foucault-and-the-iranian-revolution-janet-afary

260 Appendix
HShe's a reporter, she has to be in the procession, there's no reason why she
can't be in the truck." But when people speak to you about Jews-it's true that
there was a lot of anti-Semitic talk-that they will tolerate them only if they
don't support Israel, when anonymous notes are sent out, the credibility of
the movement is somewhat affected. It's the strength of the movement to be
a single unity. As soon as it perceives slight differences, it feels threatened. I
believe the intolerance is there-and necessary.
MICHEL FOUCAULT: What has given the Iranian movement its intensity
has been a double register. On the one hand, a collective will that has
been very strongly expressed politically and, on the other hand, the desire
for a radical change in ordinary life. But this double affirmation can only be
based on traditions, institutions that carry a charge of chauvinism, nationalism,
exclusiveness, which have a very powerful attraction fo r individuals.
To confront so fearsome an armed power, one mustn't feel alone, nor begin
with nothing. Apart from the problem of the immediate succession to the
shah, there is another question that interests me at least as much: Will this
unitary movement, which, for a year now has stirred up a people faced with
machine-guns, have the strength to cross its own frontiers and go beyond the
things on which, for a time, it has based itself? Are those limits, are those
supports going to disappear once the initial enthusiasm wanes, or are they,
on the contrary, going to take root and become stronger? Many here and some
in Iran are waiting for and hoping for the moment when secularization will
at last come back to the fore and reveal the good, old type of revolution we
have always known. I wonder how far they will be taken along this strange,
unique road, in which they seek, against the stubbornness of their destiny,
against everything they have been for centuries, usomething quite different.H
Open Letter to Prime Minister Mehdi Baza rgan
First published in Le Nouvel Observateur. April 14. 1979.
Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
Last September, after several thousand men and women had just been
machine-gunned in the streets of Tehran, you granted me an interview at the
home of Ayatollah Shariatmadari in Qom. Around a dozen of those working
for human rights had sought refuge in his house. Soldiers holding machine
guns were guarding the entrance to the alley.
You were then President of the Committee for the Defense of Human
Rights. You needed courage. You needed physical courage, for prison awaited