{"id":34,"date":"2016-05-20T19:52:30","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T23:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/?page_id=34"},"modified":"2018-03-05T11:53:35","modified_gmt":"2018-03-05T16:53:35","slug":"6-13","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/6-13\/","title":{"rendered":"6\/13 | Revolt: Foucault in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CYo4JmT2GM0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/h1>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Daniel Defert (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Daniel_Defert\">\u00e9diteur de Michel Foucault<\/a>)<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Behrooz\u00a0Ghamari-Tabrizi (<a href=\"https:\/\/history.illinois.edu\/directory\/profile\/bghamari\">University of Illinois at Urbana<\/a>)<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Judith Revel (<a href=\"https:\/\/fr.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Judith_Revel\">Universit\u00e9 Paris Nanterre)<\/a><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Moderated by <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/john-rajchman\/\">John Rajchman<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.columbia.edu\/contemporary-critical-thought\/about-us\/fellows\">Daniele Lorenzini<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/cgt.columbia.edu\/about\/people\/committee-faculty\/bernard-e-harcourt\/\">Bernard E. Harcourt<\/a><\/h1>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/6-13\/foucault-iran\/#main\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1668\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1668 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/files\/2016\/05\/foucault-iran-300x165.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"786\" height=\"432\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/files\/2016\/05\/foucault-iran-300x165.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/files\/2016\/05\/foucault-iran.jpeg 532w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 786px) 100vw, 786px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">December 14, 2017 from 6:15 p.m. to 8:45 p.m.<\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/location-of-the-jerome-greene-annex\/\">Jerome Greene Annex, Columbia University<\/a><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">(410 West 117th Street, New York)<\/p>\n<p>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\u00a0<em>political\u00a0<\/em><em>spirituality<\/em>: a mass mobilization on this earth modeled on the coming of a new Islamic vision of social forms of coexistence and equality.<\/p>\n<p>Foucault described the mass mobilization in Iran as an Islamic uprising. He did not minimize in any way its Islamic religious foundations or modes of expression. On the contrary, Foucault framed the uprising through the lens of Ernst Bloch\u2019s thesis, in\u00a0<em>The Principle of Hope<\/em>\u00a0(3 vols., 1954-1959), on the rise, in Europe, from the twelve to the sixteenth century, of the religious idea that there could come about on this earth a form of religious revolution. Foucault related the events in Iran to this religious model, originally formulated by dissident religious groups in the West at the end of the Middle Ages\u2014and which Foucault referred to as \u201cthe point of departure of the very idea of Revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Foucault explicitly characterized the will of those Iranians in revolt with whom he had contact as taking the form of a \u201creligious eschatology\u201d\u2014not the form of a quest for another political regime, nor in his words for \u201ca regime of clerics,\u201d but instead for a new Islamic horizon. When those in revolt spoke of an Islamic government, Foucault maintained, what they had in mind were new social forms based on a religious spirituality, sharply different than Western models. Foucault pointed to Ali Shariati as the thinker who had most clearly posed the problematic and formulated this vision.<\/p>\n<p>It is to this model of uprising as political spirituality, this modality of religious political revolt that we turn to in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/6-13\/\">Uprising 6\/13<\/a>. By contrast to the modality of revolt that we discussed during our seminar\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/3-13\/\">Uprising 3\/13 on the Arab Spring<\/a>, the modality of revolt that Foucault identified in Iran in 1978-79 was expressly and primarily religious. Much (but of course not all, as evidenced once again by subsequent events) of the ideological wellspring in Tahrir Square was more secular, leaderless, and occupational: a form of disobedience against a secular authoritarian regime\u2014at least as portrayed in much of the reportage and documentaries like\u00a0<em>Tahrir: Liberation Square<\/em>, directed by Stefano Savona (2012). The situation was very different in 1978 Iran, at least on Foucault\u2019s assessment. And it gives rise to a different modality of revolt: a religious eschatological modality of uprising.<\/p>\n<p>Foucault did not condemn this mode of political spirituality\u2014to the contrary, he wrote about it with respect and admiration for those who rose up and risked their lives against their oppressors. Foucault did warn that \u201cIslam\u2014which is not simply a religion, but a mode of life, a belonging to a history and to a civilization\u2014risks constituting a gigantic powder keg, at the scale of hundreds of millions of people. Since yesterday, any Muslim state can be revolutionized from within, from the basis of its secular traditions.\u201d\u00a0But he traveled to Iran without hostility, rather with sympathy for the uprising.<\/p>\n<p>And it is here, in his writings on Iran, that Foucault most clearly articulated what he called his own \u201ctheoretical ethic\u201d: \u201cIt is \u2018antistrategic\u2019: to be respectful when a singularity revolts, intransigent as soon as power violates the universal.\u201d (<em>Useless to Revolt?<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>Respectful of the individual who rises up, in order to keep one\u2019s indignation and intransigence for the power that represses. What a remarkable statement\u2014and an excellent place to start our seminar on Foucault on Iran: Revolt as Political Spirituality.<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to Uprising 6\/13!<\/p>\n<p>[Read full post\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-foucault-on-iran-revolt-as-political-spirituality\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>. \u00a9 Bernard E. Harcourt]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 &nbsp; Daniel Defert (\u00e9diteur de Michel Foucault) Behrooz\u00a0Ghamari-Tabrizi (University of Illinois at Urbana) Judith Revel (Universit\u00e9 Paris Nanterre) Moderated by John Rajchman, Daniele Lorenzini, and Bernard E. Harcourt &nbsp; December 14, 2017 from 6:15 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. Jerome&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/6-13\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1603,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-34","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}