Foucault, theocracy, fascism

Actually, my impression has been that it’s the Left that is strongest against those ubiquitous Islamofascists. After all, the Trotskyites – Perle, Wolfowitz, et al – have really led the charge, haven’t they?

Has anyone developed an intellectual honesty filter for the Internet yet? Would save people an awful lot of debunking….

tariq ali talks about michel and islamic theocratic fasicsm in his clash of fundementalisms saying:

Within three months the contours of the new regime(ie khomenis iran) had become visible:it was the stern and intrasigent face of Islamic Jacobinism. Nothing like this had been seen since the victory of Protestant fundamentalism in seventeenth century England. The difference in Time-span was important. This was a revolt against History, against the Enlightenment, Euromania, Westtoxicfacation-against Progress. It was a postmodern REvoultion before postmodernism had grown fashionalbe. Foucault, among the first to recognize this affinity, became the most bisible European defender of the Islamic Republic. How had it come to this ?
(131) (its too early in the morning, i’m sorry for the problems with transscribing.)

he made a mistake with the islamic republic in iran, but i dont know nearly enough to see why that mistake was made.

But Foucault simply has to be a leftist, or the straw man argument won’t work! How else can you go about the important work of demonstrating that every critical theory citing academic secretly loves Iranian theocracy? Never mind that they probably find something else interesting or useful in Foucault. Never mind that “postmodernists” really aren’t a coherent school of thought. Never mind that Foucault’s favorable view of Iran’s revolution not only wasn’t Leftist in any identifiable way, but wasn’t picked up from Foucault by any organized political group. It’s argument by metastasis run amuck.

Ricahrd Wolin’s book “The Seduction of Unreason…” [which I’ve just started reading so apologies for any mischaracterisation] seems to argue that many on the post-structuralist/post-modernist ‘left’ — such as Foucault — ought in fact to be though of as much more in an anti-Enlightenment tradition whch has much more in common ideologically and temperamentally with the political and philosophical ‘right’.

Another good book is “Idiot Proof.” I can’t remember who wrote it, but he is pretty good at nailing silliness on the LEFT and the RIGHT.

Andrew Sullivan has been going on about this. As evidence, he finds little Maoist groups which raise money for the Iraqi insurrgency. Of course, when they come across people like Haley Barbour, former RNC chairman and Mississippi governor, cavorting with quasi-KKK groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens, which has tracks like “In Defense of Racism”, it’s never an instance of the alliance between the mainstream Right and Fascism.

No one, of course, mentions why the Left, a secular, often atheist, feminist, Left would ally itself with fascism in the Muslim world. After all, the early and principal targets of Khomeini were the Tudeh (the Iranian Communist Party), the Feyadin (a geuvarraist group) and other factions on the left.

It is however, interesting, how much of the Right in places in the Third World have adopted post-modernist, anti-foundational, and epistemically relativist justifications for their doctorines, for example, the Hindu Right in India.

Andrew Sullivan has been going on about this. As evidence, he finds little Maoist groups which raise money for the Iraqi insurrgency. Of course, when he comes across people like Haley Barbour, former RNC chairman and Mississippi governor, cavorting with quasi-KKK groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens, which has tracks like “In Defense of Racism”, it’s never an instance of the alliance between the mainstream Right and Fascism.

No one, of course, mentions why the Left, a secular, often atheist, feminist, Left would ally itself with fascism in the Muslim world. After all, the early and principal targets of Khomeini were the Tudeh (the Iranian Communist Party), the Feyadin (a geuvarraist group) and other factions on the left.

It is however, interesting, how much of the Right in places in the Third World have adopted post-modernist, anti-foundational, and epistemically relativist justifications for their doctorines, for example, the Hindu Right in India.

Though I might quibble a little with your wording, Mr. McGrattan (significantly further upthread than when I started this little note), the phrase “that many on the post-structuralist/post-modernist ‘left’—such as Foucault—ought in fact to be though of as much more in an anti-Enlightenment tradition…” seems sensible enough: it posits poststructuralism and postmodernism as critical tools used by thinkers on either side of a given political divide. (My quibble: “Many on the [blank]” is a neat little rhetorical dodge that, though technically correct, can all too easily be used to smear the entire [blank] by association. Which is not at all to say that’s what you’re intending here, but: how many, exactly, is “many”?)

And Wolin is hardly directly responsible for the copy that graces his book jackets, but nonetheless, the blurb for The Seduction of Unreason goes rather beyond your reasonable statement:

bq. Postmodernism’s origins among the profascist literati of the 1930s reveal a dark political patrimony. The unspoken affinities between Counter-Enlightenment and postmodernism constitute the guiding thread of Wolin’s suggestive narrative. In their mutual hostility toward reason and democracy, postmodernists and the advocates of Counter-Enlightenment betray a telltale strategic alliance—they cohabit the fraught terrain where far left and far right intersect.

On the one hand, so sweeping and gross a generalization about such a ridiculously disparate herd of cats as “postmodernism” immediately sets off my bullshit detector.

On the other, I’m immediately reminded of that SubGenius cartoon. —It’s an ill wind, etc.

I’ve always thought that some of the shorter interviews and essays in the last couple of years of Foucault’s life (“The Subject and Power,” that little essay on Kant’s What Is Enlightenment, a few others) were telegraphing a rather interesting direction for his work–a sort of quasi-reconciliation with some version of the enlightenment tradition. I’ve always found it to be a bit of a shame that with all the ink spilled on Foucault, this direction was never really pursued by the Foucault industry (to my knowledge, I don’t exactly keep up on that literature).

A lot of Foucault’s closest readers–including Judith Butler–have long bristled at the charge that Foucault was a simple anti-Enlightenment nihilist, or that he had no positive political programme, and the argument often turns on Foucault’s late work, particularly The History of Sexuality. As I understand Butler’s reading, her claim is that Foucault’s political praxis was the dispersal of power into microinstitutions–not the liberation from power that one left tradition proposes, since Foucault didn’t believe that was possible–but the decomposition of major centralizations of power. Essentially I understand that as a sort of anarchism that’s fairly consonant with situationism and the postmodernist romance with decentralization, multiplicity, and so on. Foucault worked pretty hard to confound anyone trying to read him in this way, though–every positive assertion about his “real” praxis can generally be countered by a statement of his that actively denies any intent in that direction.

“It is however, interesting, how much of the Right in places in the Third World have adopted post-modernist, anti-foundational, and epistemically relativist justifications for their doctorines…”

Yup. If you haven’t already, read Meera Nanda on this subject. Her new book Prophets Facing Backward is stunning.

Tim,

You might be interested in Reiner Schurmann’s excellent article on Foucault’s political praxis.

“On Constituting Oneself an Anarchistic Subject” 1986 Praxis International 6(3): 294-310

I’m a bit puzzled by the use of the “anti-enlightenment foucault” in this discussion, and the way it is supposed to explain the his position on the islamic revolution.

It seemed to me that if foucault was an enlightenment critic, it was more in a “we’re not there yet, no matter how enlightened we may think we are”, than in a “back to the trees” way. To be more precise, i think that it requires a certain amount of imagination to mistake his “not there yet” for a “back to the trees”.

As an example, i’m pretty sure he, as post-something as he may be, would oppose the stoning of women.

It seems to me that it’s that implicit confusion that is at work in mr kamm quote, equating the critic of enlightement with wanting to roll it back.

Of course i may have misread, and this comes from a rather uninformed reader of foucauld.

Yabonn:

Basically, I don’t know where you’re getting your view of Foucault. I can’t see any basis for interpreting him as arguing that we have yet to achieve the standards of the Enlightenment, but that we should continue to strive to do so. Nor do I really see anywhere in his work the kind of foundationalism necessary to say “Stoning women is a bad thing”. I don’t think he would be “for” it, either, but the statement is precisely the kind of ethical declaration that he viewed as simplistic and irrelevant.

On the other point, it seems to me that Foucault’s dallying with the Iranian Revolution is very, very distinct from the kind of nakedly instrumental behavior of the SWP–it’s the attempt to link these as an indictment of a common “Left” tendency that I think is flawed. They come from different places and operate within very different traditions.

“In other words, you can’t get away with shrilly asserting that “stoning women is bad” is a simple sentence with only one possible meaning and demanding that everyone ignores the context in which you’re saying it when deciding how they’re going to react to you.”

Can you get away with softly asserting it? Or barely audibly? Or in a deep but humble voice? Or in a slightly raspy voice? Or in a kind of bark? Or a whine? Or a shout? What exactly are the rules for what you can get away with?

I have never read any of Foucault as Anti-Enlightenment. A critic of Enlightenment most certainly.

I read Foucault’s biographies a good 10 years ago, so I am hazy about it. However, I do recall that he was gleeful about the Iranian revolution. I think he was jeering at the West’s disapproval of that revolution led by Khomeini.

America and France, two countries whose modern identities were forged on bloody revolutions and yet trying to assert that Iran remain a nation under Reza Shah Pahlavi or move to a parliament mode. Bani Sadr and company tried to hold on to the parliamentary mode but it failed. The intervening years between Mosadegh and Khomeini were brutal for Iran. It was perhaps those years which led to the disenchantment with the West. I think it was within that kind of political/social atmosphere that Foucault jeered. I disagree that Foucault’s writings on Iran were pro-Islamofascist because that dismisses the reality of how Iranians experienced those years between Mosadegh and Khomeini. Particularly rural Iran. And perhaps Foucault felt those years and jeered the West. It was the context.

Foucault was supposed to write many more essays on Iran and discontinued on his own. Could this be because he too was appalled by how bloody and oppressive the Iranian revolution had become? I think so. There is nothing in his biographies, which would lead one to suppose that Foucault approved of stoning women or making them housebound or sending children off to fight wars or public executions.

Also, I am not sure what people mean by “postmodernism”. Do they mean the end of the grand metanarrative? Or are we talking of that hokum fabricated idiocy about there not being any facts or truth?

Basically, I don’t know where you’re getting your view of Foucault. I can’t see any basis for interpreting him as arguing that we have yet to achieve the standards of the Enlightenment

I had in mind, writing my comment, some of his writings about medical institution, the way mad people are treated, medical violence, the hospital as an institution etc. As for the precise source i’m pretty sure it wasn’t one of his big things, probably a thematic selection (medical? early works?).

I think i see what you find wrong with my sentence above : it was improperly phrased. Let me try again :
“it was less in a “back to the trees” way than in a “look, what we call enlightenment leaves room for misery, mistreatments, and all sorts of bad things. now move, you bourgeois pigs”.

The idea i tried to carry is that foucault was perhaps ready to critisize/scrap enlightenment, but certainly not for barbary.

precisely the kind of ethical declaration that he viewed as simplistic and irrelevant.

Well yes, i’m sure he’s question my meaning of “barbary” above, as this word was used too in the past in sentences as “let’s civilise these barbarians, bring the gatlings”.

And yet, i bet he’d look with a blank stare the suggestion that his works could make acceptable the stoning of women (or that nothing in there against etc). Here’s a man who chose to devote a big part of his work to these blind spots of society, prison or mad houses, and too in the way people are (mis)treated in there. And yet, his critic of the state of things would leave the door open to, well, stoning or a justification of it or the impossibility to criticise it?

I suppose you may say that, though, but that amounts to insulating his theory from what he meant by his theory, from his personnal history, and the time at which he wrote.

On a more personnal level (foucault’s), we agree that he would certainly not be “for” it. Neither for the homophobic policies of iran, that would have condemned him to death in an eyebat.

Or to put it another way; a stone hitting a woman is a physical fact; there’s no arguing with it because in general, one can’t argue with stones.

The proposition “Stoning women is bad”, however, is something that only makes sense in a particular context. If it is true that physical events of that kind are morally bad, then there is some Platonic realm in which the sentence “Stoning women is bad” is true. If you like, it’s in the Big Book of True Statements.

However, as Foucault points out, that fact about imaginary Platonic context-free sentences, is a lot less interesting than you’d think. Any particular use of the sentence “Stoning women is bad” is going to be a single historic event, with its own context and its own meaning constituted by the circumstances, and by the relationships between the parties to that event.

Once you’re clear in your mind about the type-token distinction, and once you’ve realised that Foucault cares about tokens, not types, a whole lot of confusion slips away and you stop saying embarrassing things about Foucault.

Not sure what your point is here, Ophelia?

PS — oh, the interview is here:
http://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/danger.htm

From Tim Burke:

“But that philosophical movement has to be taken seriously, and met seriously, because it had a lot of things to say that can’t just be waved away, any more than Nietzsche, the clear progenitor of a lot of this, can just be waved away.”

Right that Nietzsche inspired a lot of these guys. But Nietzsche was not an enemy of the Enlightenment in the sense that anti-modernists are. He was post-Enlightenment. One could say he saw through the Enlightenment. But he recognized that both he and every other contemporary intellectual were creations of the Enlightenment, and there was no going back.

If Bernard-Henry Levi’s reading of Foucault’s writings on Iran (only one of which was produced after Khomeini’s return, and that by only 12 days) is accurate, that half of the equation may not be all that adhesive either: (from War, Evil, and the End of History)

… the texts, the same texts, do not hesitate to emphasize everything that, in this nascent movement, makes for anxiety, or terrifies, or perhaps announces the worst. On this Iranian stage, he will say in a text in Le Monde–the very last one, the one that will summarize the final lessons and will bring an end to the adventure, as far as he is concerned–on this Iranian stage “the most important and the most atrocious” are mixed. And, clarifying what he means by “the most atrocious” he will cite “xenophobia” on the one hand, the “subjection of women” on the other (in the dialogue with Claire Briere and Pierre Blanchet, he will again evoke–once again, he’s right on the mark–the demonstrations of “virulent anti-Semitism” that are the “counterpart” to the “uniqueness” of the uprising). But already, in the “open letter” addressed to Mehdi Bazargan a few days after the first executions of opponents by the Khomeini commandos, he worries about the “trials that are unfolding today in Iran,” emphasizing that “political trials are always touchstones” and insisting that if “nothing is more important in a history of a people than the rare moments when it rises up together to bring down te regime that it no longer supports,” nothing is more important, “in its daily life,” than the moments, “so frequent on the other hand,” when “public power is turned against an individual, proclaims him its enemy and decides to bring him down.” And before that, in October, he evoked “the risk of a bloodbath” as well as “the definitions” of a “scarcely reassuring” clarity of the Islamic government that was taking shape. And even before that, in the very beginning, in Qom, with the Ayatollah Chariat Madari, an opponent of Khomeini, who was, let it be said in passing, his true great man in this affair, he posed the question of the terrible fascination with death in a religion “more preoccupied” (this is Foucault speaking) “with martyrdom than with victory.” As examples of blind enthusiasm, unconditional belief, and happy complacency go, one could find better. Shouldn’t we be obliged to him, rather, for having pointed out the symptom? Shouldn’t we, instead of this interminable posthumous trial, credit him with the merit of having been one of the very first observers to see this morbid, martyrological, sacrificial dimension, which is the mark of radical Islam?

Dsquared: the contrast between physical-fact statements (I’m assuming that’s what you really meant, rather than physical facts themselves) and moral judgements doesn’t coincide with the contrast between context-insensitive and context-sensitive statements (think how context-sensitive the truth of ‘it’s raining here’ is, even though that’s a physical-fact statement). Neither of these distinctions coincides with the type/token distinction. Part of the point I was making is that whatever we do with token assertions in a particular context still relies on their having a literal meaning, and this is as true of physical-fact statements as it is of moral judgements. So attempts to ignore literal meaning in favour of an examination of contexts and relationships aren’t going to be successful.

And when do you stop saying embarrassing things about stoning women?

when it has outlived its usefulness as a premise for assault. bush told me so.

D2: The trouble with Foucault is that deprived of context, it’s hard to convince oneself that he’s not trying to be ironic. (I’m reminded of Peter Cook’s crack that Hitler’s speeches take on a whole new light when you realise that he’s being sarcastic).

I haven’t read any Foucault, so I can’t weigh in on how relevant this is to anything he ever wrote, but I just wanted to make one small point on Dsquared’s side. It’s a commonplace these days that there is a big difference between the truth-conditions of the sentences we utter and what we manage to communicate by a particular token sentence. To take the cliched example, a reference letter that just says “X is always punctual and his handwriting is very neat” is pretty insulting if it’s a reference for an academic job. Of course it’s not part of the (literal) meaning of that sentence that X is a lousy academic, but that’s pretty clearly communicated.

If Foucault wants to stress the importance of considering both what is communicated (or speaker meaning) as well as truth conditions (or sentence meaning) then he’s making a correct and important point. On the other hand, I wouldn’t take the upshot of that distinction to be that sentence meanings are irrelevant. I think that sentence meanings are interesting as well as speaker meanings, but then I’m paid to think that so take what I say with a grain of salt.

But you still seem to be operating on a view of the world which has things in it called “meanings”. Quine ended up concluding that there weren’t any such things, and some of the best bits in Foucault and Derrida involve trying to analyse the damage caused by the assumption that there are.

Re the (lame) “stoning of women” line:

Actually, i’m not too proud of it neither. I found it unnecessarily snarky as i was writing it, but couldn’t find a convenient replacement at the time. A weakness the little bugger promptly took advantage of, morphing into something else and vaguely messy.

Note for later : harness the snark!

But for most in the humanities today, it’s the later M.F. (say, Discipline and Punish, History of Sex) that holds more interest.

Sometimes unfortunately even in the news. There is something of a panopticon in the open cages of gantanamo, isn’t it?

Dsquared: As I’m sure you know, there isn’t uniform acceptance of the Quinean strictures on meanings. But I wasn’t intending to raise deep issues of ontological commitment. *Whatever* meanings amount to, we’re going to need to deploy some notion of literal or sentence meaning, as opposed to speaker’s communicative intentions. After all, *in the situation as you describe it*, we can’t use the sentence ‘stoning women is good’ as an insult, but we can use the sentence ‘stoning women is bad’ as an insult. How can we explain this difference without adverting to the fact that the two sentences have different meanings?

Not sure how helpful this excursus into phil lang has been, but a distinction between sentences and utterances might have come in handy. Anyway, Eve writes

After all, in the situation as you describe it, we can’t use the sentence ‘stoning women is good’ as an insult, but we can use the sentence ‘stoning women is bad’ as an insult.

Really?

Heavily sarcastic tone: “_Yeah Hussain_ , stoning women is _good_, really _good_ .”

Insulting? I’d have thought so.

The Iranian-American futurist Sam Ghandchi thinks that the technocrats who keep the practical institutions of contemporary Iran running are “postmodernists”.

Here is an Iranian-American postmodernist, Hamid Dabashi, writing (in 2000) against the regime – although he seems to be investing his hopes in Khatami’s reformists, who have been rejected as just another face of the system, if the boycott of the elections earlier this year is anything to go by.

D2: There are such things as literal meanings. We all know this. Invoking Quine, Foucault and Derrida in support of the opposite view doesn’t change these facts.

As for your example: I could cast the sentence “The Nazis were evil” in bronze and hit a nice German over the head with it. This wouldn’t alter the fact that the sentence is true.