The Revolutionary Research

The Revolutionary Research

Rereading Foucault's Ideas About the Iranian Revolution in the Light of Opposing and Supporting Disputes

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Mansour Ansari
Assistant Professor of the Department of Political Thought in Islam Research Institute of Imam Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution, Tehran, Iran
10.22034/fademo.2023.395538.1003
Abstract
Foucault's ideas about revolution have become a wide-ranging controversy; Many people have considered Foucault's support and sympathy for the Islamic Revolution as a deviation from his own thoughts. Another group believes that the grounds of this support should be seen in his post-structuralism. On the other hand, there is a small group that tries to discover Foucault's sympathetic logic through introspection. The main question of this article is where the empathic logic of Foucault's views on revolution comes from. In an attempt to answer this question, both opposing and supporting views have been explored. In our opinion, Foucault's empathy with Iran's Islamic revolution was rooted in the view he had on the phenomenon of religion a few years before the Iranian revolution. Relatively recent studies on religion from Foucault's point of view have provided us with great help. In this sense, Foucault's sympathy towards the Iranian revolution was neither due to arrogance nor due to intellectual excitement. The Iranian revolution was a proof and even a test of the idea he had about the role of religion in subjectivity. The method of the article is descriptive-analytical.
Keywords
Iran Revolution
Michel Foucault
Subjectivity
Poststructuralism
Janet Afari
Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Subjects

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The Revolutionary Research
Volume 1, Issue 1 - Serial Number 1
August 2023
Pages 211-226

  • Receive Date 26 April 2023
  • Revise Date 15 July 2023
  • Accept Date 13 June 2023