Has the constitutional revolution a beginning? A Foucauldian Reading of Iran's Constitutional Revolution and Intellectual's Role in It

When did constitutional revolution begin in Iran? Can we recognize a beginning point in the history for this revolution? Which one of the active social forces in social context of Iran sent the flying spark of this revolution? These are questions under discussion in this article. For dealing with these questions, some standpoints in historical research such as narrative position, continuity, discontinuity, and multiplicity of perspectives are reviewed and views of Henri Bergson, Ferdinand Braudel, and Georges Gurvitch are criticized. Afterwards, on the basis of Foucault's genealogy, instead of considering a "beginning", this historical research relies on the "beginnings" of constitutional revolution. Finally, through a critical discourse analysis of the editorial of the solitary published number of Vatan (La Patrie) newspaper, we make it clear that one of the beginning of the constitutional revolution happened at the same time that organic intellectuals, as a new social forces at the juncture of threshold of constitutional revolution, came into the social stage of Iran. But, if other social forces, instead of intellectuals, are considered as the main actor in narration of constitutional revolution, the beginning of this revolution would be transferred to the other point of history.