Neo-pastorship, Critique of Governmental Rationality of Iran's State

To address the question of the nature of modern state in the contemporary Iran, the present paper seeks to investigate the issue of state in the contemporary Iran in terms of Foucauldian approach and the conceptual apparatus driven from it. In his late intellectual career, Michael Foucault introduced a new field into the researches on state in which fundamentally the rationalities underpinning / constituting the state are zeroed in on. The present paper hypothesizes that the drawing, organization and articulation of the modern state in Iran were being done by the governmentality of the pastorship prevailing over the tradition system and the rationalities remained out of the episteme belonged to Iranian previous universe, though it was built in the course of modernization process stimulated by Iranians` encounter with some western forms of governance. The present paper maintains that the tenacity of “the pastorship rationalities of the tradition system” and their being strengthened due to combining with some imperfect rationalities driven from modern era – that is, the rationalities oriented to consolidate the state such as “raison d'état” and “police” – lead to the generation of an “instrumental pastorship” equipped with modern technics and apparatus. Thus, it provided grounds for raising a particular political order which the present paper calls “neo-pastorship”. “Neo-pastorship”, thanks to the modern apparatuses, such as the army or the bureaucracy that was developed in the new age, came to more success in interference and carving power on the body of society.