Fears of headscarves, fears of politics
Incredibly annoying example of smug liberal racism in the Guardian last Tuesday. It was a letter, so I can’t find a link, but here’s the offending paragraph:
Our culture is tolerant of religious freedom and of the visible signs individuals choose to wear to demonstrate their faith. However, we are a secular society. Veiled and covered women are a sign of male dominance, not a sign of faith.
If nothing else, we can thank Helen Smith of Orpington, Kent, for a brilliant illustration of liberal respect for the Other as long as she is not actually Other (a point Žižek is fond of making). Troubled by the possibility of having to respect religious practices you object to? Simply redefine them so they’re no longer religious practices, and you don’t have to tolerate them.
The point being, if Helen Smith of Orpington, Kent, had stepped outside the acceptable liberal bounds of tolerance (that is to say, of disavowed intolerance), and had tried to make a genuinely universalist argument, the absurdity of her position would have become obvious. If “veiled and covered women” are a sign of male dominance, how about women in long skirts? In short skirts? In trousers? Wearing coats? Wearing nothing? In the anathematization of the veil, the gender dynamics instantiated by Western clothes are rendered invisible; Western clothes are both natural and universal, with Islamic forms of dress exceptional, singular, and oppressive. Of course, if Western liberals actually came out and said this they would be laughed at, and rightly so; but the old 19th Century Eurocentric logic remains, in a disavowed form, in liberalism’s spurious notion of tolerance.
The underlying similarity, I think, lies in liberalism’s inability to understand different sorts of differences. This can work out as imperialist universalism (all differences are to be condemned in the name of the universal), or a toothless multiculturalism (all differences are to be celebrated simply for being differences). Indeed, contemporary liberalism swings chaotically between the two. In neither case, crucially, does the liberal ever interpret a difference as an antagonism; if all differences are equally good or equally bad, one need never confront the possibility that there are some differences on which we may have to make a political choice, that is to say, to choose which side we’re on.
As Wendy Brown has pointed out, the supposed even-handedness of liberalism, the inability to choose a side, is a kind of moralism that is really a fear of politics, a desire for political questions to somehow be decided in advance, safe from the insecurity of political activity.
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Could she be saying “[Some particular] Veiled and covered women who wear them [because they as a subset of women are forced against their express wishes by a particular subset of men] are a sign of male dominance, not a sign of faith.�
This would permit multiculturalism, but not the toothless gummy sort. There is now a difference which one makes a political choice on and disavows.
Richard
Comment by Richard @ 5/24/2006 11:45 pm
The head scarf issue is plain wired. In france (and other places) it is set aside as a particularly repressive and divisive religious expression, when in fact it is but one out of many.
At the end of the day: isn’t all religion repressive at its core? Doesn’t it try to impose on the believer and others a code of conduct and ethics (dogma) that is in no way the product of their own? In comparison to this wearing a headscarf seems rather tame. Setting this issue aside as the main affront to liberalism, is like condeming Genghis Khan for his bad taste in clothing.
Comment by all religion is repression @ 5/25/2006 2:42 am
“isn’t all religion repressive at its core? Doesn’t it try to impose on the believer and others a code of conduct and ethics (dogma) that is in no way the product of their own?”
I’m not so sure impose is the best word: the believer adopts or strives towards ethics and practices. If they were his own, there would be no need to strive. Most change, personal cultivation, etc seems to involve reaching towards foreign ethics and practices. Why critique religion on that? Is, in fact, the distinction between religious and other social mores so workable? Are there religions?
Comment by anon @ 5/25/2006 8:58 am
I think “anon” is right here. I was going to link in the article to Saba Mahmood’s “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival,”, which argues that we can’t reasonably define agency in terms of self-creation of norms, but rather in inhabiting norms in particular ways. Is there any situation which doesn’t involve (to some degree) “a code of conduct and ethics (dogma) that is in no way the product of their own”? I’m not sure religion is necessarily distinct here.
Comment by tim @ 5/27/2006 12:20 pm