Foucault, the iranian uprising and the constitution of a collective subjectivity

Abstract

As is well known, Foucault went to Iran twice in 1978 (on 16–24 September and 9–15 November) as a special correspondent of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, writing a series of short articles that were immediately translated and published in Italian in the form of a reportage.1 Only a few texts on the Iranian uprising actually appeared in French in those months, and from the summer of 1979 till his death, five years later, Foucault chose not to refer publicly to Iran anymore. His stances on this subject gave rise to numerous misunderstandings and to some violent critiques, especially in France. Foucault indirectly responded to them through his article “Inutile de se soulever?”, published in Le Monde in May 1979,2 but eventually decided to keep silent, maybe because he did not want to get involved in political controversies with people who—as he said—were “fabricating things about my own texts and then attributing that to me”.3 However, in August 1979, Foucault conceded a long and incredibly rich interview to a young Lebanese philosopher, Farès Sassine, giving him permission to translate it in Arabic for the weekly An Nahar al’arabî wa addûwalî4. This interview was unavailable in its complete and original French version until the journal Rodéo finally published a full transcription of it in 2013.