Thank you, Dr. Milani
for the invitation
and Roma and Ferrico
for all the hard work.
I directed a Center
at my own university
and I know that on
paper, we are directors,
but in reality, those people
who actually do the work
are those who sort of do all
the logistics, and conceptions,
and all the really, really
hard work here that at the end
we all take the credit for.
So thank you so much
for all your work.
The talk tonight might sound
a little bit counterintuitive
for many of you who were a
part of the Iranian Revolution
or are more familiar with
the Iranian Revolution.
And I want to highlight
that this is mostly
a conceptual talk trying to make
sense of this revolution which
remains a mystery for
not only the mass media
or for common people, but
also among academics, it
remains one of the most
important mysteries
of 20th century.
I want to start-- of course,
this picture somebody
was asking me.
This picture is from
the summer of 1978.
This is very
appropriately called
Eisenhower Street in Tehran.
Of course, no more because--
this is the first
major protest rally
in Iran during the revolution.
This happened in
the summer of 1978.
The talk I'm going
to focus on has a lot
to do with this sort
of basic premise.
I came of intellectual age as a
very aspiring and young Marxist
who wanted to change the world.
I'm sure many of you can
relate to that kind of impulse
that young people feel so
much energy in their guts.
And that energy appears
to be limitless at times.
And so as [INAUDIBLE] once
said that if you were not
a Marxist up to the age
of 30, you missed a lot.
And if you remain a
Marxist after age 30,
you're basically dumb.
But I clearly
remember that reading
for the first time at
the age of 16 or 17,
this was our teenage
rebellion, reading Marx.
And those days-- some of you
might remember-- in those days,
there were these sort
of clandestine texts
of Marxist literature.
Marxist literature was
banned under the Shah.
It was very, very hard to come
by Marxist literature or naming
Marx was really hard.
In most the books of
philosophy and history in Iran,
in the 1960s and '70s, whenever
they wanted to refer to Marx,
they said the great
thinker of 19th century.
And everybody knew that's Marx.
So but this little passage here
appeared even at that young age
a rather peculiar
kind of assertion
that "The country
that is more developed
industrially only shows
to the less developed,
the image of its own future."
What is problematic
about this statement?
The problem is that Marx,
particularly for Marx,
the theorist of revolution, the
theorist of historical agency,
the theorist that
came up with this idea
that actually there are material
foundation for this kind
of revolutionary movement
that people rise up,
for Marx, you know, proletariat
rises up and changes the world.
But if you think about
this the little sentence
from the preface of the first
edition of Das Kapital--
if you lived in
Iran, for example,
at that time, or
you if you lived
in most parts of the world
outside Europe at that time,
your future was
already determined.
The future-- because
industrial world
already showed the future
of the non European parts
of the world.
So in a sense, it rendered the
entire world outside Europe
without an agency.
Of course, this is very sort
of important passage in Marx
because it also points to
a very important tension
in Marx's idea of or
philosophy of history.
That philosophy of history
that argues that history
moves forward.
And that movement
forward is caused
by the participation and
mobilization of the masses,
of the proletarian masses.
So if there is an inherent
logic into history--
I mean all these
things I'm saying
that I'm going to
sort of connect it
to the Iranian Revolution
sooner rather than later.
So the inherent
tension is in this
is that if there is a sense
of inevitability in history,
if there are historical
necessities that eventually
will change societies
no matter what happened,
these changes are inevitable.
So if the changes are
inevitable why bother?
Why people go and
sacrifice their lives
and do all these things
to go through the pain
of endless meetings and
mobilizing people, going
to factories, organizing labor,
and doing all these things
while we know, if this
is true, that there
is an inherent
logic into history,
that history in a sense
is going towards a already
determined end?
Then why bother?
Of course, I say
this because this
became actually one of
the most important parts
have the split in Marxist
movement around the world.
I mean the very first
split in Marxist ideology,
in communist movement,
was the split exactly
around this point.
The Bolsheviks in Russia said
that, actually, you know,
what Marx said is not that
if you just sit at home
and drink Kool-Aid, the world
is going to change inevitably.
You have to actually
assert yourself.
Others say that, well, because
capitalism reaches a point
at the end that it
collapses on its own weight,
as Marx predicted
in his Kapital.
And, then, you
know, we just fight
for a little sort of kinder
and gentler capitalism
until the moment that
capitalism comes to an end.
And those-- we know
who those people were.
Those are the European
social democracy.
Koski was the first
person who sort of
split from that sort of
Marxist revolutionary ideology.
And today we have Social
Democrats in Europe.
And, thank god, and
suddenly we have
a Social Democrat
in the US American
politics, Bernie Sanders.
But it goes back really
to this little passage
in Marx's understanding
of history,
that kind of what we
say in our business--
because this is an important
term I want you to remember
because I'm going to
come back to this--
a very teleological
view of history,
a teleological view of history.
A teleological view of
history meaning that history
has a purpose.
History unfolds on a
very predetermined line.
Goes from one stage to another.
Of course, those of you who
had a brush with Marxism
would know that Marx was saving
it from primitive communism
to slavery to feudalism
to capitalism to socialism
to communism.
So that what we call a
teleological view of history.
So what is the problem with this
teleological view of history?
And I want to make a case
here that it's exactly
the dominance of that kind
of teleological view--
it's exactly that kind
of teleological view
that history moves from
predetermined stages that
made the Iranian Revolution
very problematic.
People could not
figure this out.
So what happened that
suddenly we were all
supposed to go towards a
very predetermined direction
and suddenly there
comes this revolution?
By the way, the most popular
revolution in world history.
If you ask, some of
you teach classes--
if you ask anyone that
name a revolution in world
history, 90% of people
would say French history.
French history,
French Revolution.
French Revolution, only 2%-2.5%
of the population participated
in French Revolution.
The Iranian Revolution?
Wild guess.
85%.
85%?
Estimates between 10%-15%.
This is like depending
how you count.
Of course, believe
it or not, there
are people whose job is to sit
there and count these things.
And they get paid for it, too.
That's a good job.
So I mean the numbers of
participants in the Iranian
Revolution, let's
say between 10%-15%.
Russian Revolution,
1.5% of Russians
were involved in
Russian Revolution.
So you see that when I say
that this amazing revolution is
happening, totally
unprecedented in world
history, that that many people
actually march on the streets,
directly involved in the
revolution, which is actually
not based on the predetermined
plans of this kind
of historical understanding.
So you understand that why
this is so sort of in a sense
bizarre events.
And many people still
today struggling.
That's why I keep writing books
about the Iranian Revolution,
because there's so much to
figure out in this revolution.
So of course--
what happened here?
OK-- when we talk about
the Iranian Revolution,
there are two basic
assumptions that goes back
to this kind of trying
to explain what happened
in the Iranian Revolution.
One basic assumption,
very dominant,
conventional reading of
the Iranian Revolution
that, oh, no, this was a
revolution that was happening
along those historical lines.
And then the mullahs
came and stole it,
sort of the hijacked revolution.
Very, very dominant view.
I would say easily like
90% of the literature
on the Iranian Revolution is
about that sort of narrative
that the Iranian
Revolution was hijacked.
It was truly based
on those lines,
but then hijacked
by the mullahs.
By the way, this
is a photo, as I
said, by a boss who just
died a couple of weeks ago,
one of the most
important photographers
that Iran ever produced.
We are just starting, so--
we are just starting
the revolution.
You missed the part on Marx, but
we are starting the revolution.
So that's one narrative
that I think that in my work
I try to actually reject
that hypothesis and argue
that if there was a
revolution in Iran,
it was an Islamic revolution.
And without the
clergy, there couldn't
be a revolution as massive
as we saw happening in Iran.
No other social,
political force in Iran
could manage to mobilize
numbers of people,
bring them to the streets,
the way the clergy could.
And so in that sense, I
think I want to reject
that idea that it was them.
And some of my old
friends are here today.
And I think if there
was any attempt
to hijack the revolution, it was
actually the other way around.
As young Marxists and
communists in Iran,
we tried to hijack that
revolution and we failed.
And of course,
this is a very sort
of curious kind of understanding
of the Iranian revolution,
which doesn't really match
a lot of other writings
about other revolutions.
There's a very famous
expression among historians
that people say that history
is written by the victors.
Whoever the winner's
always write the history.
In the Iranian Revolution
case, this story
is actually the
other way around.
Most of the literature
on the Iranian Revolution
is written by the losers
of the revolution.
In the Western world,
there are a lot
of narratives produced
in Iran, but they
don't get any traction.
But most narratives
accepted narratives,
conventional narratives,
of the Iranian Revolution
is written by people
who lost the power
struggle after the revolution.
So in this case,
unlike other cases
of histories of
revolutions, the history
is written by the losers
rather than by the winners.
The other purpose of what
I'm doing here in this book,
and in some of my other work,
is to try to deprovincialize
Iranian history.
What does that mean to
say to deprovincializing
Iranian history?
At the conceptual
level, whatever
we understand about world
history, all the points
of reference about
world history,
the way we make
sense of the world
and make sense of
a social world,
all the points of reference
are the points, events,
that has happened in Europe.
When we say revolution, the
yardstick for revolution
always is French Revolution,
Russian Revolution,
now a little bit
Chinese Revolution.
I'll talk more about this later.
But when I say that I
want to deprovincialize
Iranian history, I want
to argue that there
are things that happened
in Iran that are really
worth contemplating at a very
general philosophical level.
Philosophical level in
terms of contribution
interventions in
historiography, in terms
of making sense of
what history is.
And that sort of sense that
I said in the beginning,
that there is a
sense that history
is unfolding going forward.
And instead of understanding
the Iranian Revolution
as just an aberration
on this field
of progressive,
linear line, I want
to bring Iranian history,
the Iranian Revolution,
into our understanding of
history and to make sense of it
in that context.
There are the interesting
debates in historiography
that some people
argue that history
has a linear progressive line.
There is another
argument, mostly
by mid 18, mid 19th
century, late 19th century
Italian philosophers
like [? Rico, ?]
who said that history is
like a branching tree.
You know the branching
tree that it goes
towards different directions.
And there are forces that
try to push this tree
and turn this branching
tree into a [INAUDIBLE],,
just going straight up.
Cut all these thing.
So I want to
basically, when I say
that I want to deprovincialize
the Iranian Revolution,
I want to sort of
release that tree
and to say, OK, let's allow
this tree to branch out
and to see what
possibilities are there
in history outside
the possibilities that
are given to us and has
become second nature to us.
Second nature in the sense
that we understand them
without questioning them.
Like we say that, you know,
if you are losing your voice,
you drink a sip of water.
You don't question then.
So that's what I mean
by deprovincializing
Iranian history.
And then I want to
make an argument
that why Foucault is very
important in that attempt
to deprovincialize
Iranian Revolution
and bring it to the
center of the way
that we understand the world,
the way we understand history,
the way we understand history
as a condition of possibilities
rather than the unfolding
of inevitable outcomes,
restoring agency, as I said.
So that kind of
understanding of history
really was reflected
in the historiography
of Iranian revolution in a
very, very important way.
That is created, most
of the literature
after the revolution,
in a sense,
is a sort of a
revisionist understanding
of Iranian history that is
constructed around a very, very
important binary.
This binary is that on
the one side of it--
again, you know
you notice when I
say these binaries,
which should be called
these constitutive binaries--
say the constitutive binaries
because they really shape
and frame our
understanding of history.
That on one side there
are progressive, secular,
and democratic forces.
On the other side,
there are religious,
conservative,
obstructionists forces
in modern Iranian history.
And it's in this struggle
between these two forces
that modern Iranian
history has been shaped.
So I want to argue against this
kind of binary understanding
to say that in practice,
if you delve into what
happened in Iranian history--
I have a couple of
examples that I'm
going to talk about tonight--
if you delve into
the Iranian history,
you realize that
these binaries, in
general, binary
understanding of the world--
like black and
white, good and evil,
secular religious, public
private, man woman--
all these binaries are
really nice and neat
and really make us
feel really good.
It gives us a very unambiguous
sense of the world.
But when you get
into the world, you
realize that the world
is such a messy place.
That these binaries actually
never play out the way
they appear on the paper.
There's a very
important sociologist
at Princeton University,
Robert Wuthnow,
who had this really interesting
exchange with one of his PhD
students.
And he said that, you know,
what you write is very messy.
And he said that, well,
this is good, you know,
because the world is messy.
Society is messy.
And there should be some
room in your writing
that reflects that messiness.
Everything doesn't look
as clean as these binaries
in the real world.
These binaries really don't
have utility in the way
that we understand the world.
Of course, when I
say this, then, I'm
just going to just mention
this because it is on my slide.
I don't want to get it
too complicated here.
There are two
different sort of ways
that we can understand
the Iranian Revolution
and the history of modern Iran.
There's just this kind of
epistemological-- epistemology
means that the ways
of understanding.
How do we understand
something in the world?
What are the sort
of methods we use?
How do we go about knowing
things outside in the world?
I mean it's very easy, like, if
you're in medicine, if you're
in physics, if you're if
you're in chemistry, really
there are very sort of
agreed upon methods.
If you're in
mathematics, you know
that how to add up or subtract.
And in my former life,
I was an engineer.
And now I have no
memory of that world.
But my mind is very
messy these days.
Like, I can't go back to that.
But in history,
in sociology, you
know it's always
a debated issue.
How do we know what's
going on outside?
I mean all of us
in this room have
a sense of what's going
on out there in the world.
You don't need a
PhD to know that.
You don't need to teach
a class to know that.
Everyone knows.
But everybody has
a sense, a way,
of knowing what's
going on in the world.
And when I say that there is
an epistemological intervention
here, it's that I'm
sort of referring
to that kind of
non-binary understanding.
What happens if you understand
the world in non-binary ways
and things that
are in a continuum?
You know a lot of
conversations these days,
this theory comes from gender
studies mostly on queer theory
that there's really
against these binaries
that people exist
on a continuum.
There is no good bad.
There's no sort of man woman.
There is a continuum in there.
So if we apply that
to understanding
of history and society, what
kind of pictures do we get?
The other part which is
more phenomenological--
whenever you are getting
tired, just tell me.
I stop and then we'll
go out, have a drink.
In California, it's very
hard to give a lecture.
You know that the
weather is always nice.
Where I come from, the
temperature outside
is minus 25 degrees and
nobody wants to go out.
You know you talk
for five hours,
they say talk more, talk
more, it's nice and warm.
You know?
Who wants to go out?
Phenomenologically, it's
like you take things
at the face value.
You understand
things the way they
appear rather than to say
that, oh, it appears like this,
but I know what's behind it.
A lot of luck Marxist literature
is very anti-phenomenological.
We do have
phenomenological Marxists.
But a lot of Marxist literature
is anti-phenomenological,
because they say that, oh,
OK, things appear this way,
but I know what's going
on deeper behind it.
Right?
So you put yourself in a very
sort of privileged position
to understand.
You have this bird's
eye view of the world.
And then you say
that, OK, you might
think that there's a bunch
of people sitting here
listening to what you
are saying, but actually,
no, they don't care at
all, because these issues
have no utility in the
marketplace, for example,
right?
So they can't care.
I say, no, no, no.
I see their faces.
You know they're really into it.
No, no, no.
You see the surface,
the appearance.
So what does that mean?
For example, if I say that
the Iranian Revolution was
a religious revolution, the
anti-phenomenological people
would say that, well, it
appeared to be religious,
but behind it, religion
was masking something else.
Right?
Religion is masking
real grievances.
And for that reason, it's
wrong to say, for example,
this was an Islamic
Revolution, because you are not
going behind the appearances.
Right?
OK.
So why-- this was all
introduction to say that why
then this was very
important to me
to think about
Foucault's writings
on the Iranian Revolution.
Just like two lines,
Michel Foucault,
perhaps, is one of the
most important philosophers
of 20th century in so
many different fields.
From history, from anthropology,
to sociology, to philosophy,
to gender studies, to studies
of power, theories of power,
you name it, Foucault
is a key figure
in all these different fields
for better or for worse.
I mean I'm not
saying that Foucault
is the greatest
thing ever happened
since the sliced bread, no.
But he's that important.
So in 1978, when the revolution
was happening in Iran,
another very, very, very
important conversation
was happening in France in 1978.
The conversation was about
the end of age of revolutions.
And I want you to think back
about what I said earlier,
right?
So anything that happens outside
Europe really didn't count,
right?
The greatest revolution in
world history is happening
and people in
France are debating
that the age of
revolutions are over.
And there's a very
interesting revisionist book
by this philosopher
historian Francois Furet,
The Interpretation
of French Revolution,
said, you know, really
the French Revolution
was the only revolution
in the world.
And after that, there was,
like, a number of imitations,
and, then, the age of
revolution is over.
And here is a Foucault,
a French philosopher,
and he said, but wait a minute.
Something is really
happening, major, major
is happening, right
around the corner.
And we are sitting here
talking about the end of age
of revolutions.
So he already had this
interest in Iranian affairs
through his work.
Foucault, as many
of you might know,
was gay and very much involved
in gay politics and rights
of prisoners.
And through many Iranian
activists-- like in 1970s,
it was basically impossible
to be in a college in the US
or anywhere in Europe and not
be exposed to Iranian politics.
Yeah, because of Iranian
student activists.
So Foucault was already
exposed to this issue
of political prisoners in Iran.
Again, there was this myth
that there were 150,000
political prisoners in Iran.
This myth has a very
interesting kind of history
that when I was
writing my first book,
I tried to figure out so where
did this figure come from--
150,000 political prisoners?
Because I remember, when
the revolution happened
I was in Iran.
And we all went to Evin Prison.
And they had released, the last
year, during the revolution
1,200 prisoners.
And then Evin Prison,
there was nobody there.
And then I remember going there
and they said, oh, they're
all in the dungeons.
The rest of the 140,000
prisoners are in the dungeons.
So everybody is looking
for the dungeons.
[INAUDIBLE] So there
were no dungeons.
There was no [INAUDIBLE].
That was it.
And, of course, now we
know that at its height,
there were only 3,700
political prisoners in Iran.
But then the number
were so exaggerated.
And the person who
actually coined 150,000
was [INAUDIBLE],,
the Iranian poet
in an article in the New
York Review of Books.
And then Amnesty
International took that
and turned that into
the official position
of Amnesty International.
And then everybody else--
even [INAUDIBLE] later when he
was referring to the political
prisoner situation in Iran--
referenced Amnesty
International.
As a sort of a very interesting
kind of loopy-loop of--
loopy-loop is a very technical
term in academia, you now.
Anyhow, so Foucault was
exposed already to this issue.
And what he wanted to
do is something called
the philosophical journalism.
He wanted to write the
history of the present.
I mean he was a historian,
a philosopher and historian.
And then he had a
project to come to the US
and write a series called
"Carter's America."
And then while he was
thinking about this,
the revolution in Iran started.
And he said, well, why
should I go to the US?
I go to Iran.
And it's sort of related
to Carter's America.
And so he went to Iran.
Partly I wanted to have
this slide show because
of this picture because I
think it's so out there amazing
that Foucault is
waiting for his luggage
at the Mehrabad Airport in 1978.
It's interesting fact that--
if you're in my world,
especially in California
because Foucault
spent a lot of time
in Berkeley towards
the end of his life.
And I went to graduate
school at UC Santa Cruz.
And at the time in
late 1980s, 1990s,
if you go to grad school, this
was sort of a rite of passage.
You became a knight if
you read all Foucault.
And every little thing
Foucault had written
was translated into English.
All his lectures continue to
be translated into English.
A conversation he had with a
graduate student in a coffee
shop in Berkeley was published.
Everything.
And all these
years, I had no idea
that Foucault actually wrote
about the Iranian Revolution.
And the very first
time I sort of
discovered this was through
this translation in Farsi.
"What the Iranians
dreaming about?"
[FARSI] One of the
essays he wrote.
And then this is a
later translation.
"Iran, the spirit of
a spiritless world."
Another title of an
interview, "Iran, the spirit
of a spiritless world."
So it was a curiosity
to me that why
is it that Foucault wrote all
these things and everybody
read them except these pieces
about the Iranian Revolution?
And then I started
digging into it.
Of course, when the people
started writing about Foucault,
they said that he
was a gullible man.
One of the reviews
of my book actually
mentioned this that
you know, why bother
to write about a gullible man?
And so they compared
him to sort of Heidegger
and Heidegger's tendencies
towards the Nazis.
They said, you
know, Foucault also
had these tendencies
towards islamists
and was fooled by
this kind of seemingly
emancipatory politics.
I was very lucky to get to know
the person who turned Foucault
to the Iranian situation,
a French sociologist
by the name of Paul
Vieille And when
I went to University of
Illinois in Urbana-Champaign,
Paul Vieille was there.
Just, you know, my luck.
And then he told me
Foucault's reading list.
He said that this is how he
prepared himself to go to Iran.
Reading lists that was given
to him by Paul Vieille.
Among the important
texts that he read
were two important French
orientalists, Islamologists,
one, Louis Massignon, who
wrote this full volume
the Hallaj, a mystic martyr.
If you don't have time
to read the full volume,
there's an abridged
version of Hallaj.
The movie is not made yet, so
we can't watch the movie, yet,
but the abridged
revision would do it.
And another person,
Henry Corbin.
It's interesting that both of
these French Islamologists,
expert on Shi'a Islam, they had
a very particular understanding
of Shi'ism.
And Foucault was
pretty much influenced
by that particular
understanding of Shi'ism.
In their view, Shi'ism--
and you can tell by
Massignon's book on Hallaj.
Those of you who know, Hallaj
was this sort of mystic
who basically was set
on fire because he
claims that he is the truth.
And these are very pretty,
wild, out there kind
of mystics who claim martyrdom.
And both Massignon
and Corbin, less so
Corbin but mostly
Massignon, they believed
and that Shi'ism is a
religion of saints and martyrs
and they constantly reproduce
this kind of sainthood
and martyrdom in their history.
And of course there are plenty
of examples to support that.
I mean those of you who are
even remotely familiar which
Shi'ism you see that
there is a really
good historical foundation
to understand Shi'ism
along those terms.
What was really
absent in the work
was the formal juridical
and legal Shi'ism.
Which is something that we
see that after the revolution,
it's that side of Shi'ism
that basically becomes
the central kind
of characteristics
of the Iranian Revolution,
that formal, legal, juridical
Shi'ism that is primarily
absent in these writings
and is primarily absent in
Foucault's understanding
of the Iranian Revolution.
Of course, if you understand
Shi'ism along with those lines,
then you go to Iran and
see millions of people
marching on the
streets without fear,
without any kind
of consideration
or consequences of the fact
that you go to the streets
and stand in front of
soldiers with machine guns.
And Foucault says
damn right, you know,
this is the religion of
martyrdom and sainthood.
Of course, you know at the time
that Foucault goes to Iran,
there is a very interesting
kind of formation.
This is where I want to go
back to that understanding
of non-binary understandings,
because a lot of people
talk about the revolution
was between secular
and religious forces.
I have spent the
last 20 years or so
combing through the literature
of political parties to Iran
to find which political party
was speaking the language
of secularism in Iran.
No one.
I mean not that
secularism did not exist.
But the language of
secularism was not spoken.
The only people who talked
about secularism, people who
were against the revolution.
Among the forces of
revolution, among the people
who participated in revolution,
the language of secularism
was not spoken.
And there was a very
good reason for that,
that that language
was not spoken.
I'm sure many of you remember
this, because this was also
a very important moment in
Iranian political history,
the public trial of
Khosrow Golesorkhi,
a Marxist, journalist,
essayist, poet.
And I am going to read this
little passage from his defense
that it would shock
the audiences today,
but at the time it
was totally fine.
Nobody was scandalized
by these lines
that I'm going to read you
which today seemed very, very
unlikely.
So in his defense, he says--
he reads this, one of his
poems, and then he says this.
"I begin my defense with
the words of Imam Hussein."
This is a Marxist.
"I begin my defense
with the words
of Imam Hussein, the greatest
martyr of the peoples
of the Middle East.
As a Marxist Leninist, I
searched for social justice
for the first time in
the teachings of Islam.
And then I found socialism.
In Iran, the true Islam has
always fulfilled its duty
to the liberation movements.
There are close
similarities between what
Marx says that in
the class society,
wealth is accumulated in one
side and poverty, hunger,
and misery on the other.
And that the downtrodden
is the producer of wealth.
And what Imam Ali
says that no palace is
built without the
misery of thousands.
That is why I call Imam Ali
the first socialist in world
history.
Being tried today
in this courtroom
is just another example
of a Imam Hussein's life.
Hussein stood up and
was martyred by Yazeed.
Yazeed occupied a smaller
corner in history.
But what has been
repeated in history
is the legacy of Hussein
and his struggle,
not the rule of Yazeed.
People's history is the
re-enactment of Hussein's path.
As a Marxist, I applaud such
an Islam, the Islam of Ali,
the Islam of Hussein."
So when I say that when--
I mean in the olden days,
the monarchy in Iran
constantly was
the propaganda was
that these were works
of Islamist Marxists
and everybody sort of laughed
at that kind of assertion.
But there was two
different things
happening at the same time.
There were Islamist Marxists.
And they were Marxist Islamists.
In the sense that Iranian
Marxists, in their ethos,
in their understanding
of history, in the way
they related to one another,
in the way they understood
how history unfolded,
they're very, very much
influenced by the
same kind of Shi'ism
that Foucault was influenced
by and the same kind of Shi'ism
that guided and framed
their political ideology.
So Iranian Marxists were,
in a sense, quite Shi'a
in their cultural ethos
and the way they understood
their own place in the world.
Of course, this was
not only the Marxists
who had this kind of
affinity towards Shi'ism,
particularly Shi'ism,
not Islam in general,
but also, the Muslims.
Perhaps the most
obvious example would
be Ali Shari'ati who
actually borrowed heavily
from a lexicon of Marxist
understanding of history,
questions of class society,
questions of imperialism,
questions of justice.
He borrowed from Lenin, very
openly borrowed from Lenin,
the idea of vanguard parties.
He borrowed from Sukarno,
the Indonesian leader.
He borrowed from Trotsky.
He constantly talked about
permanent revolution.
And he also borrowed
from Shi'a Islam.
He was a committed,
practicing Muslim.
And he translated Frantz Fanon.
This is actually-- when I
was looking in the archives,
I saw this very
interesting letter
that his Savak handler,
agent, was following
him wrote this report
to his superior saying
that we noticed that Ali
Shari'ati is busy translating
Frantz Fanon to Farsi.
So you know between
Fanon, Sarte, Marxism,
Marxist existentialism,
and Islam,
you see that this kind
of way of continuum
rather than binary
understanding of how
this political force
in Iran was shaping
in the context of a very, very
culturally specific moment.
It generated a very
kind of idiosyncratic
language of speaking
about justice
and speaking about revolution.
I just want to read a
passage from Shari'ati
to see that when I read
the Marxist view and then
this is Shari'ati that--
you know that there was a
campaign against Shari'ati
in the seminaries.
And one of the leaders of this
campaign against Shari'ati
Ayatollah Milani one of
the sources of emulation
in [INAUDIBLE] who
actually banned
his students from attending
Shari'ati's sermons, lectures.
And so Shari'ati writes this
really fascinating letter
to Ayatollah Milani, one
of the highest ranking.
At the time, Ayatollah Milani
was much more significant
religiously from
Ayatollah Khomeini.
Khomeini was pretty marginal in
terms of religious credentials
actually.
So after saying hello,
Ayatollah Milani, I love you.
You are the greatest thing
ever happened, blah, blah.
And then he says this.
"Everybody is asking this
question--" Shari'ati says,
"why is that pious people
such as yourself who
sit on the cathedral of the
deputy of the Shi'i messiah,
imam-e zaman, as a
source of emulation,
have not uttered a word
about tyranny in this world?
For eight years, the French
army bloodied and massacred
Muslims of Algeria,
ruined their cities,
tortured their warriors, and
Algerians fought heroically.
The enlightened Christian
priests in France
sympathized with the Algerians.
The existentialist Satre and
the antireligion Mrs. Simone
de Beauvoir defended them and
endangered their own lives
for the sake of the
Algerians' cause.
Even the French
communist Henri Alleg
joined the Algerian resistance
and made the atrocities
of the French their torture
of the Algerians' mujahidin,
known to the world.
You, one of the leaders
of the Shi'ite world
did not even issue a meaningless
statement of sympathy.
It perturbs me deeply
to witness that,
that while that is happening,
a great source of emulation
writes on the pages of his book
that 'the Prophet has advised
those who eat melon
would go to the heaven.'
He said that
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
"And then you have the audacity
to call me an unfit element."
And then he goes on and says
that my teacher Sorbonne,
Georges Gurvitch,
a Jewish communist,
is a better source of emulation
than you Ayatollah Milani who
is sitting in [INAUDIBLE].
So in that sense, you
see this kind of when--
again I go back to that binary.
He said that if you
have those binaries, how
do you explain these things?
If you move through those
binaries, then inevitably,
you are going to pigeonhole
Shari'ati in the Islamist part.
You pigeonhole people like
[INAUDIBLE] on the other side.
And then you try to write a
narrative that actually speaks
to those pigeonholes
rather than what
actually happens in reality.
So Foucault was very
much aware of this scene.
He knew Shari'ati.
He talked to people
around Shari'ati.
He talked to [INAUDIBLE].
And then [INAUDIBLE],,
also, yeah, quite
an interesting character there.
Dr. Milani knows that.
Also when Foucault
arrives in Iran,
it's only a few days
after declaration
of martial law in Tehran.
He flies Shahabad in
September, September 1978.
And then in his
early writings, he
said that I entered a
city that I expected to be
totally colonized by terror.
Of course, the reason he says
that is these pictures that--
this is before and after.
This is the declaration
of martial law.
And this is when
people, of course,
didn't know martial
law was declared.
That day, this is the best
day ever that I overslept.
You know, you're
supposed to be there.
So of course, when he
writes this thing--
again, you see I'm trying
to bring all these elements
together here to say that when
he's thinking about something
very special is happening here.
That there is a transformation
that was happening
in the streets of Tehran.
And by the way,
the second time--
he goes to Iran twice-- the
second time he goes to Iran--
this is in front of Tehran
University-- some of you
might remember.
This is [INAUDIBLE].
Another massacre happens.
It's just his luck that
whenever he is going to Iran,
the massacre happens
and he shows up.
And in his earlier writings
on the Iranian Revolution,
he said in France,
we always talked
about this abstract
political concept
called collective will,
collective will of the people.
That this is how history moves.
And he said that,
you know, in France,
we never knew what the hell
this collective will is.
Nobody has ever seen
a collective will.
And he says that collective
will sounded like god,
that god is there or something.
And he says that--
and he writes to this essay.
He say that but
for the first time,
I think for the first
time in history,
I saw the collective
will of the people
on the streets of Tehran.
Something really transformative
is happening there to him.
And he thinks that this
transformation is also
happening on the
streets of Tehran.
And I like this picture
because this sort of captures--
Walter Benjamin
defines revolution
as an as a leap into the sky
of historical possibilities,
as a leap to the sky of
historical possibilities.
I like this picture because
there's is a leap there.
And you never know
where you land.
Revolutions are
dangerous business.
You know?
And you never know
where you land.
And here, Foucault says
that everybody says
that Iranians are really crazy.
There are all these very,
very interesting sort
of journalistic reports of
mostly French journalists who
are in Tehran.
And one of them
[INAUDIBLE] who made
a lot of interesting contacts
for Foucault and many others.
And he writes this thing
that these Iranians
are swimming in ambiguity.
It's not quite clear.
Everybody knows that
the Shah has to go.
No one knows what happens next.
You know?
It's totally ambiguous.
And of course, this ambiguity
adds also to the mystery.
I mean you would imagine
that people possibly
might be willing to sacrifice
their lives because they
say that, OK, I'm
going to do this
because I'm going to gain that.
You know?
And what that "gain
that" was absent
in this general understanding
of the notion of justice,
the notion of freedom.
But what exactly entailed
in that, nobody knew.
It's totally ambiguous.
And everybody is sort
of running away from it.
In France, people
already started
writing about the
counter-revolution in Iran.
Even up to today, when people,
the French social sociologists,
like [INAUDIBLE] a
great sociologist,
they refer to the
Iranian Revolution
as a counter-revolution.
Because again, I go back
to that original point
that it wasn't sort of
unfolding on the lines
that everybody expected
revolutions to follow.
So Foucault says
but wait a minute.
Let's set aside all
these assumptions
that we have about a
teleological history.
How do we see this revolution
if our assumption is not
that, this revolution
was supposed to realize
an already determined future?
What happens if we don't
understand the present time--
This is a little
bit complicated.
Just bear with me--
if you don't understand the
present time as futures past?
If you don't understand the
present time as futures past?
Because if we know where
we are going in history,
present time only makes
sense if it's going
towards that particular future.
Right?
So if you don't understand
present time as futures past,
how do we write about it?
How do we know what's
good, what's bad?
What is that
yardstick that we say
that, OK, these political
forces are good, progressive?
Because once you
say progressive,
then you have an assumption.
Progressive towards what?
Right?
There is already an
end point in your mind
when you evaluate
or use the yardstick
for political parties.
So Foucault says, you know,
let's pause for a minute
and give conceptual
significance to this ambiguity.
Let's think of this ambiguity
in the Iranian Revolution
as the condition
of possibilities.
Maybe it's not all that bad
that things are not quite clear.
Maybe ambiguity has generated
a space, a historical space,
in which people can
participate to figure out
alternative futures,
futures that nobody has ever
thought about.
These days we have this kind
of neo anarchist position
that another world is possible.
This is exactly the same thing.
Is another world
possible or not really,
we are just kidding ourselves?
So Foucault says that this
is a moment of ambiguity.
And if you give it a
conceptual significance,
then we can understand that
there might be possibilities
of constituting new forms
of social relations,
social world, history,
so on and so forth.
I have five more minutes
and then we'll stop.
The other thing that
Foucault emphasizes
is that there is also
something really interesting
happening in Iran.
And then he calls that the
political spirituality.
Of course, a lot of people
misunderstood Foucault's notion
of political spirituality,
because the people
thought that he's talking
about religious character
of the revolution.
He was not really talking
about the religious character
of revolution in relation
to political spirituality.
He said that there is--
he has this amazing
line that if he never
wrote another line I would
be very, very happily
say that he was the
one of the greatest
thinkers of 20th century--
he said that a man in revolt
is ultimately inexplicable.
Excuse the gender language.
A man in revolt is
ultimately inexplicable.
No one can really explain what
happens that suddenly somebody
is transformed from inside to
reach a point that transcends.
He said that transcends fear.
I mean we all are human
beings and we understand fear.
But without transcending
fear, these revolutions cannot
happen.
You have to transcend fear.
And then he said
that the beauty of it
is that this
transcendence happens
without the subjects who are
doing the transcendence being
aware of it.
They go through this process.
And they become someone
they never expected
to have the ability to become.
I'm sure all of us have
these moments in our lives
that we are in the
moment, that we
do something that is above
and beyond our own abilities.
That later on in retrospect, you
said, wow, how could I do that?
You know?
And so I say that this is an
important point for Foucault
to understand this.
And it moves away
from earlier sort
of explanations of
revolutions, which
was based on economic
situation, political situation.
No, no.
There is something that is
sort of part of transformation
of the individual.
And this is spirituality
for Foucault was not
a sort of matter of the soul.
It was the matter of the body.
It's sort of very
counterintuitive in a sense.
He said that people can--
I said it is a spiritual act.
It means that you are releasing
your body from the prison
house of your soul.
You are sort of stripping
off all these techniques
of docility.
We are all concerned
all the time
that what is the proper
behavior in society.
How do we behave
to be acceptable?
How do we behave
in the classroom?
How do we behave in
this lecture hall?
How do we behave at work?
How do we behave
when we're driving?
All these things that
our body is so much
under control of our
soul that are sort of act
upon this kind of techniques
that we learn in our lives.
He calls that the
techniques of docility.
We've become docile subject.
And he said that this
political spirituality
is a very corporeal thing.
It's bodily.
You release your body
suddenly that you
have no fear of anything.
You know?
Anyhow.
And last, but not least, is
his notion, that because--
a lot of people say
that, but how could
you defend this revolution
because we all know what
happened after the revolution.
And he says, well--
again, another kind of
misunderstanding of Foucault's
writings on the
Iranian revolution
that he says that
there should be
a distinction, a
decoupling of the revolt
from the outcome of revolution.
He says it is useless to
revolt. It is useless.
If people know that they
can't change anything,
is it useless to attempt change?
He called himself a very
hyperpessimist activist.
Hyperpessimist activist.
At the end of the day, we all
might think that, you know,
we can't change this world.
And is it then OK to
think of those people who
try to change it as naive,
as stupid, as worthless?
He said, no.
Actually, I read this poem
by Shamlou-- and I end here--
and I think it
captures what Foucault
was trying to say that once
you enter this world of revolt,
once you transcend
your body from all
those techniques of docility,
you become a new subject.
You become a different person.
You are not the same person
you were before that.
Despite the fact that you
might fail, despite the fact
that there is going to be
situation worse than before,
but you, the subject of
history, has been transformed.
And let me read this
poem of Shamlou,
because I use this in my
book, too, the that he says,
that [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].
"The rebellious flight of a
fountain that cannot escape
the earth and is simply
trying deliverance."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
I went over four minutes.
And I'm drenching in sweat,
because I get very excited.
So I'm going to
take some questions.
Yes.
So, have you read [INAUDIBLE]
Yes.
So one question I had-- at the
end of his essay, he says--
it seems like he's saying in
that essay that the Iranian,
kind of fiery spirit, that
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] died
at the Battle of [INAUDIBLE]--
That's right.
[INAUDIBLE] 1500s.
That's right.
Could you argue that
it's hard to put
a label to that kind of
revolutionary spirit probably
[INAUDIBLE] and all these guys.
If that loss of confidence
happened at the Battle
of [INAUDIBLE],, could
the Iranian Revolution
be a restoration of that
confidence [INAUDIBLE]..
It's a hard question.
I mean I'm not quite sure
how do we count for something
like Iranian identity.
It's a very fluid kind of thing.
I don't want to
suggest that there
is something called
Iranian identity that
moves in centuries of history.
Obviously, people are alive
and add new experiences.
And they understand the
world very, very differently
in each historical epoch.
But the way Shari'ati
conceptualizes
that is that he makes a
distinction between Islam
of movement and
Islam of institution.
And he said that whenever
Islam is institutionalized,
it loses its revolutionary core.
So for example,
even for Shari'ati,
it would be very,
very easy to argue
against the Islamic
Republic today,
because he says that once
you institutionalize Islam,
then you lose that
revolutionary spirit
and that revolutionary core.
That's why in his
writing, he always
talks about
permanent revolution.
Because once you
stop, once you pause,
then you are
bureaucratized, then
you develop interests of
agents of that bureaucracy.
Of course, he learns
this from Trotsky, too,
that what happened in
the Russian Revolution.
So in that sense, I think that's
the way he understands it.
And then he comes up with
this kind of Safavid Shi'ism
and Allavid Shi'ism.
That, again, Safavid
Shi'ism, in a sense,
one can argue that today we
have Safavid Shi'ism in Iran,
because once the
religion becomes
the sort of and the official
religion of the state,
then it loses its dynamic core.
Right?
And that happened during--
for the first time, actually--
during Safavid period,
that Shi'ism becomes that
sort of a state religion.
And then the movement
that continues
to be a part of Shi'ism
becomes very, very marginalized
according to Shari'ati's
historiography.
And then he wants to revive that
kind of revolutionary spirit.
Thank you so much for the
good points and good talk.
You mentioned about--
I think you called it Islamic
revolution [INAUDIBLE]
you refuted that part
because a number of people
who participated it wasn't
because of the [INAUDIBLE]
that many people would not have
[INAUDIBLE] to do something
like that.
You characterized that
as a reason for Foucault
[INAUDIBLE]--
One of the reasons, yeah.
One of the reasons.
On that line, I
wanted to see what
you think about the major
reasons in order of importance
that this thing happened.
And was the motivation for
having an Islamic society
was the main motivation
for this whole movement.
I doubt that was it,
but I don't want--
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
No.
I mean that's one
of the reasons.
Of course, sort of
revolutions involve
mobilization and all these
things and networks and all.
Of course, the revolution
also had a rhythm.
A rhythm that actually the
Shah, in his famous speech
in the summer of
1978, very rightfully,
actually, addresses this issue.
And he says that they have
politicized the third day
of death, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH],,
40th day of death and turned
that into a political event,
which was true of course.
And I think the Shah was totally
right, because that was really
a very important
constitutive element of how
the revolutionary
movement was perpetuated.
Because the key always--
if you study all these
different revolutions--
the key always in all
these revolutions,
the sort of $64,000 question--
I mean for California
$64,000 is nothing--
in Urbana-Champaign,
$64,000 is a lot of money.
The $64,000 question for
all revolutionary movements,
how to perpetuate the movement.
That's the very,
very key question.
And if you see all
these failed movements,
they were not able to
create that perpetuation.
In Iran, that
perpetuation happens
by sort of appropriating
this kind of what
I call the religious rhythm.
There's this religious
rhythm that is politicized.
And people can identify with
it and participate in it.
There's a very important
concept Hegel talks about.
He says that concept
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]..
Means that the sort of ethical
order, unspoken ethical order,
that nobody says that, OK,
I do X, Y, Z, but everybody
practices the same thing.
Right?
And Shi'ism was, in a sense,
the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
of the Iranian Revolution.
That people could identify
with these sort of nodules,
these points, and participate
in this revolutionary movement.
The other part that I said that
this was an Islamic revolution
was exactly because of this kind
of non-binary understanding.
When I say that this was
an Islamic revolution,
that Islam is very,
very, very different
from the Islam that becomes
the ideology of the post
revolutionary state.
They're totally different
kinds of things.
And indeed, when people say that
we want [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
brotherhood, and equality,
and the governance of Ali,
the rule of Ali, Imam Ali.
What did that mean to people?
It meant a lot of
different things.
To [INAUDIBLE],, he meant
something very different,
because he's talking about it.
To the mullahs in [INAUDIBLE],,
it meant something.
To masses and masses of
people in the streets,
it may mean something.
But also, it became something
that could unify the people
and to a very kind
of irreducible thing.
The massive, massive
numbers-- and they
say that what
became the hallmark
of the Iranian
Revolution, was exactly
through these kind
of connections
of cultural, ideological,
political, and political actors
were bringing all these
things together in that sense.
You studied the
French philosophers
of Foucault of your book,
if he was alive today
and he could fly to Tehran
and Khomeini Airport,
what did you think he would say
about what's happening there?
First, he will say
this airport sucks.
[LAUGHTER]
No, the people asked him that
how come it didn't problematize
you when people saying that
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Islamic
rule, Islamic government.
And Foucault said,
you know, to me
I don't need the
adjective Islamic.
When people say government,
I am already scandalized.
You know?
So it doesn't matter
what kind of government.
All governments, for
Foucault, it was very--
I mean politically,
he is closest
to an anarchist understanding
of political philosophy.
He was an
anti-government person.
So for that very reason,
if he goes to Iran today,
he'd say that this
is another government
like all other
governments in the world.
It's oppressive.
It implements
techniques of docility.
It implements the
formation of what--
in my work I called homo
islamicus, a new man.
I mean all revolutions
try to create a new man.
[INAUDIBLE] talks
about revolution
that creates new man.
Marx talks about the new man.
Everyone wants to create.
Revolutions were understood
at the ground zero of history.
You do that, you
build everything.
At that moment, at
that ground zero,
Foucault goes all the
way to ground zero.
But he wants to disconnect
from the kind of building
they are building, because he
believes that there are always,
in any form-- if it's
liberal governments,
it's socialist governments,
Islamic governments, any kind
of governments, they
create structures
that would operate in
oppressive relations
with the human
subject in society.
So he would, basically,
if he were alive today--
actually, I just met his
partner a couple of months ago.
And he asked me if I could
arrange for him to go to Iran.
I said I can't arrange
for myself to go to Iran.
But, no I mean he wouldn't care.
I mean like he wouldn't--
I mean, I'm going to Iran.
He would think that this
is another oppressive
government like all other
governments in the world.
Yes.
Is there any
speculation about what
will happen when Khamenei dies?
There are a lot of speculations.
But I don't know.
I mean there are so
many different scenarios
that I don't think I
can talk about them.
I have no idea what's going
to happen after Khamenei dies.
I think I'm much
safer to say that.
Yes.
Your way of explaining
this process of revolution,
how do you explain
the hostage crisis
in sequence of the
hostage crisis?
Yeah.
Good.
In my first book, I tried
to show Islam and descent
in post revolutionary Iran.
I wanted to show that there
is a fierce competition
among revolutionary
forces to show which
one is more radical, which
one is more anti-imperialist,
which one is willing to push
the revolution forward in really
uncharted territories.
Of course, for the
left the Iranian left
of which I was a
part, the view was
that the provisional government
that came to power right
after revolution,
[INAUDIBLE] government,
it was the sort
of the equivalent
of the Kerensky government
in Russian Revolution.
Iranian left was very formalist.
You know the Iranian
left constantly
tried to sort of find the
answer to all the questions
in the Iranian Revolution
via the writings of Lenin
or just interesting
phenomena in itself.
But that was the understanding
that the February Revolution
in Iran was the February
Revolution in Russia.
And the understanding
was that we
have to push forward
and radicalize this
to such a degree that the
October Revolution would
come after this.
Of course, one of the means
of radicalizing the revolution
was by making it more
and more antiimperialist.
Now, there is a lot of documents
that just came out last year--
and the BBC published
them on their website--
about the negotiations that
had happened between Khomeini
and his people with
the US government
in terms of how they
promised to keep
the main institutions of
pre revolutionary power,
like military, intact.
And of course, the
left knew that.
The left knew that.
And they wanted to push
and to say that, see,
they are betraying
the revolution.
They want to slow
down the revolution.
And one attempt was made
right after the revolution
to occupy the American embassy.
And Khomeini ordered
them to be kicked out.
And because that attempt
happened by the Iranian Fadaian
Group, the gorilla group.
And then later, this
was all sort of--
again, this was sort of in
the context of two things--
competition to radicalize
the revolution,
to make it a permanent
revolution in the debate
in drafting the
Iranian constitution--
which is a fascinating,
fascinating theater.
I mean if you
haven't read it, this
is the docket there's
4,000 pages of minutes
of this available, actually,
through the Library
of National Archives in Iran.
And constantly, the
debate is that how
do we make sure that the
revolution doesn't stop here.
They're all shariatists
in their mind.
They fear that
this revolution is
going to be institutionalized.
And they want to find
a solution how to make
it a permanent revolution.
And when the issue
of [INAUDIBLE]
comes into the debate,
it's only in that context.
OK.
There is one person who can
make sure that the revolution is
continuous, it's permanent.
And that's Khomeini himself.
But then, of
course, the fear was
that if the Islamist
faction doesn't attempt
to radicalize the
revolution, it would
be the left who would
radicalize the revolution
and gain more legitimacy in the
eyes of revolutionary masses.
So that's one reason.
The other reason
was really truly--
I mean I knew half
of these students who
took over American Embassy.
They were from my campus.
I knew at least half of them.
The entire leadership position
of that I knew personally.
And their understanding
was that they
wanted to interrupt any
American attempt to launch
a coup after the revolution.
That was their understanding.
They wanted to go in there and
get out after a couple of days
and to show Americans that,
OK, we know what you're up to.
We know.
And of course, they go in there,
things get totally out of hand.
They see all this
shredding documents.
They see all these things.
And then, immediately,
the Revolutionary Council
takes over and then it turns
into the hostage crisis
which was totally unintended
consequence of the embassy
attack.
So two things.
Interruption in
possible American coup,
counter-revolution
and competition
for radicalization
of revolution.
You know we had the first
draft of the constitution that
was going to go to
vote on December 10th.
And after November 4th when
the embassy was taken over,
then somehow the
second draft shows up
which has the
Islamic government.
That's right.
The first one didn't have it.
The first draft is--
that's a whole
different-- if Dr.
Milani invites me again after
this, I would be more than--
You're invited.
I would be more than
happy just to focus
on what happens to these
drafts of constitution.
How did they write these
drafts of constitution?
Because they're
a bunch of people
have no clue about
writing a constitution.
And indeed, they were supposed
to approve the first draft
in 10 days.
And this took more
than 4 and 1/2 months.
They sat there.
They kept talking about it.
And there is this session--
which is so hilarious.
That's why I say, it is true
theater-- where is Mr. Baseri?
He needs to write
a play about that,
because that's the only
person who can do this.
Because there is this
Ayatollah who's sitting there.
He said that I'm
not quite sure what
I'm supposed to do, you know,
like Islamic constitution.
Why should we write
a constitution?
We have the Sharia.
We have this.
What else do we need to do?
And Ayatollah [INAUDIBLE],,
he tells him--
he shouts, you know.
He says that that's because
you don't do your homework.
We gave you the
Constitution of China
and the Constitution
of Bulgaria to read.
And we told you wherever you
see Marxism, change it to Islam.
That's it.
I kid you not.
It's in the minutes.
Of course, this is
an interesting thing.
I mean it's like when people say
that, oh, this is like Islam,
it's the Quran, and this.
What Quran, you know?
This is about the
Constitution of China.
And the first draft was the
Constitution of Belgium,
and then French
Constitution, and then
French, Belgian Constitution
turned into Chinese,
Bulgarian Constitution.
So again, to my original
point, don't understand things
in binary terms,
because then you
see a lot of things
happening in the middle
that really the word out
there becomes a little bit
counterintuitive in essence.
So shall I stop here.
It's 8:00.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]
