[R-G] Left-Right Convergence on Iran

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/016303.shtml>
July 30, 2007
Ignatieff in Iran: Pragmatist thinkers like Rorty are favoured to
radicals like Foucault

I found this article by accident. It is Michael Ignatieff's account [LINK:
<http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/ksgnews/Features/opeds/071705_ignatieff.htm>]
of his last year's visit to Iran, with invitation from Ramin
Jahanbegloo who was later arrested on charges of acting against the
national security:

     Jahanbegloo says he thinks of himself as a bridge between
     Iran and those universities. He invites a steady stream of
     philosophers like Richard Rorty from Stanford and Agnes
     Heller from the New School in New York to give talks to
     students. He sees some signs that their ideas are finding
     a toehold in Tehran. Three decades ago, the intellectuals
     du jour were Michel Foucault and fellow radical theorists.
     They arrived in Tehran proclaiming their solidarity with a
     revolution that actively despised them while persecuting its
     own freethinkers. Now the pendulum in Tehran has swung
     toward pragmatic liberals like Berlin.

It's quite interesting how Ignatieff dismisses Foucault's support for
the Iranian revolution with just labelling him as radical and praises
Jahanbegloo's attempts to bring the liberal, pragmatic thinkers such
as Rorty and Heller.

This is of course a cheap shot at Foucault from the right, by
Ignatieff, a strong supporter of the US invasion of Iraq [LINK:
<http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F20B10F73C5A0C778DDDAA0894DC404482>]
on humanitarian grounds.

But also from the left has been emerged attacks on Foulcault's praise
for the Iran's revolution, the most famous of which, by Janet Afary
and Kevin Anderson in their book (an excerpt [LINK:
<http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/007863.html>]), titled
'Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of
Islamism.' [LINK:
<http://books.google.com/books?id=8-jhK7IeQIgC&dq=Foucault+and+the+Iranian+Revolution&pg=PP1&ots=_vHfam2_SF&sig=oW1KUhvU5yJTrXlETGpEduLEss0&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fq%3DFoucault%2Band%2Bthe%2BIranian%2BRevolution%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26client%3Dfirefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title#PPR7,M1>]
(I have ordered it recently to read Foucault's original dispatches for
Corrierre Dela Serra in his two visits before and after the 1979
revolution.)

A recurring theme these days is that the lines between the right and
the left, when it comes to Iran, has become so blurry that they has
almost become meaningless.

The left has started to challenge the Islamic Republic's legitimacy in
a similar fashion to the right. This is what living in the American
paradigm does to one's intellect, I suspect.

I know, I have to elaborate on all this...

Posted by hoder at July 30, 2007 2:45 AM| TrackBack

<http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/016301.shtml>
August 2, 2007
Jahanbegloo advocated Rafsanjani in Wilson centre

The other day I asked you to take part in a guessing game [LINK:
<http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/016276.shtml>], based on some
quotes. Now, here is the answer.

The person who, in a speech at Woodrow Wilson's centre in 2003 [LINK:
<http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=16720>],
said those words was Ramin Jahanbegloo.

Jahanbegloo also said in his speech, titled ' Iran: From Political
Gridlock to Crisis of Legitimacy' that "[t]oday, what is certain is
that democratic developments in Iraq are taking a slower pace than
what was expected and the Iranian population has no hope of a future
American intervention in Iran." (And note, thanks to my friend Mo,
that Jahanbegloo used the word 'hope,' not 'fear'.)

He later went on and and by his three scenarios of a) the centrist
Rafsanjani's win b) Revolutionary Guard's coup and c) wide-spread
urban chaos, effectively called the US liberals to stand behind
Rafsanjani in the then forthcoming election, if they didn't want to
see those two other scenarios.

This is a further evidence for me about the ties between the
neo-liberal regime change plans and Rafsanjanist reformers.

Posted by hoder at August 2, 2007 3:43 PM| TrackBack

--
Yoshie