The problem with Islam as a political force is an essential one for our times and for the years to come”, replied Michel Foucault to a letter to the editor, sent to the French weekly, Le Nouvel Observateur, by an Iranian reader, “Atoussa H.”, in 1979. Written after his second and last visit to the country where a popular insurrection sought to overthrow the regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi, Foucault’s reply to this letter attempted to respond as well as to rising criticism over his reports on the Iranian revolution. Little discussed outside of France, the writings of Michel Foucault on the Iranian revolution have become an ambivalent focal point since 9/11. Insofar as Foucault focused on moments of historical discontinuity, and at that time in his research was bent on analyzing the complexity of power in distinct historical frameworks, he also worked on envisioning possibilities of resistance. In the urban revolt of millions of Iranians against the Shah, Foucault recognized an event of resistance and political self-affirmation of prime historical importance.And Foucault went even further. Upon returning from his first visit, he met briefly with the Ayatollah Khomeini, exiled in France at the time, as he felt that a process of “political spirituality” was unfolding in Iran. That Foucault’s objectives were to create a true journalism of political ideas and that through the Iranian context he sought to understand the turbulence faced by another civilization, this nobody can deny. As Foucault wrote, when the tone of his reports was the source of outrage among Khomeini’s opponents in France, “the first condition for taking on [the problem of Islam as a political force] with a minimum degree of intelligence, is not to begin with hatred.” Yet, as if it was in an application of the thought of the “specific” intellectual and of the suspension of moral judgment, Foucault sought to comprehend this radical political happening from its internal processes.What has developed in the Middle East since then, we have come to know at least by gleaning at the headlines of international news. Foucault’s articles on Iran, as incomplete as his project ultimately proved to be, offer a perspective on a pivotal time and on religion’s new political expansion. We are still being driven by its repercussions, be it as Muslims, Christians, Jews or atheists. In the context of the historical progression of Shiite and Sunnite fundamentalism, the Iran “dossier” has been received mainly in two ways. One reading has Foucault undergoing a philosophical and political apprenticeship through his inquiry. This is Foucault’s biographer Didier Eribon’s portrayal. In a pioneering gesture for a European philosopher, Foucault witnessed a process of radical subjective transformation of a Muslim people, in this case, Iranians. Eribon suggests that “political spirituality” opened a path in Foucault’s research on subjectivation processes within the reformulated History of Sexuality. But in spite of the balanced attention given in this reading, such an argument seems to take chronology for causality.On the other hand, Foucault was accused of conceiving of a “political spirituality” through the framework of death and in disregard toward the plight of women. Advocates of this reading, like Afary and Anderson, take Foucault as having sacrificed his preoccupation with the civic, moral and philosophical demands of lay individuals, and especially of women. They hold responsible the initial enthusiasm with which he experienced the reencounter of religion with politics in the case of the Islamic revolution. They claim obsession on his part with the way Shiite revolutionaries faced death. Moreover, these critics argue that the context of post-Nietzschean political analysis led Foucault to a prognosis on the revolution that abstracted from its repercussions on human rights and the rule of law – despite the fact that his theoretical writings of that time kept inspiring woman’s thought and feminist thought alike.Foucault abruptly halted his interest in the progression of revolution in Iran. As the main documents of this period have yet to be translated into Portuguese, my aim here is to present the main themes of Foucault’s project, and his experience as it developed during this brief period between September 1978 and May 1979. In the second part, I consider some of the criticism made against him, and I offer a bid at relativizing it. We end on a rapprochement of Foucault’s conception of journalism of ideas with the work of American-Iranian artist, Shirin Neshat.
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Jun 1, 2007
Kristina Sessa 
Open Access