Online philosophy and culture magazine Aeon has a piece from Colin Koopman - who teaches philosophy at the University of Oregon, and is currently "writing a genealogy of the politics of data" - in praise of Michel Foucault.
"Power", apparently, is Foucault's key word. Koopman argues that whereas all previous philosophers had searched for the Platonic essence of power, Foucault took a radically different approach:
Rather than using philosophy to freeze power into a timeless essence, and then to use that essence to comprehend so much of power’s manifestations in the world, Foucault sought to unburden philosophy of its icy gaze of capturing essences. He wanted to free philosophy to track the movements of power, the heat and the fury of it working to define the order of things.
To appreciate the originality of Foucault’s approach, it is helpful to contrast it to that of previous political philosophy. Before Foucault, political philosophers had presumed that power had an essence: be it sovereignty, or mastery, or unified control....
In seeing through the imaginary singularity of power, Foucault was able to also envision it set against itself. He was able to hypothesise, and therefore to study, the possibility that power does not always assume just one form and that, in virtue of this, a given form of power can coexist alongside, or even come into conflict with, other forms of power.
It doesn't seem like much of an insight to me - power isn't an essence, but comes in different forms...who'd have guessed? - but then I'm no expert on matters Foucauldian. It does, though, seem a shame, as we look to events in Iran, and the challenges to clerical power (yes, that word again) from the street protests, that no mention is made of one of Foucault's most famous enthusiasms. For, back at the time of the Iranian revolution he visited Iran and was duly impressed, voicing his support for the theocrats.
Left-wing intellectuals have a long and inglorious history of failing to see the malignancy of political regimes and movements that turn out to be violently despotic. One thinks of the Webbs' enthusiasm for Stalin and the Soviet Union, which, on the part of Beatrice, extended to a defence of the show trials of the 1930s (“The soviet government was right, even from the standpoint of humanity alone.”); Brecht's support for the government of the DDR, even as it invited Soviet tanks in to quell a workers' revolt; and Chomsky's blindness to the atrocities perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. To this roll call of naiveté, it is right to add Michel Foucault and his enthusiasm for the Iranian revolution, evident in a series of articles he wrote for French and Italian newspapers in late-1978 and early-1979.[I]t was clear, at least to many not on the Left, that the particular Islamic form of the revolutionary movement had deeply troubling aspects. Atoussa H, an Iranian feminist writing in Le Nouvel Observateur, for example, noted in November 1978 that the Western Left supposes that Islam is desirable - albeit most Left intellectuals themselves don't want to live under Islam - whereas "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 a feudal or pseudo revolutionary oppression... The Left should not let itself be seduced by a cure that is perhaps worse than the disease."
Foucault, unfortunately, was precisely seduced by the popular uprising in Iran, which he claimed might signify a new "political spirituality", with the potential to transform the political landscape of Europe, as well as the Middle East. Thus, for example, in his October 1978 article, "What Are the Iranians Dreaming About?", he adopted an almost mythic rhetoric to describe the revolutionary struggle:
The situation in Iran can be understood as a great joust under traditional emblems, those of the king and the saint, the armed ruler and the destitute excile, the despot faced with the man who stands up bare-handed and is acclaimed by a people....
In the particulars, Foucault was effusive:
Islam values work; no one can be deprived of the fruits of his labor, what must belong to all (water, the sub-soil) shall not be appropriated by anyone. With respect to liberties, they will be respected to the extent that their exercise will not harm others; minorities will be protected and free to live as they please on the condition that they do not harm the majority; between men and women there will not be inequality with respect to rights, but difference, since there is natural difference. With respect to politics, decisions should be made by the majority, the leaders should be responsible to the people, and each person, as it is laid out in the Quran, should be able to stand up and hold accountable he who governs.
On February 1st 1979, five million people were on the streets of Tehran to welcome back Ayatollah Khomeini after 14 years of exile. By the end of February, power effectively lay his hands and the hands of a revolutionary council. Former officials of the Shah's government were rounded up, and many were summarily executed. Public whipping was introduced for alcohol consumption. Libraries were attacked if they held books that were "anti-Islamic". Broadcast media was censored. As for women's rights, and Foucault's claim that there would not be inequality, only difference (whatever that actually means), on March 3rd, Khomeini decreed that women would be unable to serve as judges; on March 4th, that only a man could petition for divorce; on March 9th, women were banned from participating in sport; and on March 8th, as predicted by many more pessimistic voices, women were ordered to wear the chador.
Then they started hanging the gays. Foucault was himself gay, of course.
More from What are the Iranians dreaming about?
It is often said that for Shi'ism, all power is bad if it is not the power of the Imam. As we can see, things are much more complex. This is what Ayatollah Shariatmadari told me in the first few minutes of our meeting: "We are waiting for the return of the Imam, which does not mean that we are giving up on the possibility of a good government. This is also what you Christians are endeavoring to achieve, although you are waiting for Judgment Day." As if to lend a greater authenticity to his words, the ayatollah was surrounded by several members of the Committee on Human Rights in Iran when he received me.
One thing must be clear. By "Islamic government," nobody in Iran means a political regime in which the clerics would have a role of supervision or control. To me, the phrase "Islamic government" seemed to point to two orders of things.
"A utopia," some told me without any pejorative implication. "An ideal," most of them said to me. At any rate, it 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 obedience. In pursuit of this ideal, the distrust of legalism seemed to me to be essential, along with a faith in the creativity of Islam.
There are, it pretty much goes without saying, plenty on the academic left still ready to defend Foucault. Bernard Harcourt, as part of Columbia University's Modalities of Revolt, for instance:
Michel Foucault identified in the Iranian uprising of 1978 a modality of religious political revolt and a form of political spirituality that privileged, in the secular realm, expressly religious aspirations. What Foucault discovered in Iran was, in his words, a political spirituality: a mass mobilization on this earth modeled on the coming of a new Islamic vision of social forms of coexistence and equality.
Ah yes. Political spirituality. Not theocracy. Political spirituality. Much better.
So Corbyn and his fellow leftists, who might be concerned about those brave enough to protest the clerical fascists in Tehran, are following a long and undistinguished tradition.
It's funny that none of the intellectuals who have admired Iran have ever wanted to go and live there. It's almost as if they don't really believe what they say.
Posted by: Bob-B | January 02, 2018 at 07:18 PM