A lecture by Behrooz Tabrizi (University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign)

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi argues that in his controversial essays written in 1978-1979 in support of the Iranian Revolution, Michel Foucault recognized that Iranians were at a threshold of a novelty. The critics chastised Foucault for endorsing a religious uprising and reproached the great philosopher for his failure to see the revolution’s inevitable consequences. Ghamari-Tabrizi views Foucault’s writings on the Iranian Revolution as an attempt to write the history of the present without binding commitments to a teleological historiography. Is it possible for a people to envision and desire futures uncharted by already existing schemata of history? Is it possible to think of dignity, justice, and liberty outside the cognitive maps and principles of the Enlightenment?



Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi is Associate Professor of Sociology and History and Director of the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Islam and Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran (I.B. Tauris/Palgrave-MacMillan, 2008) and a literary memoir entitled Remembering Akbar: Inside the Iranian Revolution (O/R Books, 2016). His talk is based on his latest book, Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment, which was just released by the University of Minnesota Press in August 2016.

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Duration: 47:55

Published: Tuesday, November 1, 2016