Free Speech…an illusion?

I know this is a bit late, but I do have some thoughts about the reading for this month. And, just to forewarn any staunchly academic readers, this post is verging more on unfiltered thoughts than on something structured and manicured. With regards to the readings this month, there is a common myth in the Euro-American context that Christianity is somehow fundamentally democratic. Talal Asad’s “Free Speech, Blasphemy, and Secular Criticism” seizes this idea and challenge’s its validity. One could even argue that western Christianity, especially of the United States brand, challenges free speech as much as Islam is purported to do. Politicians have been synonymously interchanging “Christian” and “Democracy” for many years in the social and political arena. Now it’s difficult to parcel out any difference in national rhetoric, hence the echo of “God bless America” after every major presidential speech.

Much of this ferment, I believe, has been created to cull and persuade the masses in similar ways as the extremist Muslim doctrine. It’s quite ironic that the “West and Islam” are so antagonistic toward each other and yet each need each other to justify economic, military, political, and social policy in different nation states. Edward Said underpins this point in his doctrine of Orientalism: it’s not so much just the problem of framing the Other, it’s that this policy has justified imperial rule for hundreds of years and continues today.

In the instance of the Danish cartoons scandal, there was a clear binary: democracy and secularism vs. tyranny and religion (21). These disparate positions are rhetorical constructs and can be interchangeable depending on how each county or region views each other. In fact, there is no binary in the U.S. context; democracy and tyranny comingle in a sort of yin and yang relationship. They feed off of each other and create contradictory ideas. For example, it’s acceptable that the conservatives castigate Obama and mark him as a Nazi, and, more specifically, Hitler himself. But, they also reject any rhetoric that might seem unpatriotic. This latter category has been loosely defined under the Homeland Security Act, which basically justifies the undermining of free speech in a democratic society for security purposes. Because of this contradiction, western society struggles with the same issues of fanaticism and extremism. Unless one is ultimately supporting Christian values, democracy, and U.S. policy, then free speech only an ideological construct and therefore an illusion.

How Many Wrongs...

Is critique secular? It’s clear that Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood took this question seriously when preparing these essays; and despite Mahmood’s tacked on last paragraph, the answer is a conclusive No! I’d be interested to hear what they had to say if they moved beyond this question, on to ask, for instance, should critique be secular? Or, how could critique be more secular? Their complication of the secular does more to expose the hypocrisy of interfaith dialogues and ecumenicism (liberal constructions) more generally than to suggest any means beyond, and becomes, unfortunately, another standard critique of empire, with the terms secular, religious, blasphemy, free speech, thrown in.

This book is critical, but is it critique? In a book that seeks to trouble binaries, it’s ironic that the driving logic of each essay is the revelation that there are two wrong systems at work. There’s no monolithic Islam…Okay. But, now there’s a monolithic West. For Asad, the West (and the secular!) is exemplified (as Imre pointed out to me yesterday) by neocons like Fukuyama, and by just plain old cons like Pope Benedict. And for Mahmood, the West is a juridical monoculture. To do a little generalizing myself, I’d say this ironic outcome is due to the elemental confusion within the particularly American school of ideology critique that thinks exposing ideology as such is somehow a moral achievement. In this version of critique two wrongs somehow make a right.

On his first page, Asad exemplifies the category error (or, metalepsis) that acts as a guiding principle: however one figures these vaguely defined antagonisms (between West/East, freedom/fundamentalism, secular/religious, Islam/Europe), it’s assuming too much to claim the debate over the cartoons within the “wider discourse [of] the West’s ‘War on Terror’ ” (20). Isn’t that “War” itself part of a wider discourse that this volume is trying to name? (And if this isn’t Asad’s claim, then he should watch his passive-voice generalizations: “the affair was discussed”; “the cartoon scandal was linked”, “it was argued” (20) etc.). Unmasking the onto-theology at work in liberal states isn’t even really necessary when both neocons and neoliberals (is there a difference?) have publicly and ridiculously appealed to and enlisted religion in their crusade for global democracy, from Ann Coulter’s loudly-touted imperative to Christianize the Middle East, to CNN’s thinktank darling Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s mission to ask for Rome’s help in converting “the immigrant Muslim fifth-column in Europe” (See her recent autobiography, or, last week’s TLS).

However, to be positive for a moment, the topics addressed by Is Critique… are fascinating and rich. And I really enjoyed Asad’s brilliant allegory for the story of Christianity/Democracy (22-3), at least, until it was undone with the analysis of Jesus via free speech (34). It’s true and troubling that democracy at once claims to belong to Christianity (or more often to the pseudo-category “judeo-christian”, which pretends to be inclusive, to subordinate the minority to the majority through both its syntax and its pretence to be historical—but does it actually mean anything?) at the same time as it claims to be secular. But then Zizek does a fine(r) job of reminding us of Christianity’s historical hostility to democracy (First as Tragedy…). And this book at least hints at questions well worth asking. As Asad and Mahmood briefly bring up, it is productive to think this conflict in terms of integration, but what about imagining something worth integrating into? How can Asad’s discussion of the Lockean idea of identity being related to property (28) be fleshed out regarding real property, access to and ownership of material wealth? And would different property relations change anything for the subject of rights that Mahmood defines? But for the most part we’re reminded of things like how free speech is not freedom and is in fact a limitation (32).

My main concern is, as always, how this indictment of abstract equivalent values (which is not at all, as Asad argues, a characteristic of the nation state as such, but rather of its strange bedfellow capital) and its supposedly-attendant elimination of difference (24) implicitly posits difference as such as a virtue. And inevitably, by linking this equivalence to Western politics via alienation (24), the “other” becomes a figure for counterhegemonic or revolutionary resistance. Two wrongs don’t make a right, especially if you’re not even willing to call one of the wrongs a wrong, but insist that it is right(er) by default. Even in Mahmood’s intriguing critique of the juridical there are two wrongs: films offensive to Christians were banned under the same article as Turkey banned books offensive to its majority Muslim population.

Mahmood’s explanation of “Muslim piety” as a mode of perception unfathomable to Western minds is, also, not all that “other”. The sign/image of Mohammed is immediately tied to life; it marks a real relation rather than an arbitrary linguistic connection (76). But isn’t this similar (and perhaps even assimilable) to the Lacanian ideal ego, the image you assume? And then Mohammed or God becomes the ego ideal, the identity you assume to be watching you as you perform your ego ideal? Unfortunately, returning at the end of the essay to this very interesting description of the different modes of perception and relation to the divine in Christianity and Islam, we hear: “I read [the problem] not as an epistemological problem but in terms of the differential of power characteristic of minority-majority relations within the context of nation states” (89). That’s too bad, because it’s actually quite fascinating as an epistemological problem and (laudable, but) unnecessary as a critique of the nation state. This critique of the law as a site to achieve rights (because really this discussion is at bottom about who constitutes a subject of rights, and how such a subject is constituted and who gets left out. That’s always the at least implicit point of the ideology critique which takes as its mission the uncovering of inequality and hypocrisy) comes to a familiar conclusion: it’s biased in favour of the (religious) majority. Maybe a suggestion or two on how to further secularize legal apparatuses would spice things up! But in the end we get the feeling that Mahmood is as exhausted arguing with liberal democratic hegemony as some of us are hearing about it: “I am not sure if either the Muslim immigrant community or the European majority is prepared for such an undertaking” (89)

This American ideology critique that I’m critiquing here is necessarily limited and appears naïve because it wants to pursue the Marxist project without going over to Marxism. Why, for instance do none of our authors cite Marx’s “On the Jewish Question”? In fact, in her new book, Wendy Brown has a chapter called “The Jewish Question and the Woman Question”, yet Marx’s name comes up only twice in the whole book (Bauer gets only one reference!). This Marxophobia leads to an utterly facile moralization that’s not much worse than the uncritical “Us vs. Them”. So there is no us or them, and they are more like us than we think and less like us than we think in other ways, and we are much less like us than we like to think, so this way of thinking is wrong, and we should be more careful, and god forbid we should ask critical questions of a situation in which people died over tasteless cartoons because many of those questions will be asked by the usual gang of idiots and will lead to much similarly tasteless “public debate”. I’m always up for criticizing Christianity and liberalism and onto-theology, but if I were to write about it, I’d want to imagine ways of moving closer to something better than exposing wrongs; for example, let’s push this not-unfamiliar problem of the subject of rights and the place of institutions within its figuration. The essays we looked at this month clearly show that exposing two wrongs does little toward figuring a philosophy of Right.

At the risk of monolithicizing these two essays, two wrongs may prove that I’m right (or at least a third wrong): Asad thinks that the problem is that individuals are made into abstract averages—one vote is equal to any other (24). Mahmood warns religious minorities facing moral injury that majority attitudes are worth more than others (88). Maybe we can find in this contradiction a key to moving not just beyond Western religious bias, but perhaps even further.

Mahmoodian Fragments

Saussurian semiotics as Protestant? This is a novel idea. Made me wonder if the foundation of many of the theories that I like and agree with has “motivated” roots. Goodness: maybe they all do! What then?

But I wouldn’t mind some evidence: “aspects of Protestant semiotic ideology became embedded in more secular ideas of what it means to be modern” (72; emphasis added) is the best she can do?

Worse: “One finds in Saussure, argues Keane, a preoccupation not entirely different from that which agitated Calvin and other Protestant reformers: how best to institute the distinction between the transcendent world of abstract concepts and ideas and the material reality of this world” (emphasis added). Is “not entirely different” evidence of correspondent motivations? The cat on the mat and Marx’s table both have legs but only one of them is looking for a cheezburger. The other is a perverted table.

Critique is secular. Secular isn’t secular and critique isn’t critique. Saussure told me.

I simultaneously feel two contradictory impulses.

First: Mahmood’s shrill tone shuts down discussion and I think that’s bad. How to answer someone who knows you’re wrong before you open your mouth? She says she wants to maintain “discussion” and “tension” in the academy (91-92) but I’m not sure what kind of a discussion we would have. I would listen and perhaps quip sarcastically (quietly though).

Second: “Can we all get along?” asked Rodney King. Everyone laughed. No. Is the globalization of understanding a good thing? I think Zizek said that we don’t need more understanding; we need less understanding (sounds like something he’d say). Which doesn’t mean we need more hate, or stupid cartoons (would the debate have been different if they were funny? How does this fit with “taking things too seriously”?). To provide a literary example, I think we need to judge books by their covers—the problem is when we aren’t able to revise our judgments. Don’t we read literature because it helps us learn how to think carefully and change our minds?

I liked the part about religious discrimination as racism. Racism isn’t racism anymore. Mahmood told me.

I didn’t understand the argument Mahmood makes about the different forms of religious assimilation undertaken by Muslims and Christians: Muslims assimilate Muhammad (76) and therefore respond bodily and affectively to insults to Muhammad, whereas Christians maintain some kind of signifier/signified split between themselves and the artifacts of their religion, a split that insulates them from the pain of any insult to those artifacts? If this is the case, why would all those court cases suppressing anti-Christian films in Europe even be necessary?

I was raised by “hippy” parents at the church of bike-jumps and Tom Swift. I’m not sure what (if anything, cartoon or otherwise) would make me go to the window and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Is critique secular?

No, obviously not; or, hell no! I am not so much interested in what the book says on the matter, I just want to answer the title question.

I don’t think critique is secular for a few (not-so-)simple reasons. First, in critique we engage with the discourses that surround us, yes? Or, perhaps you don’t and live in your insulated, academic bubble in which you never come up for air. While I think “dominant discourses” is a term that gets thrown around so much as to be almost inconsequential, the dominant discourses of a large portion of the world are shaped by and through Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These traditions do come into contact with other religions (e.g. Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) but Western scholars tend to take-up a lot ideologies that Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition has put forth. So, there is always a relationship to these religions, and although critique is not in the service of glorifying God, it is in the service of debunking what his followers say and uphold. Religious narratives and themes are everywhere in literature and popular culture, and their dissemination is taken up by those that both support and are against these traditions (Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen is an example of a text that engages Christianity but does not glorify it).

Also, since religions are some of the most “traditional” institutions in the world, they are often under the most vehement criticism or critique. Religions are applauded when they change their traditions (such as the Anglican church’s female bishops) and attacked when they do not (such as the very rigid dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church). We like to see religions change with current theories on what it means to be a subject, but we’re really willing to admit the influence religion and religious rhetoric has over our current academic predicament.

What would academia look like if we left every narrative, and every ideology that grew out of religion, and thus became truly secular?

Devotion to Critique

I did not know that I was “allowed” to consider critique in terms of its affective elements of “self-cultivation” — “reading, contemplation, engagement, and sociality” (Mahmood 91). Though I realize this is an impossible and problematic admission, I’ve always felt that when I engage in critique, I am/should be striving for my own objectification. I should labour to first identify my identity politics (White, straight, North American, lower-middle class, agnostic), then empty out these subjective prejudices, sensitivities and processes...really I should empty out my identity. I imagine offering myself up to some larger (secular) project, which is more about observing, through a removed posture, the politicized operations of other people's “ethics” rather than the deeply individualized ideations and experiences of “morality.” There is this perception that morality is normatively defined only in relation to religion. As a class, I believe we have already interrogated the resistance to include approaches and topics that seem religious, for fear they are not critical or, borrowing Mahmood’s term, “satirical” enough (90).

As a student, I tell myself, “see, look what you've done to contribute to the advancement of— to use the same descriptors Mahmood troubles— ‘tolerant’, ‘democratic’ and putatively secular critique (90). Really, though, my confession shows a prohibitive, normalizing and moralistic connection to my object of study: academic discourse. Like Mahmood suggests, there must be room to talk about injury and punishment, here (70). And there must be room to seek an address in “intersubjective” (89) relations between secular critique and religious dogma, particularly if both of these bodies rely on “normative” ideas of truth (90). Following from what Mahmood proposes, I think this address cannot reduce either pole to the material (religion as racial, and critique as the objectifying explanation of materials like the Danish cartoons), or the abstract (religion as non-material and non-racial, and critique as entirely intellectual).
But how would this play out? How do we prevent respective systems of belief from collapsing during collision?

Dancing Underwear, or, the Sanctity of the Market

A pair of Michael Jackson’s underwear sold for a hefty $1,000,000 in 2008. On the face of things, the clean(ish) white cotton was no different than the kind weaving fruit of the loom products across the globe. The king of pop, however, made these tighty whiteys dance with a market value galaxies beyond your run of the mill undergarments. Something of the now dead pop star, so the idea goes, was in the fabric.

Saba Mahmood makes the case that the debate around Muslim outcries following the 2008 publication of Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad hinged on a key assumption around the so-called secular/religious divide in contemporary thinking. Where the defenders of secular reason frame the debate around questions of linguistic structuralism—Muslims, on this account, never learned the irreducible split between signifier and signified—Mahmood makes the case that western juridical practices discriminate against “assimilative models” of signification (76). The difference, she makes clear, is between non-indexical sign systems (the word chair is not a chair) and one where “Muhammad [is] the mark of a relation of similitude [wherein] he is a figure of immanence in his constant exemplariness, and is therefore not a referential sign that stands apart from an essence that it denotes” (76). The claim rests on an understanding of Muslim relationality (here called schesis or the latin habitus) where the sign of the prophet is not so much a sign as it is a recapitulation of a transubstantiated (forgive the Christian diction) relation constituted immanent, rather than transcendent, to community. Parodies of the prophet, Mahmood and her fieldwork suggests, are offensive not just to the idea of Muslim community but to the very essence that holds it together.

This seems like a smart way to frame the debate and to more generally reveal the fallacious (and inconsistent) divisions institutionalized in law across the West (her stuff on ECHR is a prime example of this). My point is simply an addition to Mahmood’s critique of secular reason: there’s nothing secular about insisting Michael Jackson, or any part of him, is in a pair of underwear. And of course the underwear exchange (Christian Aguilera had a pair sell for more a few years ago) is not just about idiots believing celebrity essence can be found in the fabric of undergarments; rather, it’s about the subject-object relation insisted upon (and naturalized through) a system predicated on exchange-value (that is, value determined not by the object but by the totality of relations of production and the exploitation therein). Marx’s example of the wooden table brought to market, of course, reveals that “as soon as [a thing] emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were to begin dancing of its own free will” (Capital vol. 1 164). Million-dollar underwear sullied with the essence of the Michael Jackson—and the less hyperbolic but equally mystical quality of commodity exchange we experience every single day—index a primary contradiction in secular thinking. Call it capitalism or call it celebrity fetishism, the point here is that the emblem of secular society (the market) takes what is sacred on the level of religious relationality and makes it silly on the level of objects and the people who make them.

But more to the point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG0quz3Gu8g

Secular Critique

Sorry for the delay!

A few of you have mentioned that it's difficult to relate critique to your personal lives, or that so-called politics and current events aren't interesting. I suppose I have the opposite stance, in that it's hard for me to see how these things don't relate to our everyday existence, from interpersonal relations (not just meeting people from other cultures, but interacting with others in general) to how we conceive of ourselves as citizens (subject to the laws and policies of the state, but also with a responsibility to social justice). I've struggled with seeing other people's perspectives, especially during religious debates, such as the head scarf law in Quebec--my strong secularism is either supported or compromised by different/conflicting aspects of my (also strong) feminism. I've always found that the critical skills I learn in school are never separate from the problems I encounter in my own life, and in fact help me understand the inevitable contradictions that are a part of all of our experiences. Throughout my twenties, it's been clear to me that as I mature in my life, I also do in my work -- not a one-way causality, but developing concurrently. In as mild a way as possible, I'd like to point out that a lot of people don't have the privilege to go about life without critique or without an awareness of "politics" and how structures of power affect us. It's important to have these questions thrust upon us if we wouldn't approach them willingly, at the beginning of our research, because no matter what we're studying, we should not attempt to elide these so-called political questions. Why can't we all get along? For the most part, individuals do. Let's consider, then, how people are put or place themselves into groups, and the power dynamics that structure those groups in our society and among societies.

Angela's (funny, not offensive) Far Side cartoon is a good example of clashes between semiotic systems. As Mahmood points out, it's not so much that Mohammed is represented, as there has been Islamic art representing him before. The reference in the Far Side cartoon is a fairly politically neutral aphorism, so not galvanizing angry mobs. Depicting Mohammed as a terrorist, on the other hand, is hardly neutral. In fact, I don't believe the mobs were riled up until some mullah somewhere for political reasons brought the cartoons to a greater audience a few months after the publication. And, yes, I do think the cartoons were meant to offend, and the Far Side cartoon was just a play on a common saying (which is a lot of what Gary Larson does, he's not meaning to offend). Jyllands-Posten is a right-wing publication and the cartoons above all are undeniably racist. Their intentions are beside the point, though. The semiotic system the cartoonists were assuming and that of the Muslim audience are different, according to Mahmood--this is something she argues independent of intention. Considering how heterogeneous the Muslim world is, though, it seems like she's making a specific argument about a specific type of offense, albeit one that is the most relevant to her question of secular critique (which I think should have probably taken up more space in her essay).

I tried to fit in some of Living in the End Times during my leisure time over the break. We can make fun of Fukuyama as much as we want, but it does seem like we've sort of resigned ourselves to a certain type of political and economic system that is apotheosis or end. Zizek and others frequently point out how it's easier to imagine the destruction of the planet than it is to imagine the end of capitalism (and better for the box office too, no doubt). No more revolution, just some tweaks here and there. It's so important to be aware (critical!) of what we take for granted as the secular, best, rational way of existing in the world, and Mahmood's essay illuminates how these assumptions operate not only on the grand scale of geopolitics, but even on the smallest syntagmatic units. I've considered myself such a strong secularist my whole life that the ways in which spiritual traditions have shaped my ideas about language and interpretation have never been foremost in my own critiques. In Alberta I've encountered many religious people and realize that I need to be more flexible and understanding of that perspective, whereas before I would feel comfortable dismissing religion altogether. What I'd like to discuss are the ways that we see our political (and other) assumptions creep up in our academic lives, especially in scholarship that is not overtly political or what one would call "theoretical."

practices within traditions?

I feel a bit handcuffed wading into this question because while particularly liberal secular traditions outlined by Mahmood are by no means unproblematic, and can certainly be normative in terms of “religion, subject, language, and injury” (90), I’m leery of taking up the secular and legalistic questions about their normativity without constantly underscoring the practices operating upon, without, and without those traditions in any given situation

I realize Mahmood is taking up a specific instance and questioning the polarized debate termed between blasphemy and the freedom of speech, but I suppose I feel that our own discussion stemming from this should be wary of totalizing or reductive approaches to practice vs. law/state. In Canada, for instance, given the variety of relationships that Canadians have to varying elements of Christian faith, I wonder about the elements of Christianity within Canadian systems: for example, how much Christian iconography or practice is actually present in holidays like Easter or Christmas for Canadians, and how many Canadians appreciate the long weekend without a second thought to any kind of religious celebration at all? I guess I’m wondering about a kind of Fiskean popular practice of Canadian traditions, a repurposing of the religious into secular (or other non-secular traditions) and the resulting normativity of the “secular liberal principles of freedom or religion or speech”, non-neutral as they are (90).

Perhaps I’m coming at this issue backwards but I wonder about our own imperatives to rethink existing (Saussurean?) distinctions between abstract and materially constituted things/concepts/figures (72), not only in terms of a better understanding of, for example, a mimetic relationship to Mohammed, but also in terms of how practice can be constituted between the secular and the religious. I don’t think that the Christian traditions inherent within the Canadian system are any more problematic than every other white or European tradition upon which our country is based (and I believe these are problematic!!), and so I suppose I’m thinking of “practice” kind of along MacIntyre’s understanding, both for the majority or dominant communities as Mahmood defines them, and for the non-majority communities operating within given traditions.

Obviously, my observations are operating more in material practice than an ethical or moral inquiry, but if we are indeed attempting to suspend foreclosure between the analysis of the phenomena at hand and the defence of beliefs (91), then I’d like to consider also radical or non-normative practice operating within or alongside normative regulations as well.

Church V. State in Canada

Just a point of interest: the separation of Church and State does not exist in Canada. At least not legally.

The first line of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms reads as follows:
"Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law."

And since there is the "notwithstanding clause" it is possible to opt out of any ruling based on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Queering polygamy?

Curiously enough, while reading Mahmood's article, I couldn't help but think of a case of religious freedom that is slowly (very slowly) winding its way through the BC justice system: that of the Crown vs. FLDS, specifically those that reside in the community of Bountiful. For those of you unfamiliar with the specifics, I encourage you to do some Googling because the details are fascinating but briefly the case is this: Bountiful is a break-away community from the Church of Latter Day Saints. The church recently experienced a schism along the lines of polygamy: Joseph Smith, the founder of LDS, was a proponent of polygamy (the religion stems in part from Smith's ability to interpret golden tablets he found in the desert, written by G-d. Cynics say he "discovered" the provisions of polygamy after he met a woman he desired, but Smith was already married), arguing that the number of wives one has indicates one's status in the church and (from what I understand) denotes which level of heaven one will enter. Most Mormons do not practice or believe in polygamy, but those in Bountiful (and some a few communities in Utah) do. Polygamy is illegal in Canada and for decades, Bountiful and the Bc government were at a stalemate: polygamy quietly continued in the community and the government pretended not to notice. However, reports started coming out from Bountiful ex-wives who left the community and young boys who were forcibly removed as not to compete for wives, all who spoke out against the abuse, oppression, and indoctrination they experienced. Coupled with rumours that girls as young as 16 were being forced to marry and were being trafficked across the border to Utah finally forced the Bc government's hand.

Up until that point, the government refused to lay charges because they did not want to test the limits of the freedom of religion clause in the Charter. (The former leader of Bountiful, Winston Blackmore, knew this and in interviews boasted of the safety from polygamy charges.) The fear was, and still is, how to frame the argument in such a way as to not create some catastrophic legal precedence. I worked for the BC government when all of this started to happen and I can attest to the heated conversations that ensued about religious freedom, women's rights, and state control.

So what does all of this have to do with Mahmood? I am struck by her argument that secular law concerns itself with protecting the dominant religion/social class and legal wrangling by religious minorities need to be keep the implications of secular legal decisions in mind. On the one hand, a legal structure that privileges dominant socio-cultural religious traditions makes me immediately suspicious (look at Canada's Christian-dominated public holidays, for an easy example). On the other hand, I think the oppression against women and young boys coming out of Bountiful is disgusting and needs to be stopped.

But where is the balance between these two truths? The same arguments that are lobbed against polygamy (it oppresses women, it challenges normative definitions of marriage and family) are eerily similar to those lobbed against queers. The obscenity trials of Little Sisters is still fresh in my mind and while gay marriage is legal in Canada, it certainly isn't the queer revolution of the heteronormative family I keep waiting for.

I don't know how all of this will work out. I do know I will keep my eyes on the decision and pray that when it comes the ripples won't be waves.

“No man ever gained much honor by writing against a king”

]There are a lot of interesting threads to pick up on in these posts, and I am excited to see if any of the questions that Mahmood (or we) have posed are answerable. Mahmood indeed calls upon the academy to the explore tensions between “the labor entailed in the analysis of a phenomenon and defending our own beliefs in certain secular conceptions of liberty and attachment” (91), so our discussion (here and in class) is a step towards answering his call. Perhaps mostly because I, perhaps like some others that have expressed frustration with the pertinence of ‘critique’ to their work, am always reading for material I can use in my own work, what I take away from Mahmood has the potential to be off topic. Hopefully, though, my thoughts on Mahmood will be relevant.
What did I find most compelling about Mahmood’s “Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?”. .. ? Well, I was drawn to the concept of the iconoclast, but more in terms of political, than religious, authority. Mahmood asserts that ‘icon’ “refers not simply to an image but to a cluster of meanings that might suggest a persona, an authoritative presence, or even a shared imagination” (74). An iconoclast works to break this cluster of meanings, potentially threatening the persona, authority, or shared imagination. So was the Danish cartoon (of which I have never heard before) iconoclastic? Did it (threaten to) destroy the authority of Muhammed? The only knowledge I possess of the Muslim reaction to the cartoon derive from Mahmood’s article. Her construction of the events suggests that the Muslims were deeply offended by the cartoon rather than led to disbelief, which makes me think that, were the cartoon an iconoclast, it was an ineffective one. An earlier instance of an ineffective iconoclast was Milton’s Eikonoklastes, in which he denigrates Charles I as a tyrant, carefully unravelling the rhetoric of Eikon Basilike and attempting to destroy the earlier text’s martyr-like construction of the king. Eikonoklastes was a relatively unsuccessful attempt to defame the dead king. Yet, Milton’s intent behind the work was made abundantly clear--even by the title! Milton, the heretic! Is the Danish cartoon blasphemy? Heresy? What the Danish cartoonists were trying to accomplish with the cartoon is less obviously iconoclastic, and I would have liked to have seen Mahmood more carefully consider the implications of iconoclasm in relation to the cartoon. Is the “choice” to follow/honor a king analogous to the “choice” to believe in and adhere to a particular religion and its tenets? Can we consider secular authority alongside religious authority?
Conversely, is it even possible to consider religion and secular power separately? Mahmood characterizes the interaction between secularism and religion as one of domination: “secularism has historically entailed the regulation and reformation of religious beliefs, doctrines, and practices to yield to a particular normative conception of religion” (87). Therefore, I find it problematic to consider whether critique is secular without considering the way in which religion potentially operates in it or complicates it. If we work with the premise that secularism and religion could be at play in critique, then, we are left with a new question: how do secularism and religion function in critique?

Cartoons, Humour, and Satire

In response to Saba Mahmood’s lecture I would like to raise a few questions concerning cartoons, humor, and satire. I must admit that when the Danish cartoon controversy was happening I did not pay all that much attention to it. Now I wish I did because I would like to have a visual memory of the cartoons in question. I do remember wondering, and these thoughts resurfaced as I read through Mahmood’s chapter, what the big deal was all about. I remember reading a Far Side cartoon that depicted Muhammad, (I think, but am not sure, that that cartoon appeared in Gary Larson’s The Chickens are Restless) and nobody made a big deal over that one. Why? Is it because Gary Larson makes fun of all sorts of religious figures? (I’ve read some of his cartoons depicting God, Satan, Moses, Adam, Eve, the Egyptian Sun God, Noah and there are many more, I’m sure). Or is it because Gary Larson’s cartoons appeared on the funny pages of newspapers, and not the editorial pages (which is where I imagine the Danish cartoons were). Is it because his cartoons are not categorized as political cartoons? (Certainly, some of his cartoons are distinctly political, but most are not). Why are some cartoons offensive and some cartoons simply humorous? And isn’t humor often derived from offense? Many of today’s comedians seem to draw on this tradition.

Although I have not seen the Danish cartoons, I have read that they depicted a turbaned Muhammad with a ticking bomb inside his turban. Some commentators who defended their publication (according to Mahmood) were said to be defending “freedom of expression, especially satirical expression” (66). So were these cartoons satire? I think this is an important question to ask, since, by definition, satire is a tool of moral critique, and “the rage behind satire is usually attributed to the respect satirists have for the ideals their subjects have violated” (Handbook of Literary Terms 135). This is something that seems to have gone unnoticed in the debate. Were the cartoons meant to spite? Were they indeed a “gleeful display” (68) of blasphemy? Were they propaganda? Or were they meant to mock a human vice or political folly? I think that we need to take a closer look at the cartoons themselves, and try to figure out if the cartoons were meant to hurt and to rally hate, or if they were meant as a tool for critique.

Considering secularism

This discussion brings to mind a debate which continues to simmer, albeit quietly, in my otherwise fairly peaceful home. My husband and I are neither of us religious, though we are both the products, to a certain extent, of religious upbringings (I more than he). The question is, should our children be exposed to, or instructed in, religion? If so, which one? I contend that Christianity is so embedded in Western culture that we cannot fail to educate them about it; that our cultural and even our personal histories rest largely upon this tradition. He counters that they don’t need exposure to religion, and, if they are going to learn about it, why not some other religion? Why Christianity? And, if Christianity, should we go with Catholic (his background) or Protestant (mine)? I continue to assert that, while cultural sensitivity to other religions is of the utmost importance, we ought to convey, as best we can, a sense of the tradition from which we, their parents, derive. So, the children were baptized (in Protestant churches, to placate my father), and we have not proceeded much further (though at least they are no longer asking, during religious family functions, “Mommy, who’s Jesus?”).

I suppose what I’m grappling with here is, in the terms of Asad’s argument, the “Western conceit of the self-owning individual presumed free from all forms of coercion, including those potentially entailed in religion” (14-15). I would certainly concur with Camille’s friend in her strenuous support of the separation between church and state--I refused to send the children to their designated public school because it runs a Christian stream alongside its regular one--but I just as readily agree with Camille that secular critique can easily become culturally callous. Wendy Brown explains that the Western critical tradition prides itself on supplanting “the religious, the ideal, the unreal, the speculative, and the divine” with “the rational, material, real, scientific, and human” (13). However, as this volume makes clear, such a binary quickly loses its purchase when intellectuals begin to question Western “presumptions to monopolize the fact, meaning, and content of secularism, rationalism, freedom, and even democracy” (13). All we achieve, in thinking we are now somehow ‘free’ of the religious underpinnings of Western culture, is the construction of a fundamentalist, extremist Other; as Mahmood puts it, “either one is against secular values or for them” (65). Taking up Anabelle’s point, I wonder just how aware most of us are of the influence of the Judeo-Christian narrative on our putatively secular existence and critical practice. It seems, from reading this text, that a lack of awareness carries serious consequences.

Lost too...

I’ve done a little bit googling of Saba Mahmood. She is associate professor of social cultural anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and has quite a number of publications on Islam and Muslims. From her name, research interests, and the institution she works for, I presume that she comes from a Middle East background and has received studied in the States. This cross-cultural background, I think, to a large measure has enabled Mahmood to stand outside the murky swirl of the blasphemy vs. freedom of speech dispute and to reach the heart of the matter.

Rather than remain bogged down in the specifics of the discussion, Mahmood sets herself the task of questioning culturally different normative frameworks within which people make judgments. She points out that in the view of the Europeans, Muslims are too backward to understand that icons are merely vehicles for communicating meanings and have nothing to do with the abstract character of religious beliefs. While for Muslims, icons “pertains [pertain] not just to images but to a form of relationality that binds [bind] the subject to an object or imaginary.” The failure to understand that the two parties in fact talk from different planets (i.e. the semiotic tradition and the iconophile tradition) and their immediate resort to judicial language lead to the escalation of the clash.

Mahmood’s analysis prompts me to think of my own comparative advantage in studying English literature. In order to sell myself last year, I indicated in my PhD application that I was confident that my non-Western background would help me place English literary texts in a comparative and international context and dig up the aspects of culture which might otherwise be taken for granted by North American students. With several months past, I have to admit that I’m far from being confident than my self-made advertisement boasted. During the past few months, I have been applying myself to getting a handle of the logic of academic argumentation in North America. Yet for many times, I found myself mired in theoretical reasonings and couldn't lift myself out of the mess. My undergraduate English writing teacher used to exhort us to abandon the Chinese way of writing (which, she thought, was “circular”) and to follow the English writing style (which, in her opinion, was “straightforward”).  Yet many English academic essays I’ve read in the past few months prove to be far more circular than Chinese essays. (Well, to do justice, it should be pointed out that a great number of essays I’ve read are English translations of those written by French scholars). Sometimes I would spend hours on an abstruse piece before it eventually dawned on me that the writer just wanted to convey one single idea – a simple idea. Here I pose my questions. To what extent do current academic discourses help with our clarity of thinking? Is it because we are so busy with learning to master these discourses in order to survive in the harsh academic jungle that we have but little time to examine the frameworks on which these discourses are based? Besides cultural background, what are other factors that prevent us from seeing the wood (evaluation frameworks) for the trees?

A bit lost

Since the beginning of this course, I have struggled to come up with meaningful responses to our readings. In her response to this month’s readings, Anabelle notes that her “main issue when speaking about abstract things like ‘critique’ is the way these things don't really connect with what I do or how I live.” I think the problem Anabelle identifies here is one of the sources of my difficulties. So much of my experiences as an academic have consisted of making whatever part of academia I am in contact with work for me (as much as that is possible), without thinking of the larger context in which I am situated, if only because it is difficult to connect the larger context with the everyday of my academic life. Obviously, this colloquium is helping me to shift my approach to academia, but I still feel a bit lost during our discussions of abstract concepts like ‘critique’ or ‘tradition,’ and still more lost during our discussions of the past, present, and future of the university and the humanities. I can’t help but think that this course would be so much more useful to me if I were a newly hired faculty member (wishful thinking!), or even at the end of my doctoral studies. I feel as though I’m being asked to consider the state of a profession when I’m not yet a professional—only a trainee. I also feel a bit like the Alice of the Disney adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, when she begins by happily following a well-marked path only to discover that it is being swept up in front and behind her, leaving her with a tiny square of path and no idea where she is, where she is going, or how she is going to get there.

My particular difficulties with this month’s reading stem from the fact that I’m not particularly interested in politics or current events (which, as my supervisor pointed out, is in fact a political stance), so I feel totally unequipped to discuss the affair of the Danish cartoon (it sounds like an Agatha Christie novel when phrased this way: The Affair of the Danish Cartoon... but I digress) even though I do actually remember (albeit vaguely) when it came up in the news. The best response I could come up with would be something similar in content to but far less eloquent in style than Camille’s question: “Does cultural critique have any obligation to respect other epistemological systems, especially in postcolonial or transcultural situations? What does critique loose if we answer this question in the negative?” My instinctive answer would be yes—critique does have an obligation to respect other epistemological systems, but my reasons for answering in the positive come down to something like “it’s just good manners” or “why can’t we all play nicely,” which isn’t particularly ‘critical’ or even helpful in this context. Is there anything wrong with a little cultural sensitivity? Does it prevent us from engaging in a productive critique? Seriously—I don’t know, please tell me.

Is Secular Critique Culturally Callous?

This week’s readings brought to mind an intense argument I had with a friend who studies law at UVic. At the time I thought our argument was about human rights, accommodation, and Canada’s colonial history, but in retrospect it seems more about the uncritical application of critique (especially in cases where minorities and spirituality are involved).

My story requires some digression: the law building at UVic is currently named the Frasier Building after UVic’s first dean of Law, but it used to be named the Begbie Building for Judge Matthew Baillie Begbie. I couldn’t find any in-depth record of the law building having been named for Begbie, though my friend recounted the story to me and it is also briefly noted, though not explained, here (http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/courses/lawdemo/mod03/MOD3A1.HTM). All that remains of the former name is a bronze statue of Begbie in the building’s lobby. Or at least that was true until a year ago: someone pilfered the statue.

Begbie was the Crown Colony of British Columbia’s first Chief of Justice. He was also known as the “Hanging Judge” for the high percentage of his trials that ended in execution. In the majority of these cases (22 of his 25 guilty verdicts prior to 1871) the hung parties were First Nations; the executed in the other 3 cases were white. This said, my preliminary research has also suggested that Begbie was more culturally tolerant of British Columbia’s First Nations and Chinese populations than was common at the period. Regardless, the Faculty of Law found this history of either/both Begbie’s racialized trial track record and history of capital punishment sufficient to warrant changing the name of their building. There was also a contingent of faculty and students who wanted to remove a 3-foot high statue of Begbie from the building, or at least from its predominant placement in the school’s lobby.

There had been debates about what to do about the statue in departmental meetings and classes, but they never resulted in a consolidated decision since Begbie disappeared over the Christmas break in 2009. Almost everyone at the law school was vexed with its disappearance because considerate deliberation was not allowed to manifest in action. Furthermore, no one really knew what motivated the Begbie-napping, be it anger at Begbie, frustration with the constant cycle of debates and lack of action at the school, or just a purposeless prank.

Here is where the disagreement with my friend begins: someone within the department invited a First Nations elder to come to the Frasier Building and perform a ceremony where the statue had been. I didn’t witness the ceremony and I don’t know what its particular focus was, be it forgiveness, peace, acknowledgement, etc. but whereas I’m usually concerned about the cursory nature of such evocations of Canada’s First Nations in university proceedings, my friend was livid that what she understood to be a religious ceremony not only occurred within but was solicited by the school of law.

Her critique of the ceremony was that universities are public spaces funded by the government, and that there is (and should be) a strict separation between government-funded institutions (such as the university) and religion. I found this argument unsound on several levels, especially that a blanket separation between church and state should apply to institutions funded by the state (how do religious studies function in such an system?), and I also challenged her suggestion that a Salish ceremony constituted “religion” as understood by such separations, drawing a distinction between religion and what I saw as spirituality in this case. My friend was further frustrated that a community outside of the school of law had been brought into a debate that (as far as she was concerned) was neither involved in nor affected by the statue’s disappearance. For her, the elder’s ceremony offered nothing to the school or its students. Still, her primary concern was that such a ceremony had been paid for by university funds and constituted a breach of separation between church and state, which, when taken to its logical extreme, she argued, could be interpreted as the state endorsing/enforcing the religion of West Coast natives. She found such event particularly offensive in a law school.

I countered by arguing that the legal separation between church and state is, regardless of its value in contemporary practice, an epistemology imposed with colonization that neither fully considered nor addresses First Nations’ spirituality. I also was vehement that such a ceremony might not have been intended for the students or the faculty of law but for the First Nations community who are undeniably involved in the discourse of colonial legacies (such as that of Judge Begbie) in Victoria and elsewhere; if the ceremony meant nothing to her yet had the potential to be meaningful to others, should she really feel personally slighted by its performance? I also suggested that while a similar ceremony may not have been performed at other law schools, UVic has a university-wide, explicit commitment to the inclusion of West Coast First Nations in study, research, and university management, something she should have considered before choosing to attend this particular school if such involvement and its iconography/history/spirituality bothered her.

The debate got nasty: in the end she considered me a bleeding-heart English major who was attempting to compensate for colonial atrocities by privileging First Nations rights over those of other Canadians (a reversal of what Mahmood discusses on 88 concerning the unbalanced nature of law which sees all as equals yet must maintains order for the majority). I saw her as blindly applying law and critique without turning such keen criticism to the application or interpretation of law in postcolonial settings. We fought, it sucked, and we never really resolved anything.

Still with me? I apologize for the length of this response, but this experience gets me to my central question: is secular critique culturally callous, or, more to the point, how can I perform culturally attuned critique in an increasingly globalized world? What amazes me about the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy is how a conservative-leaning newspaper with a relatively small circulation of 120,000 readers in Denmark was taken up not just in the Middle East but worldwide: critique no longer circulates strictly within its own cultural spheres, but has become globally accessible and (I would argue) accountable. Mahmood discusses how Western critique fails to consider its own origins. She hints at, but never quite discusses, the role that cultural sensitivity and compassion could have, but failed to, play in the critique offered in by these cartoons. Does critique reject compassion or cultural sensitivity for fear of appearing uncritical? Put another way, is cultural sensitivity inherently uncritical? These questions evoke Marx’s distinction of critique and criticism (discussed by Brown on 12), and make me wonder if criticism is a culturally callous wolf in critique’s clothing. Does cultural critique have any obligation to respect other epistemological systems, especially in postcolonial or transcultural situations? What does critique loose if we answer this question in the negative?

In retrospect, I understand my friend’s arguments as rooted in a defence of secularism in schools dedicated to critique, and not so much about the legal implications of a government-funded school supporting an ostensibly religious ceremony. Still, I feel valid in challenging her automatic and uncritical application of critique. I tried then and am trying here to trouble critique’s seeming obviousness, its supposed impartiality, by emphasizing secular traditions of critique’s cultural bias. We can defend culturally insensitive critique so much as we’d like, but ultimately I can only see this resulting in a deepening of our cultural embeddedness and the ossification of our critical faculties.

VIDA: writing trends and gender

On the subject of critique, wanted to share this in case some have missed it:

http://vidaweb.org/the-count-2010

Brown, in her introduction to Is Critique Secular? writes the following blurb (referencing Marxist heritage):
“Critique in this tradition has prided itself on explaining both mystifications and human consort with these mystifications from a place imagined to be their opposite in every respect. Thus does the rational, material, real, scientific and human aim both to explain and supplant the religious, the ideal, the unreal, the speculative, and the divine.” (13)

Asad, in his section “Historical Notes on the Idea of Secular Criticism,” writes (as one of three responses to Said) that, “since criticism employs judgment, since it seeks conviction – of oneself and others – to what extent does it therefore seek to overcome skepticism?” (47)

In light of our previous discussions in this class, and the “crisis in the Humanities” which we reference ad nauseum, I’m curious about the relationship between the speculative and conviction as it manifests itself in our critical discourse. I find a continual sense in my classes (largely through critical articles assigned for reading) that the purpose of a critical argument is to ‘supplant’ another person’s (previously ‘accepted’) claim with a new, more rational, way of understanding a particular concept/piece of writing. As a critically engaged member of an academic practice, I learn to see through such postures of conviction (understanding in particular the slippery nature of language and the way my perceptions of the world are created by the particular social and linguistic contexts in which I develop, as both person and scholar). By doing so, I can then, with equal degree of ‘conviction’ (really I always feel like an imposter) I lay my own thoughts open to the world and await the judgment of my fellow thinkers, continually prepared to supplant my supposed ‘ideal’ or ‘unreal’ perceptions of the world with their own rational arguments.

While this may come off as a rant, what I’m really interested in asking is: do we continually support a certain sense of ‘righteousness’ in our own thought-production? If we do, what impact does this have on our understanding of the academic landscape as secular? And, if we accept Brown’s split between ‘rational, material, real, scientific and human’ on one hand, and ‘the religious, the ideal, the unreal, the speculative, and the divine,’ on the other, just what sort of judgments are we attempting to assert through ‘critique’ when we position our own work as supplanting that of our colleagues?

I realize that many of us see our own work as building upon, rather than replacing, the work of other scholars. But the continual need to find the flaws in other people’s arguments suggests to me that while we may want to refine these thoughts of others, we do it in a way that diminishes their work, even if it doesn’t invalidate it. In what ways are we limiting our freedom (as writers, as critics) in perpetuating this practice? Does this practice negatively impact the way our discipline is perceived by a broader public? Could adapting our standard critical practices help address our current humanities ‘crisis’?

Hah, for once I'll be the first to write, even though I don't know that it's a good thing. But I have a writing schedule, and this thing is the next on my list, so let's get to it.

I must admit that I was puzzled as to why we were reading this in the first place. The Danish cartoons? And it took me a while to get it, until Asad's answer to Butler. What triggered me was when he asked: "What does this do to the way one is asked to--and actually--lives?" (140). Indeed.

My main issue when speaking about abstract things like "critique" is the way these things don't really connect with what I do or how I live. So I like that Asad puts "criticism" and "critique" on a scale, instead of separating them. As I was reflecting on this, I realized that this is an exclusively English issue of language. In French, there is no difference between the word for "criticism" and the word for "critique"--both are "critique". The verb "critiquer" has both the sense of criticizing and critiquing. The person who criticizes and the person who critiques are both called "critiques". Of course it doesn't mean they're the same thing--it just means that I think Asad is right when he says that both are linked together.

Let's think about literature for now. Let's say I'm reading a sexist Victorian novel. I think, "oh my, this novel is really sexist." That's a criticism: it is lacking in something, there's something wrong with it. Then it brings me to think: "so what's the ideological implications of this? What kind of message is sent through this narrative?" This is what we would consider "critique", at least in what I conceive to be my academic task. I can't really discuss Butler's intervention, because to be honest I had a hard time following it with all the Foucault and Kant stuff. And I mean, if we don't know that our conception of intellectual work is imbedded in the judaeo-christian foundations of our society, then our basic schooling is doing something wrong. Of course I'm aware.

Our so called "secularity" is really a de-mystification of religious values. Weber's classic Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism has clearly shown that specific religious values can be applied to something that doesn't seem religious at all. It's always been obvious to me, but then maybe I've read the right stuff to make me aware of it. Of course we must recognize this and be aware of it and see when it comes in the way of social justice and when it becomes a tool of oppression. But isn't this what we're always doing as literary critic(izer)s anyway?

Austen

Weren’t we supposed to read some Jane Austen for this month? Having never read any Austen, and always confusing her and all those Brontes, I got started on Pride and Prejudice. I made it 27% of the way through. Sadly, those are hours I will never get back.

Despite the fun I generally make of the Victorianists, I actually quite like a lot of Victorian literature and, when I was an undergraduate trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up, I considered focusing on Victorian texts for my honours project. I like Dickens very much. Great Expectations is probably the only book I’ve read twice—once in En-ger-land: a paperback copy I bought in Winchester on a rainy December day while the aunt I was visiting went to the panto. I first read about Pip et al. during one of those unfortunate teenaged phases in which I attempted to, as Eliot says we must, obtain some tradition through great labour. Being a real rebel, I read the Iliad around the same time and remember being terribly disappointed that the only response I had to it was a genuine enjoyment of the endless battles. I think that’s still my only response. Whatever the importance of the Iliad, I do now know that nothing at all happens in the first 27% of Pride and Prejudice. No one even dies of consumption.

The most interesting thing about reading P+P was that I read what I did of it on a Kobo ereader (that’s how I can be so certain that I read 27%). It’s very strange to read a big thick book on a screen that looks like paper and holds a thousand books but is only a quarter-inch thick. People interested in new media and the-history-of-the-book are surely thinking about these things. I also had a strange worry that I was not reading a “good” copy of the novel—maybe whoever entered the text for Project Gutenberg had got some things wrong, or maybe there were typos, or maybe there were battles that had been edited out. One can only hope.

Thinking about reading etexts reminded me that there were other readings for this month. Like Jeff, I have no idea what “ethics” is or means (that’s what you said, right Jeff?). I remember Pete in The Examined Life talking about vegetarians and spending money while he strolled the streets of New York in what were undoubtedly expensive leather shoes. Ethics seems to be about common sense, some form of collective guilt and/or shame, and a reiteration of the Golden Rule (or Might is Right). Confusingly, ethics seems to be both everywhere and nowhere. My connection now to etexts seems a stretch, but I was left wondering about the ethics of reading downloaded books—not the ones that are in the public domain, like P+P, but the ones that are obtained otherwise. Of course it’s a copyright issue, but wouldn’t the copyright holders (monsters?) claim that there’s an ethical background to copyright? This seems especially pertinent given that our texts on ethics, etc. for this month were scanned and emailed around to us all. As I (barely) understand it, this method of distributing texts to students is no longer ethical/allowed. I would very much like someone to explain this shift in departmental (or is it university?) policy to me—not even explain the supposed rationale for the shift or anything that in-depth but actually fill me in on what happened over the Christmas break. I suspect these answers will provoke many questions related to McIntyre's ideas about institutions, practices, and internal and external goods.

Criterion and on...

Adam Carlson

This month’s readings thematize the “malaise of modernity”, the absence of objective/social horizons of significance against which good can be distinguished from not-good. We know that for Jameson there’s no lack of horizons, but for his Macintyre there is. For Eliot, there’s a synthetic relation between the traditional and the novel that binds the (privileged) individual’s talent to collective excellence. And for Badiou, there’s a strange synthesis between the universal and the utterly singular that for Eagleton forms no horizon at all. Each reading seeks to establish, in particular, a criterion for virtue. But more interestingly, they discuss the preconditions for criteria in general. Tradition and critique, as the two main operators in this discussion, form two modes of answering the question, what counts as an answer? As I’m tinkering together a project roughly dealing with, um, well, I guess we’ll all have to wait for next month to find out, I’m intrigued by the way each of our texts treats alterity in relation to virtue. Badiou criticizes (through Eagleton), the “ideology of human rights”, and “the idiom of difference and otherness that accompanies it [and] reflects a ‘tourist’s fascination’ for moral and cultural diversity; it accepts only those others who are ‘good’ others—which is to say, those like myself; which is to say, not other at all. It has no respect for the difference of those who do not respect its own cherished differences.” Badiou here is voicing a common critique of institutionalized diversity, multiculturalism-as-national-policy, or liberal democratic tolerance. Herbert Marcuse to Wendy Brown have argued that in the celebration of difference, it’s the majority that gets to decide what counts as “good” (or virtuous) difference. And, were Eagleton’s Badiou to stay in the truly revolutionary universal, attempting to “achieve sameness”, we may have a more profound critique of multiculturalism than those typically found on the Left a la Brown (namely, that diversity is an alibi/instrument of imperialism; and/or, it’s yet another expression of liberal democratic hypocrisy). However, Eagleton goes on to complain, Badiou ends up taking a backdoor into the difference party through his national and generational affiliation with the veneration of alterity-in-and-for-itself: “for all his undoubted political zeal”, Badiou is “caught up in an elitist sort of antithesis between the ordinary and epiphanic”, proclaiming “the non-conceptualizable, revelatory, irreducibly singular, evental, subject-constituting character of truth.”

According to Eagleton, Badiou has curiously conservative criteria for universal truth: “The sameness he has in mind is more one of truth than equality. Truths, he insists, are the same for everyone, and anyone at all can proclaim them.” Does this not smack of Hobbes’s cynical contention that the distribution of intelligence is truly democratic and egalitarian, as everyone is always sure they’re right about everything? Perhaps it’s obvious where I’m going here, but it seems to me Eagleton’s main beef with Badiou is that that truth-as-singularity, that is, as alterity, is—dare I say again “metaleptically”, or at least tautologically or analytically—simultaneously example and criterion for what really (counter-normatively) counts as good, meaningful, authentic, an event, or as significance as such: “What is to count as a situation, and who decides? Are there really any ‘singular situations’, as Badiou seems to imagine? And is there any way of analysing, or even identifying one, which does not implicate general categories?” Eagleton has me convinced that I need to read Badiou’s book, and I agree with Eagleton’s Badiou that the real trouble with diversity is not the liberal hypocritical celebration of difference which ignores/contains/disarms difference, and that some sort of non-essentialist, non-strictly-humanist concept of sameness is at least worth thinking about. But I disagree with his leftist fantasy of alterity, or the willingness to equate anything even remotely counter-hegemonic with virtue, especially since this set of criteria superimpose the bad utopia of the easy answer over the possibility of a good utopia in which answers might objectively count for something.

Eliot treats this question of the answer in terms of alterity as well, explaining that we praise a poet for being different from his predecessors, while remaining blind to those parts of his work in which those predecessors live on most vigorously (14). TSE sounds awfully Lukácsian as he describes the “great labour” through which one may gain the “historical sense” and inherit the tradition. This “historical sense”, that is, the consciousness of the present and the place of the present within the historical, and of the individual within a complex inheritance and conditions of inheritance, would in another tradition be read as the coming to class consciousness. For TSE the criterion for aesthetic virtue is historical. It cannot be understood without a complex interrelation between the complete—that is absolute—past and its disjunctive relation with the absolute present—the absolutely new or novel (“the really new”)—that is, alterity. And the tradition is what makes alterity meaningful. TSE is quick to reinforce that this novelty or disruptive force is only felt in the process of its integration or its “conformity” to the tradition it modifies. Thus his is a hegemonic aesthetics that must accommodate for the presence of the non-normative by revising/re-normalizing the whole structure of history, by canonizing the counter-canonical, or by negotiating and compromising with the new that for whatever reason cannot be ignored or suppressed. Really, TSE’s aesthetics is shaped like a liberal democratic theory of equality or diversity, and like liberal theory, his pedantic method is a textbook case of Bourdieuian exclusion via cultural capital (and of course, he makes no pretence to accessibility [16-7]).

For TSE the past is “only” a horizon of interpretation against which the ratio of individuality/conformity may be measured. “And we do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value” (15). For TSE, excellence or aesthetic virtue must meet the dual demands of being new, but not too new, different, but not revolutionary, and this is just one reason why TSE cannot be a Lukácsian (not that Lukács would ever have him as one!). Even despite his modernist aesthetic radicalism, TSE’s criteria for virtue, or excellence, or art, reveal him as a champion of the bourgeois liberal status quo. (What may be interesting to consider here is Jameson’s figuring—in “Postmodernism and Consumer Society”—of the modernist criterion for aesthetic success as commercial failure. I wonder if this puts pressure on Eliot’s maintenance of the status quo, or if the authenticity of commercial failure is just a “new” [sub-] cultural normativity.)

For TSE it is not the greatness of the components that make up the work of art, but the “intensity of the artistic process, the pressure […] under which the fusion takes place, that counts” (19). So, the excellent artist is a Modernist form and never a Romantic content. Content’s relation to the question of the answer follows into After Virtue: if every society values differently, then how do we know that they’re talking about the same concept of virtue? Again, the urgent need is for a criterion. Most interestingly, Jameson takes what might otherwise be read as an exercise in scholasticism and focuses on the collective nature of Aristotelian virtue: the absence of virtue constitutes the non-conforming individual as outside of the auto-fashioning community; or, to put it another way, conformity to norms equals virtue, and alterity is thus at least somewhat evil (151-2).

Contradicting his anti-utopianism, Jameson’s Macintyre must become utopian in order to imagine the communal conditions within which virtue may be regrounded. Perhaps the truly utopian goal is to imagine a way in which middle ground is not always/already an alienating mediation, to find the res publica in medias res.