Azadeh Thiriez-Arjangi, doctor of Philosophy – researcher and teacher, elected official of the 16th arrondissement of Paris in charge of higher education.

Is the collective responsibility you’re highlighting conceived along Ricœurian lines of forgiveness and promise, or rather along an Arendtian model of political responsibility without individual fault?

ATA: Both, but not exactly at the same level. The Arendtian model seems essential to me first of all for thinking about political responsibility. Arendt rigorously distinguishes individual guilt, tied to acts actually committed by a person, from political responsibility, which can be collective. We can thus be called upon to answer for what was done in the name of the political community to which we belong, without having to declare ourselves personally guilty in place of those who actually committed the crimes.

This distinction is fundamental, even necessary, in the Iranian context. Collective responsibility does not mean that all Iranians are guilty of the Islamic Republic or of the 1979 Revolution. Let me give you an example: like many Iranians, I suffered a great deal from this guilt that the world, in a way, placed on our shoulders. I still remember, like a deep wound, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s despicable speech at the UN podium about Israel. As soon as I went outside, people would talk to me about it saying, “Your president,” as if he represented me, even though I had never voted at all, and he truly made me ashamed!

Indeed, such an idea would even dissolve the real guilt of all those who directly participated in the destruction of Iran and in the repression and terror carried out. As Arendt says, when everyone is declared guilty, no one truly is anymore.

Earlier we spoke about the eclipse of utopia caused by the reign of ideology. This thesis is also a response to an accusation I often hear in the Iranian context: how could this regime have stayed in power so long? It must have supporters. Some friends even go so far as to show me manipulated images circulated by the regime to tell me, “This regime has supporters, that’s exactly why it’s still there!” In recent years, this way of seeing things has fortunately softened. And when I’m still asked these questions, they’re asked in a more empathetic than accusatory tone.

Let’s return to the Ricœurian model, which comes into play, it seems to me, at the moment of emerging from violence and rebuilding a shared world. Ricœur himself borrows........

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