At the height of the Iranian revolution in the winter of 1979, French philosopher, Michel Foucault, described what he was seeing in Tehran as “perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most novel and the most insane.”
“Islam,” he wrote, “which is not simply a religion, but an entire way of life, an adherence to a history and a civilization, has a good chance to become a gigantic powder keg, at the level of hundreds of millions of men.”
Such praising words about the Iranian uprising are probably the very reason few have even heard of Foucault’s dispatches from Tehran for the Italian newspaper, Corriere Dela Sera, in 1978-79.
Twenty nine winters later, the Islamic Republic of Iran is more independent, stable, confident and technologically advanced than ever, while it has remained as the most serious and continuous challenge to the U.S. hegemony in the world.
But what can explain the survival of the outcome of such revolt? What will the future look like for Iran, whose most of its young population now have no first-hand experience of that revolt?
The rise of the first non-cleric president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, can point to some answers.
For sixteen years, Iranian government was in the hands of the Euro-American educated bureaucrats who were gradually departing from the specific subjectivity (rejection of the universals, in Foucult’s term) which brought about the Iranian uprising of the 1979. The spectre of modernity slowly started to dominate everything, from the economy to the politics, and the two consequtive administrations picked up a similar project of modernization which the shah had previously failed to continue, and with it, the gloomy consequences started to wane in too: corruption, incompetence, and socio-economic inequality.
The elite’s vision of economic and political “reform” was transforming Iran into a very similar country under the shah, only with an Islamic posture. At the same time, the Europe and the U.S. were not only happily watching as Iran was practically undoing its revolt, but even assisting and accelerating the process.
Then came the shock. Ahmadinejad, an outsider to the Iranian establishment who was never taken seriously by journalists and politicians alike, won the election. Compared to his main rivals, he had lower religious credentials, less support from the elite, less money for campaigning, and gave zero promises to normalize relations with the U.S. Instead, he travelled much more around the country and met face-to-face with the forgotten majority of Iranians, talked more about economic equality, and promised more of a serious war on corruption.
He simply pledged a return to the abandoned values of the 1979 uprising, with independence, freedom and justice at the centre. (His promises about a more relaxed attitude toward religious code are reflected in its talks with the British rocker Morrissey to have .)
If Western journalist leave the Northern part of Tehran more often, they will be able to observe how much Ahmadinejad represents a passionate revival of the core values of the uprising. They will also discover how Islam is functioning as the best, but not the only, carrier of those values.
Like many Iranians who have lived in the West for the past 7, 8 years, the rise of Ahmadinejad (and also travelling to other parts of the Middle East) has incited a radical change in the way I see myself, relate to Iran, and view the world. I have finally realised what it was that the entire Iranian nation revolted in order to achieve and how valuable this subjectivity is to empower the world of the marginalised, the poor and the oppressed.
This doesn’t mean I don’t see the unfortunate intolerance the Iranian government sometimes shows toward dissent and difference. But I argue that such intolerance is a direct consequent of the existential threat that the big powers have posed toward Iran since the day it succeeded in its revolt.
As a post-revolutionary Iranian, who is not religious a single bit, I am proud of what my parents’ generation did in 1979 and I do whatever I can to protect and improve the Islamic Republic of Iran in its promises of independence, freedom and justice.
This has predictable made me being labelled as an “agent of the regime”, by many exiled Iranians who always do that to anyone with whom disagrees with. But you will see millions like me if you ever visit Iran and not be trapped in those parties in Northern Tehran.
Hossein Derakhshan is a London-based media analyst and writes the Persian-English blog at hoder.com. this article first appeared in The Guardian.
