With all good wishes,
Cynthia

MF’s analysis revolves around Islam as a form of ‘political spirituality’, an entirely different way of coming to know the self and politics than the Western liberal or revolutionary narrative (i.e. self-control, religious rituals or the veil as a means of agency). I thought this might be an interesting intersection for your own work:

“I do not feel comfortable speaking of Islamic government as an “idea” or even as an “ideal.” Rather, it impressed me as a form of “political will.” It impressed me in its effort to politicize structures that are inseparably social and religious in response to current problems. It also impressed me in its attempt to open a spiritual dimension in politics.”

This phase of his life is rather strange and much avoided by academics in the West, but in a way it links to later-Foucault’s move from technologies of power to technologies of the self in Graeco-Roman and Christian discourse.

You can read this particular article by MF at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/007863.html. All his writings on Iran are collected in the appendix of a pretty awful book/commentary by Anderson and Afary.

I agree that Foucault does not attempt to spell out how resistance should occur or whether x’s articulation of it in an ancient regime is better than y’s who lives in the modern West, as that doesn’t fit his project.

I haven’t read his Iranian reports. If you have time, would you summarize some of what he says?

With all good wishes,
Cynthia

i think this is where foucault is notoriously vague, but perhaps intentionally so. on the one hand, he insists that resistance always accompanies power no matter how extremely exercised. (i think in the interview ‘The ethic of care of self and the practice of freedom’ he suggests that jumping out of a window as one mode of resistance to slavery). on the other hand, he refuses to articulate how such a resistance may arise because each mode is a singularity to be understood in its own right.

this is where Foucault is probably most interesting. Have you read his Iranian reports? they demonstrate his approach in a way that would make most western liberals uncomfortable

I understand (at least one aspect or possibility of) a “state of domination” to arise as a result of a power relations gone bad. This doesn’t, however, seem to mean that one could not “raise” the relation back to a power relation. In other words, there is dynamism of among the states and relations that is ongoing.