Iran's Troubled Modernity by Ali Mirsepassi

Read moreĭebates around the sectarianisation of politics across the Middle East and Muslim world more broadly have opened new spaces of enquiry into the interrelationship between religion and geopolitics. This ideological work must be situated within larger political, religious, and socioeconomic contexts. It takes ideological work both to construct differences and to create solidarities across borders among Shiءa. Thus, transnational Shiءi networks do not self-evidently reproduce themselves based on a shared sense of religious identity and history. Participants' ideas about the history and characteristics of this transnational network cannot be understood separately from their claims to political and religious authority in the Shiءi world.

1979-I discuss the debates that inform the creation of such contested memories and reasons for and consequences of their divergence.

Focusing on how the Lebanese Shiءi political party of Amal and the current Iranian government remember the figure of Mustafa Chamran-an Iranian Shiءi anti-Shah activist based in Lebanon from 1970 to. In particular, I analyze how interpretations of past events define Shiءi relations across borders in the Middle East. In this article I address the transnational dimensions of memory production. The discovery of spirituality (Iran), the valorization of an autonomous subject (Kant) and the call for a tolerant environment towards minority practices (liberalism) pave the way for the later Foucault’s ethics, which are grounded in spiritual exercises and means of liberating the subject. In this article, the author argues that Foucault’s interpretation of the liberal tradition, which is at the core of the 1977-9 lectures, must be examined in combination with Foucault’s other major interests in the late 1970s, namely the Iranian Revolution and Kant.

Foucault’s recently published or soon-to-be translated 1977/-9 lectures (published as Security, Territory, Population and as The Birth of Biopolitics) offer new elements for understanding this dense and uncharted period along Foucault’s itinerary. However, the motivations behind this transition remain either misunderstood or understudied in large part. The shift in Foucault’s work from genealogy to ethics finds consensus among Foucault scholars.

Iran's Troubled Modernity by Ali Mirsepassi