Associate Professor of Political Science, Sociology, and
Women’s Studies at Purdue University, is author of Lenin, Hegel and Western
Marxism. Anderson is co-editor of Marx on Suicide, The Rosa
Luxemburg Reader, Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology, and a
forthcoming volume of Marx’s writings on non-Western societies and gender.