Revolution in Spiritless Times. An Essay on Michel Foucault's Enquiries into the Iranian Revolution

Abstract

It is argued that Michel Foucault's reports & commentaries on the 1978/79 Iranian Revolution (IR) represent the first, & most coherent, attempt to theorize a model of revolution in the late twentieth century. Foucault's effort to empirically verify the emergence of ideas among ordinary people & the effect of ideas on people's everyday life during times of political unrest & rebellion, has led many critics to accuse him of "infantile leftism." This criticism, however, fails to take into account the fact that Foucault's understanding of the IR was built on his political philosophy: the bipolarity of his notion of power, his ideas on mediation, & his hermeneutics of technologies of the self as related to change. For Foucault, the IR signified the decline of any notion of power related to the structure of the nation-state, & heralded a new form of revolution based on political spirituality.