“That thing we have completely forgotten, after the Renaissance and the great crises of Christianity: a political spirituality? I can already hear Europeans laughing; but I, who know very little about Iran, know they are wrong.”
Michel Foucault, October 1978.
The Knapp Foundation will hold a one-day conference in the Autumn of 2026 under this title to consider (1) the questions that arose in Michel Foucault’s engagement with the political situation in Iran in the years 1978–1979; (2) the ways in which Foucault’s concerns were and were not reflected in the years following the Iranian revolution; and (3) the ways in which the concerns Foucault raised are (or are not) reflected in contemporary connections between some protagonists in the politics of revolt and resistance, and the politics of Islam in Europe and the Middle East.
More details to follow shortly.