The Eternal Return

“Foucault’s experience in Iran contributed to a turning point in his thought. In the late 1970s, he was moving from a preoccupation with technologies of domination to a new interest in what he termed the technologies of the self, as the foundation for a new form of spirituality and resistance to power. We argue that the Iranian Revolution had a lasting impact on his late writing in several ways. In his Iran writings, Foucault emphasized the deployment of certain instruments of modernity as means of resistance. He called attention to the innovative uses Islamists made of overseas radio broadcasts and cassettes. This blending of more traditional religious discourses with modern means of communication had helped to galvanize the revolutionary movement and ultimately paralyzed the modern and authoritarian Pahlavi regime.”

- from Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (Afrary and Anderson, 2005)