28 Conference of the Academy of Latinity

28 th Conference of the Academy of Latinity

Shared Values in a World of Cultural Pluralism

Muscat, Sultanate of Oman November 23–25, 2014

Shared Values in a World of Cultural Pluralism

Reference Texts

28th Conference of the Academy of Latinity

Shared Values in a World of Cultural Pluralism In cooperation with the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs

November 23-25, 2014 Muscat, Sultanate of Oman

Rio de Janeiro, 2014

© Academy of Latinity, 2014

Published by Educam—Editora Universitária Candido Mendes Rua da Assembleia, 10, 42º andar, Centro 20010-010—Rio de JaneiroBrasilPhone: 55 (21) 3543-6401 Email: cmendes@candidomendes.edu.br

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Academy of Latinity—Headquarters Rua da Assembleia, 10, 42º andar, Centro, Rio de Janeiro—Brazil—20011-901 Phone: +55 21 3543-6498—Fax +55 21 3543-6501 E-mail: cmendes@candidomendes.edu.br www.alati.com.br

Table of Contents

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ntroduction

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The Oman Conference Candido Mendes........................................................... 11 The Quest for Identity De la politique et de l’amour Gianni Vattimo.............................................................. 17 Bolivia’s “Evismo”: “specters” of communism or “ghosts” of neoliberalism?

Javier Sanjinés C.......................................................... 27 The culture of coexistence and pluralism. The Islamic view, Oman’s experience and prospects for a way out of the impasse Abdulrahman Al Salimi................................................ 49 5

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World Consciousness, Citizenship and Shared Values Human rights in contemporary Islamic thought Ridwan Al Sayyid.......................................................... 65 The roots of an elusive Andean identity: a brief history Enrique Ayala Mora..................................................... 79

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Towards an International Dialogue Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy Syed Farid Alatas........................................................121 New spaces for East-West dialogue Marco Lucchesi...........................................................161

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Coexisting with Difference in an Age of Pluralism and Globalization Difference and “otherness” on the brink of dialogue Candido Mendes..........................................................173 Universalité et pluriversalité: les valeurs en question François L’Yvonnet..................................................... 199 Religious knowledge and cultural creativity in the making of Islamic pluralism in Brazil Paulo Gabriel Hilu R. Pinto........................................215

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Social Inclusion and Representation Democracy without politics: how democracy can seriously harm democracy Daniel Innerarity........................................................ 245 Diversity, inclusivity and governance in the social landscape of Southeast Asia Razali Ismail............................................................... 273

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The global clash of inequalities: multiculturalism and its limits Enrique Rodríguez Larreta........................................ 291

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Looking for the Sense of “Otherness” Philosophers and kings Susan Buck-Morss.......................................................317 Le religieux à l’épreuve du politique Hélé Béji...................................................................... 339 Values through others. Being weak in a world of cultural pluralism Santiago Zabala...........................................................351

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articipants............................................................................ 367

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Introduction

The Oman Conference

Candido Mendes

The 28th Conference of the Academy of Latinity aims to give an answer to the questions gathered during the entire course of our meetings, questions relating to what it means, in these postmodern times, to truly acknowledge our collective identity and the dialectics derived from it. The cardinal points confront globalization and its new non-hegemonic dimensions; the impact of terrorism; the struggle for difference within multiculturalism; the advance of citizenship and human rights; and the new challenges for democracy faced with representation and the emergence of direct forms of revindication and collective protest. Another motion to debate entails the universe of virtual communication: the significance of the new dynamics of consensus and the course taken by mobilization born of postmodernity.

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In the wake of almost fifteen years of work, the Academy contemplates the awareness of multiculturalism vindicating more and more—beyond the various rhetorics of dialogue—bolder endeavors to truly understand otherness, beyond its reductionisms and simulacra.

At the same time, assimilation is widely recognized not to be a solution: we need to move beyond mere tolerance.

However, it remains a challenge to accept the fact that diversity, rather than a hindrance to cohesion, undeniably enriches humanity.

Such a new scenario arises together with the wane of metapolarities, as set forth by the center-periphery relations characteristic of colonial dependence. One may speak of a new matrix of differentiation, as opposed to the formerly hegemonic profile of globalization. Pluralism is no longer a simple rule of coexistence but a real praxis, moved by the sense of otherness and the rise of a genuine ecumene of recognized collective subjectivities.

This encounter sets out to reveal the core of the issue, which necessarily—given the presupposed sharing of values of cultural pluralism—involves two key questions, namely: the conditions for dialogue, and the limits of whatever universal may imply in terms of this same (yet variable) essential characteristic of contemporary difference.

At the same time, searching objectively for the limit-conditions of the present historical process includes perusing the amplitude of its democratic involvement, as well as the objective challenge of governmental actions in the face of the determination and projects of the models adopted.

The Oman Conference

Significantly, the reflection of this seminar has been its clear epistemological connotation. Engaged in an ever syntagmatic search for dialogue, it challenges the true conditions of its relevance, inseparable from its delving deep into the question of the modern or postmodern. And it is in this same dimension that reflection emerges on the very limit-conditions of multiculturalism, objectively confronted by the inequalities of our Dasein, or the interrogation concerning the hermeneutic value of interpretation.

Meditation also will be forced to seek out the “becoming” of cosmopolitanism, within the framework of a new global awareness.

Also within this hermeneutics, spatial connotation claims its counterpoint in what might be the possible twists and turns of postmodern East and West.

But extreme caution concerns the very permanence today, at this turn of the century, of this presumed coexistence of cultures, where the pluralism of differences seemed to have settled. This is the result of the advent of the Islamic State, the radical diachronies in the design of national States, and of the definitive rupture of the profile of the other by virtue of strict repetition of ipseity. Where, in this hermeneutic emerging, can be found the very condition of social recognition, and in what terms can one question the survival of contemporary pluralism? And—assuming that this possible vis-à-vis survives—in what terms can the imperative of human rights assure this irremovable platform?

This extreme dialogue reclaims the search for the counterpoints that subsist in Islamic culture, such as the Omanis

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in their untouched pluralism, or their resistance and affirmation within the sphere of expatriate communities in Europe or Latin America.

Ever in search of rediscovered new extremes in this dialogue, one looks, for example, for new spaces in an EastWest encounter of contemporaneity. Or else the advance of the critical mark in the limits of representatives of collectivities, such as the questioning, for example, of an evasive identity of the Andean world in history. Nonetheless, this epistemology spurs itself on to find relevant knowledge, where it is always liable to the risk of the rhetorics of authenticity, challenged by the constant caveat of demystification. In all this surging of postmodern thinking, we may only be at the true unveiling of axiological values—the veritable Dasein—perhaps, as suggested, in order to go even deeper into the heuristic quest for an anarchic hermeneutics.

The full amplitude of the Oman Conference lies in realizing the threat of what was thought at the beginning of the century to be, at last, the pluralism and acknowledgement of differences, beyond dominating civilizatory illuminism. The Islamic State is here to show how far the very sentiment of—and respect for—the other are affected in this contemporary coexistence, and to what extent this sentiment and respect intrinsically call out for dialogue and respect for difference in these days of ours.

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The Quest for Identity

De la politique et de l’amour Gianni Vattimo

Peut-on vraiment dire, comme le fait Martha Nussbaum dans son récent livre (Political emotions, Harvard UP), que “L’amour importe pour la justice” (sous-titre du livre)? Nussbaum est, actuellement, une des philosophes de la politique les plus connues aux Etats-Unis et je pense que cela donne à ce livre et à ce sous-titre une signification que l’on pourrait nommer “épocale”. Il n’est pas fréquent, voire très rare, que les études de théorie politique (je ne dis pas de sociologie ou de psychologie sociale) se consacrent à un thème comme celui-ci. Naussbaum reconnaît devoir beaucoup à la théorie de la justice de John Rawls qui ne prête pas beaucoup d’attention aux émotions et qui se présente plutôt comme une sorte d’utilitarisme modéré que l’on appelle libéralisme en lui donnant le sens anglo-saxon d’une attitude respectueuse des droits humains fondamentaux, et 17

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intéressée à la réalisation d’une justice, comme le pense d’ailleurs Nussbaum, de type aristotélicien: équitable distribution des biens et poids sociaux, démocratie égalitaire, etc. En tout cela, on ne voit pas trop bien en quoi pourraient compter l’amour et, plus en général, les sentiments.

C’est justement sur cette absence, pour ainsi dire, que s’articule la contribution de Nussbaum qui veut présenter une sorte d’accomplissement de la théorie rawlsienne du point de vue de ce qu’il est nécessaire, du côté des émotions, pour une société juste. Donc, tout d’abord, il faut savoir que le livre de Nussbaum ne concerne pas du tout l’importance des émotions pour la lutte politique ou, disons, pour la création d’un État libéral; mais seulement de quels sentiments devraient être favorisés et mis en acte dans une société libérale de type rawlsien. Pensons à un exemple opposé, à ce qu’écrit Walter Benjamin dans son court essai sur la philosophie de l’histoire, là où il peint l’attitude sentimentale des révolutionnaires qui, dit-il, ne sont pas tant inspirés dans leur combat par l’image de la société future qu’ils projettent de réaliser mais, plutôt, par le souvenir des injustices subies et des souffrances de leurs ancêtres. Quoi que l’on puisse penser, en termes nietzschéens, de la négativité de ce “ressentiment”, nous rencontrons là une affirmation très dense de signification. On pourrait même y voir un exemple de l’inséparabilité de la théorie et de la praxis. Une révolution n’a pas besoin d’une image définie et détaillée construite auparavant, d’un programme capable de s’imposer à une considération rationnelle; ce qui la met en mouvement est justement l’intolérable de la condi-

De la politique et de l’amour

tion présente, dont on voit très bien les traits, mais sans pouvoir dire exactement ce que l’on va construire après (on se souvient des vers de Eugenio Montale dans un poème de l’époque fasciste “Codesto solo oggi possiamo dirti, / ciò che non siamo, ciò che non vogliamo”. Dans le texte de Nussbaum, il n’y a aucune allusion à ce que peut inspirer une action de transformation sociale; l’amour et les émotions comptent pour elle en tant que contenu indispensable de la société: il n’y a pas de société juste, libérale, sans la présence de certains sentiments qu’elle décrit et analyse, parmi les citoyens; donc il y a là aussi un programme, mais dirions-nous de type “réformiste” ou même “complémentaire” pour l’action à l’intérieur de la société libérale. C’est le programme d’une sorte de welfare state émotionnel pour lequel elle prend des modèles dans la littérature, voir dans la musique (Le nozze di Figaro), en se réclamant aussi d’auteurs plus “classiques” de la tradition de la philosophie politique, tels que Rousseau, Comte, Stuart Mill, ou de poètes comme Tagore. Malgrè de nombreuses pages littérairement fascinantes, ce qui manque au livre de Nussbaum est exactement l’amour ou l’émotion. Cela n’est pas une remarque littéraire; il s’agit du fait que, comme toute la littérature politique “libérale” (je le dis dans le meilleur sens du mot, on pourrait dire “progressiste”), ce qui prévaut est la description d’un ordre idéal dont on ne se demande pas les conditions de possibilité (pour parler kantien). C’est avant tout le problème que pose la théorie de Habermas, qui se limite au fond à une description de la société de la communication non manipulée ni déformée. Bien sûr, dans la descrip-

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tion des conditions idéales d’une société communicative de ce genre, il y a aussi un programme révolutionnaire (ce qui fait de Habermas, depuis longtemps, un philosophe, voire LE philosophe de la Gauche), mais ce qui manque est exactement une théorie de la transformation. Quand on se met à décrire, plus de passions ni d’émotions; cela est aussi la limite du livre de Nussbaum, qui veut être un texte “scientifique” rawlsien-aristotélicien — qui, au fond, ne dérange pas l’ordre libéral dans lequel Nussbaum, et Habermas aussi, croient vivre.

Tout cela pourrait se limiter à une discussion critique académique du livre duquel nous parlons. Mais le fait même que, comme je le notais au début, il s’agisse de l’oeuvre d’une philosophe déjà presque “classique” dans la pensée libérale, dépasse ces limites et, au moins dans mes intentions ici, ouvre la perspective sur le sort de la politique “alternative” dans nos sociétés “occidentales”. De ce point de vue, ce que l’on observe par rapport à ce livre est comme un emblème de ce qui manque au libéralisme actuel et de l’incapacité de la pensée libérale à combler ce manque. D’abord, il est signifiant qu’un thème comme celui des émotions devienne le point d’une discussion non marginale pour la théorie politique. Pourquoi maintenant? À mon avis, cela témoigne assez clairement de la crise de la démocratie dans le monde ainsi nommé “démocratique”. Nussbaum registre et donne voix à l’absence de passion qui caractérise l’atmosphère politique actuelle. Tout se passe comme si personne “n’y croyait” plus. Même les campagnes électorales dans beaucoup de pays européens

De la politique et de l’amour

ne suscitent plus de conflits à haute intensité. D’ailleurs, c’est exactement d’une démocratie à basse intensité que l’on parle à propos de nos sociétés.

Dans bien des sens, on pourrait dire qu’il se passe avec la société libérale ce que Marx prévoyait pour le capitalisme: elle nourrit dans son propre sein ceux qui vont la tuer. Quoi de plus libéral et rawlsien qu’un débat politique centré sur l’économie, les ressources, l’administration?

Seulement en des cas très rares on parle, en ce genre de politique, de projets généraux et de vision du monde; cela signifierait retomber dans l’idéologie, ennemie de toute discussion politique sobre et réaliste. Heureusement pour certains pays (je pense à l’Italie ou à la France), il existe les homosexuels, avec leur problème de mariage paritaire qui nous oblige à parler de famille, de vie concrète, de visions du monde. Mais ce qui domine les classes dirigeantes, c’est la préoccupation pour le budget, l’impératif de la “stabilité”. Qui peut s’émotionner pour la stabilité?

Même la grande lutte continue contre le terrorisme, vrai ou inventé par les media ou les gouvernements, appartient à ce cadre de manque d’émotion: elle tâche de suppléer à ce manque, à travers les descriptions sanglantes qui envahissent nos téléviseurs à l’heure du dîner, mais l’excès tue tout effet émotionnel en nous. L’indifférence domine presque partout. Le motto futuriste, et plus tard fasciste, selon lequel “la guerre est l’hygiène du monde” paraît tristement réalisé dans les histoires de violence urbaine, souvent expliquée comme un effet d’ennui du monde unidimentionnel.

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Est-ce-que les émotions “libérales” de Martha Nussbaum pourraient fonctionner comme thérapie dans ce cadre désastreux? Ce n’est pas un hasard si elle prend ses exemples positifs dans l’opéra du XVIIIème siècle, dans la musique de Mozart, et non dans les romans passionnels du XIXème siècle ou dans des textes “dostoïevskiens”. L’amour dont elle parle comme d’un facteur qui contribue à la vie de la société juste est, à ce qu’il paraît, un amour socialement béni, accepté, riche en ironie, mondain, loin de toute violence. Ce n’est même pas “l’amour qui n’ose pas dire son nom” (comme Wilde nommait l’homosexualité) car, parmi les sentiments “bons” que la société libérale doit promouvoir il y a aussi un sentiment de tolérance qui nous aide à rejeter le dégoût suscité en quelqu’un face à des comportements que l’on trouve détestables, voire innaturels et donc “monstrueux”.

Je suis en train d’exagérer, mais pas trop. Le fait est que le livre de Nussbaum semble dominé par une sorte d’irénisme qui correspond trop bien au climat social des démocraties “avancées” dans lesquelles nous croyons vivre. S’il est vrai que la démocratie moderne est fille de l’Age des Lumières, un des héritages les plus importants du XVIIIème siècle, on peut bien voir dans ces émotions modérées et réglées de Martha Nussbaum l’apologie d’une société “rationnelle” et raisonnable, qui évite les excès de tout genre en vivant même le processus démocratique (les élections, l’alternance au pouvoir, etc) comme quelque chose qui exclut toute violence et d’abord tout changement (violent, évidemment) de l’ordre établi. On se voit aussi poussé à recon-

De la politique et de l’amour

sidérer l’idée même d’une société bien réglée, tel qu’était l’idéal cosmopolite de Kant. Souvenons-nous toujours du fait que l’un des défenseurs philosophiques de l’ONU et de ses organismes de règlement des conflits internationaux est le kantien Jürgen Habermas, en cela évidemment d’accord avec Nussbaum et Rawls et toute la pensée réformiste “occidentale”.

Pour moi, il ne s’agit pas de stigmatiser le caractère conservateur de cette pensée réformiste, de laquelle on ne peut pas ne pas partager les contenus institutionnels, etc.

Nous voulons tous que se réalise une république cosmopolite de type kantien. Ce que nous ne pouvons pas trop accepter, c’est le manque de toute considération de la situation présente, où la république cosmopolite avec ses institutions de justice internationale existe déjà sous la forme de la caricature autoritaire dominée par la NATO dans sa fonction policière centralisée sur le Pentagone, malgrè le changement récent. “Décrire”, c’est à dire théoriser, en cette condition, la société libérale, signifie admettre que cette société existe en fait et qu’elle nécessite au maximum d’un “supplément de coeur” — les émotions “positives” dont il est question dans le livre de Nussbaum.

D’accord, pourrait-on nous dire, mais alors quoi? Quel état sentimental souhaitons-nous que s’instaure dans une société capable de se transformer radicalement, au lieu de penser seulement à garder sa “stabilité”, amoureuse bien sûr, mais toujours dans les limites qui sont exprimées par exemple dans le motto latin “unicuique suum” sans questionner l’origine des propriétés que l’on se propose ainsi

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de respecter. C’est là que nous revient le texte de Benjamin que j’ai déjà mentionné. Mais je pourrais aussi me réclamer d’un très petit livre qui a eu un succès énorme dernièrement. Dans le livre de Stéphane Hessel Indignez-vous, l’indignation dont il est question ici n’est pas motivée par des raisons “logiques”, par un calcul rationnel comme celui qui est demandé aux citoyens de certains pays européens qui doivent se soumettre à la discipline de l’austérité pour payer “leur” dette aux grandes banques. On regarde avant tout à la souffrance, à celle des “autres” comme les ancêtres dont parle Benjamin ou des oubliés de tout type (tiers ou quart monde, exclus et exploités, animaux soumis à l’expérimentation biomédicale). C’est tout ce monde silencieux — qu’avec Heidegger on nommerait le “silence de l’être” que la philosophie doit savoir écouter — qui nous appelle à l’indignation. Elle est quelque chose d’irrationnelle, c’est à dire a le trait de l’amour ou de la passion amoureuse, parce qu’elle nous tombe dessus sans raison, comme le fait de tomber amoureux. Les objections usuelles des démocrates “formelles” contre cette forme d’émotion politique vise surtout au phénomène du “chef” carismatique: grands exemples en Amérique latine, Castro, Chávez, Lula, Evo Morales... Là, on côtoie le problème du Führerprinzip, que je ne me propose pas de discuter ici — il est dangereux, pour tout dire. Mais on ne peut pas ignorer, surtout dans une société où même les leaders qui se présentent aux élections acquièrent de plus en plus les traits du chef carismatique, ou bien doivent posséder des qualités de ce genre, que les grandes transformations révolutionnaires ont tou-

De la politique et de l’amour

jours (voilà un point possible de discussion) demandé des “héros”, de grandes personnalités capables de mobiliser les “masses”. Il y a là une composante irrationnelle de la politique qui ne cesse de scandaliser. Mais il faut bien que la théorie se charge de ce problème, si elle ne veut pas rester au niveau des bons sentiments et, en définitive, au niveau d’une apologie, quoiqu’implicite, de l’ordre existant. Si l’on se souvient que l’un des grands problèmes des partis révolutionnaires a toujours été celui du rapport entre les masses (inspirées par le ressentiment dont nous parlions) et le “comité central”, fait de dirigeants “rationnels”, délégués à produire un programme possible pour l’action et donc toujours exposés à la corruption de la raison calculante, des compromis avec l’existant, etc., on se rend compte de combien de motifs s’accumulent à l’intérieur de cette question de l’amour qui importe pour la politique.

Ma conclusion ici n’est pas une conclusion, elle veut seulement ouvrir des demandes sur ce qui est notre condition présente: le capitalisme calculant et raisonnable nous impose une vie sociale de plus en plus “neutralisée”, où les passions (et les souffrances aussi: encore Benjamin) doivent être comme suspendues au nom du calcul économique. Observons que, comme l’a dit Marx, l’économie politique n’est pas une science naturelle, donc la répression des passions au profit du calcul n’est pas un devoir “naturel”; c’est bien une imposition de quelqu’un sur quelqu’un, bref, un aspect de la domination. Se réclamer de la souffrance des ancêtres (et de tout “autre” hier et aujourd’hui) pour agir politiquement est scandaleux parce que cela ne

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correspond pas au calcul rationnel qui, de son côté, est seulement l’expression historique d’une domination de classe.

Le livre de Martha Nussbaum est donc précieux parce qu’il nous pousse à voir, encore une fois, la contradiction du capitalisme — soyez sages et calculants, mais vous ne pouvez vraiment l’être, il vous faut aussi l’amour... — de laquelle on peut espérer qu’éclate l’action transformatrice.

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Bolivia’s “Evismo”: “specters” of communism or “ghosts” of neoliberalism?

Javier Sanjinés C.

Elected president of Bolivia on December 18, 2005, and reelected in December 2009 with a historic 64% of the popular vote, Evo Morales, of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), is the first indigenous president in the republic’s history. Morales’s MAS is also associated to the “pink tide” of leftist governments that is sweeping Latin America through the ballot box. How should we interpret this stunning victory, and what is its significance for revolutionary or reformist change in one of the most backward and poorest countries of Latin America?

Following Jeffrey Webber’s From rebellion to reform in Bolivia, an illuminating book on class struggle, indig27

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enous liberation, and the policies of Evo Morales (2011), I will argue in this paper that Morales’s opportunity to move forward with a more direct confrontation with the logic of capital, is more rhetorical than real. Likewise, the Morales government has incorporated some of the language of indigenous liberation developed by the earlier stages of popular struggle during the first years of this century, but has separated its indigenous focus from the material reality facing indigenous people.

While the current conjuncture at the close of Morales’s second term attests to the fact that his government has reconstituted neoliberalism, it also leaves little doubt that on both the right and the left internationally, hyperbole has often substituted for deeper reflection and analysis of the Bolivian scenario. Recently, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala give, in chapter four of their interesting Hermeneutic communism. From Heidegger to Marx (2011), uncritical support to the Morales government. In so doing, the authors have not taken into account how Morales’s policies have deviated from the popular struggles for socialist and indigenous decolonizing emancipation.

Hermeneutic communism must be commended for its reformulations of political philosophy, reaching from ontological premises to political philosophy. According to the authors, hermeneutic communism “is not the outcome of a theoretical discovery or a logical correction of previous errors but rather the result of the end of metaphysics” (2011, p. 110). Vattimo and Zabala indicate that “hermeneutics could not have been possible without the end of Eurocen-

Bolivia’s “Evismo”: “specters” of communism or “ghosts” of neoliberalism?

trism, which has also always been the sociopolitical correlative of Western metaphysics” (p. 110). Since they call for the end of metaphysics and a change to the return of communism, they do so “in the name of justice, fraternity, and the solidarity of the weak” (p. 111). Just as Vattimo rightly condemns the recent bloodbath perpetrated by Israeli military forces in Palestine, the author of Hermeneutic communism also points to the various crises that led to the dissolution of metaphysics in the twentieth century, accompanied not only by wars but also by the technological revolutions unimaginable in the past.

Hermeneutic communism affirms the “historical (not theoretical) necessity to recapture communism in the moment in which its “spectrality” seems to have reached its peak” (p. 112). For Vattimo and Zabala, the recourse to spectral communism becomes an objective necessary today because of the discharge of capitalism and also because it continues to impose itself as the ideal of human history. In order to find alternative models of capitalism and alternatives to its historical manifestation in neoliberal policies, both authors affirm that some of the domestically elected governments of South America could become possible models for the West to pursue (p. 113). Consequently, Evo Morales’s democratically elected government could be considered an example of the communist promise of a society without classes, which in turn “could be interpreted as ‘without dominion’, that is without an imposed unique truth and compulsory orthodoxy” (p. 117). This could also be called a “society of dialogue”, presenting the features

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that constitute the “spectrality” that is the indispensable characteristic of the rebirth of communism. “Evismo”, the name given to the governmental expansion of indigenous cultural rights in Bolivia, could be considered as a South American alternative to capitalism, and the emblematic sign that “reformism” has come to an end. As I said before, although Hermeneutic communism must be commended for its ontological reinterpretation of revolutionary action, it exaggerates the radicalism of Morales’s social and economic policies, and promotes a dominant international view of Morales’s development project in Bolivia, a view steeped in romanticization. Predictably, the debates occurring inside the country, and analyzed comprehensively in Webber’s From rebellion to reform in Bolivia, allow me to present five themes that cut against the grain of the fashionable left-wing interpretation of Evo Morales and the Bolivian process. The purpose here is to document the extent to which neoliberalism still shapes Morales’s social and economic policies.

First, the plausible interpretation of the left-indigenous insurrectionary period between 2000 and 2005 as a “revolutionary epoch”. However radical, this period could not produce a true social revolution; as popular forces shifted to the electoral arena, “Evismo” could be considered a regressive movement because it turned popular politics into a rebellion that reverted to reform (Webber, 2011, p. 43-9).

The insurrectionary period between 2000 and 2005 met the criteria of a “revolutionary epoch”, and constituted the “weakness and spectrality that are the indispensa-

Bolivia’s “Evismo”: “specters” of communism or “ghosts” of neoliberalism?

ble characteristic for communism’s rebirth” (Vattimo and Zabala, 2011, p. 117). This insurrectionary period sent out important signs that reformism had come to an end, and that reactionary forces were no longer capable of winning ground. Indeed, during this five-year cycle of urban and rural revolt, sustained mass mobilization from below and a multifaceted state crisis from above created opportunities for a transformative structural change to the Bolivian state and society.

As Webber points out, the insurrectionary cycle had the sturdy support of a plethora of movements that radically questioned the existing neoliberal armed order. These mass movements were engaged in a combined liberating struggle to overcome the interrelated processes of class exploitation and racial oppression of the indigenous majority. The guiding aspects of this wave of radicalism and “spectral” communism were the nationalization of, and social control over, natural resources such as water, natural gas and oil, ores, land and indigenous territory. Popular organizations and movements revived the “weak messianic power” of the historic fight to refound Bolivia through a revolutionary Constituent Assembly that would see the organized participation of the popular sectors. This would reverse the centuries-long internal colonial domination of the white-mestizo elite over the majority indigenous population, a system of oppression petrified in state institutions at the founding of the republic in 1825 and still haunting Bolivia’s present as an unsolved ‘ghostly” situation, even after the reforms carried out by the 1952 nationalist-populist revolution.

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Bringing the unsolved problems of the past into the present, the indigenous movements were rooted in the everyday necessities of the popular classes, while at the same time, at moments of mass mobilization they effectively associated these issues with the quest for political power and the structural transformation of the state and economy.

Absent from the scene was a revolutionary party capable of uniting the multiplicity of emerging popular forces. The MAS, led by cocalero union leader Evo Morales, was the only force able to organize the masses beyond the local or regional terrain. While Evo Morales’s political force played an important part in the Water War of 2000, it opted later on for constitutional solutions to the state crisis, and in 2005 steered the political conjuncture away from the radicalism of the streets toward the sphere of traditional politics. Signs of a tamer leftist reformism, aligning the MAS with bourgeois, moderate forces, could be detected as early as 2002, when Morales distanced his movement from massive popular rebellion and turned toward electoral politics as the definitive domain of party praxis. The MAS started to court the urban middleclass voters in electoral contests, a clear indication that it did not envisage a profound rupture with the nation-state under neoliberalism. Two clear moments of this shifting reformist constitutionalism were the December 2005 national elections and the Constituent Assembly of 2006.

The 2005 elections sliced the country into east and west; while the MAS won in the Andean departments of La Paz, Oruro, PotosĂ­, Cochabamba, and Chuquisaca, PODEMOS

Bolivia’s “Evismo”: “specters” of communism or “ghosts” of neoliberalism?

(“we can”), the neoliberal coalition, captured the Amazonian departments of Pando, Beni, Santa Cruz, as well as Tarija. As the country was politically split between reformists and revolutionaries, the MAS had, as was expected, its best results in the countryside. But it also took the cities.

Appealing to the informal urban proletariat, the MAS was able to win in all cities, except in the reactionary heartland of Santa Cruz. The MAS vice-presidential candidate Álvaro García Linera was instrumental in this electoral win. A suave and well-educated mathematician and ideologue of the Cochabambino middle class, García Linera was successful in steering the MAS towards a moderate electoral platform. His reformist political and economic views—he is the architect of an “Andean-Amazonian capitalism”—helped the MAS win over sufficient middle- and upper-class urban voters in the wealthy neighborhoods of La Paz and Cochabamba to secure victory. As Webber observes, analysts have pointed out that the middle and upper classes perceived the reformist MAS’s realistic strategies as a potential antidote to the left-indigenous insurrections of the preceding five years.

A potential win of the far-right PODEMOS was perceived by the elites as suicidal because it would assuredly result in a rebirth of violence and revolutionary unrest. In other words, the Bolivian upper and middle classes saw in Evo Morales’s electoral victory a smooth, veiled reproduction of the capitalist system. PODEMOS, the open neoliberal coalition, would have been too risky a solution, given the tumultuous five previous years. As a consequence, the 2005 elections were steering Bolivia back into reform.

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The Constituent Assembly of 2006 confirmed the transformation of the insurrectionary popular drive into a tamer “social pact” with right-wing forces inside and outside of Congress. While the popular social movements demanded a revolutionary Constituent Assembly that would drastically modify the economy, state, and society seeking to improve the lives of so many of the “weak”, the Constituent Assembly introduced by the MAS in 2006 rejected all such revolutionary and participatory proposals.

Instead, it went back to the traditionally constituted politics of the Congress, making every effort to appease the landholding bourgeoisie of the eastern part of the country—the so-called “media luna states”—in regard to the definition of the Assembly’s rules and procedures. This, in turn, paved the way for the rearticulation of the rightwing forces. The room afforded to them by the MAS in the Constituent Assembly helped to reconstitute a political project in the form of right-wing “autonomism” in the departments of Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz and Tarija, the four media luna states.

The whole set-up of the Constituent Assembly was indeed contradictory. If regional self-determination is a pillar of democracy, the regional autonomy demanded by the media luna states meant handing over Bolivia’s wealth to the most reactionary and wealthy of the Bolivian ruling class, as well as to transnational corporations. Webber notes that the distorted 2006 Constituent Assembly, geared back into reformism by the MAS political forces, shows that the “revolutionary epoch” did not lead to “so-

Bolivia’s “Evismo”: “specters” of communism or “ghosts” of neoliberalism?

cial revolution”. The concept of social revolution, while it still connotes process and uncertainty, allows measuring “the depths and consequences of lasting structural change that have successfully won through the popular struggle of a revolutionary epoch” (2011, p. 46). It is clear that the 2006 Constituent Assembly did not lead the country in the direction of social revolution.

Secondly, for Hermeneutic communism a society without classes and consequently capable of living in peace through dialogue constitutes the “weakness and spectrality that are the indispensable characteristic for communism’s rebirth” (2011, p. 117). In the Bolivian case, the referendum held on January 25, 2009 and won with 69% of the vote, expressed this “spectrality” because supposedly it strengthened the rights of the country’s indigenous peoples by increasing community involvement and enhancing the rights of the weakest segments of the population (2011, p. 127).

The origins of the MAS, as well as the party’s class composition, confirm Vattimo and Zabala’s observations on the rebirth of communism. The historic roots of the MAS lie in the coca-growing zone of Chapare, in the department of Cochabamba. With the crash of the international price of tin and the corresponding privatization of most of the state mining industry in the mid-1980s, tens of thousands of jobless miners were “relocated” throughout the country, thus constituting the “weak and spectral” social component of a once-proud working force. The relocated miners had to adapt to a coalition of social forces in the volatile, semitropical region of Chapare, where Trotskyite

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ideas and organizational strategies brought to the area by the migrant miners melded with the visions and tactics of the preexisting networks of indigenous and peasant union and community structures. Through hunger strikes, road blockades, and historic marches tracing long stretches of Bolivian countryside and cityscapes, both cocalero and indigenous forces constructed an interesting “culture of dialogue” among themselves, in this way showing the “spectrality” claimed by the authors of Hermeneutic communism. It remained to be seen if this “spectrality” would resist the ideological changes that the MAS encountered as it shifted in class composition over the following years.

Jeffrey Webber observes that the shift in the party’s ideology toward moderate reformism happened as early as 2002. In conflict with the “weakness” and the “spectrality” expressed in Hermeneutic communism, the changes were not a consequence of a new outlook on the part of Morales himself, but rather the shift was “indicative of an alteration in strategic orientation toward electoral politics and the changing class composition of the party over time” (2011, p. 63).

While historians Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thomson, writing in 2005, before the electoral victory of the MAS, argued that “The current cycle (…) constitutes the third major revolutionary moment in Bolivian history (2005, p. 63), the first being the anti-colonial indigenous rebellion led by Túpaj Katari in 1781, and the second being the 1952 National Revolution”, the endgame of the revolutionary moment was still in play at the time the piece was writ-

Bolivia’s “Evismo”: “specters” of communism or “ghosts” of neoliberalism?

ten. One year later, the character of the MAS cabinet in 2006 reflected the shifts in ideology and in class composition, far apart from the weak and spectral nature of subaltern movements. While many of the individuals selected to fill these positions came from popular upbringings (peasants, miners), they currently come from relatively privileged, middle-class sectors of the rural and urban economies. Furthermore, the moderately reformist nature of the MAS grew progressively evident when vice-president Álvaro García Linera became the dominant public voice of the MAS’s new economic development program.

García Linera posited that Bolivia ought to first build an industrial capitalist base. The capitalist model he envisions—“Andean-Amazonian capitalism”—gives primacy to state intervention in the market. This means capitalist development with a stronger state to support a pettybourgeoisie that will eventually become a national bourgeoisie of indigenous, or “Andean-Amazonian”, origins.

Only after a long intermediary phase of industrial capitalism would Bolivia “eventually” turn to communism. This process, described by Webber as a regression from revolution into reform, resembles the old line of the Stalinist Bolivian Communist Party.

García Linera’s moderate reformism also allowed the autonomist right to partially consolidate itself. It distorted the revolutionary nature of the Constituent Assembly of 2006 envisioned by the indigenous movements between 2000 and 2005. García Linera was also instrumental in demobilizing autonomous rural and urban protests or in stra-

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tegically mobilizing its bases against the media luna rightwing autonomous states, but within guidelines predetermined by the MAS elites. In fact, it could be argued that instead of revolutionary advances, what we see today is a new corporativist state—philosopher and political analyst Luis Tapia has recently referred to it as the “criollo Leviathan”—with a disciplined working class and a carefully engineered capitalist economy.

Thirdly, the disassociation from the project of socialist transformation is related to the fact that the MAS has artificially separated decolonization—the cultural and anticolonial revolution to end oppression of indigenous people—from the revolution to end class exploitation experienced by the same indigenous population. Issues organically linked to the 2000-2005 revolutionary epoch have begun to unravel in the rhetorical distortions adopted by the MAS in government. In this sense, decolonization has become purely rhetorical as the MAS progressively co-opted its symbols. Indeed, I have recently written the prologue to a book that unveils how indigenous representation has been shrewdly accommodated to the symbols of the apparently debunked liberal nation-state, maintaining the symbolic structures of the already constituted civic nation together with the constituting and decolonizing pluri-national state (Tórrez and Arce, 2014).

Furthermore, the MAS has decided ideologically to overcome the contradiction of simultaneously promoting democratic indigenous revolution and neoliberal continuities by separating the anticolonial indigenous revolution against racial oppression from the economic revolution to

Bolivia’s “Evismo”: “specters” of communism or “ghosts” of neoliberalism?

end class exploitation. Webber indicates that during the insurrectionary period between 2000 and 2005, socialist movements believed that the racist oppression and class exploitation of the majority of indigenous workers and peasants were organically linked, and had to be debunked simultaneously in a coordinated liberation struggle. In reality, however, the MAS appropriated the decolonial rhetoric and advocated indigenous cultural revolution immediately, leaving socialist transformation as a mere possibility relegated to the distant future.

In this approach to transformative politics, the nature of decolonization was distorted by what Webber calls the “neostructuralist perspective”, thus showing the weaknesses of decolonization when the fight against racial oppression is not accompanied by an equal effort to end class exploitation. In García Linera’s conceptualization of the state, the class relations of capitalism and the repressive role of the state (hence the notion of the reborn Leviathan) in reproducing these relations are obscured, being replaced by a non-ideological, pragmatic set of institutions acting in the general interest of society. As we will see later on, the state disciplines labor as necessary, allowing capital to grow for further reinvestment and accumulation. Since capitalist competition is still the operative framework, the reborn Leviathan provides private investors with the institutions that supply a reserve of relatively cheap, flexible, and disciplined labor.

For ideologues of neostructuralism, like political analyst Pablo Stefanoni, the plurinational state’s anti-imperi-

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alism relies on previous nationalist movements. The new state surpasses them, however, because it does not rely on militarism or on the middle classes leading the project, but on indigenous and peasant sectors. Stefanoni, as well as other analysts who empathize with “Evismo”, considers that the current process stems from popular nationalism and is a plebeian follow-up on the postrevolutionary 1950s, adding to it a novel indigenous nucleus. But what Stefanoni and others are confusing in their attempt to neutralize decolonization and render it obsolete (Stefanoni, 2010) is the rhetorical anti-imperialism promoting state-led industrialization with actual substantive movement toward that end.

While there are similarities to the 1952 Revolution—and neostructuralists are correct in affirming that the MAS has recreated the legacy of nationalist populism in a new mélange of indigenous decolonization fit for the twenty-first century—we are at some distance away from a “post-neoliberal turn” that might have proposed economic reform anywhere near the levels of the national-populist revolutionary epoch of the mid-twentieth century. This leads us to the discussion of the MAS’s economic policies disguised under a decolonizing, democratic revolution.

Fourthly, the “reconstituted neoliberalism” that Webber talks about seeks “success” within rather than against capitalism. Indeed, Webber points out that “the development model implemented by the Morales administration over the entire four years of his first administration (2006-2010) is best characterized as reconstituted neoliberalism” (2014, p. 177). Here again, as is also the case in

Bolivia’s “Evismo”: “specters” of communism or “ghosts” of neoliberalism?

the three themes discussed above, we can perceive that, contrary to the belief that “Evismo” functions as a “specter” that embraces the programmatic cause of degrowth, the MAS’s economic policies work as a “ghostly” reconstituted neoliberalism. Since the new developmental model is to embed the market in a coherent set of state-run modern institutions, the state takes control of the means of production and allocation in order for the market to perform smoothly. We are also talking here of neostructuralist economic policies that promote high growth and low spending. Growth based on high international prices of hydrocarbons and various ores. With tight fiscal policies and massive international reserves, the reconstituted neoliberalism, with sorely continuing social inequalities, has brought little change in the rates of poverty.

In the 1960s, famous Latin American economists, sociologists, and political scientists developed classic structuralism. Working alongside Raúl Prebisch, they indoctrinated Keynesian economics to middle-ranking Latin American bureaucrats in central banks, finance ministries and universities. While the structuralists did not develop the Import-Substitution Industrialization (ISI) growth model of the era, they did consolidate it throughout Latin America. US imperialism feared that this structuralist doctrine would accelerate state-owned enterprises, thus advocating more state planning within the economy. In reality, however, ISI allowed multinationals to leap tariff walls and build protected plants oriented toward growing international markets. Though a menace to US economic interests

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at first, structuralism, when correctly contained, adapted well to American capitalism in the region.

Like structuralist economic policies in the 1960s, present-day neostructuralist policies in Latin America have moved to the center of political influence by challenging orthodox neoliberalism while also criticizing some tenets of classical structuralism. Reinforcing the strong presence of the state in key sectors of the economy, mainly hydrocarbons and minerals, neostructuralism extended into the first years development programs of left governments such as that of Evo Morales in Bolivia. Neostructuralist principles impacted the country’s National Plan for Development 2006-2010, which predicated on the continuation of extractive capitalism, centered on exporting primary natural resource commodities mainly controlled by transnationals but with substantial revenue going to the state through royalties and taxation. Moderate reforms were introduced in the hydrocarbons sector, reforms that kept the new socialengineering approach of neostructuralism, which in turn maintained the basic foundations of neoliberalism in a context of a profound crisis of legitimacy as a development model in Latin America.

Bolivian neostructuralism revolves around “systemic competitiveness” and labor flexibility. Both features are diametrically opposed to the “spectral” degrowth predicted by hermeneutical communism. For neostructuralism, systemic competitiveness expresses the notion that markets and competition are the exclusive channels for social and economic interaction, and replaces the belief in compara-

Bolivia’s “Evismo”: “specters” of communism or “ghosts” of neoliberalism?

tive advantages. This means that what competes in world markets are not the commodities, but complete social systems (Webber, p. 184). While accepting the markets as the central organizing force in society, neostructuralists prioritize the competitiveness of the whole system through effective state intervention in infrastructure (technology, energy, transport), education, finance, labor-management relations, in a way that orthodox neoliberal policies could not grasp.

In order to achieve systemic competitiveness in Bolivia, the whole idea of the state had to be reconfigured. Indeed, the state had to blend economic policy with political intervention in order to construct a broad social consensus.

It also had to supplement the invisible hand of the market with non-market forms of social, political, and economic coordination, thus urging a large share of manufacture and value-added exports into the country’s export profile. An important aspect of the state’s role under this view was to build civil society-state partnerships to consolidate social, political, and ideological consensus across social classes behind the export-led capitalist growth.

The neostructuralists’ center-left governments have only rhetorically expunged neoliberal policies. They have actually led to the politico-economic legitimation and consolidation of the capitalist restructuring initially set in motion by neoliberal ideas and policies. While neostructuralist ideologues around García Linera have labeled the process a continuum of national-populism, it actually promotes a certain nostalgia for the developmentalist era, and for that storied class, the national bourgeoisie. Neostruc-

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turalist ideologues continue to mythologize the 1952 national Revolution and its aftermath, now complemented with disciplined campesino-cocalero and mining labor forces and with the business class hitching its wagons to the “Evista” plurinational project. As far as one can perceive the realpolitik of today’s Bolivia, García Linera has become the spokesperson for economic moderation, while Evo Morales deploys a leftist and decolonizing rhetoric in tandem with the radical lineage of the party’s revolutionary epoch. García Linera’s line, however, represents the actual development plan that the MAS has structured and instituted since it was elected in 2005.

Fifthly, and lastly, capitalist development properly regulated by the state expunges conflict from its policy framework. This can be perceived in the state’s attempt to construct consensus among workers regarding export-led capitalist development.

An important and practical innovation of García Linera’s conceptualization of “Evismo” has been the notion of “labor flexibility”—that is, the state’s attempt to construct a consensus among coca growers, mining cooperativists, and other social components of the working class to submit to the imperatives of export-led capitalist development.

One of the important facets of this flexibility demands that labor movements should be co-opted and reengineered, abandoning the class struggle and conflict with the ruling class, and embracing cross-class cooperation and labor-state stability. Proof of this conflict-ridden labor policy is Bolivia’s recently promulgated mining code, which im-

Bolivia’s “Evismo”: “specters” of communism or “ghosts” of neoliberalism?

proves the sector’s “systemic competitiveness” within the parameters of the existing capitalist order.

Given the economic and labor positioning of “Evismo” within a rigidly hierarchical and competitive world system governed by capitalism, it is difficult to speak of “degrowth” or to maintain that the policies of the Evo Morales government represent a post-neoliberal turn in the economic model of development, let alone a revolutionary process of socioeconomic transformation. If the country has grown at a fast rate as a consequence of primary minerals and hydrocarbon exports, the social effect of this growth has been neutralized by increases in the price of food. The buying power of the poorest sectors has declined and only 50-60% of those people who are employed can afford a basic food basket.

It has become increasingly clear that transnationals are demanding that the state continue its role as facilitator of the accumulation of capital and exploiter of the Bolivian workforce. The “specters” of communism, turned into ghosts of neoliberalism, lurk in the shadows of persistent class realities. Full-time unionized workers have actually grown weaker, and have lost their organizational class power, to the benefit of capital and the detriment of labor.

As a consequence, the Central Obrera Boliviana (Bolivian Workers Union, COB) is no longer an effective organizing body of the working class. Labor flexibility relies basically on dissuading workers from the class struggle, while at the same time demanding their submission to the model of export-led capitalist development. García Linera’s neostruc-

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turalism certainly agrees with orthodox neoliberalism on the necessity of labor flexibility, as well as the need to provide the labor force with new skills to help it adapt to the productive process.

In conclusion, if “Evismo” is living proof that “weak communism is not dead”, then it must also produce facts to show that it is an alternative to capitalism and to framed democracies. As part of this “pink tide” of left-wing governments sweeping Latin America, the Morales government ought to be an economic process based on radical nationalization and natural resources, and a bastion against the exploitation of transnationals and in favor of control by native Indians.

The reality, however, could not be more different, so distant from this well-meaning desire to see the South American alternative modify existing socialisms in other regions of the world. As Jeffrey Webber’s carefully documented analysis of “Evismo” demonstrates, over the years the Evo Morales government has turned from rebellion to reform. From 2005 on, the tendency of Morales’s two terms was toward reconstituted neoliberalism. While abandoning features of neoliberal orthodoxy, the MAS government retained capitalism as the principal engine of growth. From an economic standpoint, both periods showed high rates of export-led growth—based on hydrocarbons and a mining boom—and low rates of spending. High levels of international reserves were accumulated, while social spending decreased as a proportion of GDP. Rates of poverty and levels of social inequality showed little change. Flexible la-

Bolivia’s “Evismo”: “specters” of communism or “ghosts” of neoliberalism?

bor and a tight control of workers led the Morales government to suffocate any attempt to unionize independently.

While keeping a strong anticapitalist and anti-imperialist rhetoric, Morales’s economic policies moved endlessly to extract and industrialize.

Romanticized by the international left, the debates occurring inside the country are more richly grounded in the real contradictions of this social, political, and economic process. One thing, however, remains true of the “specters” of communism: the hope of Bolivia’s emancipation still reflects how the Katarista indigenous movements of the early 1970s characterized reality as a necessary move to envision society “with both eyes”, fighting against both capitalist exploitation and racial oppression, with visions of simultaneous indigenous liberation and socialist emancipation.

Bibliography Hylton, Forrest and Thomson, Sinclair (2005). “The chequered rainbow”. New Left Review, v. 2, n. 35, p. 42.

Stefanoni, Pablo (2010). “Qué hacer con los indios…” Y otros traumas irresueltos de la colonialidad. La Paz, Bolivia, Plural Editores.

Tórrez, Yuri and Arce C., Claudia (2014). Construcción simbólica del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia. Imagi-

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narios políticos, discursos, rituales y celebraciones. La Paz, Bolivia, Fundación PIEB. Vattimo, Gianni and Zabala, Santiago (2011). Hermeneutic communism. From Heidegger to Marx. New York, Columbia University Press.

Webber, Jeffrey (2011). From rebellion to reform in Bolivia.

Class struggle, indigenous liberation, and the politics of Evo Morales. Chicago, IL, Haymarket Books.

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The culture of coexistence and pluralism. The Islamic view, Oman’s experience and prospects for a way out of the impasse Abdulrahman Al Salimi

The expressions al ‘aish al mushtarak (coexistence/living together) and ta’addudiyyah (pluralism) are newcomers to the Arab/Islamic cultural, social and political scene. When Lebanese Christian intellectuals and politicians first began using them during their country’s internal conflict in the early 1970s, they were referring to the fact that the Lebanese belonged to two main religions—Christianity and Islam—and that those two faiths represented two different cultures and civilizations; each of these had its own defining characteristics which influenced its ways of thinking and living, as well as its cultural and social life, including its political culture.

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It was their recognition of these distinctive features that led them to call for the creation of a kind of federalism similar to the system that exists in countries like Switzerland.

In fact, although what they were calling for might have seemed unduly radical, its causes were rooted in the “extreme homogeneity” which was a dominant trait of Arab nationalism and had led to the union between Egypt and Syria (1958-61) as well as to later unification projects. This “homogeneity”—so to speak—was warmly welcomed by the vast majority of Arab public opinion during the period between the 1950s and 1970s. At the same time, however, these “integrationist” practices, which were aimed at establishing pan-Arab unity with an Islamic flavour, aroused the fears of Arab Christians as well as some other nationalities and ethnic groups in the eastern Arab world (and later at the western end of the Arab world too).

In this climate, Arab nationalist and leftist intellectuals countered the concept of al ‘aish al mushtarak with the notion of al ‘aish al wahid (one single uniform way of life), on the grounds that we are one nation with a single culture, whatever our religious or ethnic differences might be.

As it turned out, this confrontation that arose in several Arab states was unfair to both al ‘aish al mushtarak and al ‘aish al wahid, since both sides—the “integrationists” as well as the “separatists”—interpreted the two concepts to suit their own preconceived ideas. Some Arab Christians rejected the notion of al ‘aish al wahid because they associated it with forced integration, dhimmi (non-Muslim subject) status and subjection to the majority and its culture,

The culture of coexistence and pluralism. The Islamic View, Oman’s…

while the nationalists (and later the Islamists) believed that the idea of separate identities was part of a deliberate plot to cause schisms in the fabric of national unity and promote hatred towards Arabdom and Islam. This was despite the fact that Christian civilization was progressive and endorsed the culture of democracy and human rights.

Although the era of left-right political disputes is now in the past, the question of distinct identity versus total homogeneity is still very much alive and in recent years we have come across it in several Arab and Islamic states. This is due largely to two factors: an inability to deal with differences and disagreements in the new social culture, and a failure to establish political systems capable of reconciling “state mentality” with “regime mentality”, which lies at the root of the European concept of al ‘aish al mushtarak—a concept which the ideologues have turned on its head with the result that it creates conflicts rather than resolving them.

In the 1980s we learnt that the notion of al ‘aish al mushtarak—or pluralism—first appeared after the Second World War in the form we understand it today and that its main protagonist was the Dutch thinker Lijphart.

Lijphart observed how European countries—particularly states such as Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium—handled the problems of ethnic, linguistic, cultural and political differences. He concluded that ethno-linguistic—and sometimes political—distinctions could not be overcome merely by exercising “majority democracy” and protecting the rights of minorities. Instead, what was need-

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ed was a strong sense of identity in a “citizenship” context, reinforced by broad-based, inclusive systems which ensured that al ‘aish al wahid also made provision for pluralism and a kind of partnership between the individual and the community.

Lijphart, Moran and several other intellectuals believe that the individualism that has become so much a part of the European character over the past two centuries and more has had a negative impact on the “identity” and “culture” mentalities of both sides—the integrationist majorities as well as the separatist minorities. *** 52

Now let us first look briefly at the Arab and Islamic attitudes to al ‘aish al mushtarak and coming to terms with differences. This should enable us to assess their successes and failures during the modern era and decide how we should approach the future.

In its references to pluralism and difference, the Holy Qur’an sees them as natural elements of the world and societies we live in. We are all familiar with the ayats (verses) which mention diversity and “pairing” in nature, as well as differences in languages, colours, races and communities, including the fact that even non-human creatures are organised in different communities. In particular, we are all familiar with Surat al Hujurat, 13: O mankind, We have created you male and female, and appointed you races and tribes, that you may know one another. Surely the noblest among you in the sight of Allah is the most God-fearing of you. Allah is All-knowing, All-aware.

The culture of coexistence and pluralism. The Islamic View, Oman’s…

The Holy Qur’an states that differences in kind and social composition—which tend to extend beyond mere differences and lead to conflicts—ought in fact to lead to “knowing one another” and mutual understanding. We should also note here that the Qur’an lays down a condition, or conditions, for this, which are summed up in the expression taqwa, or “God-fearingness”—a term which implies eschewing greed, ambition, pride and disrespect for others. In several ayats the Qur’an also adds a further clarification, or world-view, when it points out that mankind were originally a single nation or community. Then they fell into disputes among themselves and they are still continuing to do so.

Of course, these disputing parties cannot all be right, but the best course of action is reconciliation, “knowing one another”, forgiveness and good deeds, not just between nations or communities within nations, but between individuals. Here we see that the Qur’an makes a distinction between two categories where resolving or managing differences is concerned: firstly, individuals and social cultures, where it calls for reconciliation, forgiveness, kindness, open-mindedness and the avoidance of attacks upon a person’s honour, religion or household; and secondly, states or political authorities, where disputes should be tackled through the application of justice: If two parties of the Believers fight, put things right between them; then, if one of them transgresses against the other, fight the transgressor [party] until it reverts to Allah’s commandment. If it reverts, set things right between them equitably, and be just. Surely Allah loves the just. (Surat al Hujurat, 9.)

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Justice and equity should be the basis upon which states and judicial systems deal with differences, while reconciliation, forgiveness, tolerance and the public interest should be the principles for dealing with matters related to social culture, individuals and groups of individuals.

Can the state or political system combine the two— i.e. justice and equity on the one side and reconciliation, forgiveness, tolerance and the public interest on the other?

Yes. A successful political system is capable of doing so, just as individuals are. In fact, individuals and the political system can work together to that end: “The recompense for an injury is an injury equal thereto [in degree]; but if a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah” (Surat al Shura, 40).

Differences, then, can arise from diversity where peoples, tribes, races and languages are concerned. However, differences of this kind should not lead to disputes and schisms—neither within a single entity nor between nations. “Ta’arof ”—or “knowing one another”—which implies mutual recognition and respect for differences, is the proper way to resolve disputes should they occur.

It is relatively easy to settle disputes when a culture of “ta’arof ” is widely accepted by societies. However, the other kind of difference is the sort which occurs when there are conflicts of interest between individuals or communities. In such cases, if they are ignored and left to fester they can result in catastrophes; hence it is vital to try to resolve them though the application of justice and equity. All parties will be willing to accept a just so-

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lution if the culture of “ta’arof ” is the dominant one. Such a culture lies behind the principle of qisas (requital) and inspires the wali al amr (person in authority) to resort to justice, good deeds, forgiveness, reconciliation and the public interest.

It was this Qur’anic vision of the world of mankind and its problems that established the historical basis and cultural background for what we call fiqh al ‘aish—the rules that govern our daily lives and show us how we should come to terms with differences and conflicts. The old traditional fiqh al ‘aish was of course strongly influenced by the culture of good-neighbourliness, mercy, looking after one another and upholding the welfare of the community, and this had an impact (both positive and negative) upon political and judicial practice and fiqh (doctrine/jurisprudence) systems, whether those concerned were Muslims or followers of other faiths.

On the other hand, political differences were governed by another set of fiqh, judicial and political rules.

The rules governing relations between followers of different faiths were determined by the ahl al dhimmah (non-Muslim subjects) system. At the same time, however, where daily life was concerned they were often relaxed in practice. In Oman we have still remembered of Imam al-Salt b. Malik (r.851-886) the declaration to his people when they conquered Socotra Island, which based in the human right and coexistence between Muslim and Christian in one land and also how protecting other people who in different believes. Indeed it was a good experience in pluralism and for the Omanis since they converted the Is-

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lam. Later on Some Islamic scholar expressed the view that the mixing between Muslims and Christians that he observed in Damascus in the 13th century was in breach of the rules in that it showed far too great a tendency towards rapprochement and al ‘ish al mushtarak; accordingly, it ought to be resisted.

As far as dealing with political differences was concerned, in the books of the fuqaha’ (scholars of doctrine/ jurisprudence) this subject is covered in the chapters devoted to Ahkam al Bughat, or Rulings for Wrongdoers— that is to say, people who make political demands. Under that system there were no judicial or political procedures for dealing with a political opposition, whether peaceful or armed; however, questions related to justice and “participation” were clear to all parties, whether they were opponents of the system or compliant with it, and in general they were aware of their rights and obligations.

How should we judge the old system, other than in the light of its acceptance of religious or political differences? It did indeed represent pluralism (or al ‘aish al mushtarak) as a system governed by conventions, rules and laws, and guided by concepts such as justice, open-mindedness and a readiness to accept the religious and political “other”. Historically, it—i.e. the old system—had its faults (at least, to some extent) in two areas: firstly, in dealing with religious and cultural differences, and secondly, in its approach to political conflicts. Even so, while it did not involve forced homogeneity or inclusiveness and there was a degree of discrimination, it survived for over 1,200 years;

The culture of coexistence and pluralism. The Islamic View, Oman’s…

this is reflected in the fact that Christians and Jews continued to live alongside Muslims, and were allowed to retain their own cultures and languages, and even their own subordinate states and political systems, which were distinct from the general traditions and practices of the countries under Islamic rule.

The First World War led to the collapse of the world’s three remaining empires—Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman—which were already in competition with the nation-state in Europe. Then the modern nation-state began to emerge in the Arab and Islamic worlds from the ruins of those empires—particularly the Ottoman Empire.

An empire is by its very nature a pluralistic entity with its own traditions, mechanisms and conventions for coping with differences. National entities, on the other hand, are “homogeneous entities” and we all know the enormous problems Europe has had to face in the era of the nationstate; one example of these is Balkanisation—or partition—caused by national and ethnic identity crises. This is also why the rise of modern nationalisms in our own region has brought great suffering in its wake, particularly since US President Woodrow Wilson’s declaration of the principle of “the right of self-determination” for different ethnicities, nations and religions.

After abandoning the Caliphate in 1924, Turkey established a national, secular, homogeneous state. An “Egyptian national entity” appeared on the scene and adopted a constitutional system, though it was also strongly homogeneous. Meanwhile, the Saudi state was established in the

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Arabian Peninsula as a highly homogeneous Islam-oriented state, and the former empire of Oman arose as a model of an “open-minded” nation-state which sought to combine tradition with modernity. From imamate and monarchy our own path has taken us towards a modern centralised state—a state based on citizenship. It is not homogeneous, when considered from the point of view of either nationalism or religion. This is due in part to the racial pluralism of Omani society; it is true that its majority component is Arab and Islamic, but for centuries its citizens have included Arabs and non-Arabs as well as Muslims and non-Muslims. For over a century we have had non-Islamic religious communities and traditionally they have not suffered from religious or ethnic discrimination. There are also several Islamic sects and schools in the Sultanate who have lived together since the days when Oman was an empire, their harmonious relationship reinforced by their followers’ status as citizens and by a climate of social and cultural tolerance. With regard to the unrest that occurred as a result of Britain’s imperial retreat, the Cold War and various social problems, during His Majesty the Sultan’s reign the state’s strong citizenship-based policies and steady growth have enabled it to withstand any possibility that turmoil might occur as a result of ethnic, religious or regional differences. The principles of citizenship, freedom, the rule of law and the state’s strong development policies have produced a cohesive, tolerant and open-minded society committed to safeguarding the country’s unity and stability, not only during the time of unrest in the 1970s, but also in these re-

The culture of coexistence and pluralism. The Islamic View, Oman’s…

cent years that have come to be known as the Arab Spring (2011-2014)—or “Arab Autumn”, in view of the events that have taken place in large parts of the Arab region. ***

I think it is natural for a person to be extremely proud when his nation can rightly claim success in a highly uncertain world and a highly unstable region. This is why I have no hesitation in saying that Oman’s experience of al ‘aish al mushtarak and pluralism is virtually unique in the region, and that this is just as true of the past as it is of the present day. I have mentioned that our nation-state has not adopted highly integrationist policies with regard to either religion or nationality. In 1966 the Royal Decree (no. 101/96) was issued, known as the State Basic Law of the Sultanate of Oman, in which the Oman system of common existence was determined on the basis of the system’s three pillars: justice, reason and ethics. These were particularly defined in items 10, 12, 28 and 35, serving as an update for the development to set up the state institutions in keeping with the comprehensive international update of the concept of citizenship, equality and tolerance. Moreover, a glimpse into our Arab history will also reveal other examples of the “moderate” Islamic model of religious and national pluralism in Sicily and Andalusia, as well as in the Omani Empire, which extended along the Indian Ocean coasts of Africa and Asia.

I should also like to point out that an Islamic culture based upon the Holy Qur’an’s view of the world (and the Muslim peoples’ own historical experiences in the fields or religion

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and culture) offers possibilities and potential for openness, renewal and compatibility with the modern age and the modern world. This is reflected in the works of the Muslim reformers in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as in the writings of leading Omani fuqaha’ such as Nur al Din Abullah b.

Humayd al Salimi, Egyptians like Sheikh Mohammed ‘Abduh, and in North Africa Moroccans, Tunisians and Algerians like Abdel Hamid Ben Badis, Al Tahir Ben ‘Ashour, and ‘Allal al Fassi. These men and their numerous pupils worked on fiqh al ‘aish, within the Arab and Islamic world as well as further afield, and their large numbers of followers represented the majority of the Muslim public and continue to do so. I am making this point because the extremism and violence we see in many parts of the Arab and Islamic world has led many observers to conclude that Islamic or religious reform has failed, since “these extremist youth” do not accept the “other” and inflict violence upon those who disagree with their sectarian or religious views.

It is true that there are some extremist trends in Islamic thought. We characterise them under the umbrella heading of “neo-Salafism”. In many cases they resemble the new “Born-Agains” we come across in Evangelical circles, as well as in Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism. However, if we wish to understand them properly we also need to consider other factors which I should like to call “failure to cope with differences” or “reaction to social, intellectual, cultural and political pluralism”. Such situations are the responsibility of the societies, states and cultural elites of the countries affected.

The culture of coexistence and pluralism. The Islamic View, Oman’s…

Even religious or national extremism can be managed successfully in forward-looking, societies which have the ability to live their lives in a way that is in tune with the modern world. However, events in the Arab world in recent years have shown a significant degree of “fragility” in dealing with national problems and issues that are of concern to the younger members of society. Consequently, certain young extremists have taken it upon themselves to fill the cultural, religious and political vacuum—a situation similar to that which occurred in Latin America in the past in the countries in which military dictatorships found themselves confronting left-wing radicals. However, just as Latin America has succeeded in overcoming those dictatorships and radical militias, so too are the aware elites and strong-willed citizens of the Arab world capable of confronting the challenges and opening up new horizons—an option infinitely preferable to lamenting their plight or asking the Americans to save their countries and societies from fundamentalism.

The way out of the crisis is through a strong, openminded, pluralistic and democratic nation-state. There can be no doubt that the problems of today will point us in that direction, because there is no alternative. This has been proved by Oman’s successful development programme and its experience in coping with differences and creating a new and progressive environment for the younger generation and all the other classes of society.

The concept of al ‘aish al mushtarak and pluralism and the culture of citizenship are major elements of the global ethos of today. It is a concept that we seriously need to in-

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corporate into our religious and cultural life, not just because it will help us to create a diverse, modern culture and society today, but also because it is part of our history as Arabs and Muslims.

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World Consciousness, Citizenship and Shared Values

Human rights in contemporary Islamic thought Ridwan Al Sayyid

1. Where it all started

The United Nations Charter of 1945 heralded the birth of a new era for humanity after the horrors of World War II and several Arab states were able to profit from it in their struggles for independence. Initially, the Arabs saw it as being different from the League of Nations which was set up after the First World War and—contrary to US President Woodrow Wilson’s declared policy—had actually acted as a revitalising force for imperialism and its mandates over the Arab “entities” that had been dreaming of freedom following the fall of the Ottoman Sultanate.

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However, the Arabs’ positive view of the United Nations and its Charter was short-lived. In 1947 the new world body passed a resolution to divide Palestine between the Arabs and the Jews. (Most of that country’s Jewish population had fled to Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s as refugees from Hitler’s persecution and had settled in Jerusalem and along the country’s coast, where they had set up their armed units under the gaze—and with the approval— of Britain’s League of Nations mandate authority.) Consequently, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was issued in 1949, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were also fleeing from their homeland, driven out by the Zionists to the neighbouring countries of Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, as well as the Gaza Strip, which had been placed under Egyptian administration. Despite this, the new international organisation’s only response had been to establish an agency to assist the refugees in the countries where they had ended up, while its other relevant resolution—on the Palestinians’ Right of Return—was never implemented; this is still the case even today!

The result of all this was that, unlike other peoples, the Arabs acquired a highly sceptical attitude towards both the UN and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The early Arab critics of the UN and the Universal Declaration of Human rights were nationalist intellectuals whose criticisms were directed at the Organisation’s “double standards” and the world’s policies towards Palestine and the Arabs. Because of their experiences, the Arabs had become ardent opponents of imperialism and saw that their land was be-

Human rights in contemporary Islamic thought

ing colonised anew in a repeat of what had happened under the League of Nations after the First World War. They were also dismayed to see that the new global power—the Soviet Union—was in competition with the United States and Europe to be the first to recognise Israel. Moreover, they observed that nothing more than a UN resolution had been needed in order to bestow legitimacy upon the new “entity”, which historically had never existed in the region, and that they had no power to resist it, particularly following their defeat in the Palestine War. Hence it was not just a question of “double standards”, but rather a “conspiracy” against the Arabs or, as Gamal Abdel Nasser was later to describe it, a case of “the one who does not own [it] giving [it] to the one who is not entitled [to it]”!

To this day the notion of an “international conspiracy” continues to be a major element of Arab thinking. However, during the era of “Islamic fundamentalisms” after the 1970s it also came to be seen as “the conspiracy against Islam”.

Muslim criticisms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights date from the late 1950s, when a number of writers characterised it as anti-Islamic on the grounds that it based the principle on the concept of “natural right”, while they themselves saw those rights as “Divine Commandments”. This radical criticism was at the same time both cultural and creedal and went far beyond the notion of “double standards” and the iniquities of injustice and unfair international politics.

In fact, some Arab states had already rejected various statements in the Declaration about women’s and children’s rights at an earlier date on religious grounds, or had expressed

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reservations about them. At the time it was said that they (i.e. the states concerned) were unable to accept them since in their view they were incompatible with the Shariah. These states also had reservations over the Declaration’s support for the right of workers and other categories to set up unions, as well as about one or two other points.

As I have said, the issue of “natural right” also provided fuel for criticism of the Declaration in the name of religion. This question had originally surfaced during the 1940s as part of a general criticism of Western culture, which was seen as materialistic, secular, anti-religious and a threat to man’s respect for the Sacred and the Divine. Accordingly, when the question of “natural right” arose, it was seen as further evidence of the decadence and essential wickedness of Western culture—a culture already discredited by the World Wars which had slaughtered tens of millions of people, and the Age of Imperialism which had seen the destruction of nations and peoples in Africa and Asia. Those who had worded the Declaration—and based it on what they claimed was “natural right”—were themselves the very same people whose belief in “natural right” had not deterred them from colonising and exterminating millions of their fellow human beings—human beings who had seen absolutely no benefit at all from the assertions they had been given of “inviolable natural human rights”.

2. From criticism of Western culture to Islamic fundamentalism

One feature of Arab culture during the early part of the 20 century was a strong reformist tendency that rejected th

Human rights in contemporary Islamic thought

the “imitative” Islamic religious tradition and called for a “renewal” of religious thought. Meanwhile, on the political front several high profile writings were being circulated in support of the idea of a civil, constitutional, democratic state. Let us also not forget that Iran’s Constitutional revolution took place during the first decade of the 20th century (in 1905/1906) and that the Ottoman State entered its second constitutional era in 1908/1909. Then the constitutional nation-state began to make its appearance—particularly in Egypt—after the First World War and the fall of the Ottoman State, and during the British and French mandates.

This development was reinforced by the growing struggle against imperialism and in favour of independence.

The inter-war period saw the emergence of the notion of a “national culture” which sought to identify the specific features which distinguished it from European culture.

This process of defining one’s own culture, which also entailed a degree of cross-pollination with “modern culture”, generated widespread criticism of imperialism and imperialist culture and led to a distinction being drawn between Western global and humanist culture (which could be beneficial) and Western imperialism with its attitudes born of overweening military and cultural supremacy. It was this period which gave rise to criticism of Orientalism—or the image of the Arabs, Muslims and Islam created by Europeans of the 18th and 19th centuries—which had been strongly influenced by the mediaeval conflicts and wars between Christian Europe and the Ottomans. Here we should also remember that from the 9th century CE the Byzantine and

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Spanish Christians saw Islam as an offshoot of Christianity, or a heretical distortion of it.

All this meant that imperialism and Orientalism were regarded as negative factors in the relationship between the West and the intellectual class of the new Arab and Muslim nation states. They became even more prominent on the eve of imperialism’s departure, with the occupation of Palestine and the rise of national consciousness. The Arab nationalists were the first to speak about the UN’s double standards and Western culture’s “invasion” of modern Arab culture.

In linguistic sociology we have the problem of written and spoken colloquial and standard Arabic. Although this is actually found in most nations and cultures, Arab nationalist intellectuals regarded the championing of the colloquial language by some Western scholars as evidence of a conspiracy against classical Arabic culture.

So as I pointed out earlier, in the mid-1950s the double standards of Western policies was a common topic of discussion. Then at a somewhat later stage, the “revivalists”— or neo-Islamists—discarded the nationalist view of world culture and world civilization in favour of an Islamic one by rejecting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a valid point of reference on the grounds that it was based on the principle of “natural right”. To begin with, many people were unable to distinguish between these two trends, because nearly all the nationalists adopted a Marxist, leftist ideology from the mid-1960s and invoked curses upon imperialist, capitalist and neocolonialist culture. In doing so

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the Arabised leftist radical terminology they employed was no less violently anti-Western than the expressions used by the “neo-Islamists”. In fact, it would be true to say that the two sides “exchanged weapons”. Meanwhile, the Islamists focused their attacks on Orientalism (for its fanatical hostility to Islam), while denouncing the materialism of Western culture and the West’s corrupting influence, which had corrupted even Christianity itself. However, they knew little about their Western cultural and religious enemy and borrowed much of their language from the leftist jargon of the nationalists. Later, however, things changed when the Islamists turned their fire away from the West and its culture and onto the leftist intellectual class and the Arab nation-state, which had been dominated by military regimes since the 1950s.

Although the Americans had orchestrated the early coups in the Arab world, because of the Cold War and the escalating conflict over Palestine, the young Arab military class soon turned to the left and the Soviet Union, with the result that the nationalist and leftist intellectuals came to represent the intellectual class of the new regimes and— just like the new military regimes—they found themselves in conflict with the Islamists.

In 1972 M. Kerr, a Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, published a book entitled The Arab Cold War (19591969)—a reference to the fact that the Arab world had split along Cold War lines. In response to the situation, the “neo-Islamists”, who were in conflict with the Soviet-oriented Arab military regimes and the nationalist and leftist

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intellectuals, soon began to align themselves with the proAmerican side, and this marked the start of an Arab cultural war (as a footnote to the global clash of cultures during the Cold War). And as the climate at that time was one of “creeds and inevitabilities”, it was only natural that the Islamists should embrace the principle of “the inevitability of Islam”—or “the inevitability of the Islamic solution”— as a mirror image of the leftist position on “the inevitability of the socialist solution”. And just as the military intellectuals were speaking of the “revolutionary vanguard” and “long-term people’s war”, so too were the Islamists talking about the “greater” and “lesser” jihad. In their view the modern world was steeped in darkness and resembled the pre-Islamic Time of Ignorance; moreover, its materialistic culture and values had created conflicts which were so severe that human beings were no longer able to recognise each other’s humanity.

Their criticisms were a rejection not only of Marxist “inevitabilities” but also of democratic and liberal “inevitabilities” or solutions. Instead, they opted for a third solution” or a “third way”—the Way of Islam. As we all remember, in the mid-1970s these fundamentalist trends began to transform themselves into jihadist ideologies, first in Egypt, then in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan…leading later to the rise of al Qa’edah.

At the same time, there was also another trend engaged in the cultural/political struggle.

Both these trends sought to establish an Islamic state with a Shariah legal system. However, while one of them

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aimed to achieve it through jihad, the other opted for the political approach and winning over the masses by setting up a state in which absolute justice prevailed. The latter group’s supporters and proponents included university professors and intellectuals (both with and without party affiliations), whose holistic view of an Islamic state and an Islamic system capable of competing in the world arena also made provision for Islamic constitutions and Islamic declarations on human rights. During the last three decades of the 20th century these declarations evolved and distanced themselves somewhat from their party-political and combative connotations, with the result that they came to be debated in public forums such as the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (now known as the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation).

3. The Islamic declarations on human rights

There have in fact been two stages of Islamic declarations on human rights. The first stage, between the 1960s and 1980s, was largely one of challenge and confrontation.

The Qur’an and the words of the Messenger (PBUH) were seen as the true, clear alternative and were regarded as the way to protecting mankind’s humanity and world peace.

Meanwhile, instead of talking about “natural right”, the preambles to the texts stated that Islam had been revealed in order to guide mankind to the path of truth, justice and peace and ensure that mankind did not lose its humanity. The declarations from this first stage cited verses from the Qur’an and Hadiths of the Prophet as evidence of the

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fact that Allah had appointed Man as His Vicegerent upon earth so that he could develop it and enable good deeds and justice to prevail. They noted that it was the function of morality to shape the individual, while the individuals who had been so shaped would form decent and virtuous communities. At the same time, it was the proper function of Man as Vicegerent to follow the revealed religious teachings, the implementation of which by individuals and communities would guarantee a successful and upright way of living.

The declarations then proceeded to itemise the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights one by one. Those they regarded as valid were supported by a Qur’anic verse or a Hadith, while those they did not see as correct from a Shariah point of view were either not included or were referred to in a footnote as being incompatible with the Shariah of Islam and therefore unworthy of a mention.

The declarations of the second stage, between the 1990s and the present day, examined man from the point of view of three qualities. The first of these—fitrah (natural, God-given disposition)—is in many ways similar to the concept of “natural right”, in the sense that it maintains Allah has endowed Man with an intellect, freedom, the characteristic of living in a community, etc. The second quality—istikhlaf—concerns Man’s status as Vicegerent appointed by Allah to develop the world and entails the question of taklif, or duty. The third stage—maqasid al Shariah (objectives of the Shariah)—is a concept of major importance endorsed by numerous fuqaha (scholars of jurisprudence/doctrine) of the past and present, the most

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famous of whom was al Shatibi (15th century CE). In brief, this concept maintains that religious laws (not just Islam) were revealed in order to serve Man’s vital interests; these interests comprise the right to a religion, the right to life, the right to exercise the intellect, the right to procreate and the right to own property. These are essential preconditions for enabling a person to survive, meet the needs of his fitrah and fulfil the obligations of istikhlaf. Some modern fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence/doctrine) studies also add a further vital element—freedom.

The second stage declarations were similar to those of the first stage in that their articles were also supported with Qur’anic verses and Hadiths. However, they also added new articles which they regarded as having been mentioned in the Qur’an but absent from the original declarations.

Some twenty years ago E. Meyer published a study on the Islamic declarations of human rights which listed a total of 47 declarations. An additional twenty declarations have also been issued over the past decade.

What does this indicate? And do these declarations (at least, the ones from the second stage) add anything significant to this subject?

It is clear that they demonstrate at least three things: Islamism’s strength among Arabs and other Muslims; a sense of challenge, a desire for confrontation and an eagerness to bring their own heritage as a contribution to the modern world and its culture; and a search for justice—a quality that has been lost in the modern world and in the way the nationstate system has developed in the Arab and Muslim context.

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Let us begin by examining the third point—the search for justice. Earlier I referred to the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in connection with the loss of Palestine and the loss of its people’s rights. I mentioned that the sense of injustice had grown among nationalists and Islamists to the point where they had come to believe that there was a global conspiracy against the Arabs and Islam. This anger was even stronger among intellectuals who had become familiar with the West and the world order through fifty years of bitter experiences of military and security regimes. Hence the declarations came to be seen as a sort of substitute for the loss of their rights in the real world.

However, one strange thing about these declarations— the first stage ones at least—is that they do not attach much importance to the questions of freedom and musharakah (participation in the political process), despite the fact that the Islamists were among the social groups that were most prone to imprisonment, prosecution and deprivation of their rights. This takes us on to the question of Islamism and the reasons—or secrets—behind its strength in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Ever since Bernard Lewis students of this phenomenon have attributed it to nostalgia for the past inspired by the failures of the present day. In fact, though, the Muslim revivalists are closer to the New Evangelical groups which yearn to go back to the Old or New Testaments but by following a new interpretation of them.

The revivalists reject the Classical Islamic tradition and the way it understands the religion and its relationship to man-

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kind and the state; instead, they seek to go back directly to the Scripture while totally ignoring the historical perspective on the faith and the Ummah (Islamic nation). Their extreme Puritanism takes them to the point where they endeavour to prove that the only way to live is by following the Book and the Sunnah, rather than by returning to the traditions of the past and the history of Islam and the Muslim peoples, which they see as “tainted”.

Initially, the Islamists had little interest in freedom and musharakah because they saw them as Western values and part of the Western cultural invasion. However, they failed to appreciate that by adopting the Islamic declarations they were also imitating the hated West, even though those declarations were dressed in Islamic garb.

Their worldview is a Salvationist one which—as noted earlier—ultimately led to a jihadist ideology and continues to do so today.

However, by the second stage of the declarations they were showing themselves ready and willing to become part of modern life and its values and bring their religious approach and heritage to the culture of the contemporary world.

Since this is the case, should we merely attribute Islamism’s strength to nothing more than a reaction against the modern world, globalisation and dictatorial regimes?

Of course not. Even so, however, it is true that after the ideological and actual collapse of the political right and left in the 1960s and 1970s many young people began to turn their thoughts to a religious state—even while continuing

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to repeat the mantra that “A clerical state is alien to Islam”!

(As if a religious state was something that only existed in a Catholic context!)

On this assumption, if Shi’ite fundamentalism is “clerical”, then Sunni fundamentalism must be nomocratic!

Have the Muslims’ Islamic declarations of human rights had a positive impact on the modern world, or at least on Arab and Islamic societies? There are certainly obvious benefits to be had from making the issue of human rights a concern of our crisis-ridden societies. Furthermore, those declarations have brought the question of rights and their implications to the forefront of Arab and Muslim consciousness, so that Muslims have come to realise that they as a people are a part of this world and share its preoccupation with its citizens’ rights.

The roots of an elusive Andean identity: a brief history1 Enrique Ayala Mora

1. What does Andean culture mean?

When we speak about “Andean culture”, the massive Andean mountains come to mind or the image of an indigenous man with his llamas at the height of vast mountain ranges is evoked. However, when we try to define what “being Andean” means, we discover that it is complex.

Andean America is the setting of our past and our present. We know that it is there and that it encompasses us but it turns out to be difficult to define. Sometimes its reality and its limits do not seem to be evident to us and other times it eludes us altogether. There are some individuals that

1. This paper has been specially prepared for the Academia de la Latinidad based on a more extensive work by the author in “La experiencia andina en la historia: encuentros y desencuentros” that will be published in vol. 8 of the Historia de América Andina.

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say it is a reverie of rhetoric, politicians or anthropologists. There are many that identify it with the indigenous or altoandino.2

Andean America is a reality with deep roots in history, and a strong identity, and a future in integration.

To answer the question: What being Andean means?, we could respond from the geographic setting.

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However, the Andean culture does not exhaust itself in a single form of geographic determination. Its specific nature can be deduced by investigating its polysemic character that combines its oneness with plurality. That is to say that from one angle it recuperates the historicity of an age-old process that because of diverse factors renders oneness to the evolution of a group of nations facing a regional, continental and planetary reality. From a different angle, it expresses paradoxically not a unifying trunk but a unity that enables a plurality to another focused on diversity that does not simply disintegrate but integrates cultural and symbolic geographical and natural terms.3

Being Andean is not just complex. It is also diverse.

To understand this, one must consider the different visions concerning what being Andean means over the course of centuries. In some cases, those visions have expressed efforts to reach a common goal and even a recurring utopia. Others have emphasized diversity.4 There are continuities and discontinuities in the historic Andean experience.

To conjure up the past and the Andean identity is to look for our roots and try to understand the world to come that we face from our shared Andean space.

2. Enrique Ayala Mora, “Presentación general”, in Luis Lumbreras, ed., Historia de América Andina, vol. 1, Las sociedades aborígenes, Quito, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador, Libresa, 1999, p. 11.

3. Ibid., p. 14.

4. Alberto Flores Galindo, Buscando un Inca, identidad y utopía en los Andes, La Habana, Casa de las Américas, p. 23.

The roots of an elusive Andean identity: a brief history

2. An Andean civilization: the Incas

Andean America was populated at least 10,000 years before Christ.5 In this extensive period of time, societies appeared, grew and disappeared in their struggle to dominate and adapt to their environment. For millennia they developed a civilization that, influenced by the High Andes, emerged as an expression of environmental, economic and cultural diversity and at the same time maintained common traits that persisted for centuries.

The axis of the evolution of Andean America was the development of agriculture by communities that managed the vertical control of their space 6 There was a complementarity of geographic space, productive activity and relations with the environment. “This system of pluri-ecological control permits the maximum exploitation of the Andean ecological conditions.”7 The Andean communities were also based on relations of reciprocity that promoted collective labor, solidarity, social relationships, daily life and political alliance.

After several millennia, societies emerged with sophisticated systems of production, advanced cultivation techniques, irrigation and transportation, notable knowledge 5. Cfr. Gerardo Ardila, “El poblamiento de los Andes (10.000 a 7.000 a. C.)”, in Luis Lumbreras, ed., Historia de América Andina, vol. 1, p. 47.

6. The pioneer of the study of the structure of the Andean regions was John Murra. One of his basic works is: Political and economic formations in the Andean world, Lima, Institute of Peruvian Studies, 1975.

7. Franklin Pease G. Y., Los incas, una introducción, Lima, Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1988, p. 76

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of ceramics and metallurgy and a differentiated and complex social structure. Agricultural villages and major urban hubs grew.8 Complex tribal societies or señoríos emerged where authority was exercised by priests and shamans and social differences grew larger and larger. These societies were based on military conquests and political alliances.

They formed incipient states or confederations. The most successful of these was the Incas that thrived in the 15th century from the south of Peru and covered territories of present Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Southern Colombia.9 At the beginning of the 16th century, the Inca Empire had reached its largest expansion.

The Inca Empire was the expression of the civilizing experience in Andean America. It was a great experience on the continental and world scale with a complex social and economic structure, roads and a sophisticated government made up of an absolute monarchy.10 The Incans, like the Romans in the Mediterranean, preserved social and technical advances of the Andean peoples they conquered,

8. L. Lumbreras, “Formación de las sociedades urbanas”, Historia de América Andina, vol. 1: Las sociedades aborígenes, p. 223.

9. F. Pease, Los incas, una introducción, p. 50.

10. Under this “central government” was a complex hierarchy of señores or caciques that ruled over the entire territory. The Inca historian says: “The territorial growth created a vast sector of landlords with very distinct status and attributes. Innumerable administrators and state authorities whose responsibility was trusted on to direct the government were added to this ‘provinciana’ elite”, María Rostorowski de Diez Canseco, Historia del Tahuantinsuyo, Lima, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1988, p. 181-2.

The roots of an elusive Andean identity: a brief history

charged taxes and maintained peace. Under its rule, production, communication and commerce grew.

The Inca Empire was a complex and multi-ethnic state that covered a great part of Andean American señoríos. Because of that, “there was continuity and effective survival in the Inca State, consisting of agriculture, grazing and textile manufacturing that made the rural ethnic communities selfsufficient”. But “this community is clearly part of a more ample context of economic, social and political power”.11 The Inca Empire was based on diverse industrious relations concerning production, with the communities or ayllus articulated by a strong and centralized state based on its military organization and some of its economic activity.

The Inca Empire was a unique experience.

The merit of the Andean culture, whose last protagonist was Tahuantinsuyo, was that it succeeded in reordering the economy and the society up to refined state levels without being influenced by other civilizations in other parts of the world.12

The Inca Empire that came to be known as “Tahuantinsuyo” (which means four parts) grouped together four suyos.

It was a true Andean experience.

3. The conquest of the Andean world

At the beginning of the 16th century, the European conquerors invaded Tahuantinsuyo and managed to dominate 11. John V. Murra, La organización económica del Estado Inca, México, Siglo XXI Editores, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1978, p. 131.

12. Waldemar Espinoza Soriano, Los Incas, economía, sociedad y Estado en la era del Tahuantinsuyo, Lima, Amaru Editores, 1990, p. 497.

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it in a few years. The Inca society was right in the middle of a transition, but this was not completed because of the European conquest. The fall of the empire and the relative ease that the conquerors experienced to subdue the Incas cannot be explained by their “superiority”, horses, weapons and written documents. The phenomenon can be better understood if we discover their conflicts, internal weaknesses and the diseases that were brought by the conquerors. The conquest was a civil war.13 The empire lost its morale from the inside.

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The constant uprisings that shook the empire exposed the discontent and the state of rebelliousness that existed among many señores étnicos before the power of Cuzco. In this way, the arrival of the Europeans—in reality, the vanguard of a much more organized invasion—must have meant the much-anticipated liberation (from Incan rule) that many local groups had waited years for.14

Apart from the subduing, the deaths caused by diseases brought by the conquerors and the mechanisms of exploitation, the conquest meant the end of the Andean world and the expulsion from history of the indigenous peoples.

Conquerors, presidents, bishops and notables fill the pages of books for four centuries, during which time, invisible 13. Guillermo Bustos Lozano, “La conquista española”, in Enrique Ayala Mora, ed., Manual de Historia del Ecuador, vol. I: Épocas aborigen y colonial, independencia, Quito, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador, Corporación Editora Nacional, 2008, p. 47.

14. Carmen Gómez Pérez, Juan Marchena Fernández, “Las sociedades indígenas y los conquistadores Apus y Supays”, in Manuel Burga, ed. Historia de América Andina, vol. 2, Formación y apogeo del sistema colonial, Quito, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador, Libresa, 2000, p. 19-20.

The roots of an elusive Andean identity: a brief history

but somehow present, the Indians were recognized to have continued to be fundamental historical actors. The appearance of “Andean Utopias”, with diverse manifestations that witnessed reality from the perspective of the defeated, confronted this situation in various instances.

For the natives, the world was the space they inhabited. For the elite Incans, this was Tahuantinsuyo. “The cosmos were divided in two; the celestial world and the underworld, the sky and the earth were named hananpacha and huirinpacha. Pacha means universe. The order of the cosmos repeats itself in other levels.” When defeat came, it meant “for many Andean men that the conquest was a pachacuti, which is to say the inversion of order”.15 It was the transition of one era to another in a history that tended to repeat itself. That is why, although some accepted the defeat as a punishment from their gods and collaborated with the colonists, others assumed that the conquest was that transition and continued the resistance. The Europeans did not have a clear idea of the world either. When they arrived to these lands they confused them with Asia and called them the “Indies”. It took them several decades to figure out that this was another continent. But they continued calling it the “Indies”.16

15. A. Flores Galindo, Buscando un Inca, p. 42.

16. The name “American territories”, or simply America, came later, after Vespucci’s maps were published, but it did not become widely known.

In the first colonial centuries, the official name that the Spanish bureaucracy gave to the American colonial empire continued being “the Indies”.

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The conquerors were ambitious for wealth and power but they also thought that they could gain a new world for Christianity. Among the chiefs and the few priests and mestizos of the New World that identified themselves with the Indians, they saw the Inca past as a structured and harmonic society and as an ideal world destroyed by the Spanish invaders. That is what Garcilaso de la Vega thought.17 The vision that identified Andean society with the Inca past began to spread. The Andean culture, defeated and colonized, endured in the collective consciousness.

4. The “Andean space” in colonial times

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After the wars of the conquest, the aborigine societies were controlled by the Spanish conquerors based on agreements with the caciques that conserved power over their communities in exchange for their collaboration.18 But during the first years, the colonizers confronted each other and the authorities that came from Spain. In the end, the Spanish Crown won.

The main centers of colonization were established in the territories of the major empires: the Aztec and the Inca.

They were organized around mining centers in Mexico and Potosí.19 Other territories produced food and textiles.

17. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales de los incas, Lima, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, 2007.

18. Frank Salomon, “Crisis y transformación de la sociedad aborigen invadida (1528-1573)”, Enrique Ayala Mora, ed., Nueva Historia del Ecuador, vol. 3, Quito, Corporación Editora Nacional, 1990, p. 111-22.

19. Fréderique Langue y Carmen Salazar-Soler, “Origen, formación y desarrollo de las economías mineras (1570-1650): nuevos espacios económicos y circuitos mercantiles”, in Manuel Burga, ed., Historia de América

The roots of an elusive Andean identity: a brief history

To rule the American empire, the Spanish Crown divided it into two virreinatos (viceroyalties)—in North and Central America, “Nueva España” and in the Andean region of South America, Peru. The cabildos (town councils), audiencias and gobernaciones were created within these subdivisions. Religious authorities were also established. In the 16th century, the Peruvian Viceroyalty covered a good part of South America. Its backbone was the Andean territory from Bogota and Quito in the north to Potosí and Chile in the south, with its capital in Lima. Twentieth-century historians named it the “Peruvian Space”. A major portion of the population was concentrated in the High Andes. There was little occupation on the coast. The Amazon region was religious mission territory.

The Andean culture and society determined colonial organization. Although the colonial authorities and the Church tried to eliminate some of the indigenous cultural traits, they took advantage of some of them in order to dominate. They used religious worship sites for Catholic saints, retained these feasts with new content, and tried to give meaning of continuity to authority by presenting the colonial leaders as legitimate successors of the Incan governors. In the religious celebrations they represented the great events of the past like Huayna Cápac’s victories or the defeat and subsequent death of Atahualpa.

Andina, vol. 2: Formación y apogeo del sistema colonial, Quito, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador, 1999, p. 135.

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After the conquest, the cruelty used by the Inca rulers disappeared from the indigenous memory but the violence they suffered at the hands of European invaders was not forgotten. They reminisced about a harmonic Tahuantinsuyo governed without authoritarian rule or violence. Some protests and anti-colonial movements renovated the “Andean Utopia” and a “return of the Inca”. They conserved oral testimonies concerning myths like the “Incarri”.20 Millennialism took root again and they spoke of the appearance of sovereign Incas that announced the reinstatement of Tahuantinsuyo. But these were not just simple visions:

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The idea of a return of the Inca didn’t appear spontaneously in the Andean culture. It didn’t try to be a mechanical answer to the Colonial domination. They had re-constructed the Andean past in their memories previously and it transformed itself and was converted into an alternative to the present. This is a distinctive feature from the Andean Utopia. The ideal city doesn’t remotely stay out of history at the beginning of periods. On the contrary, it is a historical contribution.

It has existed and it has a name: Tahuantinsuyo. Its rulers: the Incas.

And a capital: Cuzco. The content that retains this construction has been changed to imagine a kingdom without hunger or exploitation and where Andean men return to govern. The end of disorder and darkness. Inca means idea or main organizer.21

The Andean-Inca elements determined the colonial reality even though they were subordinated. The millenarian utopias were strong and there was a continuity and consciousness concerning Andean culture or a return to some of the Inca realities. The “Peruvian Space” was a continu20. Mercedes López Baralt, El retorno del Inca rey: mito y profecía en el mundo andino, Madrid, Editorial Playor, 1990, p. 77.

21. A. Flores Galindo, Buscando un Inca, p. 51.

The roots of an elusive Andean identity: a brief history

ity of the “Andean Space”. The colonial scheme based on the extraction of precious metals was in crisis in the 18th century because of the decline in production in Potosí.22 The Spanish Crown changed hands and gave way to the “Bourbon Reforms”.23 One of them was a readjustment in the administration that affected the Viceroyalty of Lima and the “Peruvian Space”.

The indigenous resistance maintained the defense of its territories, customs, community structures, feasts, language and other forms of identity. When the “Peruvian Space” crisis occurred, indigenous, mestizo and slave uprisings multiplied.24 Some of them vindicated the return of Tahuantinsuyo, believing that the past would resuscitate Andean utopias. The rebellion of Tupac Amaru gained several victories that laid siege to Cuzco. The Spanish authorities were confronted with great violence. Another rebellion

by Tupac Catari immediately appeared in Upper Peru.25 The confrontation reached major proportions, with much 22. Enrique Tandeter, “Economía minera en el espacio andino”, in Margarita Garrido, ed., Historia de América Andina, vol. 3, El sistema colonial tardío, Quito, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador, Libresa, 2001, p. 73-6.

23. John Lynch, “El reformismo borbónico en Hispanoamérica”, in Agustín Guimerá, ed., El reformismo borbónico, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1996, p. 40-5.

24. Segundo Moreno Yánez, “Motines, revueltas y rebeliones en Hispanoamérica”, in Historia general de América Latina, vol. IV, Procesos americanos hacia la redefinición colonial, p. 423.

25. Humberto Vásquez Machicado, José de Mesa, Teresa Gisbert, Carlos D. Mesa Gisbert, Manual de Historia de Bolivia, La Paz, Editorial Gisbert, 1994, p. 260.

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bloodshed. These two uprisings became references to Andean indigenous millenarism. In 1781 the “Revolution of the Comuneros” in Socorro, Viceroyalty of Santa Fe of Bogota, was led by the Creole elite against the reforms of Carlos III.26 It was subdued by the authorities of the Viceroyalty and its leaders were pursued, but its radical questioning of authority matured in the following decades.

5. Independence: consciousness of an ambiguous identity

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At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, the crisis of the Ancient Regime occurred. A revolution broke out in Spanish America at a critical turning point, feeding off the weakness of the monarchy and the expansion of the Napoleonic conquests. In the beginning, juntas or local councils formed by Creoles tried to govern in the name of the King. This started the process of Hispanic-American independence that began as a Creole attempt to form autonomous governments maintaining links with the Spanish monarchy. Afterwards it radicalized and finally put an end to ties with the metropolis.

The Independence Movement was successful when it became a continental action, integrating diverse districts and jurisdictions and convoking diverse social actors. The most important leader was Simón Bolívar, who realized that the only way to gain independence was with a collective effort from the entire subcontinent and with the incor26. John Leddy Phelam, El pueblo y el rey, la revolución comunera en Colombia, 1781, Bogotá, Carlos Valencia Editores, 1980.

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poration of social groups who could look after their own interests.27 The progression of the War of Independence developed a collective American identity. Simón Bolívar said in 1815: “We are just a small human genre; we possess a world apart, isolated by dilated oceans, new in almost all arts and sciences even though old concerning civil society.”28 The “patriots” facing the “royalists” defended their continental cause and saw the necessity of uniting the entire SouthAmerican continent in order to be able to defeat them. A sense of unity developed among the old colonial territories.

The newly-formed independent nations liberated by Bolívar’s army had a strong Andean cultural presence.29 One of the unifying elements was the sense of being Andean.

Black people played an important role in the Wars for Independence; they were warriors who fought for their own personal liberty. The indigenous, in turn, had little participation; they knew that the interests of Creole elites were not their own.

27. Simón Bolívar, Pensamiento fundamental, Quito, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador, Corporación Editora Nacional, 2004, p.

31.

28. Simón Bolívar, “Contestación de un americano meridional a un caballero de esta isla”, iSimón Bolívar, Discursos, proclamas y epistolario político, Madrid, Editora Nacional, 1975, p. 156.

29. The predominance of the Andean culture in Peru, Upper Peru and Quito was notorious. In Colombia, it became obvious in later years. An example was that Bolívar and his army had to “cross the Andes” from Venezuela to liberate Nueva Granada. In Venezuela, the weight of the population of the regions marked by the High Andes was of enormous importance in the Independence and the subsequent republican history.

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But the effort for unity in the war and the formation of the states sometimes led to an interpretation of independence as a grievance from the indigenous people. José Joaquín Olmedo wrote his grand poem about the Independence of America highlighting Simón Bolívar, who had won the Battle of Junín in August of 1824.30 Later, Sucre outdid him and won the final Battle of Ayacucho. To unite these two events, Olmedo introduced the figure Huayna Cápac, who remembers the cruelty of the conquerors, calling them “usurpers”. He identifies the patriots as warriors taking revenge for indigenous atrocities and for their sons:

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Oh fields of Junín!...

Oh favorite son and friend that takes revenge for the Inca!

Oh people that form one people and a family and all that are my sons!

Live, triumph…31

But the fact is that: Through the poem “Canto a Bolívar”, Olmedo openly expresses the tension between the concepts of ethnicity and nationality that are resolved in his poem with the adoption of aborigine traditions that were eliminated by the Spanish, creating, in that way, a proper identity for the recently liberated continent.32

Bolívar didn’t like the presence of the Inca. He said: 30. José Joaquín Olmedo, “La victoria de Junín, Canto a Bolívar”, in Biblioteca Mínima Ecuatoriana, José Joaquín Olmedo, Poesía, prosa, Puebla, Ed. Cajica, 1960, p. 113-23.

31. Ibid., p. 115.

32. Regina Harrison, Entre el tronar épico y el llanto elegíaco, simbología indígena en la poesía ecuatoriana de los siglos XIX y XX, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Abya-Yala, 1996, p. 51.

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We aren’t European; we aren’t indigenous; but a species between the aborigines and the Spanish. Natural-born Americans and Europeans by right, we find in fiction the act of disputing our designation as naturals and it is this right that states that we were born to support the opposition of said invaders.33

Bolívar did not feel that he represented the indigenous people or that his efforts were to restore Tahuantinsuyo.

This was not Olmedo’s purpose either. He used the Inca to justify independence but not to return to the Indian past.

Bolívar’s mission would not be to return to the past but to “make laws” and guarantee liberty for the people.34 On the other hand, accusing the Spanish of oppressing the indigenous, Olmedo exempts the Creoles and mestizos, that is to say, he exempts his people of acts that they still continued committing amidst the Independence Movement.

Olmedo first gives the Incas a voice against the Spanish and exhorts Bolívar to maintain unity in the countries that fought for independence but finishes by justifying future republican domination. Transforming insurgents into those that take revenge for the indigenous atrocities was frequent in the discourse of the freedom fighters. The return to the Inca past that had been a colonial Andean utopia served as a justification for independence and a unifying element for the forces that started it. The Liberator was the most important propagandist for integration. That is why being “Andean” and being “Bolivarian” are identi33. Simón Bolívar, “Discurso pronunciado ante el Congreso de Angostura el 15 de febrero de 1819, día de su instalación”, Simón Bolívar, Discursos, proclamas y epistolario político, p. 219.

34. J. J. Olmedo, “La victoria de Junín, Canto a Bolívar”, p. 120-1.

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fied as being one and the same. In Olmedo’s poem we find encounters and failed encounters in the quest for an American identity. Independence brought light to several Andean roots in our countries, roots which projected themselves in the republican existence.

6. The 19th century: national consciousness

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After independence, the Nation-State emerged in Andean America. The effort to construct the Great Republic of Colombia failed. After that, the Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation was formed and dissolved. The region finally opted for five separate countries (Venezuela, New Granada—which later adopted the name Colombia—Ecuador and Peru).35 Chile was considered an exception concerning the national constitution.

The Andean Nation-States, a continuation of the colonial State in many aspects, were characterized by deep ethnic, regional and socio-economic differences. A long process of constitution and consolidation, full of conflicts, contradictions, progress and setbacks began in the 1820’s.

They were based on regionalization and land property, the reinstatement of legal power and the exclusion of the majority (women, Indians, blacks and non-landowners). Their founders, landlords and powerful merchants, set up national projects such as the continuation of Hispanity, adopted

35. Along with these countries can be added the Republic of Panamá in 1903, after it that had broken off from Colombia.

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republican institutions and monarchial continuities.36 They retained practices such as ethnic discrimination and class societies similar to the colonial period that supported institutionalized inequality. At the same time, they confronted each other in regional disputes.

The Creole elite imposed their national vision. They considered that “universal” values eliminated cultural diversity.37 The “mestizos” became the most active participants in the identity of the nations which they considered patrias. The newly-formed States penetrated society with their administrative infrastructure. It was the action of the States that consolidated the Nations and not vice versa.38 But popular visions also were incorporated in the Nation.

The Catholic Church was recognized as the official “State Church”. It maintained its role as an agent of ideological conservation and socio-economic domination. Armies that were formed during the Independence Movement conserved their force and influence. They were frequent arbitrators between dominant groups. The States that had consolidated themselves in the 19th century with their conflicts and contradictions now found themselves in positions of very critical regional importance. In Bolivia, Ec36. Germán Carrera Damas, “República monárquica o monarquía republicana”, Historia de América Andina, vol. 4, Crisis del régimen colonial e independencia, Quito, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador, Libresa, 2003, p. 357.

37. Josep Fontana, La historia después del fin de la historia, Barcelona, Crítica, 1992, p. 109.

38. Tomás Pérez Vejo, Nación, identidad nacional y otros mitos nacionalistas, Oviedo, Ediciones Nobel, 1999, p. 129.

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uador and a good part of Colombia, the various axes of political power and the majority of the population concentrated in the Upper-Andean region. In Peru, although the political center was Lima, the majority of the population was in the Highlands. In Venezuela, there was a strong presence of politicians who came from the Andean region.

In the beginning, international borders were not precise and subject to long confrontations, wars, complaints and losses. But the occupation of the territory was for the most part Upper-Andean. One characteristic of regionalization in the 19th century was the conflict between the elite groups that lived on the coast and in the Highlands, which in many cases turned into civil war. The “Andeans” could be identified with economic protectionism and political conservatism. However, it was also a characteristic of the general identity of the new States. In various cases, it emphasized elements of national symbols like the condor, so emblematic of the High Andes, or the indigenous sun.39 Attempts at intervention by European powers (especially Spain) trying to recover their colonies provoked strong reactions from Andean countries. That occurred with the expeditions of General Flores in the 40’s,40 or the seizure of the Chincha Islands and the bombardment of Lima by 39. The national emblems of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru include the condor, the Andean bird par excellence. Besides the condor, the last two countries have the indigenous sun and the Andes mountain range as national emblems. Peru has the llama, the well-known Andean camel.

40. Cfr. Ana Gimeno, Una tentativa monárquica en América: el caso ecuatoriano, Quito, Banco Central del Ecuador, 1988.

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a Spanish fleet in the 60’s. Both episodes caused protests, meetings between government delegates and proposals of alliances between the Pacific countries.41 But these projects did not prosper. The idea that began to be accepted was “Latin America”. Later, “Pan-Americanism” was created and became an instrument of predominance of the United States in the continent.

7. Andean Indigenism: indigenous consciousness

The beginning of the 20th century brought important changes in Andean American countries. The growing link to the world market, the modernization of some aspects of economic and social life, the increase of population and the growth of cities brought phenomena like the extension of middle sectors and the development of the working class, organization and protest. Left-wing intellectual activists founded new parties and socialist movements. Art and literature promoted themes of denouncement and insurgency.

With influence from earlier years, Indigenism took root in the 20’s, especially in Peru. It was seen as an “anthropological reflection that indigenous cultures had been rediscovered after the storm caused by political liberalism”.42 But it was more: it was a questioning of national projects 41. Aimer Granados García, “Congresos e intelectuales en los inicios de un proyecto de una conciencia continental en Latinoamérica, 1826-1860”, in Aimer Granados y Carlos Marichal, comp., Construcción de las identidades latino-americanas: ensayos de historia intelectual, siglos XIX y XX. México, El Colegio de México, 2004, p. 39.

42. Manuel M. Marzal, Historia de la Antropología Indigenista, Barcelona, Anthropos, 1993, p. 35-6.

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and identities. “Indigenism emerged first as a literary movement that idealized the Inca Empire”, but later “it was also understood as the construction of a new national identity whose center was the native culture with a pre-Columbian origin that had survived centuries of adversity”.43 Manuel González Prada was the most important figure of Indigenism. There were various writers and educators, among them Luis Eduardo Valcárcel, whose ethnocentrism postulated the elimination of everything not indigenous. They were stimulated by the “andinista” movement that would integrate itself “in a conception of Indian America, where the people of Cuzco would be a species of ‘chosen people’ and the unique elite capable of directing the andinista movement.”44 Indigenism or the pro-Indigenism political movement prepared the path for socialist reflection on Andean reality.

José Carlos Mariátegui, the most original and important of its ideologists, proposed to rethink the country and transform it.45 Based on the principles of Marxism, he reevaluated the indigenous community as a foundation of historical society and the axis of Peru’s future without falling into Indianist fundamentalism, setting the framework of his vision in the analysis of a class society subject to the power of 43. Carlos Contreras y Marcos Cueto, Historia del Perú contemporáneo, Lima, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2007, p. 246-7.

44. Miguel Rojas Mix, Los cien nombres de América, San José, Universidad de Costa Rica, 1991, p. 282.

45. José Carlos Mariátegui, 7 ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana, Lima, Biblioteca Amauta, (1928) 1995.

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landowners and the bourgeois, where regional tension and ethnic confrontations occur.

Mariátegui made proposals for all of Latin America and its unity. “Spanish America, he said, presents itself as practically fragmented, split and balkanized. However, its unity is not utopia, it is not an abstraction.”46 That unity will make them popular actors. “Those timid toasts of diplomacy will not unite those people. They will be united in what is to come, the historic vote of the masses.”47 Unity has enemies, especially North-American policies toward the subcontinent that imposed its submission in the name of Pan-Americanism. The new Hispanic-American generation “must define clearly and precisely the reason for its opposition to the United States”, that is not against its people but against leaders like T. Roosevelt, the “representative of the Imperial spirit”.48 Another Peruvian thinker that put forth the indigenous question from the social and political standpoint was Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre. He saw the indigenous question not as racial but rather socio-economic: a class exploited by dominant local classes and imperialism. He used the term “Indo-America” for Latin America and promoted the “American Revolutionary Popular Action” (APRA), a pop46. José Carlos Maríategui, “La unidad de la América indo-española”, in José Carlos Mariátegui, Obras, tomo 2, La Habana, Casa de las Américas, 1982, p. 249.

47. Ibid., p. 250.

48. J. C. Mariátegui, “El ibero-americanismo y el pan-americanismo”, in Obras, tomo 2, p. 253.

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ulist movement that had influence in Peru. He thought that the State, an instrument of oppression of one class over another, becomes a weapon of our governing national classes and keeps our people divided. Consequently, the struggle against our governing classes is indispensable; political power must be captured by its producers; production must be socialized and Latin America must construct a Federation of States.49 The APRA proposed the unity of Indo-America with “action against Yankee Imperialism”. Latin America, it was said in 1923, could be considered to be divided into four sectors. The first sector is the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, Panama and Antilles or West Indies.

“The second sector is the one that is called Bolivarian Republics: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia where Imperialism action can be found in the Period of the Loan, of the great construction and of the treaty.”50 Third, the Republics of Plata and Chile, and fourth, Brazil. Very early, Haya de la Torre grouped the countries that formed the “Andean Group” into a differentiated group inside the subcontinent.

Indigenism was developed in other countries too. The Bolivian Alcides Arguedas published Raza de bronce (Bronze race), considered as the precursor of the indigen49. Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, Antimperialismo y la APRA, Lima, Editorial Amauta, 1972, p. 81.

50. Luis Alan Castro (selection, introduction and chronology), The dream of the liberator, Haya de la Torre and the unity of America (Anthology), Lima, Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Peru, 2004, p. 53.

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ista novel in Latin America.51 In Ecuador, Pio Jaramillo Alvarado inaugurated a rich tradition with The Ecuadorian Indian.52 In Colombia, Antonio García posed the question in Pasado y presente del indio.53 Studies also appeared about nation, mestizos and Afro-Colombian culture. The indigenous question was not a national priority in Chile, but the social question was developed.54 Between the 20’s and the 40’s, writers and politicians drafted reform proposals that accompanied the mass movement.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, social themes flourished, especially the land and popular figures. Notable writers were the Colombian José Eustacio Rivera and the Venezuelan Rómulo Gallegos. The indigenista novel enjoyed its peak with Huasipungo from Ecuadorian Jorge Icaza.55 The “vanguards” highlighted the value of liberty and the fight for independence, such as Las lanzas coloradas by Venezuelan Arturo Úslar Pietri.56 From Venezuela 51. Alcides Arguedas, Bronce Race, La Paz, Editores González y Medina, 1919 (definitive edition: Buenos Aires, Editorial Lozada, 1945).

52. The work was initially edited in 1925. Currently in circulation is this edition: Pio Jaramillo Alvarado, El indio ecuatoriano: contribución al estudio de la sociología indo-americana, Quito, Corporación Editora Nacional, 1983.

53. Antonio García, Pasado y presente del indio, Bogotá, Ediciones Centro, 1939.

54. Jaime Eyzaguirre, Historia de las instituciones políticas y sociales de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Editorial Universitaria, 1991, p. 191.

55. Jorge Icaza, Huasipungo, Quito, Imprenta Nacional, 1934 (the text has been modified in other editions).

56. The work was published for the first time in 1931. A very well-known edition is: Arturo Uslar Pietri, Las lanzas coloradas, Barcelona, Salvat Editores, 1970.

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and Colombia surged a tendency that praised the action of heroes and invoked common ties among countries liberated under the leadership of Bolívar.

Right-wing politics were also concerned with the indigenous question and interpreted reality from a racist and paternalistic perspective. They did so because they were, according to Flores Galindo, “the most refined Hispanist intellectuals from oligarchies and ultramontanes—those associated with the Sevilla historical school and tributaries during the 40’s and 50’s of pro-Franco authoritarism”.57 By questioning what is a nation, re-evaluating the indigenous presence and gauging the social struggle just by calling the subcontinent “Indo-America”, Indigenism opened paths that led to the definition of an ample common identity of our people and countries, especially the Andeans.

8. Rediscovering the Andes: historical conscience

Several studies that contributed to other views about the past and social history came after the writings of the Indigenists. The vision of the “Hispanists” and intellectuals linked with the oligarchies was opposed to the studies of a posterior cosmopolitan intelligence influenced by North-American anthropology and worried about finding alternatives to the challenge of the propagation of Marxism. The Indian that for some Indigenists threatened to besiege Lima, according to Flores Galindo, was converted into the “Andean Man”. A figure outside of history, unalterable, living in an eternal return of his self that was necessary in order

57. A. Flores Galindo, Buscando un Inca, p. 5.

The roots of an elusive Andean identity: a brief history

to maintain distance from whatever modernity he should find. Immobile and passive. Singular and abstract.58

Since the 50’s, there was a development of anthropology, archaeology and ethnohistory in the Andean countries.

There were several economic and Inca studies published in Peru. There were also studies by North Americans and Europeans. These new realities generated the need for a sense of “rediscovering the Andes”. The works of John Murra reached a great audience.59 Academics held meetings like the “Peruvian Congress of Man and Andean Culture”, where many advances were presented that circulated in several countries. An important development of the social sciences occurred too. Some of those studies were not free of an idealized and immobilized vision that Flores Galindo criticized.

The name “the Andes” was established internationally in the vocabulary of social sciences. It referred to the land first developed by Indian señoríos and later articulated by the Inca Empire and its continuity in the “Colonial Peruvian Space”. When “the Andes” was mentioned it meant the Peruvian Viceroyalty, including the republic, extended to the current Republics of Ecuador and Bolivia.

Peru was considered an axis of “the Andes”. For example, “the Northern Andes” were what is now Ecuador, when in reality the northern Andean mountains reach close to 58. Flores Galindo, Buscando un Inca, p. 5.

59. Among the most outstanding authors of that era were Murra and his disciples. Several of the most important Peruvian authors of those years have already been cited in this study.

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the Caribbean in Colombia.60 The Andes, being Andean or part of the indigenous culture, have always been identified with Peru.

The steady stream of studies about “the Andes” lasted several decades. Even when it was called the “Andean Area”, some writers maintained its Peruvian tradition and certain “Latin-American Studies” included the idea of the Andes: “what are now territories of the Republics of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia and fractions of the highlands of Colombia and the northeastern sections of Argentina and Chile”.61 That reduced vision has sometimes lasted until the present. But studies exist that incorporate “being Andean” with a more ample vision.

The concern about the colonial and Indian past, together with the struggle of workers and peasants, surged in parallel with the popular movement. It was a cultural and academic consequence of political realities. The “Peruvian Revolution”, started in 1968 under the leadership of General Juan Velasco Alvarado, carried out agrarian, industrial and banking reforms and settlements on nationalist bas60. Ecuadorian historians accepted the denomination for Indian and Colonial history. Only later was adopted the name “Equatorial Andean America” adopted, as it is more appropriate. Cfr. Segundo Moreno, “Época Aborigen”, Enrique Ayala Mora, ed., Manual de Historia del Ecuador, vol. I, Quito, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar Sede Ecuador, Corporación Editora Nacional, p. 13.

61. Heraclio Bonilla, “El área andina como situación y como problema” (1976), in Heraclio Bonilla, El futuro del passado: las coordenadas de la configuración de los Andes, tomo I, Lima, Fondo Editorial del Pedagógico San Marcos, Instituto de Ciencias y Humanidades, 2005, p. 34.

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es. He proposed: “Proclaim national sovereignty as a principle. Reject foreign intervention in internal affairs and respect the position of others.”62 The Peruvian Revolution named its fundamental governmental guidelines the “Inca Plan” and adopted Andean symbols and Indian images to identify its most important programs. Figures like Túpac Amaru were symbols of the process. In this way, “being Andean” started to have a new political meaning.

9. Bolivarianism: consciousness of common roots

Since the foundation of our Republics, the figure of Simón Bolívar has always been praised. In Bolivia, it was tied to its foundation and the name given to the country.63 Bolívar became a national symbol very early. In Ecuador, “loyalty” to the Liberator constituted an element of identity and political force that invoked diverse tendencies during its history.64 In Colombia, the adhesion to the figure of Bolívar became a reference to the Conservative Party that maintained the Bolivarian tradition. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, was identified with its opposers. In Peru, Bolívar was recognized as one of the generals of in the In62. Augusto Zimmermann Zavala, El plan inca, objetivo: revolución peruana, Lima, Empresa editora del diario oficial El Peruano, s.f., p. 107.

63. An Assembly met in 1825, resolved to establish an independent country with the name “Bolivarian Republic” and declared the Liberator “Father of the Homeland”. In a very short span of time it changed the country’s name to “Bolivia” (cfr. Humberto Vásquez Machicado y otros, Manual de Historia de Bolivia, p. 336).

64. Cfr. Enrique Ayala Mora, El bolivarianismo en el Ecuador, Quito, Corporación Editora Nacional, 1991.

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dependence Movement but also as an invader or dictator.

His influence there has been limited. In Venezuela, after the early Republican years in which the Liberator was pursued and denigrated, he was converted into a national icon and the “Bolívar cult” was transformed into a central state ideology.65 In our countries, especially in Venezuela, state and education entities, armed forces, local powers and social institutions have cultivated the cult of the Liberator as a gesture of liberty and justifier of power, with “Bolivarian societies” (sociedades bolivarianas) being created in many places. With their ceremonies and publications they have promoted the study and recognition of the action of the Liberator but also revived the unilateral praise of his figure, which in certain cases became a type of “secular canonization”.66 The figure of Bolívar has thus become a personage on the same level as gods and saints.67 It is important to reclaim the figure of Bolívar, his fights, ideals and pioneering proposals that orient the national his65. G. Carrera Damas, El culto a Bolívar, Caracas, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Instituto de Antropología e Historia, 1970.

66. For example, see the Revista de la Sociedad Bolivariana de Venezuela that contains the specific section: “Testimonios de la devoción bolivariana” (cfr. Volumen XIX, números 63 y 64, Caracas, 1960).

67. The image of Bolívar and his “Liberator Court” evolved to form part of syncretism cults, especially in Afro-Caribbean regions, with altars dedicated to the Liberator and rituals in which his spirit “possessed” mediums that predicted and cured. The Liberator is part of the cult of María Lionza (Yolanda Salas de Lecuna, Bolívar y la historia en la conciencia popular, Caracas, Instituto de Altos Estudios de América Latina de la Universidad Simón Bolívar, 1987, p. 93-134).

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torical construction of our countries. The iconoclastic posture that destroys the image of heroes and distorts the Independence is negative. We must cultivate historic memory as an element of identity. Several traditional studies have contributed to this goal. But the Bolivarian cult is pompous, unilateral and non-critical; it is not positive. As Carrera Damas notes, it was transformed from a spontaneous culto del pueblo (public cult) into an organized culto para el pueblo (cult for the people).68 It has been manipulated by the governments.

The Bolivarian institutions maintained very tight links with each other. They held national meetings with historians, military groups and Bolivarian societies. They promoted national and international conferences, publications and contests. This Bolivarianism had major strength in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Colombia. It became a strong cultural and political bond among countries whose independence was led by the Liberator. The denomination “Bolivarian countries” was an element of common identification.

At the continental level, Bolívar was considered a pioneer of unity. Additionally, the “Inter-American Conferences” summoned in the framework of “Pan-Americanism” promoted by the United States to consolidate its continental dominance invoked the figure of Bolívar.69 In 1948, the 68. G. Carrera Damas, El culto a Bolívar, p. 232.

69. The governments of the United States promoted “Pan-Americanism” as a “continental front” that permitted furthering the interests of its influence in Latin America. They held conferences that defined some common

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Organization of American States (OAS) was founded, with its headquarters in Washington, one of whose main sites adorned the image of Bolívar. Pan-Americanism had support but this was not unanimous. It was questioned by those who defended the Latin-American identity and those who saw Bolívar as an opposer to the dominance of the United States in Latin America.

The Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), led by Raúl Prebish, was founded to represent the Latin-American perspective. The CEPAL promoted economic reform, substitution of importations, industrial growth and agrarian reform. This concern for the development of the countries emphasized the necessity of cooperation and mutual aid. A new Latin-American consciousness emerged. It promoted unity and joint action in the socio-economic field. Thus, it is “an awareness of conscience taken to higher levels: the discovery that a ThirdWorld country exists and that Latin America forms part of it”, says Halperín.70 The new Latin-American conscience was a modern tendency of experts and functionaries who applied CEPAL proposals for development and promoted international cooperation and integration among coun-

policies and established a mechanism of coordination, the predecessor of the Organization of American States (OAS).

70. Tulio Halperín Dongui, Historia contemporánea de América Latina, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1972, p. 442.

The roots of an elusive Andean identity: a brief history

tries. A new generation of social scientists developed critical thought, rethinking economy, society and the State.71 10. The Andean Pact: consciousness of integration

Latin America has developed regional integration since the 50’s. Economic cooperation and integration was proposed beyond declaration with the formation of a customs union and a common market following the example of European integration. In the 1960’a, the Asociación Latinoamericana de Libre Comercio (ALALC) (Latin American Free Trade Association) was set up but had limited impact. This led countries to sign sub-regional agreements.

The first was the “General Treaty of Central American Integration” in 1961.72 After intense preparation, on the 25th of May 1969 the “Acuerdo de Cartagena” was signed. It constituted the “Andean Group”73; Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia and Peru were the founders; Venezuela was incorporated in 1973; Chile abandoned the group in 1976.

The initiative of the Andean Group did not come from Peru, the geographic and historic “center” of the sub-region, where, as we have seen, there were concerns about 71. Among those that can be mentioned is the important Bolivian thinker René Zavaleta Mercado. Cf. René Zavaleta, El Estado en América Latina, Cochabamba, Editorial Los Amigos del Libro, 1990.

72. The “Multilateral Treaty of Free Trade and Central American Economic Integration” was signed in 1958..

73. Comunidad Andina, Secretaría General, 28 años de integración andina: un recuento histórico, Lima, Secretaría General de la Comunidad Andina, 1997, p. 8.

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the “Andean” identity. The momentum came fundamentally from Colombia, Chile and also from Venezuela. The will to integrate was more evident in countries with constitutional regimes.

As far as we know, the name “Andean Group” was adopted because it had been used in prior negotiations and because of the geographical and historical affinity of its members,

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countries that have as one of their common characteristics the geographical unevenness that the Andean Mountain Range has from Chile to Venezuela; five of those countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela) have a particular likeness of sharing the epic achievement of the historical independentista past led by Bolívar and three of them (Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela) were part of Gran Colombia; these circumstances favored and facilitated, in principle, a process of sub-regional economic integration…74

The idea of calling it the “Bolivarian group” had surfaced during the negotiations, but the name did not include Chile and might have been rejected in Peru, which is why they adopted a name linked to the geography. However, “being Andean” was not only marked by the surrounding territory but also because of Bolivarian thought and a common vision of the future. At the moment the Andean Pact was founded, the memory of the founding fathers and freedom fighters was invoked. The ideas and proposals of Bolívar inspired the process and have oriented it until today.

Names like Hipólito Unanue, Simón Rodriguez and An74. Domingo Felipe Maza Zavala, Vida económica en Hispanoamérica, vol. 25, Historia General de América, Caracas, Academia Nacional de Historia de Venezuela, 1996, p. 227.

The roots of an elusive Andean identity: a brief history

drés Bello pointed out aspects like health, work, education, science and culture in sub-regional agreements.

Two points of view came together in founding the Andean Pact. On one hand, aborigine and colonial roots were identified as part of “being Andean”, as well as its geographic factors, civilizing background and regional projection. On the other hand, there was Bolivarianism, a basic characteristic of the foundation of our countries and republican roots. These two points of view converged in a new reality which was the integration project that led to major political development of “being Andean”.

The process of integration invigorated the countries’ economies and amplified the idea of “being Andean”. Andean integration went beyond any historical antecedent: the “altoandino”, Tahuantinsuyo, the Peruvian Viceroyalty or the actions of the Founding Fathers. It started to be seen not only as a historical and cultural unity, but above all as a political unity. It was more than its countries’ components and it extended from the Caribbean all the way to Patagonia, integrating the coast and the Amazon region. The Andean Pact reinforced the idea that already existed before: Andean-Amazonian complementarity.

The Andean Pact had advances and setbacks.75 In 1997 it was reorganized and renamed the “Andean Community” (CAN). It was unable to consolidate the customs union and the common market, but it did intensify relations between coun75. Cfr. Héctor Maldonado Lira, 30 años de integración andina: balances y perspectivas, Lima, Comunidad Andina, Secretaría General, 1999.

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tries, especially commercial relations, and it formed an integrationist institutionality. In the national and international sphere it identified member-countries with “being Andean”, starting with the name of the group, but it did not develop a common and vigorous identity among its populations. It did make advances, but there was also a deficit of Andean citizenship.

11. Andean America: consciousness of unity and diversity

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Perceptions of what being Andean means suffered a shake-up in the 90’s with the indigenous movement’s emergence, bursting onto the political scene with demands and the purpose of resisting neo-liberalism. This emergence had diverse expressions, such as the cultural and politicalrights movements in Ecuador or the Indian participation in the armed insurgence in Peru.76 The peasant-indigenous movement in Bolivia, together with other social movements, helped elect the first indigenous President.

The indigenous movement strongly questioned the Andean national states and their uniform and exclusionist structures. They demanded the recognition of collective rights of the peoples, “nationalities” or indigenous “nations”. In some cases there was a resurrection of the “Andean utopia”, with ethnic visions that proposed Indian states and the resurrec76. There are studies about this subject but the “Indigenists” or “Andean” fundamentalist dimension of the “Shining Path” has not been very clear (cfr. Carlos Iván Degregori, Qué difícil es ser Dios: el Partido Comunista—Sendero Luminoso y el conflicto armado interno en el Perú: 19801999, Lima, IEP, 2010).

The roots of an elusive Andean identity: a brief history

tion of Tahuantinsuyo. These approaches were diverse and sometimes contradictory. The extreme indigenous millenarisms that proposed the return to Andean utopias were not the majority, but they do have social influence, in the visions of the indigenous peoples and in the proposals of “decolonization”. Since the beginning of the 90’s, Andean constitutions have defined countries by their cultural and ethnic diversity and recognized indigenous rights; the CAN even established an Indigenous Consultive Council.

With less force than the indigenous peoples, Afro-Andeans also demanded recognition and collective rights. The ethnic wake-up call that questioned national states provoked a questioning of the identity of the mestizo population, at this height already a majority in the sub-region. “Mestizos” found themselves once again trapped in their ambiguity.

The complex and diverse character of Andean America was highlighted again, with more depth than before.

Diversity is one of the most important aspects of Andean countries.

Beyond certain geographic or restricted cultural visions, what is Andean is not limited to the Upper Andean region but integrates all of the plurality from the high plateaus to the coast and Amazonia and from the prairies or pamba until the beaches of the Caribbean. From this ample point of view, Andean America is a territory that includes the Andes as its backbone but embraces the diversity of a large portion of South America.77

Diversity is also the central element of a unit of the Andean world whose characteristics have to do with comple77. E. Ayala Mora, “Presentación general”, Historia de América Andina, p. 15.

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mentarity. It can be found in geographical space and in society. It is important to observe that starting with the ecological diversity that includes the coastal region until the moorlands and High Andean plateau or puna, without forgetting the foothills of Amazonia woodland, “being Andean” brings together a complementarity in its differences. In a similar way in the human and social field, one cannot understand what is “criollo”, “mestizo”, “cholo”, “negro”, “pardo” or “indio” by themselves. It is only in one’s relation with ‘the other’ that this can happen.78

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Large groups of Andean population moved to other territories. The coast, the Highlands and Amazonia come together when people move and trade products and services.

Andean diversity also expresses itself in the way that distinct social actors have perceived it throughout history and according to their interests and experiences. Flores Galindo highlighted the reactionary discourse of Hispanism and the neutralizing vision of the “Andean man” found in some modernizing intellectuals. For the author, “being Andean” is not only a justifying discourse of the Indian situation, it also permits, for example, the ability to free itself from the racist connotation that the word Indian implies, it evokes the idea of a civilization and does not limit itself to peasants but also includes the urban and mestizo population, taking in environments of the coast and highlands, transcending current national borders and helping to find links between Peruvian history along with Bolivian and Ecuadorian.

The author asks: what is Andean? And he responds: First of all, it is an ancient culture that should be thought of in terms similar to those that were utilized for the Greeks, the Egyptians or the Chinese but to do that we must relinquish this concept of any trace 78. Ibid., p. 14-15.

The roots of an elusive Andean identity: a brief history

of mystification. History offers a path: look for links between ideas, myths, dreams and objects and the men that consumed, produced, lived and praised them. To abandon the calm territory of non-incarnate ideas, to come into contact with struggles and conflicts with men in plural, with groups and social classes, with problems concerning the power and violence of a society. Andean men have not gone through history locked up in an impossible museum.79

It ends up being very clear that “being Andean” is not a passive entelechy (pipe dream) but a reality in movement plagued by contradictions and conflict. There is not one “Andean man”, even if it were the Indian. There are “Andean men” in the plural. And maybe we should say “Andean people” or “Andean persons” to correct the exclusion of women and the chauvinism that has dominated us for centuries. And also to be able to highlight the entire scope of what is Andean, which has been increasing throughout history.

Andean people are diverse. There are more than just the Incas or important Indians. However, it is undeniable that there have been numerous and important Indian contributions during the quest of being Andean. The “minga” or “collective-labor” Indian, for example, is a current practice adopted by everyone. There are alternative ways to assume our reality in a globalized world without losing sight of our Andean roots.

The idea that we must force ourselves to “live better” has been proposed in our societies, that is, to reach standards of welfare that advanced capitalist countries enjoy.

79. Flores Galindo, Buscando un inca, p. 6.

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However, this implies that we continue the rhythm of abuse and waste of our resources, pillaging our environment and leading a lifestyle marked by competition and lack of solidarity. That would mean that we accelerate the destruction of the planet and prolong the predominance of capitalism with its huge level of injustice. But in the Andean roots there is another way to conceive life. It is not a matter of “living better” in relation to the culture of waste and overexploitation of resources which in the end do not bring happiness, but rather of “living well”, that is to say, carrying on with dignity, without misery, exercising fundamental rights, without opulence and without the anguish caused by the need to accumulate and compete. In other words, looking for a simple lifestyle and in harmonic solidarity as regards the manner one conducts one’s life and satisfies one’s needs, not trying to reach the model that the richest world powers set.80 The idea of “living well”, or sumac kausay, is one of the important contributions that the Indians of Andean America have given the world. It has been developed mainly in Bolivia.81 The sumac kausay is important but it should be taken into account that we live in peripheral societies

80. Enrique Ayala Mora, Ecuador, Patria de todos, Quito, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador, Corporación Editora Nacional, 3ra. ed., 2009, p. 81.

81. Fernando Huanacuni Mamani, Vivir bien/Buen vivir: filosofía, políticas, estrategias, y experiencias regionales, La Paz, Convenio Andrés Bello, Instituto Internacional de Integración, 2001.

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where capitalism predominates as a system of exploitation and inequality.

“Being Andean” will always be a permanent rediscovery of our roots. But it will also be, after the experience in the Andean community, a proposal of integration. This implies that we must consolidate the advances of the process and at the same time consider the Andean Community as a “stepping stone toward the integration of South America”, as Germánico Salgado lucidly saw it.82 With this huge objective, it is important to involve the CAN in the construction of the UNASUR, which will be slow and difficult, even more so if the two processes are carried out in an isolated manner. South American unity will not be viable without the Andean component, not only because of the need for the member-countries to participate or the development of community institutionality, but also because unity in diversity is a way to join together to achieve integration.

But this paper is to deal with the past, and we are already talking about the future. We must conclude confirming that whatever may come in the future of the Andean Community, its member countries will not be the same after having participated in it. Their processes as nationstates have experienced irreversible changes, above all during the integrationist process that never gave in to opposition between what is national and what is Andean, between 82. Germánico Salgado, El Grupo Andino de hoy: eslabón hacia la integración de Sudamérica, Quito, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar/ Corporación Editora Nacional, 1998.

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sovereignty of the states and progress of the supra-national.

Latin America is the place where there have been two sides of the same reality. “Being Andean” is now and in the future will remain incomprehensible without integration. But as a geographic, historical, identitary and human fact, “being Andean” will be more than the CAN or any type of institutionality.

“Being Andean” is many things at the same time. It is a complex reality with elements of continuity and change at the same time. The question of what being Andean means will always be pending, not because it has not been answered but because at the moment of answering it, new questions arise. The Andean experience, with its encounters and failures, permeates the history of our identity. In one way or the other, it is part of all of us. It unites us in its diversity.

3

Towards an International Dialogue

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy Syed Farid Alatas

Introduction

Dialogue literally refers to a conversation between two people. What we have in mind here, however, is more than just that. What we have in mind is a conversation on a subject of common interest between two or more individuals or parties whose beliefs are informed by differing worldviews. The ultimate aim of such dialogue is to achieve a level of appreciation, understanding, interest and compassion for the views of the other. The human sciences have a role to play in facilitating this dialogue both in public dis121

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course and in formal education. For dialogue to be successful, it should have certain characteristics. Three such characteristics are discussed in this paper: i. the conceptual vocabulary of the dialogue should be free of ethnocentrism. In other words, the conceptual language of the dialogue should not be drawn exclusively from one civilizational or religious tradition; ii. discourse that informs the dialogue should be liberating in the sense that it should be intellectually demystifying; and iii. the dialogue should be impactful upon the people who are the subjects of the dialogue, that is, dialogue should have an advocacy element. In other words, the knowledge that informs dialogue should be relevant.

The purpose of this paper is to present examples of what relevant knowledge means in relation to dialogue. This is done by theorising relevance itself, by way of establishing certain sociological criteria of relevance. In this paper, I discuss different types of relevant knowledge. In the next section, the problem of the relevance of knowledge is introduced. A typology of irrelevance is provided. The main types are conceptual, value, mimetic and topical irrelevance. Included under conceptual irrelevance are two types, namely, the inapplicability of theories and concepts, and their sophistry, perversion and mystification. In these cases, bodies of knowledge can be said to be irrelevant when they are inapplicable or when they mystify through false and vicious reasoning, or by veiling re-

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

ality. In the sections that follow I provide examples of relevant knowledge. An example of a body of knowledge that is conceptually irrelevant is from the study of religion. An example of discourse that is conceptually relevant in the sense that it demystifies dominant perspectives is the critique of Islamic economics. Value irrelevance refers to the disconnectedness of knowledge from its political, economic and cultural milieu. An example of a discourse of value relevance is that which critically deals with sectarian persecution. I illustrate what such a discourse might be like with recourse to the case of the persecution of Shi’ites in Malaysia.

The problem of relevance of knowledge

Among the problems of the social sciences in the Third World which are peculiar to the state of postcolonialism is that of their irrelevance. What is clear from the literature of the last forty years is the strong awareness of a lack of fit between Western theory and non-Western realities. Many examples have been noted of the irrelevance or non-applicability of Western concepts, theories and assumptions.1 Epistemological issues concerning the reliability of claims to truth or the origin of knowledge are common to social sciences in both the countries of their origin as well as in postcolonial societies.

The problem of irrelevance is not confined to epistemology.

1. Alatas, “The captive mind and creative development”; Alatas, “The captive mind and development studies”; Fahim, “Indigenous Anthropology”; Fahim & Helmer, “Indigenous Anthropology”; Parekh, “The poverty of Indian political theory”; Pieris, “The implantation of Sociology in Asia”; Singh Uberoi, “Science and Swaraj”.

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Nevertheless, sociological or philosophical approaches concerned with the questions of objectivity or the social basis of knowledge have generally not raised irrelevance as a problem. Objectivity and the social basis on knowledge are universal concerns, whereas the problem of irrelevance is peculiar to the social sciences of some societies. It is necessary first to conceptualise irrelevance by way of presenting a preliminary typology of the phenomenon.

A review of the vast literature on the state of the social sciences in various non-Western and postcolonial societies reveals a number of problems said to beset the social sciences in these areas, which we may understand as constituting various types of irrelevance. There are a number of theoretical perspectives that address the state of the social sciences in postcolonial societies, such as Orientalism,2 academic dependency theory,3 the theory of mental captivity,4 postcolonial theory, and other critiques of the social sciences which detect problems in the application and practice of North American and European social science in postcolonial contexts. Each of the problems identified can be understood as illustrating a type of irrelevance, as follows: I. From the theory of mental captivity we may derive an understanding of irrelevance as typifying social science 2. Said, Orientalism; Said, Culture and imperialism.

3. Altbach, “Servitude of the mind?”; Alatas, “Academic dependency and the global division of labour”; Sinha-Kerkhoff & Alatas, Academic dependency in the social sciences.

4. Alatas, “The captive mind and creative development”; Alatas, “The captive mind and development studies”.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

that is defined by the inability to raise original problems and to devise original methods of problem-solving. This leads to the “unreality of basic assumptions, misplaced abstraction, ignorance or misinterpretation of data, and an erroneous conception of problems and their significance” in social science5 and the alienation of the socialscience enterprise from its surroundings.

II. The theory of mental captivity also discusses redundancy as a problem.6 The uncritical imitation of redundant propositions (those already known) provides us with yet another aspect of irrelevance, that is, unimportance or triviality.

III. Yet another aspect of irrelevance is that of unaccordance or disparity as, for example, between assumptions and reality, a point that has been made by all the theories of social science referred to above.

IV. Inapplicability, as in the inapplicability of a certain theory, is also an aspect of irrelevance. The theories of Orientalism, Eurocentrism and postcolonial criticism have tirelessly demonstrated how inapplicable theories are unwillingly forced onto data and end up in the form of problematic constructions.

V. Irrelevance also connotes sophistry, perversion and mystification. Here we speak of social science as irrelevant when it mystifies through false and vicious reasoning while at the same time being sophistic and sophisticated. The irrelevance lies in the ability of the social 5. Alatas, “The captive mind and development studies”, p. 11.

6. Idem, p. 12.

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sciences to make attractive claims to truth which are illogical, unsound, or groundless.

VI. Irrelevance also implies inferiority. Here we refer to inferior, mediocre or shallow social science that gains a respectability in the non-Western outbacks that far outweighs its ideal powers.

VII. The irrelevant, servile (alien, other-empowering) commitment of many social scientists to social-science agendas originating from without represents another type of irrelevance.

Each of these types of irrelevance, that is, empowerment of others, alienation, triviality, discordance, inapplicability, mystification and inferiority, can be seen to plague the social sciences at different levels. i. Conceptual irrelevance—The study of the history and logic of concept formation in the social sciences reveals how concepts derived from one cultural language are elevated to the level of universal concepts and comparative dimensions, the application of which veils discrepancies between text and reality.7 An example would be the use of concepts from the sociology of religion such as church, sect and even religion itself to talk about Islam. Durkheim was possibly guilty of this. The manner in which he treated magic, for example, was according to the self-understanding of Christianity.8 Irrelevance of types IV and V are found in this category.

7. Matthes, “The operation called ‘Vergleichen’”.

8. Personal communication with Professor Joachim Matthes, Singapore, September 13, 1997.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

ii. Value irrelevance—As mentioned earlier, the role of values in prioritizing research according to extra- or nonacademic criteria must be taken into account in understanding the establishment and perpetuation of research agendas in the social sciences. An example of this problem comes from Egypt, where researchers complain of funds being spent on surveys to find out what people think of the veil, a topic deemed to be of low priority.9 Often value commitments prevail that are not rooted in the immediate surroundings of the researcher. Irrelevance of type VIII is found in this category. iii. Mimetic irrelevance—This refers to the uncritical adoption of theories, concepts and methods from external sources, which, due to uncritical and imitative treatment, results in redundancy, mystification and mediocrity. Included in this category are irrelevance of types III, VI and VII. iv. Topical irrelevance—This arises when what is deemed to be problematic is not obvious but rather remains in the midst of expected familiarity, in the “field of the unproblematic”.10 Irrelevance of type II comes under this category.

It follows that what must be regarded as relevance is the reverse of all that has been presented above as irrelevance.

Relevant social science would then refer to an original, significant (non-redundant), concordant (referring to concordance between assumption and reality), applicable, demysti9. Personal communication with Dr. Ezzat Hegazy, Cairo, June 1997.

10. Schutz, Reflections on the problem of relevance, p. 25.

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fying and superior tradition which can be seen to exist at all levels of sociological activities. The sociological criteria of relevance can be derived by putting into reverse the four categories of irrelevance, as follows: i. Conceptual relevance—This requires rethinking the universality of concepts and comparative dimensions, by first of all establishing non-dominant cultural languages as sources and then working to develop truly universal or canopy categories. What would an anthropology or a sociology of religion look like if its concepts were derived from Islam rather than Christianity? The classification of religion may not include Catholicism and Protestantism under the same category of Christianity, because their doctrines and rituals differ too greatly to warrant their inclusion under one religion. Such an approach to religion would be as ethnocentric as the Eurocentric study of religion that it sets out to correct. The task would be to move beyond such one-sided constructions. ii. Value relevance—This refers to the selection of values that we establish as a criterion or standard for selecting research topics and drawing up research agenda, as well as for policy-making and advocacy. iii. Mimetic relevance—Mimesis can be turned into a virtue in the context of endogenous intellectual creativity, which requires self-consciousness of the problem of irrelevance at both the individual and institutional levels. iv. Topical relevance—This requires the ability to discover problems, unfamiliarities, in the midst of the

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

familiar or the “field of the unproblematic”. An example is a Khaldunian theory of the stability of the Syrian state, or a Khaldunian theory of elite circulation in 19th century Sudan.

In what follows, I present examples of different types of relevant knowledge. As stated above, included under conceptual irrelevance are two types, namely, the inapplicability of theories and concepts, as well as their sophistry, perversion and mystification. Here we speak of social science as irrelevant when they are inapplicable or when they mystify through false and vicious reasoning, or by veiling reality. An example of a sociology that is conceptually relevant is one that critiques the Eurocentric concept of religion and offers a more universal concept of religion. An example of discourse that is conceptually relevant in the sense that it demystifies dominant perspectives is the critique of Islamic economics. Finally, an example of a discourse of value relevance is that which critically deals with sectarian persecution. I illustrate how such a discourse might be like by resorting to the case of the persecution of Shi’ites in Malaysia. In the three sections that follow, each of the examples of relevant knowledge, that is, applicability, demystification and advocacy, is discussed.

The intellectual christianization of “religion” and its alternative

I would like to provide an illustration of the problem of Eurocentrism using the example of the concept of religion

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and drawing from the work of Joachim Matthes.11 This concerns the translation of cultural terms such as religion into scientific concepts. Social-science concepts originate from cultural terms in everyday language. As such they present problems when introduced into scientific discourse and used to talk about areas and periods outside those of their origins. The result is a distortion of the phenomena that they are applied to.

The Latin religio, from which the English term religion is derived, was a collective term referring to diverse practices and cults in and around Rome prior to the emergence of Christianity. When Rome became Christian, Christianity became the dominant belief and all other beliefs were absorbed or eliminated. But religio was not applied to Christianity as there was no need to—it was the only legitimate belief, so it was just known as the Church. With Luther and the Protestant Reformation, religio referred to Christian beliefs and a way of life separate from the institution of the Catholic Church. It was oppositional to the clergy, that is, it was the layman’s religion.

In 1593, the French philosopher Jean Bodin published his Colloquium heptaplomeres (Colloquium of the seven about the secrets of the sublime). Here there was a generalized understanding of religion that included non-Christian faiths. By the 18th century, “religion” came to be used as a scientific concept, referring to belief systems other than Christianity.

But while “religion” meant all beliefs, when European scholars wrote about religion critically, they had in mind Protestantism (as in Marx’s reference to religion as the opi11. Matthes, “Religion in the social sciences”.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

um of the intellectuals) or the institutional religion (Catholicism), as opposed to the religion of the believers (Protestants). When “religion” is applied to beliefs other than Christianity, for example Islam or Hinduism, there is an implicit or explicit comparison with Christianity, which results in an elision of reality. According to Matthes, the logic of comparison is such that the two things to be compared are subsumed under a third unit which is at a higher unit of abstraction. For example, apples and pears are subsumed under fruits. “Fruits” becomes the tertium comparationis. Similarly, Christianity and Islam are subsumed under religion.

The problem with this is that, to begin with, the characteristics of religion are derived from Christianity. Therefore, the supposedly general scientific concept “religion” is culturally defined by Christianity, and Islam is looked at in terms of Christianity rather than compared to Christianity in terms of a tertium comparationis, a general concept “religion”.

What reality is lost, what is the distortion done to Islam?

Religion as it is understood in the West is a private matter as opposed to state and church. Therefore there are such dualities as sacred versus profane, religious versus non-religious, and so on. Also, religion in the West refers to the beliefs and private lives of believers. The danger is that Islam is also seen in these terms when in fact there are no such dualities. For example, there is no distinction between secular and religious education. All knowledge and education is either about God or the creations of God. Let us also consider the case of Hinduism. According to Smith, Hinduism is “a particularly false conceptualization,

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one that is conspicuously incompatible with any adequate understanding of the religious outlook of Hindus. Even the term ‘Hindu’ [an Indian or non-Muslim inhabitant of India] was unknown to the classical Hindus. ‘Hinduism’ as a concept certainly they did not have.”12 The term ‘Hindu’ has its origins in antiquity as the Indo-Aryan name of the river Indus, which is its Greek transliteration.13 It is from this usage that the terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ gradually acquired their descriptive and geographical denotations. Muslim scholars such as al-Bīrūnī (A.D. 973- ), writing in Arabic, used the term al-Hind to refer to the Indian subcontinent, but when they referred to the people of that subcontinent or aspects thereof they were referring to what they considered the indigenous and non-Muslim inhabitants of India.

In Persian and Urdu the corresponding geographical term to al-Hind was HindustÅn. Things HindustÅnÇ referred to whatever was indigenous to India and non-Muslim.14 The English ‘Hindu’ probably derived from the Persian. The term “Hindu” appears in the Gaudiya Vaisnava texts of the sixteenth century.15 The usage here is consistent with that in 12. Smith, The meaning and end of religion, p. 61, cited in Frykenberg, “The emergence of modern ‘Hinduism’”, p. 102, n. 3.

13. Smith, The meaning and end of religion, p. 249, n. 46, cited in Frykenberg, “The emergence of modern ‘Hinduism’”, p. 83. Smith’s source is Spiegel, Die Altpersischen Keilinschriften, vol. 1, lines 17-18, A, line 25: 50, 54, 246.

14. Frykenberg, “The emergence of modern ‘Hinduism’”, p. 84.

15. O’Connell, “Gaudiya Vaisnava symbolism of deliverance from evil”, p. 340-3, cited in Frykenberg, “The emergence of modern ‘Hinduism’”, p. 84.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

the Muslim texts of the premodern Arabs and Persians. Even in the modern period, this negative definition of Hinduism is found, as is evident in the Hindu Marriage Act. The Act defines a Hindu, among other things, as one “who is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew by religion…”16 The terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ in reference to religion, and a unitary one at that, were for the most part a modern development. In the eighteenth century they began to be used by European Orientalists such as Halhed, Jones and Müller to denote an Aryan, Brahmanical or Vedic-based high culture and religion.17 It is this usage that was adopted by the early Indian nationalists themselves like Ramohun Roy, Gandhi and Nehru.18 This ‘new’ religion was founded on the ontology and epistemology contained in the VarnÅsramadharma and encompassed the entire cosmos, detailing as part of its vision a corresponding stratified social structure.19 What is important in these developments, as far as the intellectual Christianization of Indian belief systems is concerned, is that (i) the belief systems of the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent (excluding Muslims, Jews, Christians and Parsis) came to be regarded as religion; (ii) these belief systems were seen to constitute a single religion; and (iii) they were founded on a system of Brahmanical doctrines based on

16. Derret, Introduction to modern Hindu law, p. 18-19.

17. Frykenberg, “The emergence of modern ‘Hinduism’”, p. 85-6.

18. Idem, p. 86.

19. Idem, p. 86.

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the Catur-Veda (Four Vedas).20 It is in these senses that characteristics of Christianity were read into Indian beliefs. Gradually, the newly christened Hinduism also came to encompass the ‘low’ tradition, or what is nowadays referred to as ‘popular’, ‘temple’, ‘bhakti’, ‘village’, or ‘tribal’ Hinduism.21 What are the problems with these constructions of nonWestern experiences that utilised Western concepts?

1. The mix of fact and fiction. The beliefs of peoples such as those of Muslims and the Indian subcontinent are not understood according to the self-understanding of these peoples. There is a mix of fact and fiction in that facts are organised into a coherent framework that is derived from Christian categories posing as the tertium comparationis, the result being a construction that is somewhat mythical.

2. The imposition of categories from the outside. Categories such as “religion” are imposed from the outside, that is, by European scholars, resulting in constructions that do not accord with the self-description of the communities concerned.

3. Homogenization. There is an attempt to homogenize societies and communities, thereby hiding complexities. Simply stating the commonalities of the people who live on the Indian subcontinent veils not only the contrary self-understandings but also the variety and heterogeneity of religion in India.

20. Idem, p. 86.

21. Idem, p. 87.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

4. There is a Eurocentric bias in that ideas, models, problem selection, methodologies, techniques and even research priorities continue to originate from American, British, and to some extent French and German works.

5. There is scant generation of original ideas in terms of new theoretical perspectives or schools of thought or innovations in research methods.

6. There is a general neglect of local literary and philosophical traditions. This is not to say that there are no studies on local literature or philosophy. The point is that these traditions remain as objects of study and are not considered as sources of concepts in the social sciences. Furthermore, they are rarely studied by social scientists.

7. The above problems exist within the context of intellectual imperialism, that is, the intellectual domination of the Third World by the social-science powers (United States, Britain, France and Germany).22 It should be noted that the field of the sociology of religion, especially where the study of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam is concerned, is very backward in this regard. A proper approach would be to develop the tertium comparationis from a comparative study of concepts in all these belief systems. The development of what we may term as alternatives to Eurocentric discourses, therefore, requires fa22. Intellectual imperialism is discussed in detail by Syed Hussein Alatas, “Academic imperialism”; “Intellectual imperialism: definition, traits, and problems”.

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miliarity with the local or indigenous tradition, which is understood by Kim Kyong-Dong to mean both the classical tradition as well as the world of popular discourse.23 Knowledge of the local or indigenous is a prerequisite for the development of the tertium comparationis.

The Muslim scholar Abū al-Rayhān Muhammad bin Ahmad al-Bīrūnī (973-1048) provides us with an alternative conception of what is today called Hinduism. He provides a comprehensive account of the civilization of India, including the religion, philosophy, literature, geography, science, customs and laws of the Indians. This paper concentrates on al-Bīrūnī’s construction of the religions of India.24 Al-Bīrūnī had a universal conception of dÇn, which he applied to religions other than Islam, at a time when the Latin religio was only applied to Christianity. At the same time, al-Bīrūnī does not intellectually or culturally Islamize the religions of the Indians by reading into the Indian material an Islamic model or Islamic meanings. AlBīrūnī did not read Islamic meanings into the religions of the Indians. It is interesting that al-Bīrūnī’s translator, Edward C. Sachau, observed that al-Bīrūnī’s method was not to speak himself “but to let the Hindus speak, giving extensive quotations from their classical authors” (Sachau, 1910, 23. Kim, personal communication, 21 June 1996. See also Kim, “Toward culturally ‘independent’ social science”.

24. I consult both the original Arabic, the KitÅb fÇ tahqÇq mÅ li al-hind, as well as Sachau’s English translation, Alberinu’s India. Dates in brackets indicate the year in which the work was written. Unless otherwise stated, all quotations in English are taken from Sachau’s translation.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

p. xxiv), while Sachau himself does not always allow alBīrūnī to speak when he reads modern European meanings into al-Bīrūnī’s Arabic text.

Sachau’s English translation of the Arabic original, undertaken in the late nineteenth century, reads into Arabic terms nineteenth-century European ideas about what Hinduism was. For example, in his preface to the Arabic original, al-Bīrūnī refers to “the religions of India” (adyÅn alhind) (Al-Bīrūnī, 1377-1958 [c1030], p. 4), which is translated by Sachau as “the doctrines of the Hindus” (Sachau, 1910, p. 6), leading one to assume that al-Bīrūnī conceived of a single religion called Hinduism.25 Islamic economics as capitalist ideology

One crucial result of dialogue, I am sure we would all agree, is that it should aid in releasing the mind from mental captivity. Academic dependency at the level of ideas is the general condition of knowledge in the Third World. Although it is fashionable to expose Eurocentric biases in the social sciences, the emergence of autonomous or alternative theoretical traditions has been very slow, and the dependence on theories and concepts generated in the European and North-American context continues. This problem of dependence is linked to the ubiquity of imitation, a condition conceptualised by Syed Hussein Alatas as mental captivity. The captive mind is an “uncritical and imitative mind 25. In fact, a study of Sachau’s translation may be more a study of the intellectual Christianization of the religions of India than of al-Bīrūnī’s work on India.

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dominated by an external source, whose thinking is deflected from an independent perspective”.26 The external source is Western social science and humanities and the uncritical imitation influences all the constituents of scientific activity such as problem-selection, conceptualization, analysis, generalization, description, explanation, and interpretation.27 Among the characteristics of the captive mind are the inability to be creative and raise original problems, the inability to devise original analytical methods, and alienation from the main issues of indigenous society. The captive mind is trained almost entirely in the Western sciences, reads the works of Western authors, and is taught predominantly by Western teachers, whether in the West itself or through their works available in local centres of education. Mental captivity is also found in the suggestion of solutions and policies. Furthermore, it reveals itself at the level of theoretical as well as empirical work.

Alatas suggested that the mode of thinking of colonised peoples paralleled political and economic imperialism. Hence, the expression academic imperialism,28 connoting the context within which the captive mind appears.

Academic dependency at the level of ideas should be seen in terms of the domination of social-science teaching and research by the captive mind, the consequence of which is the persistence of Eurocentrism as an outlook 26. Alatas, “The captive mind and creative development”, p. 692.

27. Alatas, “The captive mind and development studies”, p. 11.

28. Alatas, “Academic imperialism”; Alatas, “Intellectual imperialism: definition, traits, and problems”.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

and orientation in social-science teaching and research, as well as planning for economic, social and cultural development. A case in point is the discipline of Islamic economics, which provides an example not only of the dependence on ideas but also the function of such dependence.

The notion of Islamic economics did not arise from within the classical tradition in Islamic thought. In the classical Islamic tradition there were discussions and works on economic institutions and practices in the Muslim world, but the notion of an Islamic science of economics and a specifically Islamic economy did not exist.29 Islamic economics, therefore, is a modern creation. It emerged as a result of dissatisfaction with capitalist and socialist models and theories of development in the 1950s.30 It is mainly in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that Islamic economic research is being carried out, although there has also been a great deal of interest in this field in Egypt, India, Iran, Malaysia, and Sudan. Interest in Islamic economics predates the rise of the modern Islamic states of Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. Islamic economics rejects the ideology of “catching up” with the West and is committed to discerning the nature and ethos of economic development

29. Abdullah, “Al-Mudarabah”; Masters, The origins of Western economic dominance; Udovitch, “At the origins of the Western commenda”; Partnership and profit in Medieval Islam; “Commercial techniques”.

30. Abdul Rauf, A Muslim’s reflections on democratic capitalism; AsSadr, Iqtisaduna.

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from an Islamic point of view. The need is, therefore, to identify the Islamic ideal of economic development.31 The starting point of Islamic economics is based on a rejection of various ethnocentric misconceptions to be found in modernization theory with regard to Muslim society, such as its alleged fatalism and the lack of the achievement motive.32 Muslim scholars have been tireless in pointing out that the prerequisites of development are to be found in Islam and that development within an Islamic framework is based on the constellation of values that are found in the Qur’an and the Sunnah (the traditions of the Prophet of Islam).33 Western development theory and policy are based on the peculiar characteristics, problems, and value constellations that are found in Western society.

However, the Islamic critique of development studies is not directed solely at modernization theory, but generally at the corpus of development thought encompassing the entire spectrum of perspectives from the Left to the Right to be found within the discourse of modernism. Modernism, whether in its liberal or leftist moments, calls upon Islam to promote development by recasting Islam in a modern light, by tempering its fundamentalist tendencies, by accepting Western notions of economic and political development, in short, by recasting itself in a Western mould.34 31. Ahmad, “Economic development in an Islamic framework”, p. 171.

32. Idem, p. 173.

33. Alhabshi, “Peranan Akhlak dalam Pengurusan Ekonomi dan Kewangan” (“The role of morality in economic and financial management”).

34. Tibi, The crisis of modern Islam; Nasr, “Religious modernism”.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

Islam, on the other hand, has a different outlook on life and the nature of social change, and implies a unique set of policy options for the solution of the problems of development.

Nevertheless, Islamic economics suffers from a number of problems, some of which have been dealt with by others.35 The following remarks on Islamic economics, however, are centred on the distinction between ethical and empirical forms of theory.

Ethical theories express preference or distaste as regards reality in accordance with certain standards of evaluation.

In addition to this, they specify the ideal goal toward which changes should be made. Empirical theories, on the other hand, are generalizations about observable reality and require the process of abstraction and conceptualization.

Islamic economics presents an ideal of development that is based on an Islamic philosophy of life. Arising from this alternative vision of development, various policy options have been suggested, such as the introduction of interest-free banking and zakah (poor tax).36 What is presented as Islamic economics are in fact ethical theories of production, distribution, price, and so on. When Islamic economists dis35. Kuran, “Behavioral norms”; “The economic system in contemporary Islamic thought”; “On the notion of economic justice”; Fazlur Rahman, “Riba and interest”; “Islam and the problem of economic justice”.

36. Ahmad, “Interest-free banking in Pakistan”; Ariff, Money and banking In Islam; Faridi, “Zakat and fiscal policy”; Iqbal & Mirakhor, “Islamic banking”; Karsten, “Islam and financial intermediation”; Khan, “Islamic interest-free banking”; Khan & Mirakhor, “Theoretical studies in Islamic banking”; “Islamic banking”; Uzair, “Some conceptual and practical aspects of interest-free banking”.

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cuss the traditional categories of economics such as income, consumption, government expenditure, investment and savings, they do so in terms of ethical statements and not in terms of analyses and empirical theory. Contrary to what is claimed,37 it would be difficult to refer to an Islamic science of economics, although we do have the scientific study of economies in Muslim countries, as well as the study of Muslim economic institutions and commercial techniques.

When Islamic economists are engaged in empirical theory, what is presented as Islamic economics turns out not to be an alternative to modernist discourse, as far as empirical theory is concerned. The foci and method that have been selected by Muslim economists for economic analysis is essentially that of Keynesian and neoclassical economics. The foci are the traditional questions that come under the purview of theories of price, production, distribution, trade cycle, growth, and welfare economics, with Islamic themes and topics involved, such as zakah, interest-free banking, and profit-sharing. The problems associated with this are the following: First of all, the techniques of analysis that have been selected, that is, building up abstract models of the economic system, have not been translated by Islamic economists into empirical work. For example, works on interest tend to construct models of how an interest-free economy would work.

There is no empirical work on existing economic systems and the nature, functions and effects of interest in these systems.

37.  Nasr, “Religious modernism�, p. 194-5.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

Secondly, these attempts at Islamic economics have sought to ground the discourse in a theory of wealth and distribution in very much the same manner that Western economic science does, as a glance at some of these works will reveal.38 When they are engaged in the sort of discourse that one could understand as constituting empirical theory, this is not done from a specifically Islamic scientific approach. The point here is that attempts to create a “faithful” economic science have not yielded policy options for the problems that are being addressed because what “Islamic economics” amounts to is neoclassical economics dressed and made up in Islamic terminology.

In the 1930s, 40s and 50s, economists in Latin America, Europe, and the United States began to pay attention to underdeveloped areas. The dominant school used to explain development in advanced capitalist countries was neoclassical economics, according to which the operation of free-market forces can maximise aggregate economic welfare, and the growth of output under full employment will continue as long as there is a positive propensity to save and invest in excess of what is needed to maintain capital equipment. The subsequent rise of development economics was in part a response to the inapplicability of neo-

38. Kahf, “Savings and investment function”; Khan, “A macro consumption function”; Khan, “Islamic interest-free banking”; Abdul Mannan, “Allocative efficiency”; Siddiqui & Zaman, “Investment and income distribution pattern”; “Investment and income distribution pattern”; Zarqa, “Stability in an interest-free Islamic economy”.

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classical economics.39 There are a number of approaches to the study of the economies in underdeveloped areas, including the structuralist school, neo-Marxism, dependency theory, and the new institutional economics.

Islamic economics is very much embedded in the tradition of neoclassical economics in terms of its near-exclusive concern with technical factors such as growth, interest, tax, profits, and so on. A host of issues relating to political economy, such as uneven development, unequal exchange, bureaucratic capitalism, corruption, and the role of the state, have been addressed by structuralist, neo-Marxist, dependency, and new institutional economic theorists, but are not dealt with at the theoretical and empirical levels by Islamic economists. This is not to suggest that Islamic economists should uncritically adopt these other perspectives to replace neoclassical economics. The successful indigenisation of development economics and the claim to scientific status depend on the degree to which indigenisation efforts retain what is of utility in neoclassical and other theories of development.

The main problem with this state of affairs is that under the guise of “Islamic economics� the policies generated in industrialised capitalist centres are implemented in the Muslim world and are legitimated, thereby undermining the very project that Islamic economics is committed to. In attempting to ground itself in a theory of rational man and a hypothetical-deductive methodology, it has merely sub39.  Hunt, Economic theories of development, ch. 3.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

stituted Islamic terms for neoclassical ones, retaining the latter’s assumptions, procedures and modes of analysis. As such, it has failed to engage in the analysis and critique of a highly unequal world economic order in which the gaps are ever widening. That this supposedly anti-Western economics was co-opted and made to serve those very trends that it outwardly opposes must be considered.

Thirdly, not very different from neoclassical economics, it extends a technical-economic rationality over a wide range of problems, which presupposes viewing different ends as comparable outcomes, which in turn entails eliminating cultural hindrances to the comparability of outcomes. In this sense, neoclassical economics, Islamic economics, Marxist and other alternative theories of development are similar in that they are based on narrow assumptions about human action.

It can be said, therefore, that Islamic economics functions ideologically to support world financial capital while claiming to offer an alternative to mainstream economics.

More importantly, it interacts with and reinforces an attitude that can be described as a modernist Muslim ethic that some have referred to as Islamic Protestantism. This involves a sense of piety in economic action in the context of the loss of traditional culture and the buying into a crude materialistic outlook. An example frequently cited is the development of the area around the haram in Mecca.

So many historical sites in Mecca have been demolished that much of the prophetic legacy is disappearing.

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Irfan al-Alawi, director of the UK-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, said: “The authorities are trying to destroy anything in Mecca that is associated with the prophet’s life.” The homes of the Prophet’s wife, grandson and one of his companions have been demolished. The house of Prophet Muhammad’s wife, Khadijah, was replaced with a block of 1,400 public lavatories. Other historical sites have been replaced with skyscraper hotels.40 To complete the picture we can add that this modernist ethic has an affinity with Salafist and other modernist ideologies in the Muslim world in that both are indifferent to or reject tradition.

The 16th century Protestant remained traditionalistic in terms of the outlook on family, marriage, culture and aesthetics. By the nineteenth century, however, the Protestant element had receded into the background. As Weber said: The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate world morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism…41

Salafist economics can be said to embody an extreme development of this attitude in which culture and aesthetics are excessively subordinated to the technical and eco40. “As the Hajj begins, the destruction of Mecca’s heritage continues”, The Guardian, 14 October 2013.

41. Weber, The Protestant ethic, p. 180.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

nomic requirements of development, even at the expense of the destruction of religious heritage. However, this must be distinguished from the so-called “Islamic Puritans” or “Islamic Calvinists” for whom the interconnectedness between religion, heritage and culture, on the one hand, and economy, on the other, remains strong.42 The kind of political and business elite I am referring to as embodying the crass consumerist culture which is driven by Salafist economics is more akin to those who wish to tear down old neighbourhoods and forest areas and build shopping malls, luxury apartments and hotels.

The persecution of Malaysia’s Shi’ites

Any dialogue should be critical and impactful upon the people that it concerns. The dialogue should not remain at the level of scholars, the religious or any other elite.

Shi’ahs in Malaysia make up 250-300 million of the Malaysian population. Over the last 30 years, the attitude of the Malaysian authorities towards the Shi’a and their treatment of this Muslim minority sect has changed from acceptance to rejection and even persecution. In 1984, the Fatwa Committee of the National Council for Islamic Religious Affairs declared that the Shi’ite Ja’fari and Zaidi

42. For more on this phenomenon, see ESI, Islamic Calvinists; Yavuz, Toward an Islamic enlightenment; and Uygur, “‘Islamic puritanism’”. For critical views on the idea of Islamic Protestantism, see Alatas, “Contemporary Muslim revival”; and Browers & Kurzman, eds., An Islamic reformation?

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schools of jurisprudence were acceptable in Malaysia. In 1996, this decision was revoked.

This was followed by a series of fatwas issued between 1998 and 2012 by various states in Malaysia that placed restrictions on the spread and practice of Shi’ism.

In some cases, such as in the state of Negeri Sembilan, the ruling is simply to prevent the spread of Shi’ism.

Shi’ites are free to practice Islam according to their tradition but not permitted to spread their beliefs and practices among the Sunni majority. In other cases, such as in the state of Selangor, Shi’ites have been arrested for practicing their rituals. In December 2010, about 200 Shiites, including some foreigners, were arrested by state religious authorities during a raid at a Shi’ite centre.43 In other cases, such as in the state of Perak, the law makes provisions for the arrest of Shi’ites who possess Shi’ite literature (books and documents). Under Section 16 of the Perak Criminal (Syariah) Enactment, 1992, it is an offence to possess items on Shi’ism, including books, audio-visual materials and posters.44 In early August 2013, two Shi’ites were arrested, followed by another six arrests in September. The Perak Islamic Religious Department (JAIPk) enforcement chief Ahmad Nizam

43. http://dawn.com/news/592364/malaysia-may-charge-200-for-deviating-from-islam; http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2012/01/14/malaysian-shiites-face-growing-persecution/.

44. New Straits Times, 6 August 2013.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

Amiruddin is reported to have said that the Shi’a should be eradicated.45 Shi’ites are reported to be a threat to national security. The Ministry of Public Order and Security issued a paper entitled “The Modus Operandi of the Shiite movement and the Threat to National Security” at the seminar “Facing the Shiite Virus”, held at the Science University of Malaysia (USM) on October 13 2013.46 No evidence for the Shi’ites being a threat to security was ever presented.

The Malaysian government’s position regarding Shi’ism appears to be in conflict with the Federal Constitution of Malaysia:47 Article 3(1): Islam is the religion of the Federation; but other religions may be practised in peace and harmony in any part of the Federation Article 8(2) Except as expressly authorized by this Constitution, there shall be no discrimination against citizens on the ground only of religion, race, descent, place of birth or gender in any law or in the appointment to any office or employment under a public authority or in the administration of any law relating to the acquisition, holding or disposition of property or the establishing or carrying on of any trade, business, profession, vocation or employment Article 11(1) Every person has the right to profess and practise his religion and, subject to Clause (4), to propagate it.

45. http://www.nst.com.my/nation/general/close-watch-on-shia-followers-in-perak-1.334060.

46. http://www.sinarharian.com.my/mobile/semasa/perkasa-undang-undang-pencegahan-ajaran-syiah-1.211537.

47. http://www.agc.gov.my/images/Personalisation/Buss/pdf/Federal%20Consti%20%28BI%20text%29.pdf.

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The Federal Constitution clearly protects the rights of Muslims, as well as practitioners of other faiths. Where Islam is concerned, the Constitution mentions only Islam and not any specific school of thought.

The position taken by the Malaysian religious authorities and the government is contrary to a series of international declarations, including the Amman Message. Released in 2004, the Amman Message declares among other things that: Whosoever is an adherent to one of the four Sunni schools (Mathahib) of Islamic jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali), the two Shi’i schools of Islamic jurisprudence (Ja’ fari and Zaydi), the Ibadi school of Islamic jurisprudence and the Thahiri school of Islamic jurisprudence, is a Muslim. Declaring that person an apostate is impossible and impermissible.

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The Amman Message was endorsed by the major Sunni clerics and leaders of the Muslim world. Malaysia is also signatory to the Amman Message. The Malaysians who endorsed it were H.E. Dato’ Seri Abdullah bin Haji Ahmad Badawi (then Prime Minister of Malaysia) and Dato’ Dr. Abdul Hamid Othman (Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister and Religious Adviser to the Prime Minister).48 The Malaysian authorities’ position with regard to Shi’ism is, therefore, contrary to the majority view or consensus of the religious scholars of Sunni Islam.

The Amman Message was preceded by other declarations, among the most famous being the fatwa issued by HE Shaykh Mahmud Shaltut, the Head of Al-Azhar University, 48. http://ammanmessage.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=vi ew&id=91&Itemid=74.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

Cairo, on the permissibility of following the Shi’i school of thought. An excerpt from the fatwa reads as follows: The Ja’fari school of thought, which is also known as Al-Shi’a Al-Imamiyya Ithna’ Ashari, is religiously correct to follow, as are other Sunni schools of thought.

The Malaysian official position is also contrary to the International Bill of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, in particular with regard to the following articles:49 Article 1 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 18 Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 29 1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

3. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

49. http://www.un-documents.net/a3r217.htm.

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In addition to legal action taken against Shi’ites in Malaysia, the community has been subjected to slander and demonization by the government-controlled media. A cocktail of distortions and half-truths have been reported in the media about Shi’ite practices and beliefs. For example, they are reported to encourage bloodshed and the killing of Sunni leaders.50 At a Friday sermon in November (2013), the Malaysian Islamic Development Department or JAKIM listed 10 beliefs that Malaysian Shiah allegedly held, including sodomy.51 In order to discredit Shi’ism, it has also been disseminated in the media that Shi’ism is a religion created by the Jews.52 Many other examples of the misrepresentation of Shi’ism in the Malaysian state-controlled media can be presented.

Advocates of religious freedom for the Shi’ites of Malaysia should make the following demands: i. To return to the 1984 decision of the Fatwa Committee of the National Council for Islamic Religious Affairs that recognized the Ja’fari and Zaidi Shi’ite schools of thought as legitimate in Malaysia. This is in keeping with international Sunni practice. ii. To revoke all anti-Shi’ite fatwas and gazetted laws arising therefrom.

50. New Straits Times, 6 August 2013; Utusan Malaysia, 9 September 2013.

51. ht t p://w w w.t he m a l ay m a i lo n l i ne.c om /m a l ay sia /a r t icle /jihad-calls-for-eradication-of-shiah-that-permits-sodomy-muslimstold#sthash.0vbgL5cG.7rBSJEwN.dpuf.

52. Utusan Malaysia, 9 September 2013.

Relevant knowledge for dialogue: applicability, demystification and advocacy

iii. To insist on fair reporting in the state-controlled media of matters to do with Shi’ism.

Furthermore, now is the time for social scientists and others to conceive of a research project that examines the nature and causes of sectarianism in Islam. Part of the objectives of the project would be to document and publicise the opinion of contemporary Sunni and Shi’ite theologians and jurists who have sensible views on the matter as well as sound theological arguments against the sectarianists.

Conclusion

In order to facilitate dialogue among religions, particularly between the West and other civilizations, it goes without saying that serious inroads must be made in the trafficking of stereotypes by the media, which in turn are influenced by the extent to which education is Orientalist or Eurocentric. This is because the media and public discourse are influenced directly or indirectly by knowledge that is produced in tertiary education. Therefore, the problem has to be dealt with at the level of knowledge-production in these institutions, that is to say, teaching and research. This would then mean that there should be greater interaction among social scientists in Asia and Africa. At the same time, the dialogue should not be limited to conversations among the elites of scholars and statesmen. It should be a demystifying dialogue that also impacts upon the lives of those being discussed in the dialogue.

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New spaces for East-West dialogue* Marco Lucchesi

For Saeid Edalat Nezhad

With the era of Extremes and the Twin Towers behind us, we are now facing a new and contiguous pluralism.

The world map of religions is undergoing tremendous transgenic change. The age of cuius regio, eius religio (whose realm, his religion), is in demise. Los Angeles is now the largest Buddhist city in the world. The Catholic *

Translation Juliet Attwater.

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Church is growing fast in Asia. England has nearly the same number of Muslims as it does Anglicans. Hinduism and Christianity have seen a series of symbolic exchanges with Henri Le Saux and Thomas Merton.

The theology of religions today is part of a wider and more varied plan that shows there is no other path than through dialogue, in the synergy that this creates, and in the relationship that ultimately depends on the condition of progress and power. It is in this area of risk and unease that we are moving, acting, and being.

This is the somewhat dreamed-of interstitial face between East and West. All eyes are fixed on a culture of peace, now projected through the pains of labour, which allow no rest, in these days of massacre and ethnic cleansing in the Middle East.

The dialogue answers through an incomplete cartography that parties adhere to—fiercely protecting their own identity—and weaving a living fabric in which the intelligence of the process is not immobilised by potential mere function. There are no more opposite sides. We are all on the same side, involved in webs of dialogue that are often arduous, but also deeply thoughtful and delicate, set along a horizon where religions show a sensitivity to otherness under the umbrella of ecumenical teaching. All this, together with the relativism of superficiality and a syncretism that is contested by those who seek a convincingly complete synthesis, a lingua universalis, without scent or beauty, tends more to serve the vertiginous flow of info-

New spaces for East-West dialogue

capital than to actually create any ideal conditions for the praxis of encounter.

We need the flame of an authentic dialogue that does not restrict biodiversity, that does not dampen cultural and religious affiliations, that does not value the beauty of differing parties over a monotonous sterile environment that risks extinguishing the brightest points that define and constitute us. It would be aligned with imposing the desert of market theology on the cornucopia of ancient poetics.

Dialogue grows in the pluralist heavens of thought, not through dialectics which are ready to criticise their interlocutors, and which lead to the amnesic synthesis of them both, beings legitimized by a growing entropy. Because everything exists in relation to the other, face to face. As Martin Buber said, the isolated “I” does not exist, and neither does it support the Thou alone. There cannot be an “I” in “it”, an “I” and “Thou” introduces the genesis of Dialogue, of the essence of interlocution.

I think of the bright flashes in the sky in the poem by Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai (1689-1752) and I sense a new relationship between heaven and earth: The lightning flashes through the air And arrives in Istanbul, It races toward the western horizon, Touching China lightly then Glittering in Samarkand And soaked with happy memories It moves on to Rome and Kabul Surrounding Kandahar And unleashing a storm over Delhi (…)

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And they make a luminous streak through the sky, bringing together the most diverse of cities, a pure dynamic of water and glittering memories. The flash of the word, that summons everyone from every latitude to the I and Thou. This is the fascination of the ethics of dialogue, of its sensitive poetics, which restores the balance of extremism and combats the malaise of exclusion once difference is no longer an epistemological demon that needs to be remorselessly eliminated.

The presupposition of the dialogue, hovering between lightning and storm, memory and light, abnegates the aseptic non-participatory narrative floating a few metres over the soil of History. Dialogue cannot thrive in a cold, clean, uninhabited glasshouse. Nor is it indifferent to its guests’ addresses, or to the waning of an agenda of intentions. If it were merely this, it would be nothing more than a simulacrum that lacked the beauty of everything that we are not. Because the Other is a source of wonderment and delight.

Hans Kßng responded to these challenges in his pioneering project entitled Declaration towards a global ethic, which is based on an inter-religious dialogue with which I partially agree, particularly when he states that dialogue cannot be: an indifference that is indifferent to everything, an indifference to any pretension of orthodoxy that positions itself as being people’s salvation or destruction, and that seeks to impose its veracity through means of power and coercion.

And he then goes on:

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A relativism for which there is no such thing as an absolute, but instead, a greater awareness of relativity in relation to all of mankind’s absolutisms, which block any productive coexistence between different religions. We need to be more aware of relativity, which allows us to understand all religions through their relationships.

In my desire to follow this path of peace, in January 2014 I went to Delhi to visit the mausoleum of the mystic Nizamuddin Aulia (निज ़ाम दु द् ीन दरगाह), the Sufi saint from the century of Dante and Rûmî, who is respected by both Hindus and Muslims, and who transmits a perennial sense of otherness in the spirit of heartfelt compassion.

I arrive at dusk on a Thursday at the portentous pilgrim’s corner. For Nizamuddin, music and poetry reflect emotion in the face of the cosmos, the radiant beauty of the I and Thou. A man then starts to recite an ancient Urdu poem by Sain Bulleh Shah which is dear to me: Nor am I a believer of the mosque, Nor am I in rituals of the infidel Nor am I the pure inside the impure.

Nor am I inherent in the Vedas, Nor am I present in intoxicants.

Nor am I lost nor the corrupt.

Nor am I union, nor grief, Nor am I intrinsic in the pure/impure Nor am I of water, nor of land.

Nor am I fire nor air.

Bulla! I know not who I am Nor am I Arabic, nor from Lahore, Nor am I the Indian city of Nagour.

Nor Hindu or a Turk from Peshawar.

Nor did I create differences of faith, Nor did I create Adam and Eve Nor did I name my self.

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Beginning or end, I just know the self, Do not acknowledge duality.

There’s none wiser than I. Who is this Bulla shah Bulla! I know not who I am.

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A knowledge that comes from not knowing, that lives in another space that transcends—without regulating religious affiliations and territories. It belongs only to the Thou, the Beloved, in its absolute and irresistible condition. Like Shah Abdul and Nizamuddin, Bulleh Shah is part of an ancient lineage of mysticism, which goes well beyond the question of canon and is open to all the variations of the I and Thou. A similar approach can be found in the Qur’an 5.48, which clearly praises difference:

Though I highlight only the second part: We have sent messengers before you—some of them we mentioned to you, and some we did not mention to you. No messenger can produce any miracle without God’s authorization. Once God’s judgment is issued, the truth dominates, and the falsifiers are exposed and humiliated. (40,78.)

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This is one of the sources of the Qur’an’s Otherness, among other passages, which cultivates the Sufi mystic, and makes him more radical, just as the great poets of Islam who focused on an inexhaustible grammar did, and for which Jalaluddin Rûmî is a central figure. At the same time, it seems clear that dialogue and religious affiliations do not have to be as contradictory as the extreme-right wing in Europe and in America would have one believe.

For them the only meeting between East and the West can take place after the depth of Levantine metaphysics has been undermined, and considered an outdated clash of civilizations, after the mother of all wars, and a laboratory of extremism.

As I leave Nizamuddin’s tomb I can still make out a few obdurate stars still shining through the polluted skies of Delhi. I walk slowly and purposefully, with a theme and variation, and an un-ending conversation with Djalaluddin Rûmî: What can I do, Muslims? I do not know myself.

I am neither Christian nor Jew, nor Muslim, I am not from east or west, not from land or sea, not from the shafts of nature nor from the sky, not of the earth, not of water, not of air, not of fire.

I am not from the highest heaven, not from this world, not from existence, not from being.

I am not from India, from China, no from Bulgaria, not from Saqsan, I am not from the world, not from beyond, not from heaven and not from hell.

I am not from Adam, not from Eve, nor from paradise and hell.

My place is placeless, my trace is traceless, no body, no soul, I am from the soul of souls.

I broke the duality, lived the two worlds as one.

One I seek, one I know, one I see, one I call.

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I have no concern but carouse and rapture.

If one day in my life I spend a moment without you, from that hour and that time I would repent my life.

If one day I am given a moment in solitude with you, I will trample the two worlds underfoot and dance forever.

O Sun of Tabriz, I am so tipsy here in this world, I have no tale to tell but tipsiness and rapture.

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Küng, Hans (1993). Projeto de ética mundial. São Paulo, Paulinas.

Mir, Mustansir (2006). Iqbal. London-New York, I. B. Tauris.

Munawwar, Muhammad (s/d). Iqbal: poet-philosopher of Islam. New Delhi, Adam Publishers & Distributors.

Nezhad, Saeid Edalat (2000). “The role of religions in minimizing the world’s crises”, In: Studies in interreligious dialogue. Leuven, Peeters.

Qur’an (ed. Abdel Halim) (1988). Oxford University Press.

Salil, Kuldip, org. (2011). Great urdu ghazals. New Delhi, Hind Pocket Books (Urdu-Hindi-English trilingual edition). _____ (2012). Best of Meer. New Delhi, Rajpal & Sons (UrduEnglish bilingual edition).

Vigil, José Maria (2006). Teologia do pluralismo religioso.

São Paulo, Paulus.

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4

Coexisting with Difference in an Age of Pluralism and Globalization

Difference and “otherness� on the brink of dialogue Candido Mendes

Difference and cultural abolition

At this start of a new century, the discourse of modernity always focuses on the coexistence of cultures and their ever-growing pluralism. And this has been accompanied by an acknowledgement of difference and reciprocal perspectives across the same collective horizon.

Implicit in this understanding is the affirmation of identity that is guaranteed by constant social memory. This in turn persists as a counterpoint between resisting and eventually assimilating dominations in a framework of possible prevalence, or else consented dependence.

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The link between contemporaneity and the installation of this collective identity results from the defeat of its civilizatory dominion during the last half millennium, which has led to cultural “offspring” being suffocated or even eradicated by the advent of technology and the radical reordering of the context in accordance with a rationality proclaimed as universal (Debray, 1992).

The unique impact of the 11th of September was precisely the result of the severing of this conditioning factor by the Islamic world through the intrinsic and radical affirmation of its ipseity by Western hegemony.

The terrorism espoused by Al Qaeda mirrors the implacable message that seeks the premise of this recognition, the premise of a world based on differences (BennaniChraïbi, 2003).

Parallel to this, contemporaneity, in the very depths of the West, grew conscious of colonial violence and its expansive structure of alienation, and indeed of all historical identity (Mignolo, 2007). In this new century we are still engaged in this task of deconstruction, or as far as the point where colonial dependence attained its own conditions of thinking, and even the mimesis of its vision of the authentic and what a collectivity “for itself” would actually be, in its path toward freedom and collective fruition. Now the new century faces the outbreak of violence from the Islamic State, with its radical annihilation of this very feeling of the other and its elimination of recognition as an imperative of universal coexistence. What we are surely witnessing, in the best Jasperian sense, is the rupture of an axial period,

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built by historical process over the last half millennium. The paradigms themselves now appear broken in their intransitive assertion of ipseity and their total cancelling of historical time and multiple coexistence.

By force of circumstance, we find ourselves at the first impulse of this new cogito that already presupposes the entire elimination of dialogue and the valid presence of the other on the horizon of history.

The whole postulate of dialogue as a precondition of collective existence disappears in the extreme reduction of all historical alliance-forming to the same radical imperative of renunciation of alterity (Sève, 2005).

Nothing other than this is the new challenge posed to epistemology and charged à la Windelband and Rickert: the boundary condition of understanding itself. We are heading for the very loss of time synchronies beyond the bounds of epoch or the presumed permanence of historical cycles of failures: “being more”, the effective flourishing of the human phenomenon. The clamor for the caliphate of the Islamic state is already the clamor of this loss of temporal synchrony on which modernity is based, and the diminishing of their collective protagonists based on the nationstate. It is on these same premises, then, that the clamors for this same understanding of the last two decades prove outdated, in search of whatever might support this new axial age opened by the aporetic irredentism of the Islamic State (Roy, 2002).

One wonders in what terms we can—at least as a caveat and using the imperatives of rationality—respond to the

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radical impasse that has presented itself, seeking the first returns or remissions, seeking at least the rudiments of a dialectic discourse (LukĂĄcs, 2001).

The acts perpetrated by the IS do not represent the final episode of the rebel spontaneism that runs rife in the region. Nor do they represent the revenge of the survivors of the Saddam Hussein government in the war waged by Bush.

What has to be read into the sheer radicalism of this confrontation, admitting the presupposition of an axial change in these days of ours, is the exchange of all collective identity for a strict manifestation of ipseity, which is so absolutely and exhaustively repetitive. In the clamor of a revival of the caliphate, ostensibly abolished since 1923, the Shiite-Sunnite dilemma will have to be faced in a process leading toward this last uprising of faith. However it may be, the movement is heading for the extreme radicalism of “believe or die�, driven by a fanaticism from which Islam had freed itself ever since the Abbasids (Esposito).

Contradictions and differences: the emerging matrix

It is also important to admit, in these axial-age days, the breaking of the historical matrix of specifying the protagonists of our collective identity. This has to do with the loss of synchrony of this circumstance over the last 500 years. And this has happened in a regression affirmed in the Middle East today by the caliphates, which deviate utterly from the alignment set up by the nations and their geo-

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graphic frontiers in a universe of unbreakable interactions.

The caliphate wants to agglutinate portions of several present States on behalf of a historical unity seen as something past, and to return today to what is argued to be their canonic, founding moment. And immediately the question is raised concerning the gratuity or arbitrariness of this new historical element in the mistaken syntagm, in whatever— while scanning this canon at the crucial moment of domination—is the recognition of a golden era, the dialogue with contenders in the zone of resistance to Imperial formations (Lewis, 2005). In a parallel with what today is happening between Iraq and Syria, one may ask about the classic floating identity of the Jewish Nation, the forced migratory configurations of Babylonia or the present Persian confrontation, allowing a new dialogue to be set up. Similarly, our days are testimony to this reemergence of the Crusades, amidst a complete uprooting of citizenship, especially in the more developed countries, thus speeding up the creation of diachronic political units in these jihads of radical de-culturalization in which young Americans or Europeans alienate their faces and identities to join a salvationist jihad, in favor of, and without any return from, the caliphates being formed. More often than not, these volunteers for death also imply a radical conversion to Islamism, a new fraternity of this ongoing “Holy War”. This is the very idea of the project, the historical achievement of the West challenged by these jihads so eager for a true, intransitive eschatological vision of any and every future. What is wholly distinguishable here, in the extreme of so-called Western

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rationality, in the intransitive nature of this militancy of rationality, is a project that sows the sense of being. And in this same jihad it can be argued that these volunteers, often springing from the middle class of America or Europe, represent a response to banality which is an unbearable maneuver of their daily existence and the nothing produced by their universe of consumerism and mediatic imitation. Unlike the conquests of the Crusades, what stands out in these new jihadists is a strict zeal for testimony and martyrdom (Ali, 2003). But they cannot be likened to the terrorists who kill the other for no cause, mistaking the other for the enemy; rather, they abolish historical formations experienced as obstacles with no return, that most essential pulsation of collective conscience. One also sees on this horizon a new phenomenology of differences in the contemporary, the opposite effect of the cultural resistance of lost identity caused by the extremist contrast between the borders of the affluent world (Scheffer, 1995), at times in its explanatory dynamics, and the real ghettoes of immobilism and marginality that gave shelter to sovereign collectivities abandoned for centuries to the inertia of their governments. None other is the situation insinuated today by Haiti, for example, handed over as it is to a growing generational diaspora and with its immigrants endlessly searching for better living conditions (Bordes-Benayoun, and Schnapper, 2006). This neoassimilation process arises with the country also being left behind, void of memory and identity and accepting to live with the host country in affirmation of cultural pluralism.

This same parameter even contrasts with migration move-

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ments such as the Mexicans in the United States, where the intention of returning and the identifying force of the adventure resist even against the welcoming conditions of the frontier country, which in turn is also marked by the imposing figure of its identity, let alone its overwhelming integrism.

The epistemology of change

This analysis reclaims a definition of the epistemological presuppositions of this reflection by first of all calling attention to various degrees of pseudo-difference that could affect the perception of the collective subjectivity of contemporary agents (Dallmayr, 2010). The first point involves the confrontation between fundamentalism and the true identity that often results from residue points of resistance from the course of history, then leading to a reductionist profile of what might be the full force of the actual contribution of the memory that configures this identity (Baudrillard, and Valiente Noailles, 2005).

Likewise, the impetus to counterpoint this very domination can lead to the mimesis of this polarization by transferring contents of the “other” in a counterpoint that sections the axes of this effective dialectic.

The accelerated historical process produced by these collective subjectivities leads to diachronic perceptions of this forming identity, still in the ambit of a domination made obsolete by the super-domination involved in the historical process (Mendes, 2004a).

Attention is also called to the function of this epistemology, which also entails deconstructing the very “aware-

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ness” of the whole historical process, involving a reassessment of moments of setting aside or downright rejection of stages or moments of this process which are subsequently seen as a degrading or discarding of identity.

In this epistemology we would actually also come across the protagonists of modernity effectively and in various degrees assuming their identity within the framework of the nation-state. This counterpoint between the commitment “to oneself” or “to others” made by the collectivities in conflict gives rise to different stages of assuming the collective fates expressed in the emergence of nationalisms in these epochmaking circumstances. What is implied in this collective conscience represents the passage of diffuse feelings of independence and the building of converging, cumulative social systems in all their dynamics: a precise response to the efforts of development in the face of the naïve, inert views of progress as historical time.

These approaches suppose the establishing of epistemological support for such social reflection, starting with the pseudo-differences that possibly encompass the perception of the collective subjectivity of the present historical actors (Hall, 1992). The first such pseudo-difference is the confrontation of fundamentalism against truthful identity, resulting from the resistances emerging from the process of its historical continuity. This may lead to a reductionist profile of the effective memory input which is responsible for such identity.

Subsequently, the facing of a determined domination may lead to a mimesis of such polarization in transposing

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what represents the contents of such an “other” beyond the real axis of this encounter (Touraine, 2000).

The acceleration of the historical process could produce a diachronic perception of those collective identities and sometimes even jeopardize an obsolete context of domination vis-à-vis its new development.

One must also consider the deconstruction of the awakening of consciousness, which implies reevaluating the instances of discarding or fully assuming the acknowledgement of its identity.

In fact, in this epistemological caveat we also face the different scales of recognition of an authentic collective self.

The nation-state is nowadays the ultimate entity in this historic commitment. No less than this is the imperative of nationalisms as the basic reference to these collective selves.

Such is the crucial factor in this collective consciousness in respect to the transition from a diffuse feeling of dependence on the part of the previous subjects to colonization as a “social total fact”. Such is the impulse that assures the building of effective social systems, in all its convergent and cumulative dynamics: the fulfillment of development according to the ingenious visions and inertia-bound progress that are considered as a category of historical time.

President Obama’s decision to annihilate the Islamic State was immediately acknowledged by the consensus of American parties for the vehement support offered by the Republicans. What is at stake is the eradication of an organized force bent on an indiscriminate forming of alliances against the nations. On the other hand one sees the Amer-

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ican presumption that immediate cooperation will be given on land by the bordering countries under threat, leaving the air action to the United States, without any involvement of troops.

The question remains as to the extent or limits of the mobilization on the part of the Islamic State, as well as just how far it has already for decades penetrated the collective unconscious of this ever so critical region of the world (Encel, 2002). At the same time, one wonders, in the mesh of these prospective alliances—on one side and the other— whether the vows made with Washington are also linked to the conquering of autonomy by ethnic minorities in the countries involved, especially the Curds in Turkey or the kuidish in Western Pakistan.

Be that as it may, the absolute novelty in the fight against the Islamic State lies in this antagonism directed not towards a government or regime but rather towards a collective protagonist whose militant power is so widespread that it escapes all predictable dissent in the nationstates. The horrendous, unprecedented dramatization of the non-negotiable beheadings of American and British hostages by the IS defines this countdown by the IS as the abolition of any consensus of the period, as the unquestionable threshold of an axial age. This is not just a matter of asking where in the still nebulous ideology of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the conquests of universal rationality over the last five centuries were abandoned, together with the validity of democracy, human rights or religious preferences. And the question remains concerning the relation be-

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tween the IS and Sharia itself, with regard to what today (and especially since Rowhani) involves the Teheran regime’s acceptance of pluralism of religions. We are also disturbed by the lack of limits to this radicalization, again in contrast with the perceptible struggle of forces during the Khomeini Revolution, or else the spontaneism of the utterly sacrificial 11th September. Furthermore, the movement is liable to possible nationalist outbursts and temptations following possible successes in confrontations with the sovereign status quo of the Middle East.

Cultural diversity on the brink of the new axial age

On the brink of an envisaged new Axial Age, one has to wonder about what the dynamics of cultural diversity represents today in the wake of non-hegemonic globalization.

One possible issue emerging nowadays concerns the superseding of the old continental regionalities in the framework of their present configuration.

Such a new scenario accompanies the demise of meta-polarities, as set forth by the center-periphery relations of colonial dependence. One may speak of a new matrix of differentiation, as opposed to a globalization whose hegemonic features were formerly closed. Pluralism is no longer a simple rule of coexistence but a real praxis moved by the sense of otherness and the surging of a genuine ecumene of recognized collective subjectivities.

At the same time, this certainly requires a full understanding of this interplay of cultures—rather than civiliza-

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tions—since the historical process, as ruled by the West, imposed the univocity of a world run by techné and the instrumentality of nature and its context. So, one may now speak of emerging parameters of cultural diversity confronted with the limit-conditions of the “universal” supposedly implied by globalization (Bhabha, 1994).

Overexposure of cultures, now out of their former shelters under the nation system, may also be at stake in the remaining geopolitical conditioning. Indeed, the ongoing interaction between set social identities and the incoming dynamism of development in its different stages of growth contrast with their previous memories. This outcome is much more prospective-bound than what was previously accomplished by those collective identities.

These new interactions are especially relevant in the former continental arrangements, bearing in mind the appearance of the BRICS more as a deterrent force vis-à-vis the old matrices of global power than an effective, coherent and homogeneous counterpoint to their influence. It is difficult to imagine a common action, especially of China and India, despite their control over one third of the world population and their extended common frontier. The BRICS are condemned to their own isolationism, and when they do interplay, they generally enter into a bilateral concurrence, as is the case of China and Russia in Kazakhstan, or of Brazil and China in Africa.

At the same time, on the threshold of this new Axial Age, we see how the emergent world actors have come dis-

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entangled from the former continental profile. This is precisely the case of Brazil vis-à-vis Pacific Latin America, where the new “Tordesillas Treaty” between Peru, Chile, Colombia and Mexico seeks integration with China. It is also what stresses Brazil’s rising Atlantic hegemony towards Africa, together with increasingly unbalanced development of Brazil in comparison with her neighbors, as relations take the form of strict economic assistance to Paraguay and Bolivia, for example.

In such a new and open global conditioning, the struggle for identity moves far from the old rational assumption of the increasing functional interplay between its economic, political, social and cultural components, based on the premise of democracy. Indeed, we may face a regressive outcome of seclusive religious identities, or reductionist forms of wars of religions, such as that launched by the Buddhist factions against the Islamic groups in Myanmar.

The military coup d’état in Egypt was in turn a reaction to the first modern election of the Muslim Brotherhood as the country’s ruling political and religious force. Anyway, it seems clear that, quite different from the old established interlacement between secularization and democracy, the post-Enlightenment age may turn into an era of a state-biased revival of religion, as fostered nowadays by the Christian fundamentalism of the Republican Party in the USA (Todd, 2002).

One has to examine the present world interplay of differences, especially into the contrasts between the West

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and the Asian countries. It is fundamental to assess the social reality of colonialism in the last half millennium in Latin America and Africa. The full profile of historical dependence and domination results from the absolute nonfunctionality of the social pattern established in such territories. It was all conditioned by the interests of the centers of such domination, and the building of collectivities for the other centers. The very idea of a nation in those peripheries became mimetic, overcome only by an awarenessraising process that involved a radical change to the previous inertia-based social dynamism. This is precisely the contemporary effort of development as thorough change, unsuccessful in the full interplay of its economic, social, political and cultural conditionings. It also implies an inner time of achievements, kept within the proportions of the in-takes of such interplay. So, genuine differences may appear in the emergent profile of such countries, especially in the levels of general mobility and awareness-raising to improve such results.

The Westernized side of the world shows the permeating of cultures by the features of civilization, as the configuration of collective identities via the transformation of context through a tĂŠchnĂŠ of the world-to-be. We thus face the suffocation of any sense of a previous collective identity with that domination and the set values imposed to achieve it. The mimesis of the nation became the protagonist of that collective subjectivity (SanjinĂŠs C., 2007).

Nowadays this generates the claim for a possible precolonial quest for authenticity in contents disparaged from

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their present historical frames. Such is the case, for instance, of today’s Bolivia, Ecuador, or even Peru, in their claim for a Quechuan or an Aymaran identity (Kowii, 2007). In such terms, for instance, the present constitution of Bolivia stands for a multinational state, setting the pace for an emerging power system prone to a possible emerging federative format (Albó, 2007).

The historical matricial world in the East did not face the dialectics of civilization and culture, as exemplarily shown

by China. Neither has its sense of identity been challenged in full by the chronic invasions from our side of the world.

It could necessarily be improved in our times, and its world coexistence could emerge though the inner perception of its threats, as shown by the Maoist cultural revolution.

New jihads after Al-Qaeda led also to the claim for a fundamentalism vis-à-vis the historical national identity.

The claim for a caliphate in the Middle-East is the first sign of possible non-synchronic coexistence out of the recognized subjective collectivities in the present historical process. Also, at the same time, a possible regression of identities to civilization turns to the roots of Christianity in the efforts of the Republican Party in the US to reclaim the support of religion in the full-fledged acknowledgement of its increasing fundamentalist stand. Contemporaneity also faces, in terms of a full retrieval of collective memory, a return to religion, which implies the full recovery of a value system, challenged by secularism and science (Lyotard, 2002). Such a surge, engineered by a fundamentalist posture of such beliefs, may lead to new tension in terms of a

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state or church confrontation with the contents of social order or the common good.

This other sign of the times, expressed by democracy in the rules of power, shows even more clearly the conflict emerging in terms of the dynamism of civil society visĂ -vis the established neutrality of the government stance.

This was unquestionably the threat of a possible religious take-over in Egypt, following the resounding clerical victory of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the removal of President Mursi by a military coup.

It turns out also nowadays that the set rules of democracy can also be seen to be forcing a possible hegemonic globalization. This is precisely the claim of the so-called Bolivarist states, under the leadership of Venezuela: to look at the present political situation as a contention between the forces of change and the status quo, functionally linked to the international interests of the capitalist order. A sort of increasing limitation of political parties and, especially, the development of new censorship, play on the premises of a confrontation between democracy and genuine national claims supporting what remains of an international order of interests.

Martyrdoms and jihads come in the pattern of this new emergence, in the priorities assumed by the witnessing that risk even harming the other in order to accomplish the sacrifice. And terrorism, absolutely intransitive in its message, acquires all its fresh evidence in this new century, contrary to violence at all costs, but claiming the objective goals of a change in the status quo, as in Ireland or the Basque Country.

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So, the whole isonomous vision of humanity vanishes, and with it the personableness of all vis-à-vis. Not even an explicit message is needed, and the anonymous line of human bombs waiting to explode sanctions the rupture of the universality of contemporaneous coexistence. Above all, and contrary to the humanism of a decade ago, one faces the collapse of representation, hampered by an increasingly ambiguous mediation of public opinion in its collective feeling, as the expression—always susceptible of generalization—of individual sum-total accounts, without remnants, in the electoral procedures.

Public space returns once more to the square, after the presumption of achieving consensus in the scales and hierarchies of representative majorities and minorities, as a national body, has been deflated. The “democracy of the indignant” that has recently appeared is a priori not reducible in its aspirations to the concerted interplay of Congress plenaries and public opinion. Moreover, it shows the perception of the expropriatory character attained by the universe of the media in inducing and manipulating public opinion towards the complete elimination of the remnants of difference to constitute subjectivity, on the level of the contradictions, synthesis and discrepancies of the global society (Maffesoli, 2000).

What we also face today is the threshold of that epistemological condition described by Carl Schmitt—a world that reencounters the friends-enemies polarization to reach the extreme rejection of the other in such intransitive manifestation of the difference. Within what limits, then, would

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stand the claims for humanism, bearer of the heritage of the remanding interaction between the universal and the rational, and the old Kantian belief in the advent of humanity, regardless of whether or not the State affirms its configuration?

Even more disquieting, in the framework of the “war of religions”, is the extent to which, in the West, the republicanism of the Tea Party unfolds in successive variants of the same fundamentalism, from the Mormons up to radical Catholic extremism. One would have to talk of a limit-heuristic for the maintenance of that dialogue, threatened by the breakdown of the collective recognitions of this world, which would be a haven to civic terrorism and the social subjectivities descended into the trenches. One would have to ask if the first task of this heuristic should be go on thinking of the devolution of the polarities to classic dialectics and to possible remittance of the distinctions, yet driven to the very last step of rationality, to the synthesis at the brinks of analogies and approximations (Habermas, 2005). Perhaps we have not yet realized to what extent the world of the “wars of religion” eliminates the very perspective of the vis-à-vis amongst the collective subjectivities.

Nor have we considered what in a residual phenomenology of recognition could be the premises for this coexistence to the point of compromising the complete denial of the other.

It is as if the ultimate imperative of such survival did not superimpose itself on a minimal presumable platform of affirmation of human rights, where the prius of humanity would at least rise as a natural imperative, and of the ir-

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revocable environment for the whole subjective collectivity. As a result of the stirring-up of the “war of religions”, one might even say that human rights reflect a “Western ideology”. However, the humanism now emerging would settle on the un-conditionality of consciousness, on the exercise of its freedom, a priori linked to that of the other, regardless of the advancement of its quiddity or the subsequent manifestation of their differences.

In other words, we could only come upon the recognition, in minimis, of this new Humanism if an Enlightenment, perceived as natural, were to unfold and the process of rendering a post-Renaissance rationality immanent were drawn out.

Secularism was perhaps just an intermezzo in this new sacralization of the public order by the establishment of the Sharia in the Islamic States. The pendulum reaches its extreme in Iran, which astoundingly deems to have equanimous judicial prowess to the Court of The Hague to judge crimes against humanity. The diffidence of the regimes emerging with the Arab Spring, especially Tunisia and Egypt, expresses the difficulties in conserving such secularism in the face of a State religion. Even if an extremist fundamentalism might not be attained, a rather more rigorous Salafism alongside the Muslim Fraternity grows stronger in the Egyptian ballots.

On the extremes of such fundamentalism, the Boko Haran in Nigeria are professing territorial separation and, most importantly, adherence to the Sharia—in a direct confrontation with other religions, murdering believers and destroying Jewish and Christian temples.

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Such fundamentalism is reinforced by the limitations of collective recognition, which in times of general involvement reveals the mimetic aspect of democracy. The mobilizations and the claim for historical authenticity developed by the Arab Spring now bear their impact on the new international order. Are we going to face a precarious and strict coexistence or are we on the verge, as a founding element of collective subjectivity nowadays, of a defective acceptance of the other and authentic collective recognition (Agamben, 2000).

We face a new framework of world polarization that takes root in several grounds, pledging the defense of a West freed from the emerging migratory policies in contradiction with the assurances of the Charter of the United Nations, and for some we may even be facing an ethnic territorial interdiction. The right to migration belongs to the human genre, as does the search for better life conditions and collective well-being. For others, we may face the danger of an anti-Arab West based on a globalization conditioned by a definite social set.

So, one has to discover if such emerging segregations still reflect the trauma of the September 11 catastrophe or if we are facing a new social and economic Malthusianism, prone to increasing prosperity in a more concentrated and exclusive Europe.

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Rio de Janeiro, Garamond.

Mignolo, Walter D. (2007). “Hermenéutica de la democracia: el pensamiento de los limites y la diferencia colonial”. In: Democracia profunda: reinvenciones nacionales y subje-

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tividades emergentes. 16th International Conference of the Academy of Latinity, Lima, Peru. Rio de Janeiro, Educam-Academia de La Latinidad.

Mora, Enrique Ayala (2007). “Enseñanza de integración en los países andinos”. In: Democracia profunda: reinvenciones nacionales y subjetividades emergentes. 16th International Conference of the Academy of Latinity, Lima, Peru. Rio de Janeiro, Educam-Academia de la Latinidad.

Negri, Antonio (2003). Time for revolution. London, Continuum.

Pinto, Paulo H. (2008). “Muslim diasporas in a comparative perspectiva: Islam in Europe and South America”. In: La dialectique du dialogue: la quête de l’interculturalité. 17th International Conference of the Academy of Latinity, Rabat, Morocco. Rio de Janeiro, Educam-Acadé196 mie de la latinité.

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Une approche des complexités et de l’émergence”. In: Sève, Lucien and Guespin-Michel, Janine. Émergence, complexité et dialectique. Paris, Odile Jacob, p. 16–20.

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Universalité et pluriversalité: les valeurs en question François L’Yvonnet

“Ô Montaigne! toi qui te piques de franchise et de vérité, sois sincère et vrai, si un philosophe peut l’être, et dis-moi s’il est quelque pays sur la terre où ce soit un crime de garder sa foi, d’être clément, bienfaisant, généreux; ou l’homme de bien soit méprisable, et le perfide honoré.” (Rousseau, Émile.)

“On ne peut se battre aujourd’hui utilement que pour des causes qui sont universelles.” (Alain Touraine.)

L’intitulé qui nous rassemble—à l’occasion de la XXVIIIème session de l’Académie de la Latinité: “Valeurs communes dans un monde multiculturel”, pourrait passer pour un sujet de concours, s’il n’interrogeait radicalement, 199

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c’est-à-dire quant aux racines, la raison même d’exister de notre noble assemblée.

Plaçons-nous d’emblée sous le patronage de Montaigne qui, dans le célèbre chapitre des Essais (I, 31), “Des cannibales”, déclare à propos des Indiens du Brésil (et de leur “importation” en France, à Rouen): “Chacun appelle barbarie ce qui n’est pas de son usage.”

Les cultures sont diverses et cette diversité est irréductible. Il est vain et dangereux de chercher à réduire cette diversité, quels qu’en soient les mobiles et les motifs.

La critique de l’ethnocentrisme devra beaucoup à toute une lignée de philosophes, d’anthropologues, de sociologues, parfois audacieusement précédés ou accompagnés de quelques “voyageurs” ou poètes inspirés (nous pensons au grand Victor Segalen et à ses Immémoriaux).

Le multiculturalisme, avec son “isme” ajoute, à l’idée de diversité, une dimension à la fois philosophique (comment penser ensemble l’un et le multiple), sociologique (la multiculturalité à l’œuvre dans les sociétés modernes) et politique (quant à l’organisation d’un monde polycentré ou multipolaire).

Peut-il y avoir des valeurs communes dans un monde multiculturel? Cette question, certes, peut être entendue à demi-mot ou prendre la forme d’un souhait partagé, elle peut aussi être traitée comme une vraie question, comme une question “philosophique” qui, comme telle, requiert, pour qui veut y réponde, d’être préalablement problématisée. En somme, il s’agit d’abord de savoir de quoi on parle et donc de se livrer à un travail de défini-

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tion, un travail conceptuel visant à fixer les enjeux, les présupposés et les conséquences. C’est la modeste tâche que nous nous donnons ici.

La question posée comporte non seulement l’idée de “valeurs”, mais de valeurs “communes”. “Communes” et non “universelles”. Quelle différence faut-il faire entre les unes et les autres? Le commun n’est-il qu’un universel “dégradé”, voire “prudent”, ou bien le terme relève-til d’un autre registre, mobilisant d’autres exigences? L’idée de “commun”, par exemple, comporte-elle une critique des prétentions à l’universel?

I—Universel empirique, universel abstrait, universel concret

Nous n’allons pas dresser une histoire de l’universel.

La chose a été faite et est assez fastidieuse. Retenons seulement que l’universel a une histoire, comme toutes les productions de l’esprit humain.1 On associe l’universel aux Lumières, ce qui n’est pas faux mais insuffisant. D’abord parce que l’idée d’universalité est présente dans la culture européenne bien avant le XVIIIème siècle et que, d’autre part, ce siècle, dit des Lumières (réflexivement), a été le théâtre d’affrontements entre relativisme et universalisme. Les adversaires des Lumières dénonçaient un pseudo-universalisme (un univer1. Cf. par exemple, les articles de Pierre-Henri Tavoillot in Histoire de la philosophie politique, tomes III et IV, sous le direction d’Alain Renaut, Calmann-Lévy, 1999. Ainsi que le texte du catalogue qui accompagnait l’exposition “Lumières, un héritage pour demain”, à la BNF, Paris, 2006.

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sel humain), qui serait en fait un relativisme (l’homme nouveau n’est qu’une abstraction), au nom de l’universalisme divin. Notons qu’Adorno et Horkheimer, dans la Dialectique des Lumières, adresseront aux Lumières une critique assez semblable: elles seront incapables de fonder quoi que ce soit sur les ruines d’un universel transcendant.

Il est bon de garder à l’esprit que l’universel est originairement une notion polémique.

En quel sens peut-on entendre l’universel?

On peut concevoir d’abord, a minima, un universel empirique. Un universel de fait. C’est exemplairement ce à quoi peut aboutir celui qui se demande, alors qu’à l’évidence les valeurs sont relatives, sur quoi peut reposer un “universel esthétique”: une toile de la peinture italienne peut plaire à un Écossais, Homère plaisait à Athènes et plait à Paris. Serait-ce parce que la nature humaine est une?

C’est la réponse de Hume. Tous les hommes sont constitués de la même manière. Certes, mais la nature humaine a fait long feu, la catégorie s’est avérée à la fois métaphysiquement encombrante et épistémologiquement inopérante, même si certains neurobiologistes ont pu céder à la tentation de lui assurer une seconde vie. Ensuite, comme le rappelle le même Hume (Traité de la nature humaine, III, 1, section 1) on ne saurait tirer une prescription d’une constatation. Que les hommes soient en général attachés à la liberté ne suffit pas à faire de celle-ci une valeur universelle, pas plus que la beauté ou le désir de connaître (les “hommes désirent naturellement savoir”, disait Aristote).

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Il y a l’universel abstrait. L’universel ne peut être une norme ou une valeur qu’à la condition de ne pas être un fait général. Ainsi l’idée d’un “universel humain” tel que, par exemple, formulé par Rousseau: l’homme est le seul être perfectible, c’est-à-dire, capable de faire parler la volonté lorsque la nature se tait. L’homme a par là, quelles que soient ses particularités naturelles ou culturelles, une valeur et possède des droits. Certes, mais cet universel abstrait ne fait que fournir un cadre formel, éthique ou politique. Il ne saurait suffire à nourrir l’ambition du “commun”, suggérée par la question posée, tout au plus apportera-t-il l’illusion de l’unité nominale.

Il faut que l’universel se singularise, s’incarne effectivement dans l’existence des hommes. Un universel singulier. Comment l’universel vient-il aux hommes? Rousseau apporte à cette question une réponse originale, loin de la “querelle des universaux”: par l’éducation—dit-il dans Émile où il dresse une généalogie de l’universel—qui est un processus d’arrachement à soi par la construction de soi. Après la pitié qui fait sortir l’enfant de lui-même, viendront—c’est l’objet de la “Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard”—la découverte de l’amour de l’humanité, le goût pour les idées générales et l’aspiration à changer le monde.

Mais il ne suffit pas d’être dans le vrai, il faut encore, et Kant y insistera, produire un sens commun, quand il n’y a au départ que différences et désaccords entre les hommes.

D’où les trois maximes kantiennes: “Penser par soi-même”, c’est-à-dire, avoir le courage de se servir de son propre entendement” (Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?); “Penser en se

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mettant à la place de tout autre”, autrement dit “réfléchir sur son propre jugement d’un point de vue universel”; et enfin, troisième maxime, “Penser en accord avec soi-même”.

L’amour de l’humanité devient concret; vécu et partagé, et semble représenter l’ultime universel humain. Pourtant, cet amour suffit-il à garantir l’existence de valeurs communes? Suffit-il à protéger la diversité? Est-il un obstacle au refus de la différence?

L’approche différentielle du concept d’universel ne permet pas de répondre à la question qui nous est posée. Qu’en est-il du commun?

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François Jullien,2 que nous nous proposons de suivre ici, peut nous aider à voir un peu plus clair: il ne faut pas confondre l’universel, l’uniforme et le commun.

• L’universel, tel qu’entendu philosophiquement, est un concept rigoureux de la raison, un concept a priori, antérieur à toute expérience. Il ne saurait servir seulement à reconnaître une totalité constatée, empirique, mais désigne, nous dit Jullien, “un devoir-être projeté en a priori, et établissant une norme absolue pour toute l’humanité”. À une universalité “faible”, descriptive, qui n’a d’universel que le nom, qui n’est jamais qu’une généralisation

2. François Jullien, De l’universel, de l’uniforme, du commun et du dialogue des cultures, Fayard, 2008. “Quel absolu pour les Droits de l’homme?”, in Human rights and their possible universality, Rio de Janeiro, Académie de la latinité, Textes de référence, 2009, p. 61-85.

Universalité et pluriversalité: les valeurs en question

abusive, s’oppose une universalité “forte”, normative, à la mesure de l’a priori kantien…

Cela étant dit, on rencontre immédiatement une difficulté, que Jullien souligne avec force: l’universel conçu logiquement—qui permet de penser les relations de nécessité à l’œuvre dans les énoncés de la science, dans telle loi physique, par exemple—, une universalité de principe, ne permet pas d’envisager le vivre ensemble ou le vivre en commun des diverses cultures. Prenons, par exemple, la “Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme”: l’universel “faible”—la Déclaration s’adresse à toute l’humanité, qui est désormais “au complet” grâce à la planétarisation à partir de l’épicentre européen—est aussi un universel “fort”, la Déclaration est prescriptive, elle est fondée sur une nécessité de principe. Le hiatus entre les deux niveaux n’est pas explicitement réfléchi.

Ce qui est en cause, ici, n’est pas seulement la possible confusion du descriptif et du prescriptif, de ce qui est et de ce qui doit être, mais la légitimité d’un “devoir être” censé pouvoir s’appliquer à un “être” finalement insaisissable.

En s’en tenant à l’usage rigoureux du concept, on risque de passer à la trappe le contexte historique de la notion, en en faisant une sorte d’universaux: l’universel fort n’est jamais qu’un produit particulier de la pensée européenne, sous sa forme assez tardive, résolument moderne; sans compter qu’au XVIIIème siècle, la question de la diversité des cultures ne se posait pas, en tout cas, pas en termes anthropologiques. Il faut toujours se méfier du catéchisme de la raison, de la raison des Lumières, souvent

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“aveuglantes”, selon le bon mot de Régis Debray. Sans vouloir réveiller une vieille querelle, on peut adopter un point de vue résolument nominaliste: les universels produit par la raison n’ont qu’une existence nominale, seuls les individus existent réellement. Ce qui suppose, en tout premier lieu, de leur donner la parole…

• L’uniforme est le “double perverti de l’universel” répandu par la mondialisation. Alors que l’universel est ce qui est “tourné vers l’Un” (uni-versus), qui se tiendrait dans une sorte de prééminence, l’uniforme renverrait à la régularité conforme de la série: “En saturant le monde, il se fait passer subrepticement pour lui, mais ne peut invoquer de légitimité.” Il relève d’un intérêt non de la raison mais de la production qui, “en diffusant indéfiniment le semblable, en fait le seul paysage qui nous reste”. L’universel s’oppose au particulier ou au singulier; l’uniforme s’oppose au différent. Jullien montre bien que les revendications, ici et là, d’un droit à la différence sont moins des manifestations identitaires (la volonté de se distinguer des autres), que l’exigence pour tous “d’avoir une histoire propre qui (…) nous pose tous également en sujets possibles, comme sujets culturels, portant en nous-mêmes la chance de cette auto-promotion et d’un avenir inventif”.

L’uniforme, qui n’est jamais qu’une pseudo-universalité, est l’un des obstacles à la possibilité même d’un monde commun. Il n’y a de monde commun possible qu’à partir de la différence, de la mise en commun du propre et du différent. Qu’à partir de la reconnaissance des différences.

Universalité et pluriversalité: les valeurs en question

• Le commun est ce qui appartient à plusieurs (communis). Il est ce qui peut être partagé (cum, avec). Mais qu’estce que le partage? Est-ce la mise en commun de ce que nous avons en propre (telles manières d’être, telles “valeurs”), que nous proposons de partager ou la mise en commun de ce que nous avons en partage (le monde, par exemple), à la manière d’un héritage (sens premier du “communis” latin)? Le commun, dit Jullien, à la différence de l’universel, ne s’édicte pas (à la manière d’une “loi” de la raison), ni ne se “prédicte” (avant toute expérience): il est essentiellement inscrit dans l’expérience. Nous sommes toujours pris dans du commun, qui est à la fois “reçu” (par mes appartenances “objectives”, comme celle d’être breton et francophone) et voulu (par mes choix politiques, par exemple). Jullien fait judicieusement remarquer que si l’universel est “absolu”, peu ou prou, le commun est gradué. Il peut être étendu ou restreint. Il est extensible par nature.

Le commun n’est un concept ni logique (comme l’universel) ni économique (comme l’uniforme), mais politique.

Pensons à l’idée aristotélicienne de bien “commun” qui fonde la communauté politique (celle de la polis).

On peut bien sûr se demander si le commun étendu à tous coïncide avec l’universel. Jullien rappelle, fort du distinguo scolastique, que l’appartenance du commun est réalisée “dans la chose” (in re), alors que l’abstraction de l’universel lui est “ultérieure” (post rem). La “Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme” est, à cet égard, ambigüe, puisque se trouvent quasi mêlés, une prescription universelle et le commun de la participation: “L’idéal com-

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mun à atteindre par tous les hommes” (Préambule). Faut-il entendre que l’universalité est renforcée par le partage en commun? Ou que le partage en commun (de fait) doit être fondé sur l’universalité (en droit)?

F. Jullien cite opportunément Mireille Delmas-Marty.

Lors d’une session de notre Académie,3 elle avait insisté sur la nécessité d’un droit “commun” pour l’humanité et non d’un droit “universel”. Non par l’abandon d’une exigence de partage planétaire, ni par réalisme pragmatique, mais par un glissement significatif du plan de la morale à celui de la politique. “De la prescription à la participation.”

Afin que puisse naître une “communauté de valeur”, une communauté du bien commun.

On gagne en outre à bien marquer l’écart qu’il y a, entre un commun “fermé” ou “clos” (qui ex-communie) et un commun “ouvert”, extensible, qui recueille et accueille.

La question qui nous est posée prend un relief particulier si l’on prend soin de ne pas confondre le commun ni avec l’universel, dont il n’est pas l’une des figures ni avec l’uniforme, dont il n’est pas une variation.

S’il y a des “valeurs” communes, ce ne peuvent être que des valeurs effectivement partagées par la communauté humaine, forte de leurs différences. Il faudrait concevoir une sorte de cosmopolitisme du commun.

3. Mireille Delmas-Marty, “Universalisme des droits de l’homme et dialogue des cultures: l’énigme d’une communauté mondiale sans fondations”, in Aliança das civilizações, interculturalismo e direitos humanos, Rio de Janeiro, Educam, 2007, p. 85-97.

Universalité et pluriversalité: les valeurs en question

III—La question des valeurs

Le mot “valeur” est assez encombrant. Rappelons qu’il fait son entrée dans la langue philosophique avec Nietzsche, qui l’entend péjorativement, avant de migrer dans la langue de la sociologie allemande, via Max Weber. La réévaluation des valeurs conduit l’auteur de Zarathoustra à une dévalorisation des valeurs anciennes et à un renversement des valeurs. Nietzsche, d’une manière ironique, entend d’abord le mot dans son sens financier: combien cela vaut-il? Les valeurs prétendent pouvoir mesurer le prix de la vie. Ce qui est impossible dit Nietzsche. La vie n’a pas de prix, pas plus que la liberté ou l’égalité...

Les valeurs auraient une “dignité”. Nous retrouvons Kant. On ne saurait les négocier, les échanger. Faut-il en conclure qu’elles sont “absolues”? Non point, car rien n’existe dans l’absolu (et les vaches y sont noires, dit Hegel). Toute production de l’esprit est relative. Alors qu’estce qu’une valeur? C’est à la fois ce qui vaut et le fait de valoir. Mais qu’est-ce que valoir? Ne vaut que ce qui est désirable ou désiré. Une valeur est “l’objet hypostasié d’un désir”...4 Si nous cherchons à penser des valeurs communes, c’est qu’elles sont d’une certaine manière désirables ou aimables. Elles doivent l’être en un sens spinoziste: elles amplifient notre manière d’être, elles amplifient le monde dans lequel nous vivons. La justice n’est désirable (et est comme telle une valeur) que parce 4. Cf. l’article “Valeur” dans l’excellent Dictionnaire philosophique, d’André Comte-Sponville, PUF, 2014.

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que nous la désirons et qu’elle amplifie notre puissance d’exister. Aussi bien individuellement que collectivement. “Évaluer, c’est créer”, dit Nietzsche.

C’est dans cette direction, nous semble-t-il, que nous devons chercher à établir des valeurs communes, une communauté de valeurs.

Car, si l’on entend par valeur, en un sens apparemment plus modeste, un principe auquel on adhère collectivement et qui est censé guider l’action, on se heurte à des difficultés, déjà aperçues, qui portent sur l’existence même de telles valeurs à l’échelle de l’humanité. Philippe Descola, titulaire de la chaire d’anthropologie au Collège de France, fait remarquer que dans les sociétés sans écriture, la “valeur” n’est jamais définie de façon normative, à savoir positivement, mais négativement: il y a des choses à ne pas faire. Il est mal d’être glouton, par exemple; par contraste, la frugalité peut passer pour une “valeur”. La valeur proscrit plus qu’elle ne prescrit.

Peut-on se contenter, en guise de “valeurs communes”, de “proscriptions communes”? À la manière du Décalogue (“Tu ne tueras point!”) ou de la prohibition de l’inceste (qui est la règle des règles, selon Lévi-Strauss). C’est difficilement imaginable, sauf à en appeler à la Transcendance ou à la Nature. Or, il s’agit bien de concevoir des valeurs communes, immanentes et non naturalisables, non des valeurs universelles venues d’en-haut ou d’en bas, mais établies par les hommes au bénéfice des hommes.

L’idée de valeur étant très fortement associée à notre modernité occidentale, tout comme l’idée d’universali-

Universalité et pluriversalité: les valeurs en question

té, on peut évidemment y renoncer purement et simplement, prônant un relativisme intégral. On sait pourtant qu’un tel relativisme est logiquement non pertinent (il s’annule lui-même) et qu’il risque en outre d’aboutir à un nihilisme intégral.

Que les valeurs soient relatives—elles n’existent que relativement à l’esprit qui les conçoit et les pose—ne veut pas dire qu’elles vaillent rien ou qu’il est absurde de se battre pour elles. Il faut au contraire se battre pour elles, puisqu’elles n’existent que par ce combat.

Il faut penser autrement, la relation de l’universel et du relatif, d’où le commun. Non plus penser l’universel et le relatif, comme s’excluant mais comme étant complémentaires. Il y a d’un côté la “Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme” (ONU, 1948), de l’autre la “Convention sur la diversité des cultures” (Unesco, 2005), qui est un “patrimoine commun de l’humanité.

IV—Universalité et pluriversalité

Revenons à nos moutons. Non plus seulement: peut-il y avoir des valeurs communes dans un monde multiculturel? Mais comment rendre communes des valeurs dans un monde multiculturel? Comment, par exemple, concevoir une protection des Droits de l’homme sans les fonder sur un universel statique et unifié.

Mireille Delmas-Marty dit qu’il faut dynamiser l’universel, dynamiser les Droits de l’homme. Il faut les concevoir comme des “processus transformateurs, interactifs et évolutifs”. Non plus un universel figé, et par là même suspect

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mais, dans la perspective du commun, un universel pluriel et en mouvement. Ainsi entendu, les Droits de l’homme devraient permettre la mise en compatibilité des différences, la “recherche d’une harmonie qui viendrait progressivement de leurs interactions”.

La protection de Droits universels devrait passer par l’harmonisation et l’hybridation. C’est sans doute, là encore, le chemin du commun. L’harmonisation est un processus de rapprochement des différences (la création de la Cour Pénale Internationale, par exemple, comporte l’idée de subsidiarité par rapport aux juridictions pénales des États); l’hybridation est un processus de métissage (des procédures pénales, pour reprendre le même exemple, mais aussi quant à la définition même de crime contre l’humanité).

Une démarche qui conduit M. Delmas-Marty à définir l’humanité comme une valeur résultant de deux processus: la différenciation “qui détermine la singularité de chaque être humain comme être unique et non programmé”. Et en même temps, un processus d’intégration “qui implique l’égale appartenance de chacun à la communauté humaine”. Une double conception individualiste et holiste.

Ce qui l’amène à promouvoir l’idée d’un humanisme revisité, “qui s’adapterait à la mondialisation sans renoncer aux différenciations”.5 Un humanisme relationnel (Philippe Descola) et non relatif. Relationnel, parce que met5. Mireille Delmas-Marty, “Vers une humanisation réciproque: le rôle du droit”, in Human rights and their possible universality, op. cit., p. 35-61.

Repris dans le n° 1 de la revue Cité, PUF, 2010.

Universalité et pluriversalité: les valeurs en question

tant en relation la diversité des hommes et des cultures, mais aussi parce qu’ouvert au monde non humain (l’animal ou la nature).

M. Delmas-Marty propose très judicieusement, suivant la suggestion de François Ost, d’utiliser le concept de traduction, tel que définit par Ricœur. La traduction, dit-elle, ne produit pas de l’identité, mais de la différence. Elle peut servir de médiateur entre l’universalisme des valeurs et la diversité des cultures. Il faut chercher l’équivalence en renonçant à l’identité. Ce qui vaut au plan du droit—c’est l’objet du travail de notre auteur—peut être étendu à toutes les règles, dès lors qu’intervient la volonté du commun.

••• En somme, et ce sera notre conclusion, le thème de notre rencontre comporte une exigence implicite, mais essentielle: la nécessité d’établir à l’échelle de l’humanité une communauté de bien, qui est en même temps une communauté de survie et une communauté de destin.

Nous sommes au plus près de l’Évangile de la perdition dont parlait Edgar Morin: puisque nous sommes perdus (dans le gigantesque univers), puisque nous sommes voués à la souffrance et à la mort, nous devons être frères.

Une fraternité qui serait la clé d’une véritable politique de civilisation.

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Religious knowledge and cultural creativity in the making of Islamic pluralism in Brazil Paulo Gabriel Hilu R. Pinto

Brazil has a large Muslim population,1 which was formed since the late nineteenth century by successive waves of migration from the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine) and by the conversion of Brazilians. The Muslim communities are mostly urban, the largest ones being those in São 1. The census of 2010 gives the number of 35,167 Muslims in Brazil. Muslim religious authorities speak of 1 to 2 million Muslims in the country.

Raymond Delval, in his book Les Musulmans en Amérique Latine et aux Caraïbes, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1992, estimated the number of Muslims in Brazil to be 200,000 in 1983 (p. 201). In 2010 the Pew Forum estimated the Muslim population Brazil as being 204,000 (http://features.pewforum. org/muslim-population-graphic/#/Brazil). I consider, based on my ethnographic experience with several Muslim communities in Brazil, that plausible estimates for 2014 could range between 100,000 and 200,000 Muslims in Brazil.

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Paulo, Foz de Iguaçu, Curitiba, São Bernardo do Campo, Brasília and Rio de Janeiro. Nevertheless, there are important sociological differences between communities in each of these sites. For example, the Muslim community in Rio de Janeiro has not received a significant influx of recent immigrants, a fact that makes the processes of the construction and transmission of Muslim identities more dependent on local and national cultural dynamics. In contrast, in the other above-mentioned Muslim communities the production of Islamic identities is strongly influenced by transnational Islamic movements and by the constant contact with Islam as practiced in the Middle East.2 As most Muslim immigrants to Brazil came from the Arab Middle East—mainly Lebanon, Syria and Palestine—they were identified with the large Arab community already existing in Brazil.3 The Arab immigrants that came to Brazil in the first half of the twentieth century were mostly Christians and they managed to overcome or minimize the effects of the widespread racism and discrimination directed against them in the 1930s and 1940s, such as their stigmatization as backward, fanatical and greedy “orientals” called as turcos (Turks) by a large part

2. The data analyzed here were gathered in several periods of ethnographic fieldwork that I have done in the Muslim communities in Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba since 2003. These ethnographies were made possible by research grants given by CNPq and Faperj.

3. See John Karam, Another arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese ethnicity in neoliberal Brazil, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, p. 10-3.

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of the Brazilian intellectual elite.4 This was done through economic success and a strong investment in cultural capital, such as higher education for their sons and daughters, which created an impressive upwards social mobility.5 The media discourse on terrorism after September 11 made more evident some of the tensions underlying the ambiguous insertion of the Arabs in Brazilian society as whites who are, nonetheless, “marked” by cultural differences. This became more acute in the case of the Muslims, who became the target of transnational political discourses that tried to link them with international conflicts and define them as a security threat (in particular the Muslim community in Foz do Iguaçu). These discourses had clearly negative effects on the situation of the Muslims in Brazil. Many informants told me that they were harassed in the streets, being the target of verbal abuses, such as “terrorist” or, in the case of women, “Bin Laden’s wife”. There were also a few cases of physical aggression in Rio and São Paulo.

However, the stigmatization of Arabs and Muslims as “terrorists” was challenged by other discourses that define the Brazilian nation in opposition to what is perceived as the imperialistic policies of the United States and their allies. This tense relation with the USA in the Brazilian na4. Jeffrey Lesser, A negociação da identidade nacional: imigrantes, minorias e a luta pela etnicidade no Brasil, São Paulo, Unesp, 2000, p. 87135.

5. Oswaldo Truzzi, Patrícios: sírios e libaneses em São Paulo, São Paulo, Hucitec, 1997.

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tionalist discourse made a large portion of the Brazilian public opinion see the 09/11 terrorist attacks as a “retaliation” provoked by the very imperialist policies that are fostered by the Americans in the Middle East.

In this sense, the Muslim identities in Brazil inherited the ambiguous position of the Arab/Syrian-Lebanese ethnic identity, to which were added more dramatic symbolic and political meanings. With this broader context in mind, I will analyze here the construction of Muslim identities and codifications of the Islamic tradition in Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba as a way to understand how a plurality of Muslim identities and ways of understanding and living the tenets of Islam emerges from the interaction between immigrant traditions, local and national cultural realities and the transnational appropriation of Islamic religious knowledge produced in the Middle East and Europe.

The Muslim community of Rio de Janeiro

The Sunni Muslim community in Rio is rather small in comparison to those in São Paulo or Paraná. The leaders of the community estimate that there are 5,000 Muslims in the whole province of Rio de Janeiro, with more or less 1,000 of them being directly or indirectly connected with the Muslim Charitable Society of Rio de Janeiro (Sociedade Beneficente Muçulmana do Rio de Janeiro, SBMRJ), which constitutes the religious and institutional center of the community.6 Until 2007 the religious activities of 6. The incertitude of the numbers is reproduced on the local level, as the Muslim institutions do not keep systematic records of their members or

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the Sunni Muslim community took place in a prayer hall (musala) in a commercial building in downtown Rio. Since that date the religious activities moved to a new mosque that is being built in the Tijuca neighborhood. This is the only mosque currently operating in Rio de Janeiro, for the mosque built in the neighborhood of Jacarepaguá in 1983 has been closed since the mid-1990s. There is one musala downtown and another in Copacabana. There is also the ‘Alawi Muslim Charitable Society in Tijuca, which serves as a space of sociability and for the celebration of ‘Alawi rituals, such as ‘Ashura and the Mawlid al-Nabawi (Birthday of the Prophet).7 Despite its small size, the Sunni Muslim community in Rio is particularly interesting because it is the largest one in Brazil in which members are not predominantly of Arab origin. The history of this community is marked by a series of cultural reorientations that allowed it to create a of the families that constitute the community. Raymond Delval recorded that he was told in 1983 that there were 12,000 Muslims in the state of Rio de Janeiro, of which 5,000 lived in the city of Rio, while there were only 60 members registered in the Muslim Charitable Society of Rio de Janeiro (Delval, Les Musulmans, p. 233-9). The 2010 demographic census registered only 964 Muslims in Rio de Janeiro, which is Brazil’s second largest city with about 6.3 million inhabitants.

7. ‘Alawis are a Shi’i sect that exists in Syria, Lebanon, and southern Turkey. The ‘Alawi community in Rio performs the Friday prayers in the prayer-hall at their Society and celebrates some holy dates, such as ‘Ashura and the Mawlid al-Nabawi. The ‘Alawis in Rio de Janeiro usually do not attend the religious activities at the (Sunni) Muslim Charitable Society of Rio de Janeiro. Some ‘Alawis told me that the Salafi tendencies of the Sunni community discourage them to attend the mosque or to engage in the activities of the SBMRJ.

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form of insertion in the local society based on the incorporation of new members through the conversion of Brazilians. The result is a multicultural and multiethnic community that includes Arabs and their descendants, Africans (many whom are foreign students or immigrants), and nonArab Brazilians who have converted to Islam from other religious traditions. The non-Arab Brazilians are, in fact, the majority in the community, while Arabs and their descendants make up only 10% of the membership. The number of non-Arab Brazilian converts has increased dramatically since 2000, when they constituted about half of the members of the community,8 reaching the level of 85% of the members in 2007.

The first Muslim institution in Rio de Janeiro was the ‘Alawi Muslim Charitable Society of Rio de Janeiro (Sociedade Beneficente Muçulmana Alauíta do Rio de Janeiro), created in 1931 by ‘Alawi immigrants from Syria.

While the Society was linked to the ‘Alawi community, its founding charter states that it is devoted to take care of “everything related to the interests of those affiliated to the ‘Alawi Muslim rite in particular, and of the Muslims in general”.9 This pan-Islamic horizon allowed the ‘Alawi Society to serve as religious institution to the Sunni Muslims and its shaykh to be their religious leader for decades,

8. Silvia Montenegro, Dilemas identitários do Islã no Brasil, PhD dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2000.

9. Estatutos da Sociedade Beneficente Muçulmana Alauíta do Rio de Janeiro, p. 3-4.

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despite the religious differences between the two branches of Islam.10 The Sunni Muslims only created the Muslim Charitable Society of Rio de Janeiro (SBMRJ), in 1951.11 Though an institutional reference for the Sunni Muslim community, it held no religious activities. In 1970, with funding from Saudi Arabia, an Egyptian shaykh trained in AlAzhar became the imam of the Sunni community and all its religious rituals, such as the daily prayers, started to be performed in the musala of the SBMRJ. This move created in practice two Muslim communities in Rio de Janeiro, one a Sunni and the other an ‘Alawi, which remained connected for some time before eventually developing divergent histories.

The emphasis on the religious aspects of the SBMRJ was accompanied by other efforts to mobilize the Sunni Muslims in Rio de Janeiro—which by 1970 were almost all immigrants from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine and their descendants—around their religious identity. Besides the daily prayers held at the musala of the SBMRJ, these efforts were directed to transmitting a Muslim identity and Islamic religious knowledge to the descendants of the Muslim immigrants who were born in Rio. Therefore, during 10. Paulo G. H. R. Pinto, Árabes no Rio de Janeiro: uma identidade plural, Rio de Janeiro, Ed. Cidade Viva, 2010, p. 119-21.

11. I found no evidence to support Raymond Delval’s reference of 1930 as the year of the founding of the (Sunni) Muslim Charitable Society (Delval, Les Musulmans, p. 234). He has probably mistaken the Sunni Society for the ‘Alawi one, which was created in 1931.

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the 1970s the Sunni Muslim community in Rio de Janeiro saw its religious identity as part of a cultural heritage brought to Rio by immigrants from the Middle East and that should be transmitted to the new generations.

After a long decline in the number of members, this situation was reverted after 1997, when a group of Muslims born or raised in Rio introduced reforms that changed completely the cultural orientation of the SBMRJ and, therefore, of the community itself. At that time the SBMRJ was directed by a Sudanese, Abdu, who had incomplete religious studies in Libya and served as the imam of the community. Abdu, together with some members of the community, in particular two brothers born in Rio of Syrian descent, who had studied Arabic and one year of Islamic jurisprudence at the Islamic University of Medina, started to change the codification of Islam officially fostered by the community. They emphasized the universalistic aspect of Islam and, adopting a Salafi framework, tried to present it as a religious system “free” of Middle Eastern cultural references. This approach contrasted with the one previously dominant in the community, which strongly connected Muslim identity to Arab cultural diacritics.

This change in the codification of Islam was accompanied by a series of transformations that aimed to widen the audience of the religious discourses produced by the leaders of the community. Thus, Portuguese gradually replaced Arabic as the main language of the Friday sermons, which allowed both Muslims of Arab descent born in Brazil and Brazilian converts to participate in one of the community’s

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main arenas of transmission of religious knowledge. Also, courses in Arabic, History of Islam and “Islamic Culture” started to be offered to Muslims and non-Muslims, creating an important arena of socialization for Muslims born in Brazil and converts to Islam, as well as a channel of dialogue with the larger Brazilian society.

These courses allowed the leaders of the community to give more visibility to their codification of Islam as well as to their criticism of the negative representations of Muslims and Islam that circulated in the Brazilian society and media. Furthermore, the courses also created an instance of cultural mediation between various representations, expectations and doubts that the students had in relation to Islam and the religious codification fostered by the leaders of the SBMRJ. This nourished the intellectual curiosity of some of the non-Muslim students, who gradually became more personally involved with the form of Islam practiced by the Muslim community in Rio de Janeiro. In addition to the universalistic codification of Islam and the adoption of Portuguese as the main linguistic context of the religious discourses, this discursive arena provided an important channel to attract prospective converts to the community.

The number of converts increased steadily, gaining momentum after 2001, when the greater visibility that Islam attained in the cultural imaginary of the Brazilian society enhanced the dynamics of conversion. After a few years, converts constituted the absolute majority of the Muslims in Rio, changing the cultural and religious character of the community. As the process of conversion to Islam in the

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Muslim community in Rio is centered on the acquisition of a Muslim identity through individual commitment to the beliefs, practices, rules and norms of Islam as they are defined and codified by the community, the increase in the number of converts led to an individualization of Muslim religiosity.

Indeed, the individual is the target of the official religious discourses that circulate in the community. The sermons emphasize individual responsibility, rational choice and conscious intention as the bases of faith. All collective rituals—such as daily prayers, fasting during Ramadan or the Pilgrimage of the Hajj—are the object, at the appropriate period of the religious calendar, of sermons that emphasize that their religious merits are only valid if they are performed with the full rational and emotional engagement of the individual. It is a recurrent theme in the discourse of the leadership of the community that Muslim identity is not inherited, but rather something that is achieved through the acquisition of religious knowledge and the conscious shaping of one’s behavior according to the moral rules of Islam.

This kind of religiosity that connects religious knowledge is based on the codification of Islam that is fostered by the leadership of the SBMRJ. The leaders of the Muslim community in Rio define their understanding and practice of Islam as deriving from the Salafiyya. According to them, Islam is a definite and bounded set of beliefs, rules and moral norms that are inscribed in the Qur’an and the Hadith. One of the leaders of the SBMRJ summarized this position during a course in 2008, by saying that

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Islam is what is stated in the Qur’an and in the traditions of the Prophet, peace be upon him. That is the Islam of the revelation. After that, because of historical reasons and influence of culture and other religions, people started to interpret and add things, creating variation and deviation from the original message. Here in the SBMRJ we think that these other practices and beliefs might seem correct to those who follow them, but we don´t accept them for us.

Nevertheless, the religious authorities of the Sunni community in Rio de Janeiro have a very particular interpretation of the Salafiyya, which for them is mainly the idea that all aspects of Muslim religiosity should be grounded in the Qur’an and the Hadith. They do not follow the literalist or political trends of the Salafiyya,12 framing their interpretation of Islamic doctrines as a moral discourse centered on the individual who aims to insert his or herself into the larger society as a pious Muslim. This orientation towards creating a Muslim religious life in a non-Muslim society leads the leaders of the community to adopt positions that could be better classified as “modernist” rather than “Salafi”, usually drawing inspiration from European or North-American Muslim sources.

One example is the official position of the SBMRJ on female converts who were already married to non-Muslim husbands before their conversion. According to one of the brothers who delivers the Friday sermon (khutba), as there is no consensus among the Islamic scholars on the issue of whether the marriage would still be valid or not, it is up to each individual female convert to decide if she will remain 12. Bernard Rougier, “Introduction”, in Bernard Rougier (ed.), Qu’est-ce que le Salafisme?, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2008, p. 15-9.

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married to her non-Muslim husband or not. This opinion is inspired by a similar decision by the European Council for Fatwa and Research. Similar issues of whether it is licit or not to work in a bar, to celebrate one’s birthday, or to eat in non-Muslim houses where pork is served with other food, are also left up to the individual conscience of each member of the community.

This “Salafi minimalism” was possible because the community has traditionally refused to receive shaykhs appointed by other religious institutions, in particular those from Saudi Arabia.13 However, since 2012 there has been a process of integration of the community with the Islamic institutions based in São Paulo and, through them, with the globalized networks of patronage that spring from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. In 2014 a new imam, a Brazilian who studied in Sudan, was appointed to the mosque and a more assertive form of the Salafiyya became the normative reference in the community.

The SBMRJ also offers spaces and alternative forms of sociability to the Brazilian cultural traditions that are seen as “un-Islamic”, such as Carnival, which is particularly present in the everyday life of the Muslims in Rio. During Carnival there are “Islamic Camping” or “Spiritual Retreat” activities, usually held on farms or in hotels in the countryside. On these occasions, those who want can retreat to an “Islamic” environment where leisure activi13. Silvia Montenegro, “Identidades muçulmanas no Brasil: entre o arabismo e a islamização”, Lusotopie, n. 2, 2002, p. 59-79.

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ties, such as sports or hiking, are mixed with praying and the study of Islam.14 Other traditions linked to urban middle-class culture such as Mother’s Day or Children’s Day sometimes also receive an “Islamic” version in the SBMRJ or are just commented on in the sermon about how a Muslim should behave during their celebration.

On the other hand, the SBMRJ is be very conscious of its position in Rio’s religious sphere, in which the Muslim community tries to inscribe itself as part of the local “religious diversity” with a discourse of tolerance and coexistence. Since 2008 a delegation from the Muslim community participates in the annual “March against Religious Intolerance”,15 where it shares with other religious traditions, such as Catholicism, Judaism and African-Brazilian religions (Candomblé and Umbanda), a space of belonging to Rio’s religious imaginary. This performative affirmation of the Muslim community as part of the local religious landscape is an important way of presenting Islam as a legitimate alternative for conversion in Rio’s “religious market”. The construction of a new mosque, the 14. This creation of alternative spaces of religious sociability is not exclusive to Muslims, as devote Catholics and Evangelical Christians also have their “spiritual retreats” in order to avoid the festivities of Carnival.

15. This march was created in 2008 after episodes of violence between members of evangelical churches and adepts of the African-Brazilian cults. Almost all religious groups, including the Catholic Church and the Jewish community, participate in this march that takes place on the Copacabana beach promenade, but many Evangelical churches refuse to participate, saying that they are being the real victims of the intolerance of the other religious groups.

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Mesquita da Luz (Mosque of Light), in 2007, can also be seen as a way of inscribing Muslim religiosity into Rio’s urban landscape.

The importance of the efforts to create a religious codification of Islam, as well as mechanisms for its transmission (sermons and texts in Portuguese, courses) that were adapted to the local social and cultural conditions of the Muslim community in Rio, must not prevent us from seeing that they are also connected to processes that point to transnational religious horizons. The processes of localizing Islam in Rio are usually coupled with others that globalize the religious imagination of the carioca Muslims.16 This is particularly true of the converts, whose socialization in the doctrines, practices, and values of Islam is allied with the construction of a transnational religious imagination centered on the Middle East and its holy sites.

Friday sermons occasionally talk about the past and present religious and political situation of the Middle-Eastern societies. Examples of Muslims living in Europe, China or the USA are also often used as moralizing stories in the sermons.

Many converts take the Arabic language course, aiming to read the quranic text in its original version, but also to acquire enough linguistic competence to be able to interact with Middle Eastern cultural and religious realities. Others go to spend some time living in Syria, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia in order to study Arabic and “learn how 16. The word “carioca” means someone who was born in Rio.

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life is in a Muslim society”, as summarized by one convert who had lived in Syria. The hajj (Pilgrimage to Mekka) is another occasion for the converts to gain an experiential dimension to the transnational religious imagination that connects them to the sacred site in the Middle East. All these experiences of direct contact and acquisition of firsthand knowledge of the Arab Muslim societies of the Middle East provide the Sunni converts in Rio de Janeiro with a form of cultural and religious capital that allows them to affirm their Muslim identity and their belonging to the umma on equal terms with those born Muslim.

Furthermore, there is an intense use of the internet by the members of the Sunni community in Rio de Janeiro for searching Islamic references on various topics pertaining to their everyday lives and/or intellectual questionings.

This is particularly true among the converts, who do not have Islamic normative models embedded in their family traditions. Most of the religious knowledge is searched on English-language Islamic webpages, usually created and maintained by European and North-American Muslims faced with issues similar to those of the Brazilian Muslims living as a minority in a non-Muslim society. Also, English versions of Arab, mainly Saudi, webpages are another source of religious knowledge among the Sunni Muslim in Rio de Janeiro. Online access to sermons, texts and fatwas of the late Mufti of Saudi Arabia, shaykh ‘Abd al-Aziz Ibn al-Baz, was an important tool for acquiring religious guidance among Brazilian converts to Islam during the early 2000s. Those who master Arabic can access Arabic-lan-

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guage Islamic webpages, thereby enlarging the horizon of their religious imagination.

It is interesting to note that important Islamic religious authorities and intellectuals in the international arena have played a very marginal, or even inexistent, role as sources of religious knowledge among the Sunni Muslims in Rio de Janeiro. For example, the Qatar-based Egyptian shaykh, Yussuf al-Qaradawi, was known only by a few of the members of the Sunni community in Rio de Janeiro and almost never cited as a source of Islamic knowledge. Similarly, Tariq Ramadan is used as a religious reference by the intellectual leadership of the Sunni Muslim community in Rio de Janeiro, but is seldom read by the other members of the community.

In summary, the disciplinary practices developed by the SBMRJ’s religious authorities (sermons, courses, normative texts, etc.) have produced a process of “objectification” of Islamic tradition, generating a religious system of cultural and social practices that serves as a conscious normative point of reference in the life of the faithful.17 This “objectified” Islam, presented as a local form of the Salafiyya, facilitates the integration of the converts in the community, downplaying the cultural differences between individuals and allowing the construction of an inclusive Muslim identity that connects the local realities of the Muslims of Rio de Janeiro with the transnational hori17. For a definition of the process of “objectification” in contemporary Muslim contexts, see: Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim politics, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 38.

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zons of their religious imagination. On the other hand, the members of the community look for religious guidance and knowledge in several sources available on English and Arabic webpages, creating transnational connections to other Muslim communities. The Islamic knowledge produced

by European and North-American Muslims is an important reference, as it deals with issues created by living as a minority in a non-Muslim community, but Middle-Eastern productions of Islamic knowledge, in particular from the religious authority of Saudi Arabia, has a normative aura, as it is linked to the sacred territorial core of the transnational Muslim community.

The Muslim community in Curitiba

The Muslim community in Curitiba, a prosperous city of about 1.7 million inhabitants and capital of the state of Paraná in southern Brazil, has about 5,000 members.18 In 1957 the Muslim Charitable Society of Paraná (Sociedade Beneficente Muçulmana do Paraná) was created as a space where the members of the community could meet and socialize. This community has always gathered Sunni and Shi’i members.

Thus, it is not surprising that the first project to keep the new generations born in Brazil committed to their Muslim identities was centered on the transmission of the Arabic 18. This number was given to me by the vice-president of the Muslim Charitable Society of Paraná during an interview in January 2012. Until 2008 the leaders of the Society talked about 5,000 families. The 2010 demographic census registered 1,307 Muslims in Curitiba.

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language with the creation of an Islamic school. The Escola Islâmica do Paraná (Paraná Islamic School) was founded in 1969 with 60 students, all from Muslim families.19 The school followed the Brazilian national curriculum with classes on Islam and the Arabic language. Although many Muslim families sent their children to study in the school, the number of students was not enough to supply the financial needs of the institution, which depended on donations from other members of the community to maintain its activities. The financial difficulties and conflicts between the shaykh and other members of the community led to the closing of the Islamic school in 1972.20 The end of the Paraná Islamic School also reflected a shift in the mechanisms of transmission of religious identity and maintenance of the community among the Muslims in Curitiba, for it coincides with the construction of the Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib Mosque in 1972.21 This mosque, which was built in “international Islamic” style, with minarets, horseshoe arches, and a dome pointed to a greater importance of religious practices as an arena of affirmation and transmission of the Muslim identity. While the Muslim community had at least two major religious tra19. Wanessa M. R. Storti, Educação árabe em Curitiba: a escola islâmica do Paraná (1969–1972), MA Thesis, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, 2011, p. 44.

20. Storti, Educação árabe em Curitiba, p. 73.

21. The Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib mosque in Curitiba is the second oldest mosque in Brazil, having been built twelve years after the Mesquita Brasil in São Paulo.

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ditions, Sunnism and Shi’ism, informing the religious beliefs and practices of its members, throughout the 1970’s the mosque was led by Egyptian Sunni shaykhs graduated from the University of Al-Azhar.22 This arrangement lasted until 1983, when it was unsettled by changes internal and external to the community. The growing immigration from South Lebanon made the number of Shi’is grow in the community until they comprised half of its members. In the international arena, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 created new models of Shi’i identity, providing many Shi’is with more assertive ways of expressing their religious identity. Likewise, the Islamic Republic installed in Iran started to make funding available for Islamic institutions and communities to export its interpretation of Islam and to dispute with Saudi Arabia religious and political influence in international Islamic arenas. In this context the Shi’i members of the community secured funding from Iran for the shaykh’s salary, as well as for the maintenance and decoration of the mosque. Indeed, until 2012—when both the interior and exterior of the mosque were covered with mosaic tiles in Persian style—the Persian carpets covering the floor of the mosque, the framed verses from the Qur’an in Persian cal22. The first shaykh arrived in 1967, before the construction of the mosque, in order to organize the religious life of the community. From 1957 to 1967, religious rituals were informally officiated by a member of the community (Omar Nasser Filho, O crescente e a estrela na terra dos pinheirais: os árabes muçulmanos em Curitiba (1945-1984), MA Thesis, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, 2006, p. 118.

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ligraphy, and the mihrab made of Neo-Safavid styled tiles, with a bilingual inscription in Arabic and Portuguese stating: “Gift from the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1996”, expressed the connections between the community and Iran.

After a period of tensions between Sunni and Shi’i members of the community during the 1980s and 1990s, the shaykh and some other leading figures of the community started to reconcile quarreling factions by constructing a supra-sectarian Muslim identity based on doctrinal and ritual elements that were shared by both Sunnis and Shi’is. One of the pillars of this process of reintegration of local Sunni and Shi’i Muslims into a moral community, grounded on the religious space of the mosque of Curitiba while also keeping strong symbolic and practical transnational links to the Middle East, was the tendency to minimize the ritual and doctrinal boundaries between Sunnism and Shi’ism in tandem with an emphasis on the shared cultural references that shaped the religious practices of the adepts of both traditions.

Accordingly, Arabic was consecrated as the main linguistic context of both official (discourses, sermons, ritual formulae, etc.) and informal (ordinary conversations) intercourse within the community; concrete signs of sectarian differences between Sunni and Shi’i Muslims, such as the pieces of stone and wood or clay tablets made of the sacred soil of Karbala that the Shi’is use for touching their heads while praying, were removed to discrete locations in the back of the praying-hall of the mosque; and Sunnis and Shi’is were encouraged to mingle freely without

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any particular order during prayers, in order to resignify their differences as individual idiosyncrasies in a shared performance of a collective ritual tradition. The leaders of the community developed discourses that stress the suprasectarian pan-Islamic inclusiveness of the community. In 2010 the vice-president of the Muslim Charitable Society of Paraná explained to a group of visitors that “the mosque of Curitiba is the only religious place besides the Haram in Mekka where Sunni and Shi’is pray as equal members of the community”.23 This same sentence was repeated on several other occasions by other members of the community, showing how successful were the efforts to overcome sectarian tensions and integrate the opposing groups into a moral community. This was done through the emphasis on shared ritual practices as well as incorporating values and practices from Middle-Eastern culture into the everyday life of the community. The result was a stable but inwardlooking religious community which was resistant to the incorporation of new members who were not Arabic-speaking immigrants or their descendants.

However, despite its success in overcoming internal conflicts, during 1970s and 1980s the Muslim community in Curitiba had to face a decline in religious practice among the generations born in Brazil. While the emphasis on Middle-Eastern cultural patterns of religious practice which were expressed in Arabic worked well to create 23. In the prayer-hall of the mosque there is a large picture of the Haram and the Ka’ba, giving a visual dimension of the symbolic link that the members of the community try to establish between the two mosques.

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shared religious understandings and experiences among those who had the cultural and linguistic proficiency to fully participate in this process, it alienated many young Brazilian Muslims who, albeit of Middle-Eastern descent, had very limited knowledge of Arabic and Middle-Eastern cultural traditions, or who were exposed to other forms of living Islam, some of them coming from the Middle East itself.

The challenge posed by the decline in religious practice among the Brazilians of Muslim descent was dealt with in other communities, such as the one in Rio de Janeiro, by creating mechanisms to promote Islam in the larger Brazilian society and incorporate eventual converts into the community. However, there was a strong resistance within the Muslim community in Curitiba towards any efforts to attract converts from the non-Muslim Brazilian population.

In this context, some changes were implemented in the community. The main promoter of these changes was its current vice-president, who was born in Curitiba of Lebanese Shi’i parents and pursued incomplete religious studies in Qom, Iran. After returning to Curitiba, he decided to dedicate his time to reviving the religious life of the Muslim community. His efforts have the support of both the president of the Muslim Charitable Society and the current shaykh of the mosque, a Qom-educated Iranian of Iraqi descent.

Since 2005 the sermon (khutba) in the Friday prayer is accompanied by a summarized translation to Portuguese in order to allow those who cannot understand Arabic to

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get its message. Since 2011 the participants in the Friday prayer also receive a printed translation of the sermon in Portuguese, which is also available on the webpage of the mosque.24 Also in 2005, the mosque started to open regularly on Sunday mornings for visitors and tourists,25 who would receive a tour of the building, the newsletter edited by the community, and basic explanations about Islam given by any member of the community who happened to be present. This opening of the mosque to visitation aimed to inscribe the Muslim community into the cultural landscape of Curitiba26 in order to raise interest in Islam among nonMuslim Brazilian and, maybe more importantly, among people of Muslim descent who had become uninterested in religious practice or in the activities of the community.

The investment in the new generation of Muslims intensified in 2007 with the reopening of the Islamic school Escola Brasileira-Árabe (the Brazilian-Arab School), with 20 students on the elementary level. Also, in the same year courses for adults in Arabic, Islamic Culture and Islam started to be given at the mosque by the shaykh or the 24. http://www.ibeipr.com.br.

25. The mosque is located in the historical district of downtown Curitiba and every Sunday there is an antiques fair on the street in front of it that attracts a large crowd of visitors.

26. Curitiba has a strong urban identity as a cultured and Europeanized “model city” for Brazil. This claim is performatically expressed, negotiated and lived by its inhabitants in Curitiba’s planed urbanism, strong public expression of ethnic identities linked to the waves of European immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a lively theater, music and museum scene.

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vice-president of the society. The content of the courses is also available in Portuguese on the community webpage.

As most of these changes were conceived and executed by Shi’i members of the community, Shi’ism became a more visible influence in the religious life of the community.

While most of the changes in the religious life of the community were made to keep the younger generations of Muslims interested in Islam, they also created a cultural environment more accommodating to the conversion to Islam of Brazilians without any Muslim ancestry. Thus, the small, but rising, number of converts to Islam27 who are members of the Muslim community in Curitiba benefit from the structure of courses and bilingual speeches that were created in the last few years for the members of the community who were born in Brazil.

The need to transmit religious meanings, values and practices to a Muslim youth who is not proficient in the cultural traditions of the older generations of immigrants from the Middle East transformed even the religious practices of the community. The sermons have become more pedagogical in the last few years, explaining in detail all their moral points and making references to precise passages in the Qur’an or the Hadith, where the listeners can find further information. Informal ways of testing and inducing re27. Conversion to Shi’ism is not as widespread as to Sunni Islam, being still a very low-key phenomenom that is more important in São Paulo, where there is a Shi’i institution created by converts and led by an Iranian shaykh, the Imam ‘Ali Cultural Center (Centro Cultural Imam ‘Ali), which has around 50 members. In Curitiba there are fewer converts, who are integrated with the mosque. The other Shi’i communities, such as the one in Foz do Iguaçu, have a small number of women who converted through marriage.

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ligious knowledge among the members of the community were developed, such as regular “quiz contests” about the suras (chapters) of the Qur’an. Those who scored the highest number of correct answers to 41 questions would gain a Qur’an or a book with Ali’s sermons, as well as the community’s general recognition of their religious knowledge.

In 2011 a quiz about the sura Al-Fatiha asked: “What does sura mean?”; “When is it allowed to not recite the sura Al-Fatiha?”; “How is Al-Fatiha different from the other suras?”; “Why do all Muslims start their activities with Bismillah?”; “Which sura does not begin with Bismillah?”; and so on. These quizzes produce a process of objectification of the religious tradition by bringing to scrutiny not only the religious knowledge as learned from the reading of the Qur’an, but also general habits and practices constructed as Islamic and their relation to the content of the sacred text. In this sense, they allow shifting the basis of Muslim identity from an inherited cultural tradition to an acquired religious knowledge that has both doctrinal/discursive and ritual/practical dimensions.

Also, due to the new courses at the mosque and the increase in those seeking Islamic knowledge, both converts and “born-again” Muslims, there was a rise in the search for religious texts that could both explain the tenets of Islam and connect them to issues pertaining to the lives of the members of the community as well as to the context of contemporary society. As the process of Islamic education is led by the Shi’i members of the community, most texts have a Shi’i orientation, while the courses try to em-

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phasize the common aspects between all traditions within Islam. Most texts are published by the Shi’i Islamic Center (Centro Islâmico) in São Paulo and range from a Portuguese version of the Rajul Balagha, the collection of Imam ‘Ali’s sermons, to Portuguese translations of central texts of contemporary Shi’i knowledge, such as Iqtisadu-na (Our Economy) and Fasalfatu-na (Our Philosophy), by Muhammad Bakir Sadr.

The use of the internet by the members of the community to search for other sources of Islamic knowledge is much less important than in the Muslim community in Rio de Janeiro. In this sense, there is a greater control of the sources of Islamic knowledge by the authorities of the Muslim Charitable Society, which implies a far greater importance, for the Muslim community in Curitiba, of classical references written by Middle-Eastern Islamic thinkers.

Therefore, the project of religious revivalism fostered in the Muslim community in Curitiba is centered on the construction of a tradition of knowledge in dialogue with classical sources of Islamic knowledge from the Middle East. Nevertheless, these references are appropriated and lived in discrete ways by the various members of the community, creating a plurality of identities and interpretation despite the religious authorities exerting greater control of the sources of Islamic knowledge that circulate in the Muslim community of Curitiba.

Conclusion

The analysis of the Muslim communities in Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba showed how Islam in Brazil is marked

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by a plurality of identities, practices and forms of organization. The appropriation, interpretation and practice of the discrete Islamic traditions in the Muslim communities in Brazil is informed by the local social and cultural context of each one of them, as well as by the multiple connections that they establish with globalized and transnational Islamic discourses and practices. These processes happen in constant dialogue with the Islamic knowledge produced by religious leaders, Muslim intellectuals and average Muslims in the Middle East, Europe and North America, which circulates through printed and digital texts and is appropriated by the Muslims in Brazil. This constant reference to Islamic thinking allows Muslim identities in Brazil to creatively incorporate models and normative schemes that circulate in the global Islamic public sphere, producing a plurality of identities and forms of living Islam that are inscribed in both local and transnational religious spheres.

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Social Inclusion and Representation

Democracy without politics: how democracy can seriously harm democracy* Daniel Innerarity

The dominant narrative affirms that we live in a postdemocratic age (Crouch, 2004). This denouncement comes in various forms, such as the superiority of the executive over the legislative branch (Habermas, 2013), the distancing of the elite from those who are governed, the displacement of the parties toward a center that eliminates choices (Mouffe, 2013), a lack of consideration for what society really wants. You will have to forgive me, but that is not the *Translated by Sandra Kingery.

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way I see it‌ The precaution that is learned when one is generally incapable of practicing anything other than philosophical suspicion invites me to look at things in another way. Could it not be that we have, instead, democracy that is open and politics that are weak? Democracy is an open space where, in principle, anyone can make his or her opinion known, which makes a thousand types of pressure possible, and we even have the ability to remove governments. This works relatively well. In our democratic societies, there is no lack of open spaces of influence and mobilization, social networks, protest movements, demonstrations, possibilities for intervention and obstruction.

What is not going so well is politics, in other words, the possibility of converting this plural fusion of forces into projects and political transformations, giving direction and political coherence to those popular expressions and configuring quality public spaces where everything is deliberated, discussed, and synthesized. The fact that it is increasingly difficult for those who act politically to formulate alternative agendas has something to do with this. We are in a postpolitical era, an era of democracy without politics. People are aggravated and the political system is agitated, but their interaction barely produces anything new, as we would have the right to expect, given the nature of the problems that we must confront.

I am going to briefly examine the workings of this “negative sovereign� that has become a force that is as strong as it is ambiguous. I will try to reconstruct the ideological premises of those who have celebrated this phe-

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nomenon as a triumph over politics in its traditional form (but which I interpret instead as an attempt to triumph over politics in and of itself ). One of the most disagreeable effects of this democratic vitality is that it depoliticizes the public space, a phenomenon that can be seen in certain concepts that have recently been all the rage following the crisis of representative democracy. There are demands for direct or plebiscitary democracy that expect to gain from citizen participation what cannot be obtained from representative delegation or trust in the improvement of transparency as a universal principle. Based on these premises, the progress of populism is not the solution, but neither is it merely a problem; it is instead a symptom of the fact that we have not managed to properly consider the place of democratic societies in a political society. We will only be able to overcome some of these failures if we engage in a critique of depoliticized democracy or, to formulate it in a positive fashion, a defense of politics against depoliticized democracy.

Democracy can seriously harm democracy not only because democratic procedures allow those who are interested in destroying power to access it, but also in a less obvious sense: certain procedures that are irreproachably democratic, if not correctly articulated, can damage democratic quality. Given that they are defended in the name of democracy and we have no intuitive sense of danger when they are demanded, what harm is there in promoting more participation, in carrying transparency to the extreme, in governing based on opinion polls, in increasing consulta-

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tion, in always doing what the people want, in presuming that the closest thing is necessarily the most democratic?

Politics is especially vulnerable to this type of demand. We will only be able to combat the things that are apparently democratic if we point out how they can have antipolitical effects if they are not integrated into a balanced understanding of politics. That is why I will conclude with a defense of what we could call indirect democracy, a territory that deserves to be explored, even when it does not make the direct forms of democratic intervention superfluous.

1. An intermittent citizenry

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Experts say that the decrease in electoral participation is not accompanied by a lack of interest in the public space (Dalton, 2004, p. 191). Citizens are avoiding classical types of organization, which is compatible with growing modalities of individual commitment, an activism that is not ideologically articulated in an ideological framework that affords coherence and totality, as could be the case with traditional, all-encompassing ideologies. The new activism is individualist, isolated, oriented toward questions that refer to lifestyles and increasingly apolitical growth (Norris, 2002, p. 188). In order to fully understand this new situation, we should, as various scholars have suggested, abandon the simplistic framework that contrasts classical activism with apolitical indifference. The people who seem most indifferent to politics in its traditional format are the most committed in alternative or extraparliamentary arenas. They often believe that their non-participation in elec-

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tions is a markedly political decision (O’Toole, Marsh, and Jones, 2003).

The very shape of political activism is changing. The possibilities of exercising what Pierre Rosanvallon has called “counter-democracy” (2006) have increased because of citizens’ self-awareness and technological advances. It is significant that most of the new political questions raised in the last thirty years have been furthered more by demonstrations and direct action than by conventional political activities through parties and parliaments (Budge, 1996, p. 192). During the first half of the last century, the activities of civil society took place in the arena surrounding political institutions, but currently they are at a distance from the places of power. We live in a society that no longer seeks to constitute power in order to configure social processes; rather, it aims to prevent an abuse of power. Contemporary society prefers present transparency over future responsibility and exercises the distrust of the negative sovereign. We have not achieved the “optimal level of distrust” (Dahlgren, 2013, p. 17), and its excessive levels have made it a creator of antipolitical distance.

What both the mobilizations on the internet as well as more classical protests in physical spaces have in common is their isolated and negative nature (not in a moral sense, but in the sense of principally aiming to prevent something). They are, for that reason, apolitical acts, to the extent that they are not inscribed in complete ideological constructions or in any long-lasting structure of intervention.

Political activity today generally appears in the form of a

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mobilization that barely produces constructive experiences, is limited to ritualizing certain contradictions against those who govern, and they in turn react by simulating dialogue and doing nothing.

Digital space has opened new possibilities for political activism. Platforms for mobilization around concrete causes—such as Change or Avaaz—allow the exercise of concrete “clicktivism” in favor of good causes; this contrasts with following abstract ideologies that are the object of general incredulity. For broad sectors of the population, the reality represented by the hierarchical parties is no longer attractive, while the internet’s virtual culture allows them to comfortably articulate their fluid and intermittent political dispositions and even take themselves offline at any time.

Another of the manifestations of the new political mobilization has to do with the consumer world, increasingly employed to express political preferences. This activism has increased enormously since the mid-1980s (Pattie, Seyd, and Whiteley, 2003). The OECD reports that the annual value of the world market of “fair trade” products was 700 million dollars in 2003 (Vihinen and Lee, 2004).

This type of mobilization reveals the emergence of a new lifestyle in which informed citizen make decisions through which an atomized mass expresses itself politically.

There is no lack of examples of activism and “negative sovereignty” in the physical space either, which is now also connected to digital mobilization: demonstrations and performances that gained a certain degree of celebrity, such

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as the alternative forums of the world summit meetings, Occupy Wall Street, the entire 15-M movement in Spain, platforms against housing evictions, halting the privatization of public services, the intervention of individual accusations in judicial trials, the successful resistance against certain public works and infrastructures: from Burgos to Stuttgart passing through Nantes‌ I am not questioning the worth of these acts of civic resistance or online campaigns; I am simply pointing out that, since they are not inscribed into any political framework that gives them coherence, they can seem to imply that good politics is a mere addendum to social conquests.

The articulation of social demands in coherent programs that compete in a quality public sphere does not work; in short, there is a breakdown in the political and institutional construction of democracy beyond the emotion of the moment, beyond immediate pressure and media attention.

Of course, those of us who demand something that strikes us as fair do not need to require that it be accompanied by a complete political program and an economic memory. But the public space is not reduced to the mere apolitical accumulation of incoherent preferences, grouped together as if there were no priority and even revealing certain incompatibilities with one another. Someone should be in charge of organizing these demands with political criteria and managing their occasional incompatibility in a democratic fashion. But, is there anyone there? If politics (and the parties that are so despised) are serves any purpose, it is precisely to integrate the multiple demands

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that continuously arise in the space of an open society with democratic coherence and authority. The construction of infrastructures is blocked, and they probably should not be built anyway, or at least not in that fashion, but we still do not know what should be done about infrastructures; we stop the evictions—because we can and should do so—but that by itself does not incentivize credit and make housing policies more just; we can stop the privatization of public hospitals, but that does not determine the type of medical policy that should be in place. The politics I miss is politics that begins when society’s good reasons culminate, where the task of the negative sovereign ends and the responsibility of the positive sovereign begins.

In addition to the fact that social demands are disarticulated, we add the circumstance that such demands are of course plural and at times incompatible or contradictory: some people want more taxes and others less, some free software and others protection of privacy and property, some are concerned that there are less freedoms and others that there are too many immigrants… Without political assessment, it is difficult to know when we are confronting an obstruction of necessary reforms or a protest against representational abuse. Protests against certain infrastructures can be motivated by ecological beliefs, but also by others that are less easily acknowledged, such as the famous NIMBY (“Not in My Back Yard”) or by xenophobic sentiments if the proposal is to build a mosque. In any case, those who tend to celebrate social spontaneity should be reminded that society is not the kingdom of good intentions.

Democracy without politics: how democracy can seriously harm democracy

The legitimacy of society’s ability to criticize its representatives does not mean that those who criticize or protest are necessarily right. Being an indignant critic or victim does not make anyone politically infallible.

There is another phenomenon of antipolitical social resistance that deserves special attention. I am referring to the fact that “tea parties” have formed around or at the extremes of the parties. They present themselves as protectors of values, representatives of victims, spokespersons for the crowd or for some upcoming revolution. From these apolitical trenches, they seem to master things with a clarity not available to those who regularly deal with the principle of reality. The wrath of these groups is directed less at adversaries than at their own side when they show signs of decreasing the number of things that are politically nonnegotiable. They spread an antipolitical mentality because they have not understood that politics always entails certain compromises and concessions. The extreme wings of the parties set the tone in a manner that may not be their function, following criteria of representativeness and without having the corresponding democratic authority. This makes certain reforms that require negotiation with one’s political adversaries more difficult.

2. The ideology of the negative sovereign

At the ideological extremes, there is a contempt for politics that is in no way criticism of a concrete way of doing politics but rather a total rejection of politics, the profound desire that politics should not exist, or that it be, at most,

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irrelevant. The political space of democracies is besieged, on right and left, by extreme forms of resistance against politics, which some people exercise from the market and others from society, both of them—market and society— understood as realities extraneous to the political process, from the autonomy of self-regulated markets, in the first case, or from the sovereignty of a society constituted at the margins of the procedures of institutional representation. Financial neoliberalism and “wikicommunism” share a similar distrust of politics, while they celebrate “the wisdom of the masses”, as market agents or as members of the crowd. At heart, the illusion of a self-governed society without institutional and juridical mediations is barely distinguishable from the liberal myth of the self-regulation of the markets. We already knew that neoliberalism is an antipolitical ideology, but we should not lose sight of the fact that, at the other extreme of the ideological spectrum, there are attitudes that have similar effects.

For that reason, I am going to focus more on the nonsocial democratic left, because the liberal right’s indifference to politics is more obvious. Today’s dominant political theory in this realm perceives popular sovereignty as something external to the institutional political system, very similar to the forms of premodern resistance against authority; it is not seen to be actively implicated in the procedures of representative politics. Constituent power inevitably has an anti-institutional dimension. That is why they grant importance to conferences, occupations, protests and movements in which they appear to exercise truly anti-establishment

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power and stage forums of “true democracy”. In this way, they are searching for immediate efficacy of popular will, which could only exist politically in negative and antipolitical terms. Society is not structured by the right and by politics, but by sentiments and convictions.

Interpreted in this way, with this anti-institutional scorn, protests are limited to staging a moment of democratic sovereignty without practical structural repercussions. We can see in this a certain mythology of “pouvoir constituant” (constituent power) as a crowd, resistance, conflict, expression of democratic antagonism, a left-wing that, rather than advocating a concept of political intervention, is limited to radical gestures and an aestheticization of politics. One of the most curious elements of the current non-social democratic left’s thinking is the adoption of certain elements of Carl Schmitt’s political theory and its resignation in the face of dominant social structures. The citizenry is considered sovereign in resistance and in exceptional cases, but not in democratic normality (which makes it seem destined to hand the management of that normality over to the right).

The other thing that is curious about many of the current political theories of the alternative left is that they offer an involuntary ideological justification for deregulation.

The radical democratic conception collaborates in consecrating the excommunication of a politics understood as the administration of objectivity and a society mobilized negatively, the normality of constituted power and the exceptionality of constituent power. The more they empha-

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size the ethical value of resisting politics, the fewer obstacles dominant politics finds against constituting itself as the only possible objectivity. In this way, a division of labor is established between bureaucratic politics and isolated politicization. In spite of what is sought by those who demand an agonistic vision of politics (Laclau and Mouffe, 1991), this framework does not make the construction of transformative alternatives possible, but turns protests into something politically irrelevant, to the satisfaction of those who want politics to continue as is.

A curious “division of labor� regarding depoliticizing politics has taken place between those who, on the one hand, defend a technocratization of politics and, on the other, those who celebrate forms of social protest as something external to the political system. In their most extreme versions, the right and the left collaborate in this way to depoliticize politics when they coincide in scorning its logic.

One side seems unaware that it is not a technical question or the antiseptic handling of an unquestionable objectivity; the other seems to have forgotten its pragmatic and institutional dimension. There is a tacit division of territory, shaped by the arrogance of the first group and the resignation of the second.

The marriage between neoliberalism and radical democracy has other chapters. Many of those who mobilize against certain large infrastructures, for example, believe in non-ideological objectivities and brandish arguments that they attempt to enhance by presenting them, just as the technocrats have always done, as if they were above poli-

Democracy without politics: how democracy can seriously harm democracy

tics. Facts, common sense and popular indignation point in an unanswerable direction. They have little comprehension of how the logic of the political system works. Within it, the questions that are aired are not limited merely to truth and objectivity, but have to do with power relationships, irrationalities, risky bets, cognitive uncertainty and ideological proposals. It is curious how both sides of the ideological spectrum have a similar conception of politics (or rather, of a society without politics) according to which, everything comes down to giving decision-making capabilities to those who claim to have privileged access to objectivity.

So then, who will put an end to capitalism? Well, the truth is that, in spite of the dominant rhetoric, there are no true enemies of capitalism who can be taken seriously, precisely at a time when they would be more necessary than ever. The recent spread of capitalism has caused many victims, but victim status does not in and of itself turn anyone into a political actor. Social injustices do not by themselves engender the conversion of suffering into a transformative force. There are many disadvantaged groups, but they are fragmented and one of the things that is missing is a narrative on the left that articulates them politically.

Let us admit it: the crisis of financial capitalism and the erosion of its legitimacy are not the consequence of harsh attacks by social movements or the political left, but the result of an implosion stemming from its own contradictions. And while its legitimacy will be damaged, it will most likely emerge victorious, assuming no political force appears that can force it to transform.

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3. Involuntary depoliticization

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The great challenge of current democratic societies is to not leave its representatives alone—it should monitor, criticize and, if it comes down to it, replace them— but without destroying or depoliticizing the public space.

It is clear that we have not managed this balance, and we either abandon ourselves blindly to the competence of those who represent us (as, for different reasons, the technocrats and populists want), or we reduce the trust and amount of delegation to such an extent that we subject politics to the register of immediacy (which also has both a technocratic version, of immediate efficacy, and a populist one, as government by survey, that is to say, politics subjected to public-opinion polls). In both cases, social activism can have depoliticizing effects to which we must pay special attention, because they are not obvious. What is obvious, what is politically correct, is understanding representation as a falsification, assuming that those who protest are right or presuming that the more participation and transparency there is, the better.

There is a way of understanding democracy that reaffirms itself as a battle against institutionalized or representative politics but that simultaneously destroys the spaces that are necessary to political life. This indirect depoliticization can be corroborated in the current crisis of representation. We can see good examples of it in certain demands for direct and plebiscitary democracy or the demands for participation and transparency when they stop

Democracy without politics: how democracy can seriously harm democracy

being corrective procedures for representative democracy and present themselves as candidates for overcoming it.

Let us begin with the crisis of representation, so frequently invoked lately, but which indeed forms part of political normality. There has always been a debate in democratic societies about the nature of representation.

A democratic society cannot set its procedures for representation in stone—such procedures are always debatable and improvable—but it slips toward the sphere of the antipolitical when what it challenges is the very fact of representation.

Representation allows us to guarantee the plurality of the political, which does not happen with direct democracy. In a complex and differentiated society, only representation manages to allow a plurality of subjects to act without annulling that plurality. In this sense, representation is not an inconvenience, but the ability for society to act politically and at the same time guarantee that its diversity is maintained. If there is political representation, it is because we must simultaneously maintain the pluralism of society and its capacity to act, the demos and the cratos of democracy.

There is no formula other than representative democracy that best guarantees effectiveness, pluralism and fairness (which does not mean that this is always achieved or is not manifestly improvable). All the other forms of democratic intervention tend to do much worse. For some time now, we have been fantasizing about types of direct democracy, whose representativeness is much more de-

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batable than our current electoral systems and its decision-making effectiveness is incomparably worse. Calls for more participation do not attain general consent, as if we had learned that these procedures are as necessary as they are limited. In spite of our digital enthusiasm, online forums, for example, are characterized by great homogeneity and a greater presence of extremist positions. In general, direct democracy is attractive for the passive citizen, in other words, for those who are not much interested in exposing their opinions and interests in front of others in the public sphere and who prefer plebiscitary decisionmaking where they can assert their will in the political system without filters or deliberative modulations. Direct democracy and plebiscitary decision-making are instruments of an apolitical nature, and if they enjoy greater prestige than they deserve, it is because they are a part of that general tendency toward democracy without politics that characterizes our societies.

Plebiscites are as important in a democracy as they are incapable of replacing profound and open debates. Plebiscites are worse than representative relationships at reflecting the plurality of opinions and interests of a society. This imprecision is due to the fact of reducing decision-making procedures to binary possibilities. Within each camp, there are many heterogeneous positions that only coincide in the yes or no. In this way, direct democracy acts in a less representative manner than representative procedures of opinion-making. Paradoxically, technocrats and the par-

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tisans of direct democracy argue that reducing a problem to a binary code makes the solution more transparent and less ideological, but both groups simplify the space of the political game, reduce the possibilities of political creativity and prevent the free use of nuances.

Let us think for a moment about the meteoric journey of the concept of transparency, in which we can find, in addition to unquestionable assets, some antipolitical results.

We shall let general acclaim trumpet its virtues; I would like, however, to point out the antipolitical backdrop behind some of the forms in which it is demanded, which imply that the whole problem of politics consists of politicians hiding something whose revelation would resolve our problems. Would that it were so! The political system is more banal reality than secret-monger and, even if it revealed its private affairs to us, we could not completely dispel the uncertainties with which we are surrounded. The indirect result of this way of thinking is to give the impression that politics has to do with objectivity and evidence, a place where there is, in the end, nothing to discuss. Understood in this fashion, transparency is a concept that recalls the pre-political demand of objective facts. This objectivist prejudice is very widespread on both extremes of the ideological spectrum; it is shared by technocrats and libertarians, the defenders of the authority of experts and those who maintain that the people are never mistaken, those who trust everything to the self-regulation of the markets or to the wisdom of the crowd. A completely transparent space would be one that is completely depoliticized.

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4. The great rift

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Political societies have a very particular dynamic that we must understand correctly in order to avoid mistaken analyses. Traditional political forces of the establishment or the mainstream both want to administer the principle of reality, which they read in ways that are essentially different. This is the arena in which right and left debate.

At times of crisis, this difference is reduced, as is logical, since crises diminish options and force the sober management of promises. When this happens, a good portion of society becomes disoriented or irritated, and phenomena appear where it is no longer a question of choosing between existing possibilities, but rather of impugning the range of options presented to us. There are new differentiations and an explosion of forces that ignore the principle of reality and attempt only to manage only the pleasure principle.

This is, in my opinion, what was revealed in the 2014 European elections and explains the success of a political force that defines itself as people who Can in the face of those who administer limitations (I am specifically referring to the emergence of the Podemos [We Can] movement in Spain). The classical parties have governed and are going to govern, which means that they know about the limits of government and the extent to which unfulfilled promises take their toll; they can even hate their adversaries, but they are also conscious that they will end up having to count on them for numerous matters; they know that they represent the people but that they are not the people, because in a democracy we can only attempt to speak in

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the name of the people in a representative fashion, in other words, without monopolizing it, in the midst of a plurality of voices and constantly exposed to the verification of that authority.

I believe that this is the great novelty, the new rift (although it is in no way unprecedented in the history of politics): the excision of responsibility and possibility. In contrast with what is often repeated, it is not so much a rebellion stemming from the alienation between unhearing elites and the innocent masses who disdain their representatives, as all the polls that point to the political class as our leading problem seem to claim. These new actors fill the stage with a language that contrasts with the calculated cardboard-like quality of traditional discourses, which has an unquestionable appeal for a large portion of the electorate. But, more than anything else, there is the appearance of a multitude of promises that become more attractive as they move further and further away from any feasible planning. Accusing them of being na誰ve is a sort of disparagement that makes no sense in the open space of a democratic society; the only inexperience that defines them is that they do not know how difficult it is to be reelected, and this experience is what gives political actors maturity.

The appearance of the new is as ancient as humanity itself. Only a lack of memory explains our bewilderment or excessive enthusiasm in the face of this rift that forms a part of the old cycle of our democracies. This unpredictable human history teaches us that everything that emerges also awaits contradiction, which stalks it as it does all

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mortals. History continues, and it is driven by a succession of promises and disappointments. That is why politics should welcome audacious promises, because our political systems require these jolts to show that no one can block the path to new actors and unusual agendas. It is better for them to work within political institutions than to protest indignantly at the margins. Because politics is a pathway that sooner or later leads all of us to reality, which we will always interpret differently, a pathway that, as an environment that conditions us and that we share with others, is always somewhat limiting. Politics is the place where each of us manages that frustration the best we can.

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The tragedy of contemporary politics is that those who have any responsibility—in other words, both the voters and those elected—are continually forced to choose between rationality and populism. For the representatives, the first of these is not understood and makes reelection impossible, while the second places political stability in danger but is socially commended. Those who govern frequently confront the dilemma of doing what citizens expect from their governments or what they are obliged to do.

We can also explain this situation as the concurrence of the inability of governments to explain their decisions and the inability of citizens to understand them. There have been so many political decisions adopted in the course of this type of dilemma. That is the drama that politicians tend to reference: they know what they should do, but they do not know how to be reelected if they do it.

Democracy without politics: how democracy can seriously harm democracy

This situation has altered the classical framework of ideological identification and its corresponding antagonism. Another axis is being superimposed on the right-left axis that confronts, in the broad sense, populists and technocrats; there are right- and left-wing versions in both categories. The new ideological spectrum can be explained based on the various combinations of these four sensibilities. What we have is basically technocrats on the right and left, and populists on the right and left, giving way to alliances and antagonisms that are not intelligible from the standpoint of classical ideological polarization.

The advance of populisms in Europe is a problem that should be considered as a symptom. Populism seems credible because something is not going well and the populist seismograph helps us identify it. For populism to be anything more than the sectarianism of a number of alienated hotheads, weak institutions and an unresolved problem must coincide in time. The success of charismatic outsiders can only be explained by a deficit in the ruling elite, such as a failure in their discourse, which does not come across as intelligible or believable, without forgetting that populisms would not be successful if there were no societies prepared to believe them.

For that reason, the struggle against populism does not rely on the appeal to intangible values as much as the mobilization of emotional resources, ranging from fear to hope.

Politics is a way of unleashing social emotions in such a way that they end up being constructive rather than destructive. Populism is precisely a reaction to the lack of

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politics, which in its current format does not allow a political expression of passion. We can understand populism’s success because politics has not managed to translate, institutionally, feelings that are broadly held in certain sectors of the population that now only trust people who promise that which they cannot provide.

If we expel emotional excesses and incalculable moments from politics, we are destroying politics itself, which encases passion. The public space is not a parlor conversation among intellectuals; emotions and a degree of dramatization are part of the society of the masses. If political moderates ignore these emotional conditions, they are welcoming the taboo-breakers, who find the stage at their disposition.

Fear and its rhetoric occupy a fundamental place among these passions. We live in a world of open spaces, which means that there is also a certain lack of protection. The most fortunate citizens have celebrated this lack of shelter as an increase in liberty (such as less regulated markets or greater mobility), but the most vulnerable among us feel insecure, abandoned, and pawns to populist promises.

Many of society’s emotional outbursts have to do with the fact that people are afraid, their fear connected more closely to a lack of economic protection on the left and to the loss of identity on the right, although all of it intermingles, giving way to sentiments that are difficult to interpret and manage. In this world, the certainties that only operate in closed spaces are no longer effective, but people have the right to similar protection in new circumstances. Until pol-

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itics is capable of providing an equivalent security, societies will have reason to trust in the unfulfillable promises of populism.

6. A defense of indirect democracy

Representative democracies have two enemies today: the accelerated world and the predominance of globalized markets on the one hand, and the hubris of citizenship on the other; in other words, the ambivalence of a people that politics should of course obey, but whose politically rather unarticulated demands are often contradictory, incoherent and dysfunctional. It is taboo to mention this second danger because many of those in the political class and those who write about politics tend to worship the people, and do not charge them with any responsibility. Few speak about “democratic” threats to democracy, those that stem from public-opinion polls, participation, exaggerated expectations or transparency. In noting this lack, I am not attempting to invalidate the principle that people are the only sovereign in a democracy; I am simply emphasizing the fact that representative democracy is the best invention we have come up with to reconcile, though not without tensions, that principle with the complexity of political affairs. Even if it sounds paradoxical, there is no system other than indirect and representative democracy when it comes to protecting democracy from the citizenry, against their immaturity, uncertainty and impatience.

The anti-establishment power of the “negative sovereign” is in no position to replace constructive power. It can

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politicize the public space in an isolated fashion by expressing indignation and staying on the margin of any construction of responsibility. Deep down, our democracy without politics has enthroned the citizens as independent evaluators who see themselves outside of any political arena, like a consumer. Open societies have unleashed the liberties of consumers to such an extent that politics is also considered from the point of view of the client, who is willful, impatient, demanding… The ideal of popular sovereignty has been transformed into a “sovereignty of the consumer.”

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The growing number of boycotts, expressions of discomfort and other forms of activism seem to be currently driven by a consumer sentiment and there is a danger that activism adopts the form of a lifestylestatement rather than a serious commitment (…). Activism seems to be nothing but a refined form of consumerism for those who are wellintentioned, who are allowed to access public resources and decisionmaking processes. (Stoker, 2006, p. 88.)

However, does this figure use up all the democratically responsible critical potentiality inscribed in the concept of citizenship?

When we complain that the markets condition politics excessively, we should not lose sight of the fact that this conditioning is not limited to global financial markets but is also verified in the relationships between representatives and those who are represented. At every level, on the global and the domestic plane, the power of consumers is greater than that of voters.

When the logic of the sovereign consumer is established in politics, politics tends to melt with the immediacy of the short term. Politics is especially vulnerable to this, given the perma-

Democracy without politics: how democracy can seriously harm democracy

nent electoral contest and the weight of public opinion, which has an ever shorter time-span because of the growing importance of polls and surveys, which allow us to attend to the demands of the present moment. Politics is enormously weakened if it is not capable of introducing other criteria to balance the possible tyranny of the present. If the institutions of representative democracy serve any purpose, it is to establish procedures that at least make debate possible, as well as the consideration of alternatives and constitutional guarantees. A democracy cannot function well if there are no institutions of indirect democracy to serve as regulating, referring or judicial authorities (which tend to deteriorate when they remain in the hands of the parties); if the dimension of delegation that any government should have were completely suppressed (which is compatible, of course, with that delegation being limited in time and being held accountable); if public opinion at any time is imposed on other expressions of popular will that are less instantaneous and more extended in time…

This is most likely one of the problems that makes politics so dysfunctional and leads to so many irrational situations (Innerarity, 2009). Politics must free itself of the “demoscopic fear” (Habermas, 2012), without giving way to elitist and technocratic arrogance. We must recognize that any leadership has inevitable costs in terms of direct democratic authorization, that there is a certain distancing demanded by the adoption of the decisions we tend to label “unpopular”.

If there were not a certain amount of distance from voters, there would be times when governments would not be able to tell the truth, and politics would not manage to disconnect

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itself from the power of the moment. We either justify this “distance” democratically or we will have no reason to oppose plebiscite populism, which has, on the right and on the left, excellent defenders.

The polls say that politics has become one of our principal problems and I, in conclusion, ask myself whether this opinion expresses nostalgia for the politics of the past, criticism of its mediocrity or rather antipolitical scorn toward something whose logic has not been fully understood. In any case, we citizens would criticize with more authority if we were to put the same effort into educating ourselves and personal engagement. And perhaps then we would realize that we are in the paradoxical situation where no one entrusts politics with those things that only politics could resolve.

Bibliography Budge, Ian (1996). The new challenge of direct democracy.

Cambridge, Blackwell.

Crouch, Colin (2004). Post-Democracy. Cambridge, Polity.

Dahlgren, Peter (2013). The political WEB. media, participation and alternative democracy. New York, Palgrave Macmillan.

Dalton, Russell (2004). Democratic challenges—Democratic choices. The erosion of political support in advanced industrial democracies. Oxford University Press.

Habermas, Jürgen (2012). Zur Verfassung Europas. Ein Essay. Berlin, Suhrkamp.

Democracy without politics: how democracy can seriously harm democracy

_______ (2013). Im Sog der Technokratie. Berlin, Suhrkamp.

Innerarity, Daniel (2009). El futuro y sus enemigos. Una defensa de la esperanza política. Barcelona, Paidós.

Laclau, Ernesto and Mouffe, Chantal (1991). Hegemonie und radikale Demokratie. Zur Dekonstruktion des Marxismus. Wien, Passagen.

Mouffe, Chantal (2013). Agonistics: thinking the world politically. London-New York, Verso.

Norris, Pippa (2002). Democratic phoenix. reinventing political activism. Cambridge University Press.

O’Toole, Therese; Marsh, David; and Jones, Su (2003). “Political literacy cuts both ways: the politics of non-participation among young people”. Political Quarterly, v. 74, n. 3, p. 349-60.

Pattie, Charles; Seyd, Patrick; and Whiteley, Paul (2003). 271 “Civic attitudes and engagement in modern Britain”.

Parliamentary Affairs, n. 56, p. 616-33.

Rosanvallon, Pierre (2006). La contre-démocratie: la politique à l’âge de la défiance. Paris, Seuil.

Stoker, Gerry (2006). Why politics matter. making democracy work. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Vihinen, Lea and Lee, Hyung-Jong (2004). Fair trade and the multilateral trading system. OCDE Trade Directorate. Paris, OCDE.

Diversity, inclusivity and governance in the social landscape of Southeast Asia Razali Ismail

The social landscape of Southeast Asia today is marked by diversity at all levels and registers, from cultural-linguistic to religio-ethnic, and it has always been so.

A cursory look at the socio-economic-cultural landscape of Southeast Asia in the past will point to how the region—as a result of its geographical position, its terrestrial geography and its demography—has always been open and receptive to external cultural influences. Located precisely between the greater Asian landmasses of South Asia and East Asia, Southeast Asia has been the recipient of cultural-linguistic and economic influences from both the Indian subcontinent and China.1 In the de1. Charles Hirschman and Sabrina Bonaparte, “Population and society in Southeast Asia: a historical perspective”, Demographic change in South273

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velopment of its native local cultures, there has always been the eclectic mixing of India and Chinese cultural influences, which is apparent until today. In the ancient architecture of the region we can see vivid and solid traces of contact with India.2 The temple-complexes of Bayan, Angkor, Pagan, Ayudhaya, Prambanan and Borobudur all point to a time when Southeast Asia was largely Indic in terms of its cultural character, and where its material culture was deeply influenced as a result of contact with India and Sri Lanka.

In terms of the languages that are spoken today and which remain the mother-tongue of millions of Southeast Asians, the Khmer, Thai, Burmese, Malay, Indonesian and other native languages of the region bear the same etymological roots as Sanskrit, as well as common scripts. Furthermore, as any visitor to the region will readily observe, the myths and epics of the Indian subcontinent are still the most popular forms of vernacular culture that are known and recognised among Southeast Asians until today—a testimony to the long period of cultural exchange between South and Southeast Asia that spanned a period of two millennia.

It was during this period of cross-cultural contact that Southeast Asia came into its own as a region that was somewhat similar to, yet distinct from, the larger cultural centres of both India and China. K. N. Chaudhuri was right when he wrote that the pre-Modern world of Asia was in many respects well ahead of the market-driven, capital-defined Moeast Asia: recent histories and future directions, Ithaca, Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2012, p. 9.

2.  Ibid.

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dernity that we see and know today: up to the 17th century, Southeast Asians were moving, migrating, settling, working and trading across the region with ease, living as they did in a borderless fluid world that had not yet seen the regime of the passport and national identity card.3 Migration, settlement and intermarriage were common then, giving birth to the hybrid cultures of Southeast Asia that we see until today.4 During that period, to speak of distinct races and ethnicities would have made little sense, as the very words themselves were deemed alien to the common belief and knowledgesystem that defined Southeast Asian societies at the period.

It should also be noted that the pivotal position of Southeast Asia meant that it would later become the crossroads for international trade and cultural exchange, and after the Hindu-Buddhist era the region later became home to the other great world religions, notably Islam and Christianity. Today, when we glance at Southeast Asia as a whole, we can see that it is indeed home to almost every major religious and philosophical system in the world, from the Hindu-Buddhist (Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam), to Islam (Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia), to Christianity (Philippines, East Timor) and Confucianism (Singapore). Unlike other parts of the world, Southeast Asia has rarely ever been isolated, and could not have chosen to be so even if it wished: its location at the crossroads of glob3.  Kirti N. Chaudhuri, The trading world of Asia and the English East India Company: 1660-1760, Cambridge University Press, 1978.

4.  Ibid.

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al trade and migration routes meant that it was forever exposed to diversity and difference from day one.

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It deserves to be stated again and again that diversity and difference have never been novel or alien concepts in Southeast Asia; and nor are these ideas new to the region and the people who live there.

History records that all of the polities of Southeast Asia have been diverse in terms of their social composition: Persians were known to reside in Ayudhaya, Southeast-Asian monks were resident in Anuradhapura (Sri Lanka), itinerant medicants and teachers from South Asia were roaming around Java and finding communities to teach and work in.5 Chinese, Indian and Arab navigators alike commented extensively about how much of Southeast Asia, in the past, encompassed the world as a whole. When the first European traders arrived in the region they found not isolated, backward communities but rather international cosmopolitan entrepots where commerce was being conducted in dozens of different languages, and where the currencies of the world were in circulation.

Southeast-Asian governance took into account the pluralism and cosmopolitanism that were the salient features of the local polities then: the trading kingdom of Malacca was run according to different time-zones, cognisant of patterns of trade and movement that were dependent upon the monsoon 5.  Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the age of commerce, 1450-1680: expansion and crisis, v. 2, Yale University Press, 1993.

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season.6 In Malacca the various communities were represented by their respective representatives and spokespersons, and prospered under the rule of pragmatic authorities who appreciated the benefits of international commerce and exchange.

Another striking example of Southeast-Asian diversity in praxis was the port-city of Banten, West Java, that was an independent native polity that could match any of the commercial centres of Europe or the Mediterranean at that time: when Theodorus de Bry wrote about Banten in 1601, his work included some of the first pictorial accounts of social life in Banten, and what we see in these images are representations of Indians, Chinese, Arabs, Persians, Eurasians, Burmans, and other Southeast Asians living and working together in a cosmopolitan setting defined by local sensibilities that regarded diversity and difference as normal. Long before Banten was eclipsed by the Western colonial powers, it—and many other regional commercial centres like it— was a place where identity could be negotiated and where individuals were defined not only by their country of origin but also by their culture, language, religion and profession.7 What happened to Southeast Asia in the centuries that followed was a fate shared by the rest of Asia and Africa that was colonised by the Western colonial-trading powers, and where independent polities were reduced to dependent colonies. Between the 17th and 19th century, the mod6. Kenneth R. Hall, A history of early Southeast Asia: maritime trade and societal development, 100-1500, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010.

7. Geoffrey C. Gunn, First globalization: the Eurasian exchange, 15001800, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003, p. 138.

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ern colony reconfigured local understandings of identity and fluidity to the point where the movement of peoples, cultures, languages and commodity that had been the hallmark of Asia was put to an end, or at least regulated by the modern colonial state.8 Looking at Southeast Asia today we note that the borders that divide the countries of the Southeast-Asian region were not drawn up by Southeast Asians themselves, but rather by the experience of the colonial encounter. As the race to colonise Asia intensified, so did the effort to carve it up into neat blocs or chunks that came under the sway of different colonial powers. In each instance, the fluidity and diversity of these respective societies was brought under control and regulated in a systematic manner, rendering diversity into something that was no longer fluid but rather codified and categorised. The net result was the emergence of distinct colonial states that eventually grew apart and lost that sense of common interconnectedness that was once the norm during the pre-Modern era.

The 19th century witnessed the great shift in terms of the world-view and sensibilities of Southeast Asians across the region: aware of the fact that colonial power was real, and their own lives then determined by the logic of colonial rule, millions of Southeast Asians opposed the injustices of

8.  John Sturgus Bastin and Harry Jindrich Benda, A history of modern Southeast Asia: colonialism, nationalism, and decolonization, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1968.

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colonialism by engaging with its modern logic.9 Faced with a colonising state that had reconfigured all aspects of their lives, they struggled with Modernity in an attempt to undo its workings within their respective nations.

It was from this period that we see the rise of Southeast-Asian nationalism, as a response to Western colonial rule.10 But from the outset the rise of Southeast-Asian nationalism (as was the case in other parts of Asia and Africa) also borrowed heavily from the vocabulary and ideology of colonial-capitalism as well. Hence it is not surprising to note that while Western colonial rule was seen as the obstacle to self-awareness and self-realisation, the nationalist movements of Asia also mimicked the logic of colonial modernity in many respects: in the countries of Southeast Asia, nationalism and anticolonialism went hand-in-hand and were seen as synonymous with each other. But in the process, Southeast Asia witnessed different strands of ethno-nationalism that opposed different modes of colonialism as well: British, Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

From the 1900s, the politics of identity—and in particular communal, ethnic identity—was the defining feature of Southeast-Asian nationalism. While this was useful in the process of mobilising mass support against a common colonial adversary, it also had the result of privileging some communities over others. In the case of colonial Burma, for 9. Thomas Suarez, Early mapping of Southeast Asia: the epic story of seafarers, adventurers, and cartographers who first mapped the regions between China and India, Tuttle Publishing, 1999, p. 37.

10. John Sturgus Bastin and Harry Jindrich Benda, op. cit.

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instance, Burmese nationalism united Burmans against the British, but in the course of doing so also targeted SouthAsian migrants, who were cast as compradores to the British colonial enterprise.11 Subsequently, in the course of the anticolonial struggle Burmese nationalists not only directed their efforts towards ending British rule and driving them out of Burma, but also cast South-Asian communities and non-Buddhist communities as ‘outsiders’, despite the fact that historically Burmese society has always been plural and diverse, and that South-Asian settlement and migration to Burma was not a new phenomenon.

The same process and logic was at work in the anticolonial movements that sprung up in other parts of the region, and where occasionally some native and migrant communities were likewise categorised as equal enemies and adversaries to the nationalist cause. In the decades that followed, Southeast-Asian nationalism channelled its energies towards winning and eventually securing the postcolonial state, but in the course of doing so the diversity and cosmopolitan character of some of these societies were rendered more homogenous as a result.

Socio-cultural diversity in Southeast Asia today

Southeast Asia today is one of the most vibrant and important centres for commerce and innovation. With a combined population of 600 million people, the region accounts 11.  Melvin Eugene Page and Penny M. Sonnenburg, eds., Colonialism: an international, social, cultural, and political encyclopedia, AM, v. 1, ABC-CLIO, 2003, p. 86.

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for 9 per cent of the world’s population, spread across an archipelago that spans the width of Europe. And Southeast Asia today is firmly located within the fold of late industrial modernity.12 The success story of Southeast-Asian governance has become the topic of much discussion since the 1980s, and it is undeniable that in many crucial respects the political economies of the region have fared remarkably well, exceeding the expectations of many. In almost all areas of socio-economic life we see the net result of economic development in the region at present: in the field of education, illiteracy is practically a thing of the past, and the advances made by Southeast-Asian women in particular are phenomenal: female students are often the majority in most local universities, and the gender balance at the work place across the region has changed almost totally. In terms of the provision of the fundamental necessities and obligations of the state, the whole of Southeast Asia today is connected by a regional communicative infrastructure, and there are no remote areas left in the region. In terms of basic healthcare, education, communications and public security, all of the states of Southeast Asia have been able to deliver the necessary to their respective populations.

The development of the postcolonial nation-state in Southeast Asia has meant that by now the opportunity structures and paths toward upward social mobility and individual self-realisation are there, offering Southeast-Asian 12.  Jonathan Rigg, Southeast Asia: the human landscape of modernization and development, Routledge, 2004.

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citizens more opportunities for education, employment and economic entrepreneurship than ever before. Ideally, this ought to create distinct prospects where communities and individuals feel that their identities are secure and unchallenged, and where identity-politics is seen as just a ladder to be scaled, before the realisation of communal and individual aspirations.

However, when we look closely at Southeast Asia right now, we see that nationalism is on the rise and many Southeast-Asian countries are facing the challenge of contestation and even confrontation in the public domain over issues that relate to identity politics and demands for recognition. We need to seriously ask ourselves why this is the case, and why the citizens of the region have not made the step towards inclusive national politics predicated on the concept of equal universal citizenship.

That Southeast-Asian societies may not move from the simplistic politics of identity where national wealth and political participation are not shared but rather divided along communal-ethnic, cultural-linguistic and religious lines, is a worrying thought.13 It is not a problem that is unique to the region, for we have seen evidence of the same in other parts of Asia and beyond as well. But it does merit serious consideration, and steps must be taken to understand why this is happening, now, and how this can be overcome.

13.  Aurel Croissant and Christoph Trinn, “Culture, identity and conflict in Asia and Southeast Asia�, Asien, n. 110, 2009, p. 13-43.

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Over the past decade the region has been witness to different forms of sectarian-communitarian conflict, ranging from ethnic-based race-hate campaigns to instances of religious violence. How this could happen now begs for some analysis, for, as noted earlier, Southeast Asia has always been a plural, diverse and cosmopolitan part of the world where different ethnic and religious communities have lived productively and peacefully side-by-side for centuries. Yet today there are disturbing signs of increasing close-mindedness among some Southeast-Asian citizens and communities, as well as demands for a hardening of cultural-social borders. Our region cannot afford to return to the early 2000s where Southeast Asia grabbed the world’s headlines for the wrong reasons, notably due to terrorist attacks and ethnic-religious conflict between citizens of the same country.

One of the possible triggers for this development is the manner in which ethnic-race, cultural and religious groups tend to view the world in terms of a logic of ‘us against them’, where other communities are invariably painted in the light of predators, interlopers and threats to their own identity. Coupled with rising living standards and increased socio-economic expectations, among some of these groups there is the fear that the economic pie may shrink as a result of globalisation, foreign-capital penetration and competition between communities.

This is, however, a wrong diagnosis of how globalisation works—for it is a fact that increased contact with the external world and other communities bring about new op-

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portunity structures for innovation, collaboration and enterprise, as our ancestors understood centuries ago. In the past, Southeast-Asian polities prospered as a result of contact with other societies, cultures and economies, and the economic wellbeing of all these polities depended upon the possibility of peaceful and productive interaction with the outside world and other trading nations. That remains true today, but needs to be emphasised time and again—for Southeast Asia cannot afford to go down the path of nationalist exclusivism or isolationism, as the opportunity cost would be too high.

The second thing that needs to be stated strongly now is the fact that pluralism, diversity and difference are not new to our part of the world. Coming at a time when some of the more exclusive-minded religious and communal movements in the region are rejecting the realities of a multicultural world and denouncing diversity as some ‘alien, Western’ concept, it has to be declared—in the loudest and clearest terms—that Southeast Asia is not, and has never been, a stranger to cosmopolitanism and diversity. From the earliest recorded histories of Southeast Asia, we know for a fact that our communities have developed and evolved to become what they are as a result of encounters with diverse communities, cultures and belief-systems from outside the region.

Indeed, all of the major faiths that exist in Southeast Asia today: Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism—come from beyond the shores of Southeast Asia.

Diversity is as natural, organic and local to Southeast Asia as are rice fields and coconut trees, and is in fact wired in as part of the collective identity make-up of all our

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societies. Restating this obvious fact may seem tiresome to some, but in the face of growing conservative communitarian developments, it has become a necessity.

Thirdly, this reassertion of our diverse past and present is the key to preparing our region and our respective nations for the challenges that lie ahead in the global age we live in. History has recorded that Southeast Asia and its nations have never posed an existential threat to any other part of the world. No premodern Southeast-Asian kingdom or polity has ever invaded India, China or any part of the planet; and yet all the polities of Southeast Asia have benefitted from contact with other parts of the world, and have grown richer—materially, economically, culturally—as a result.

In the global age that we live in today, where the world is better connected than ever before and where human and commodity movement is on a scale that is perhaps unprecedented, Southeast-Asian nations and communities need to be ready to face the reality of a competitive, and often unforgiving, world and global market.

We in Southeast Asia need to re-embrace and re-state our comfort and familiarity with diversity and difference in order to mentally brace ourselves for the expectations and conditions of living in a world where Southeast-Asian nations and communities need to compete on the go, relaxed and assured in our sense of self and with the knowledge that we can succeed in a complex world because complexity itself is not something new or threatening to us all.

We need not travel across the globe to learn lessons about

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pluralism or diversity, for we have it right in the middle of our own world, standing before us. But being cognisant and appreciative of the past must also come together with the commitment to reject all forms of exclusivism and xenophobia, and being able to internalise the lessons of the past in a manner that allows us to operationalise and instrumentalise them in the present as well as in the future.

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I spoke earlier of the success of Southeast-Asian governance, in the pre- and postcolonial era. That this is largely true means that there is no need for me to repeat the record of the region’s success yet again. But while the nationstates of Southeast Asia have been successful in the domain of economic management and political governance, and adroit at handling the range of challenges and crises that have hit our shores in the past, there remains the issue of socio-cultural-religious diversity to be addressed, and there is the question of how we can manage to govern these differences successfully in the future.

Globalisation today is accelerating at such a pace that the world is not likely to slow down to allow any country or any region to catch up. Southeast Asia’s success has been partly due to the fact that its states saw these changes coming: anticipating the end of the Cold War, the peace dividend that followed, the internet age and the age of borderless commerce. But our societies still need to be buffered to some extent against the shocks to their system, and the role of the state here is to lay down the groundwork and prem-

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ises upon which a new kind of dynamic globalised politics and economics can take root in our part of the world.

The governments of Southeast Asia have been pragmatic and realistic all along, and focused on consensus-building and peace-management. We have seen to it that the ASEAN region has been free of war between states since 1967, an achievement that cannot be taken for granted when we look at the troubled state of the world today, and also something that some Southeast Asians have come to regard as a norm rather than an exception to be thankful for.

Yet in the years and decades to come, we will live in a world that will be even more complex. Our societies will experience major processes of change to their lifestyles, living conditions, economic health and social relations. As these external variables impact upon us in Southeast Asia, the states of the region need to remember that one of the challenges of governance is to prepare societies for change, and to ready them for the task of living in a complex world where pluralism and diversity will be the norm.

The right government and the right political leadership have a major role to play in this context. Government and political leaders have been successful facilitators to capital and managers of development thus far and the FDIs, etc are coming into the region. But governments and leaders control the key instruments of state power and social management, such as education, foreign policy and interstate diplomacy. Here is where the present-day state in Southeast Asia has a role to play, to shape and determine the likely shape of Southeast Asia in the future. For a start, more ef-

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fort has to be made in the educational sector to remind the younger generation of Southeast Asians not only of the recent successes of postcolonial Southeast Asia, but also of the long history of intercommunal contact and exchange that were once the defining features of Southeast Asia’s diverse and complex society. From an early age, SoutheastAsian citizens need to know and learn that diversity and pluralism are not new and certainly not a threat to their own rich and complex identities. Political leaders must commit to the broader perspective of accepting the historical legacy of the region.

The advocacy by Malaysia of a Global Moderate Movement can be interpreted as having understood the historical commitment of SEA and that democracy must operate side by side with pluralism. In essence, this proposal must be internalised into the governance and body politic of SEA in order that nationalism and the pursuit of state interests are balanced in the interests of all in the region and that the increasingly complex challenges of extremism as well addressed by countervailing forces of moderation.

States also have a role to play in creating the right sociocultural and—crucially—socio-legal environment whereby diversity can be recognised and protected, and where communities can freely express themselves, interact and achieve both personal and collective success and self-realisation in the public domain without fear of being labelled as alien, foreign or unwanted. Living as we do in a region where movement, fluidity, migration and settlement has been the norm for two thousand years, a sense of common homeliness and

Diversity, inclusivity and governance in the social landscape of Southeast Asia

belonging among all Southeast Asians is something that all the governments and states of the ASEAN region ought to be working for, in order to ensure that the socio-cultural, intellectual and economic borders of Southeast Asia remain open and inclusive—of ourselves, each other, and other communities from outside Southeast Asia as well. Diversity and inclusivity are not factors or prerogatives that can be governed or dictated by states, but if the history of Southeast Asia has anything to teach us today, it is the lesson that governance can be conducted in a manner that recognises and reflects diversity, and which accommodates the need and necessity of accommodation itself. This has been the Southeast-Asian way, since even before the region came up with the concept of ASEAN. A reaffirmation of such a form of politics that recognises, protects and normalises diversity and difference would not mark a departure from our historical path, but merely confirm that we have stayed true to the ASEAN way.

Bibliography Bastin, John Sturgus, and Benda, Harry Jindrich (1968). A history of modern Southeast Asia: colonialism, nationalism, and decolonization. Englewood Cliffs, PrenticeHall.

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Chaudhuri, Kirti N. (1978). The trading world of Asia and the English East India Company: 1660-1760. Cambridge University Press.

Croissant, Aurel, and Trinn, Christoph (2009). “Culture, identity and conflict in Asia and Southeast Asia”. Asien, n. 110, p. 13-43.

Gunn, Geoffrey C. (2003). First globalization: the Eurasian exchange, 1500-1800. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Hall, Kenneth R. (2010). A history of early Southeast Asia: maritime trade and societal development, 100-1500.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Hirschman, Charles, and Bonaparte, Sabrina (2012). “Population and society in Southeast Asia: a historical perspective”. Demographic change in Southeast Asia: re290 cent histories and future directions. Ithaca, Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications.

Page, Melvin Eugene, and Sonnenburg, Penny M., eds.

(2003). Colonialism: an international, social, cultural, and political encyclopedia. AM. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO. Reid, Anthony (1993). Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680: expansion and crisis. AM, Vol. 2.

Yale University Press.

Rigg, Jonathan (2004). Southeast Asia: the human landscape of modernization and development. Routledge.

Suarez, Thomas (1999). Early mapping of Southeast Asia: the epic story of seafarers, adventurers, and cartographers who first mapped the regions between China and India. Tuttle Publishing.

The global clash of inequalities: multiculturalism and its limits Enrique RodrĂ­guez Larreta

In the last twenty years in international forums and in national debates in many countries, three closely interrelated metaphors have been at the center of controversy: multiculturalism, cultural identity and cosmopolitanism.

If we go through the history of these disputes in influential books and international meetings, the following may be mentioned as significant milestones: It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future. (Samuel Huntington, “The clash of civilizations�, 1993.)

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In 1999, Mohammed Khatami, then President of Iran, launched the initiative Dialogue among civilizations as an explicit response to Huntington’s thesis. A few years before that, the report Our creative diversity: report of the World Commission on Culture and Development was published

by UNESCO (1996).

In Huntington’s book, certain notions were interpreted differently in some national contexts and audiences. In the case of The clash of civilizations, the key words were civilization and culture. In China the topic of civilization inspired debates on cultural genealogies and the historical continuity of Chinese or Confucian values. In Iran the idea was to change the terms of the civilizational encounter from conflict to dialogue with President Khatami but essentially accepting the idea of cultural boundaries and the continuity of cultural identity, and fault lines.

In Latin America the subject was looked at from the outside and commented as a conflict between Islam and the West. However in the vision of Samuel Huntington, Latin America was not included in Western civilization. Later, in some countries such as Bolivia, the multicultural discussion combined with the indigenist and ethnic politics in the country, leading to the Pluriethnic Bolivian State.

September 11, 2001 and subsequent interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq amplified these controversies internationally. In 2004, Samuel Huntington published Who are we? The challenges to American national identity, shifting the topic of international conflict to American cultural identity, perhaps the real theme of his former book.

The global clash of inequalities: multiculturalism and its limits

In 2005, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, then President of Spain, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, called for the creation of the Alliance of Civilizations.

In the shadow of September 11, and also reflecting European concerns (terrorism and immigration), Islam has been central to this dialogue, now redefined as intercultural. The historical background comprised the many international forums on interreligious dialogue since at least the World Parliament of Religions, assembled for the first time in Chicago in 1893. Moreover, in the postwar period, representatives from non-Western traditions participated in the drafting of the UN Charter of Human Rights.

However, as a very central topic, the question of cultural identity, the idea that culture matters, started in the late 80s in the so-called “curriculum wars” of some major American universities (Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia, Chicago) with repercussions in major media in the USA and in global public culture.

This debate was the expression of major demographic and sociocultural changes in the American society after the Second World War. These changes can be expressed as an historical change from cultural pluralism, in the twenties, to multiculturalism in the sixties, to a postethnic America today (Hollinger, 1995).

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was one of the key turning-points in the making of contemporary American society. The ideas and imperatives of the Cold War, the Great Society, and the civil-rights revolution combined in legislation that fundamentally changed U.S. im-

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migration policy—and the composition of the American population. Few leaders anticipated the full effects of the change, which transformed the ethnic mix of the United States and helped to stimulate the Sunbelt boom. The new law initiated a change in the composition of the American people by abolishing the national quota system in effect since 1924. Quotas had favored immigrants from Western Europe and limited those from other parts of the world.

The old law’s racial bias contradicted American values and the self-proclaimed role of the United States as a defender of freedom around the world. Immigration reform thus became part of the propaganda battle of the Cold War. The new law gave preference to family reunification and welcomed immigrants from all nations equally and resulted in what is now the new American society. Many historians considered the victory of Barack Obama in the American elections of 2008 as one unexpected consequence of this law (Hollinger, 2008) From the clash of civilizations to the clash of inequalities

With the arrival of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States in 2009, many of the topics opened for discussion by multicultural policies changed focus. Ethnic and minority issues remained relevant but they were put in another context: Human rights and internationalism emerged at the center of the political scene. Samantha Power, for example, author of many books on humanitarian interventions (Power, 2007) is today United States Ambas-

The global clash of inequalities: multiculturalism and its limits

sador to the United Nations. After the 2008 crisis the economic situation within the United States was dominated by the issue of national social inequality. Anti—globalization movements and demonstrations—such as Occupy Wall Street—came to be in the center of the public scene. The critique of neoliberalism and financial markets, especially from neo-Keynesian and other critical positions (Graeber 2011), were the subject of intense attention from the media.

If The clash of civilizations was the intellectual bestseller of the last decade of the twentieth century after September 11, Thomas Piketty’s Le Capital au XXIe siècle (2013), published by Harvard University Press in 2014, turned into one of the intellectual best-sellers of this decade in the United States and in many European and Asian countries. Thomas Piketty´s book was preceded by some similar discussions and has been accompanied by others focusing on the issue of inequality. This is the case of Plutocrats. The rise of the new global super-rich by Chrystia Freeland of the Financial Times, celebrated as one of the books of the year, and the book by Nobel-Prize winner Joseph Stieglitz entitled The price of inequality: how today’s divided society endangers our future (2013).

In Piketty’s book, the key word was not civilization but capital. In many intellectual circles in Latin America, the book was read as a return of Marxism to the bookshops after the neoliberal season. Actually, the concept of capital used by Piketty has very little to do with Marxism.

This very nuanced book, full of warnings and criticism of Marxism, is a very representative expression of a culture

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well established in the postcommunist age in the circles of power in France. From other ideological positions in Paris, the newspaper Libération regretted the absence of the concepts of exploitation, social classes and class struggle in Le Capital au XXIe siècle.

Naturally, this issue was noticed by many specialists (Robert Boyer. 2013) but here I am referring to the general perceptions in different national public spheres. In China a chapter was quickly translated by Ecochina.org and significantly titled: “Save capitalism from the capitalists by taxing wealth”. Another Chinese commentator summarizes Piketty’s thesis and criticizes the potential harm of increasing income tax, as Piketty proposes: Enhancing growth is not that much on Mr. Piketty’s mind, either as an economic matter or as a means to greater distributive justice. I assume that the economy is static and zero-sum; if the income of one population group increases, another one must necessarily have been impoverished. Alternative objectives to such matters as maximizing the overall wealth of society or increasing economic liberty or seeking the greatest possible equality of opportunity or even, as in the philosophy of John Rawls, ensuring that the welfare of the least well-off is maximized, are scarcely mentioned.

In the circles of economists and intellectuals in China, market economy is not perceived as a negative phenomenon, unlike France, where, according to a February 2013 opinion poll, only 20 percent of the French think that capitalism is “a system that works rather well”, compared with

The global clash of inequalities: multiculturalism and its limits

a 55 percent positive opinion in Brazil, 56 percent in the US and 58 percent in China. About 26 percent of French people even think that capitalism should be scrapped, compared with only 12 percent of South Africans, 9 percent of Americans and 1 percent of Chinese (Agnes Poirier, in Aljazeera, 6 May 2014).

Viewed as a whole and from the relative distance of the year 2014, what was implicit in these discussions was the principle of equality a central category in liberal and socialist modern philosophy. This was a very important concern in twentieth-century America with regard to race and immigration. Gunnar Myrdal exposed it as early as 1944 in An American dilemma: the negro problem and modern democracy. The conflict or tension between equality and race was displaced from the sixties to the conflict between equality and cultural difference in the form of cultural rights and the politics of identity (Rosaldo, 1990). Probably the author who best expressed this synthesis through the creative use of the Hegelian category of recognition was Charles Taylor, in his influential essay Multiculturalism and the politics of recognition (1992).

Taylor characterized the formation of the issue of national cultural identity in modern Europe as a result of the dissolution of the hierarchical society and the formation of individual national cultures and subjectivities. Despite all his erudition and the plural horizon of his proposal (explained in part by his origins in a multicultural Canada), Taylor’s position, interesting in the context of the American debate, is a known narrative of modern Western his-

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tory. Recognition, in diplomatic and extreme military cases, was part of the law of nations of modern Europe. Rousseau found that national culture has its origin not in divine law but in the popular will. That discussion was moved to the multicultural American debate on minority subcultures centered on symbols of group identity. Though in the public sphere “culture” and “multiculturalism” appeared as the main metaphor in many discussions of social theory, the relationship between cultural identity and social justice had already been questioned by various authors (Brian Barry, Sheyla Benhabib, Nancy Fraser).

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Multiculturalism, recognition and the American national consensus

European postHegelian philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and to a lesser extent Ludwig Wittgenstein were very much commented on in the last decades in the American Universities, together with contemporary thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.

Probably a symbolic moment of that discussion was the request of a prominent group of American philosophers not to award Jacques Derrida with an honoris causa degree at the University of Cambridge in 1992 (Derrida, 1995).

Richard Rorty’s book Philosophy and the mirror of nature, influenced by Heidegger and John Dewey, was widely read in this period.

Although Philosophy Departments continue to teach epistemology, there is a counter tradition in modern thought that followed another path.

The global clash of inequalities: multiculturalism and its limits

Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey are in agreement that the notion of knowledge as accurate representation, made possible by special mental processes, and intelligible through a general theory of representation, needs to be abandoned. (Rorty, cited by Rabinow, 1986.)

Rorty claimed that his philosophical rejection of foundations did not mean that he was a moral relativist, nor did it require him to abandon his political commitments—especially to social justice, which he understood as a progressive version of social democracy and economic equality.

He considered that political values such as democracy, equal rights, and respect for others are non-foundational commitments that North Americans and Europeans have built into their social conventions. Hence, we do not need philosophy to teach us how to act politically, because the ideals are embedded in our language and traditions; all we need to do is to affirm them by human sympathy and active citizenship.

The political philosopher Maurizio Viroli, in an Italian collection of essays on cosmopolitanism, inspired by Rorty’s polemics, notes that Tocqueville already wrote that America is a country endowed with a strong national pride.

This pride is based on the self-image of being a people who managed to win their own freedom and built a strong democracy, flawed and unjust in many ways to its own citizens and other peoples, “but in the eyes of most of Americans their political system is the best that could have been put into practice until now” (Viroli, 1997). The downside of this democratic ideology is that it can turn quickly into identity pride, especially when it feels threatened.

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Shared values in this case is very similar to national consensus/dissensus, a very deeply ingrained American ideal. So it is no coincidence that a conservative liberal such as Samuel Huntington and a radical liberal like Richard Rorty have reached similar conclusions on this point. Most Americans, Professor Richard Rorty, a leading liberal philosopher, wrote, take pride in their country but “Many of the exceptions to this rule are found in colleges and universities, in the Academic Departments that have become sanctuaries for Left wing political views.” They have done “a great deal for different minorities but if the Left is to have influence, it must recognize that a sense of shared national identity (…) is an absolutely essential component of citizenship” (Rorty, cited by Huntington, 2004). What was at stake here was the cultural integration of values under plural forms, a theme further developed by Richard Rorty in a more systematic essay: “Romantic polytheism” (Rorty, 1998).

In the discussion about “cosmopolitanism” or “patriotism”, arguments from different philosophical perspectives lead to similar political conclusions, limiting themselves to a more or less pluralistic view of national identity and openness to other cultural traditions. Charles Taylor, a hermeneutic Catholic philosopher (Taylor, 1999) and Martha Nussbaum, a thinker of Global Justice and Human Needs of neo-Aristotelian inspiration, agree on the vindication of the idea of Unity of Mankind starting from different philosophical views. Nussbaum acknowledges the difficulties of her position: “Becoming a citizen of the World is often a lonely business (...). It is a kind of exile from the comfort

The global clash of inequalities: multiculturalism and its limits

of home truths, from the warm, nestling feeling of patriotism, from the absorbing drama of pride in oneself and one’s own.� It is a tense cosmopolitanism not without a tragic accent, which recalls the dilemmas of Max Weber, divided between Kantian and Nietzschean philosophical loyalties.

Charles Taylor argues his model of cultural pluralism and dialogue between different traditions with reference to the model of jesuit father Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) in his missionary project in China. But, as the historical record shows, for Matteo Ricci this was not an encounter between equal cultures: Christian revelation stood in a hierarchically superior place. Confucian mandarins were located in relation to Christianity on the same level as the pagan philosophers. Plato, Aristotle and Confucius were a lower step on the path of Revelation. Charles Taylor’s transcendental humanism placed him in a more comfortable situation, rooted in a deep sense of belonging than the thin cosmopolitanism of Martha Nussbaum.

The uses of diversity, interdependence and the social distribution of culture

Anthropologists, having culture and the social organization of meaning as their traditional object of study participated actively in this debate (Barth, 1995; Hannerz, 2007).

Clifford Geertz explicitly argued with Rorty concerning the issue of cultural identity. (Geertz, 2000; see Rorty, On ethnocentrism: a reply to Clifford Geertz).

Cultural mixture, hybridation and variation were some of the issues at stake in this broad academic exchange. In

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the discussion, some of the questions emphasized were the underestimation of nationalism and the nation-state building in detriment of alleged civilizational continuities; the importance of symbolic circulation processes and the impact of electronic media—the difference between culture and cultural identity, in particular—highlighting the importance of the social distribution of culture, interrogating the idea of fault lines and isolated cultural islands.

Some anthropologists became more and more critical of the notion of “culture” (Clifford and Marcus, 1986). Power, bio/power, and technologies of government were the new concepts inspired by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, as well as the singular Platonism of Alain Badiou. If the intellectual trajectory of Social Theory in the sixties went from social structure to symbol and meaning, this displacement can be traced today from hermeneutics to power/difference.

From this perspective an American anthropologist discussing Multiculturalism wrote that it is “a social technology for distributing the rights and goods, harms and failures of liberal capitalist democracies” (Povinelli, 2002).

The classical vocabularies of anthropology and social theory were insufficient because they were also heirs of a state-centric world originated in Europe in the nineteenth century and today challenged by the new global environment and a new intellectual situation. Writing from the border of this ontological debate, Clifford Geertz criticized the simplistic talk of cultural values: “difference must be recognized, explicitly and candidly, not obscured with offhand talk about Confucian ethic or western tradition, latin

The global clash of inequalities: multiculturalism and its limits

sensibility or the Muslim Mind Set, nor with wispy moralizing about universal values or dim banalites about underlying oneness”. Intersection, interconnection, is the reality of every “local” situation: “The blocs being gone, and their hegemonies with them, we are facing an era of dispersed entanglements, each distinctive. What unity there is, and what identity, is going to have to be negotiated, produced out of difference” (Geertz, 2000, p. 227).

When social boundaries become diffuse, social recognition, power imbalance and interdependence implode at the heart of planetary postmodernity. The fact that we live in modern, virtually democratic societies in which collective and individual subjectivities are constantly challenged, is at the basis of contemporary uncertainty. That uncertainty is transversal, crosses all cultural and social geographies, from São Paulo to Shanghai and from Cairo to the Paris banlieues. Of course, the way it is distributed, and combined, according to the political and cultural context, the answers are different, as well as the level of radicalism of the conflict with the States. Tahrir Square is not Catalunya Square and occupied Wall Street is not the center of São Paulo or Hong Kong. In all European societies, with their welfare states built after the war, cultural and racial conflicts arising from immigration is a central theme in the postcolonial Mediterranean context. In Brazil, the cultural integration of minorities is not the main concern of the public debate, but unequal access to education, health and consumption (cars, computers, cell phones, fashion) are at the center of the agenda. The statecraft and integration of

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the nation in the conditions of globalization remains a very central subject in countries such as China, Brazil and many others in the Age of Virtual Globalization.

Geertz stressed the well-known description of the power of electronic media today: The growth of technology, most particularly of communications technology, has knit the World into a single web of information and causality, such that, like the famous butterfly beating its wings in the Pacific and bringing on a storm in the Iberian Peninsula, a change of conditions any place can induce disturbances any place else. (Geertz, 2000, p. 246.)

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From a contemporary ethnographic and political point of view, diversity and fragmentation cannot be simply celebrated, opposed to more traditional (or nineteenth-century collective subjectivities such as countries, nations, societies). Fragmentation is growing, together with interconnection. Backwardness is lived with anxiety because it is juxtaposed with the acceleration of the production of new and diverse goods. The postmodern festival of consumption and postmodern forms of violence are placed side by side and in interdependence in many settings. In the words of Geertz: “Cosmopolitanism and parochialism are no longer opposed: they are linking and reinforcing. As the one increases, so does the other” (Geertz, 2000).

“Slave revolt in morality”: multiculturalism, equality and the problem of resentment

In the discussion of multiculturalism and identity politics, in America the work of Frantz Fanon on violence as an extreme form of construction of the image of the oppressed

The global clash of inequalities: multiculturalism and its limits

was placed within the context of liberal egalitarianism: the necessity to struggle as a means of obtaining recognition.

The most quoted work of the author from Martinique is his essay of psychoanalytic inspiration based on his experience of racism in France in the early fifties, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952).

Wrote Homi Bhabha on Frantz Fanon: He may yearn for the total transformation of Man and Society, but he speaks most effectively from the uncertain interstices of historical change; from the area of ambivalence between race and sexuality; out of an unresolved contradiction between culture and class; from deep within the struggle of psychic representation and social reality.

(Bhabha, 1986.)

Frantz Fanon argues that the main weapon of the colonizers is the imposition of the image of the colonized on the subjugated people. The latter has to be purged to free this derogatory self-image. This identity dimension of Fanon’s thought was mentioned by Bhabha and Charles Taylor. But the other part of his legacy, the necessary counter-purifying violence was formulated in extreme words by Jean Paul Sartre in his preface to Fanon’s last book The wretched of the earth with his explicit apology for anti-European/anticolonial violence. But, of course, local interpretations of this topic of purifying violence can have very different resonances in the context of American university campuses or in postdictatorial situations in Latin America (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil) or in China, where the memories of the Cultural Revolution are still alive. Anticolonial struggles, national consciousness and real socialism as the

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historical horizon were sequences of the European intellectual narratives of the twentieth century. Today these narratives are not very clear.

Yet even the justification and necessity of violence and confrontation of radical struggle to obtain justice has long historical precedents since the revolutions that inaugurated the modern era. The history of revolutionary mimesis is still an open chapter of contemporary world history. But the truth is that even justification of violence in certain extreme cases can be formulated as the right to insurrection and to be considered as legitimate in polarized situations as a sad but necessary moment as a claim of political equality and social recognition. Despite which, even thinkers who were in principle enthusiasts of the revolutionary cause, such as Hegel, recoiled in the face of the radicalism of the Jacobin Terror.

But in the history and memory of modern revolutions and civil wars, not only rational claims of justice are at stake.

There are other emotions in these struggles and their memories. The desire for revenge, hate, the pleasure of eliminating the other, dramaturgical sacrifices, and ultimately the erotic sense of action are very present in certain extreme situations and apocalyptic imaginaries (Filiu, 2011).

The modern philosopher who presented the problem of egalitarianism and nihilism on moral grounds, considering it a masterpiece in the process of inversion of values, was—as is well known—Friedrich Nietzsche, who placed its origin in the Christian message. He characterized it as the great invention of the Slave revolt in morali-

The global clash of inequalities: multiculturalism and its limits

ty. Of course, Nietzsche was part of the canon of contemporary critical theory. He was, however, generally read in the French poststructuralist perspective—Foucault and Deleuze in particular—as a critic of Power and the fundamentalism of Reason, rather than as a critic of equalization of values and suppression of hierarchies leading to European nihilism. The reception of Nietzsche in the early decades of the twentieth century in Europe was different: as a moral philosopher of modern nihilism and equalizing of values, of bourgeois social morality. In this sense, Nietzsche is the great genealogist of modern democratic resentiment. However, few voices in the cultural symbolic wars of the 90s made the association between struggles for identity and resentment.

Wendy Brown warns against the dangers of resentment (the moralizing revenge of the powerless). She argues that identity politics has its own genealogy in liberal capitalism, which relentlessly reinforces the “wounded attachments” that it claims to sever: “Politicized identity thus enunciates itself, makes claims for itself, only by entrenching, restating, dramatizing, and inscribing its pain in politics; it can hold out no future—for itself or others—that triumphs over this pain” (Brown, 1995, p. 74). In the context of Australian immigration policies, Duncan Ivinson, in “Multiculturalism and resentment”, asserts that there are two types of resentment linked to multicultural politics today. The first, which draws on Nietzche’s idea of resentment, takes place during situations when individuals are exposed to a structural and systematic withholding of things they want (and need), together

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with a feeling of helplessness of not being able to do anything about it. A second type of resentment is of a greater moralised nature, a reaction related to holding another morally responsible for their actions.

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In two interesting philosophical interventions, Peter Sloterdijk mapped out this subject: Zorn und zeit (2006; Rage and time, 2010), and Gottes eifer (La Folie de Dieu, 2008; God’s Zeal, 2009). Jean Baudrillard, in his insightful commentary on car fires in the suburbs of Paris in 2005, pointed to the question of identitarian insecurity and the question of belonging (New Left Review, 2006; Libération, 2005).

It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine the value of the interpretation of Nietzsche in the history of religions. But whether or not the connection with monotheistic religion is fully demonstrated, the genealogy traced by Nietzsche remains relevant as a diagnosis of our global circumstance. We live in a virtual egalitarian world, where access to goods—money, basically—constitutes the central question. Almost one hundred years before Thomas Piketty would define the “meritocratic extremism” of the financial market ideology, Max Scheler, in his book Resentment (1914) had presented its phenomenology: in the system of competition, every position is a transit point in the overall game. The internal boundlessness arises from having deleted all primary restraint to definite things. But the structure of the apprehension of values leads itself to the conception of property as a commodity, that is, as an object that can exchange in monetary value, and also leads to the conception of life both as individuals and communi-

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ties in the form of progress and an explicitly say progressive craving is associated with this conception.

The ideas of progress and regress are not found and justified empirically in life stages, phases considered and defined according to their own value but become selective forms of conception of self, of the fellow citizen and of history� (Scheler, 1938 [1914], p. 37.)

Naturally, in a world composed of more than seven billion people, complex and densely interconnected, dedicated to the values of creativity and innovation, the question is how societies can feed these huge populations—not only ensure basic needs, but the production of new goods. It is possible to do it without an extended price system? What are the limits of intervention and regulation of national states today, where most culturally and socially integrated old nation-states experience serious difficulties? These urgent contemporary issues remain open at the bottom of the crisis of European welfare states with old and new themes of social inequality, separatism, immigration and racism (Giddens, 2000). But they are very present too in countries such as the so-called BRICS countries and others exposed to the challenges of modernization in new socio-cultural environments. The equation equality/freedom continues to be one of the central aporias of modernity.

Conclusion: the psycho-politics of interdependence

Inequality is the most obvious fact of social life everywhere. At the same time, a highly formalized category of equality is implied in all comparisons by which social

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reality is measured (Human Development Index, Safety Index, Food Security Index, and so on). The societies in which we live are made up of a superinstallation consisting of airports, shopping centers, gated communities, areas of design and consumer goods to which access is uneven, a very peculiar global city. The shopping center and the international airport in the great metropolises are the symbols of our time and sometimes the project is simply to blow them into pieces.

Resentment as a collective and individual phenomenon applies not only to the more disadvantaged, nor is it an archaic phenomenon associated with negative emotions of revenge: it is a characteristic behavior of modern man. Our problem is not external: the Irrationalism of the Other. Apocalyptic violence is not the monopoly of any culture or any religion. There have been apocalyptic secularisms inspired in feelings of humiliation (Nazism is the most indisputable example), religious nationalisms and secular trans-nationalisms. What remains as an existential problem in a changing world is becoming in many regions a gigantic puzzle, the kind of collective subjectivities that can be built or remade.

This is not easy in a very unequal world formed by regional and national realities full of wounds which reproduce, perform and amplify every day. Political negotiations of differences are more necessary than ever and there are also very diverse cultural and political resources. The challenge and difficulty is to examine dif-

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ferent traditions of democracy and cultural pluralism in their specific contexts. But this also implies putting in parentheses the facilities of cultural dialogue or the mere self-celebration of Western or Eastern values.

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Stiglitz, Joseph (2013). The price of inequality: how today’s divided society endangers our future. New York, Norton.

Taylor, Charles (1999). A Catholic modernity?: CharlesTaylor’s Marianist Award Lecture. New York, Oxford University Press.

Viroli, Maurizio (ed.) (1997). “La querelle entre cosmopolitas y patriotas”. In: Martha Nussbaum (ed.). Cosmopolitas o patriotas? Argentina, FCE.

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Looking for the Sense of “Otherness”

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Caption: “Jonah and the Whale”, folio from Jami al-Tavarikh (Compendium of chronicles)

by Rashid al-Din. Date of manuscript: ca. 1400CE/802AH. Medium: Ink, opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper (online catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC). Jonah, Jonas or Younis (Hebrew ‫ ;ה ָנֹוי‬Modern Hebrew Yona; Arabic: ‫سنوي‬‎ Yūnus, Yūnis or ‫ نانوي‬Yūnān; Greek/Latin: Ionas) is the name given in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh/Old Testament) to a prophet of Israel in about the 8th century BCE, central character in the Book of Jonah.

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Versions of the story of Jonah and the Whale exist in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Jonah), the Christian New Testament (Luke 11: 29-30; Matthew 12: 39-41), and the Holy Qur’an (Surah 37, p. 139-44). While details vary, the story is one of responsibility to warn people even if it is overwhelmingly difficult (according to Jews, Jonah fled this mission), punishment for those who fail to do so (Jonah is cast into the stormy sea), and God’s mercy for those who repent: Jonah is swallowed by a whale, or big fish, but after three nights is spewed forth on dry land and sheltered from the sun by a tree because he believes, and receives God’s mercy, after which he resumes his task.1 These days we need a thousand Jonahs. But the overwhelming difficulty for us, whatever our beliefs, is that truth, which is our responsibility, is extremely difficult to ascertain. Even when truth is written in a text, how it corresponds to the conditions of our contentious present is not self-evident. Intellectual work today is humble in its goals.

Our warnings lack prophetic insight. Methods of knowledge production concede our inability to see the whole, much less to predict the future. Let us review some popu-

1. The most detailed account is in the Old Testament Book of Jonah. In the Book of Matthew, Jonah’s three days in the belly of the whale anticipate the three days the resurrection of Christ, a prophet “greater than Jonas”. The Qur’an stresses Jonah’s faith in Allah. Entire theological arguments have issued from the story, having to do with free will, the arbitrariness of punishment, determinism and its limits, faith v. unbelief, and the power to act.

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lar alternatives. (I speak from the West, about methods not confined to the West.)

First there are the new technocrats, the computer-fluent scientists for whom truth is codified in massive data banks that measure and classify information, cluster and tag the results, and spew forth correlations, comparisons, and percentages to any questions posed. These experts have replaced engineers as the prized professionals. They are sought after by knowledge-based economies in nations around the world. Philosophers are superfluous in comparison. Social scientists today do not have an easy hearing for their work in the absence of such legitimizing data. Still, it is their skill at qualitative interpretation and theoretical inference that matters.

Then there are the secular theorists that dominate in Western academies, those who, following Kant, bracket all metaphysical questions (the ones, as Kant says, that really matter to human beings), declaring them inaccessible to reason, hence off-limits to philosophical speculation—or, following Hegel or Marx, invert the transcendent realm, in order to rescue its utopian contents as a future project. There are those who provide comparative analyses of religions by treating them as anthropological manifestations across cultural differences. And then there are the followers of Nietzsche who, with great consequence as heirs to the Enlightenment, declare that the only Absolute is absolute relativism, thereby vitiating any claim to speak the truth.

There are infinite varieties of such secular approaches. But they share a rigid commitment to immanence as

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the cure for all forms of political imbalance. This postmodern premise is, however, not a panacea. Theodor W. Adorno, teaching in Germany after the experiences of Nazism, Stalinism, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, warned his students that no philosophical position is immune from political abuse. It is “something we can learn from dialectics, namely that there is no category, no concept, no theory even, however true, that is immune to the danger of becoming false and even ideological in the constellation that it enters into in practice”.2 And what of theology? There are Departments of Comparative Religion in most US universities, where experts on Islam are increasingly in demand. Theological schools focus on secular scholarship concerning religious themes. As for studies in Humanities Departments, despite the vigorous debates around Carl Schmitt’s notions of political theology, despite cautiously postsecular approaches of philosophers like Derrida, and renewed interest in religious thinkers such as Simone Weil and Emmanuel Levinas, the division of knowledge that separates religion from the humanities is still dominant in the Western academy, with a hefty prejudice against the religious side of this divide.

However, the turn-of-the-century Renaissance in Islamic thought has weakened that divide significantly. Partly this is the consequence of official programs of dialogue, and I have been privileged to take part in some of best of 2. Theodor W. Adorno, History and freedom: lectures 1964-1965, ed.

Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Rodney Livingstone, Cambridge, Mass., Polity, 2006, p. 57.

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them, thanks to Candido Mendes and the Académie de la latinité. But perhaps the most significant aspect of intellectual exchange has been the result of a new generation of scholars from Muslim countries who are studying in the West to become Doctors of Philosophy, and who come to critical inquiry without the secular prejudice. This has been especially productive in the field of political theory, where religion has been quite consistently quarantined by the traditional canon, that begins with Plato and Aristotle, and after considering Augustine as the Christian philosopher who sets apart the City of God and the City of Man, continues to the present with hardly a mention of theology as a positive contribution to politics since that time.

But a new generation of scholars is changing that. Last summer two students who completed their Ph.D. degrees with me wrote dissertations illustrative of the new possibilities. Pinar Kemerli is Turkish. She came to Cornell University from Boğazici University in Istanbul—a public Turkish institution, the best in the country, English-speaking, and secular. Hisseine Faradj, from Libya, has been teaching political theory as an adjunct professor in New York City while studying for his Ph.D. at CUNY Graduate Center. Dr. Kemerli is among my last students at Cornell; Dr. Faradj is among my first students at CUNY Graduate Center. They are diverse and independent in their approaches. But they share a refusal to presume the isolation of Islamic and Western experience. Their work demonstrates that such division is irrelevant to the salient issues of political theory in our time. Both are fully trained in the Western canon of politi-

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cal philosophy. They know it well, so well that they are able to see its relationship to Islamic political thought not as one of exclusionary differences that require an understanding of the Other. Rather, they consider problems of political rule across this so-called great divide, transforming the way we think these problems themselves.

Hisseine Faradj’s aim is to articulate a philosophical description of Islamic political theory around the issue of legitimate sovereignty that, he argues, cannot be appropriated by any system of temporal rule.3 Contrary to what many in the West perceive to be Islamic fundamentalism, precisely a close reading of the Qur’an makes it evident that all sovereignty belongs to God, not to temporal power of whatever nature. Hence, an unapologetic affirmation of the divine origin of the Qur’an has the effect of freeing the Islamic polity to take multiple forms—nation state, federation, kingship, caliphate, etc.—as well as content—democratic, authoritarian, legal-elitist, etc.—because political form remains external to the law. Dr. Faradj concludes that in Islam there can be no temporal sovereign in Carl Schmitt’s sense, that is, a sovereign who has the legitimacy to decide the state of exception that suspends the law. Schmitt demonstrated that this idea of sovereignty, inherited from Christian history, has been sustained within so-called secular nation states. Indeed, Schmitt argues that all political concepts in Western modernity are secu3. Hisseine Faradj, Ulu al Amr & Authority: the central pillars of Sunni political thought, Ph.D Dissertation, CUNY Graduate Center, 2014. This position is embraced generally among Sunni political thinkers.

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larized theological concepts, including, as constitutive of the collective, the power of the sovereign to name the enemy, the political act par excellence. In contrast, Dr. Faradj observes that because the interpretation of divine law by the Ulu al Amr (those in authority) is the source of the legitimacy of temporal power, only the Ulu al Amr can decide on the state of exception, and in the Sunni tradition they do this through ijma, a hermeneutics of consensus, that acquires the agreement of the community. Yet precisely who constitutes “those” (plural) in authority, and how consensus is achieved, is not a constant in history. The process by which these are determined can take many forms, one of which is to open a path to democracy distinct from that of the nation-state form.

Dr. Faradj demonstrates how legal interpretations of sovereign legitimacy have evolved historically as the outcome of political struggles that engage all three sources of power, legal experts, temporal rulers, and Muslim subjects themselves, as they endeavor to answer a moral question fundamental to political life—a question for which the writings of Islam give no clear (hence no possible dogmatic) answer: “Why and when should one obey authority?” It is this question, Dr. Faradj argues, that concerns not only Muslims but human beings universally. Note that all those who ask it must perceive themselves as free subjects—otherwise the question has no meaning. At the same time, the question acknowledges obedience as necessary for collective, social life. But when does obedience become oppression? The answer requires specific, local judgments that

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emerge within historically changing contexts, and it is this process that is now the source of intellectual debate and political struggle within the Muslim world.4 This formulation allows us to conceive of the questions of political theory, not in comparative terms, not as problems of cultural differences, but in a philosophical sense that they really are questions, to which no timeless, universal answer exists. And it could be argued that temporal power is guilty of a metaphysical usurpation when it presumes unchecked authority to provide this judgment on its own. The fundamental tension between freedom and obedience is the very essence of political life, not a one-timeonly problem to be resolved. It requires living judgment.

But notice that describing this tension as one between the individual subject and a national collective, or in terms of a neoliberal understanding of human rights within a global system of sovereign states, is a specific formulation of the problem of obedience and authority, a Western formulation, perhaps Protestant in origin, that emerged from the history of Europe, and that has a contingent future. It is not an a priori form of social life. Moreover, because no timeless, universal answer exists, such real questions cannot be 4. “Yet, while authority and obedience transcend time and space, obedience has particular characteristics that unfold in local geographies and specific moments in history. Identities, cultures, and nations develop around these local characteristics and produce the mosaic of subjectivities and identities that are a testament to the creativity and malleability of the human of the human subject”—but also the inevitability of disagreements; hence struggle is inevitable within any political community (Faradj, Ulu al-Amr & Authority, p. 2).

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divorced from political struggle. Popular struggles, not the nation state, are the content of democracy, aided, but not guaranteed by democratic political forms.

Dr. Faradj does not argue that Islam is inherently democratic. He is saying that democracy is not inherently Western. One can imagine, then, a discourse of democratic theory—books written, academic courses taught—that does not privilege one particular time or place, but sharpens our comprehension of the concept by identifying democracy’s appearance whenever and wherever it becomes manifest.

Rather than subsuming these appearances under known categories, contemporary struggles to bring democracy to life can teach us something new. Changing historical conjunctures affect the content of concepts. It is an error to limit their meaning in advance of these moments of creative possibility. But democracy’s appearance requires human action, and this is where the relation between moral principles and political practice moves to center-stage.

Hisseine Faradj’s work enters deeply into Muslim history and political theory, as well as recent debates among Muslim thinkers that span a wide variety of positions, in order to correct misreadings that do not consider the centrality of the Ulu al Amr in limiting Islamic temporal power, its function as a means of checks and balances, as well as its plurality of forms, that have shaped the political history of Islam. His insights are not limited to implications for democratic theory.

But they do lead me to ask, from another perspective, whether we are in the midst of a change in the very structure of political life. We could describe it this way: Political theology,

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the conceptual underpinnings of sovereign power that endow it with transcendent legitimacy, is being challenged by instances of theological politics, whereby precisely the unspoken, transcendent underpinnings are being activated as a means of political transformation.

One recalls here Gandhi’s famous response to the question: “What do you think of Western civilization?” He answered: “I think it would be a good idea.” This exchange occurred in the context of British colonialism that his movement of non-violent resistance did so much to undermine.

Hence the marshaling of transcendent principles is not merely an intellectual enterprise. It demands practice. Precisely within theological discourse, Martin Luther King acted to challenge sovereign power, in order to realize the principles to which that so-called secular power appealed. Liberation Theology did the same with regard to the official order of the Catholic Church. While these instances of political action do not share a “religion”, they share a deep, theological sensibility, connecting political life to transcendent ideals— universal and eternal—while recognizing the illegitimacy of any earthly, political order that presumes to appropriate these ideals as its own possession. And in each case, Dr. Faradj’s statement of the universal question applies: “Why and when should one obey authority?”

It is this same capacity to articulate the real and abiding questions of political theory that impresses me in the writings of Pinar Kemerli. Her method is very different, but the effect is, similarly, to expand the questions of political theory beyond the boundaries of the West, without re-inscrib-

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ing logics of Otherness. Dr. Kemerli, too, focuses on temporal sovereignty and the political theology that such sovereignty presumes. Her argument moves in a coherent trajectory from Hobbes to Rousseau, to Atatürk, to Islamic conscientious objectors in Turkey. It is the latter category of political actors who expose the theological claims of the modern state, and practice their politics of critique by undermining this theological basis.

Dr. Kemerli’s dissertation deals with a contradiction at the heart of the modern, liberal state, one that she calls “the sacrificial paradox of sovereignty”. She argues that, contrary to claims of secularization, the sovereignty of modern nation states cannot do without the support that religious belief supplies. Dr. Kemerli shows us that modern citizenship is forced to rely on traditions of religious martyrdom, in order to legitimate killing and being killed, because these practices, crucial for national defense, fundamentally contradict the tenets of self-interest and individualism that undergird neoliberal politics in other domains. Moreover, this paradox of sovereignty was one of which Hobbes and Rousseau, as secular theorists, were fully aware, and which they tried, with trouble, to resolve.

If indeed, as Hobbes claims, individual self-preservation justifies submission to state authority, then how is it possible for states to require of their citizens the ultimate sacrifice of life itself? Hobbes proposed a contract theory of military service between the soldier and the state. Still he acknowledged, “faith makes better soldiers”. Hence the paradox remained, which Hobbes struggles to resolve through a “sup-

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plement”, a reconstitution of Christianity as a pedagogic tool for unifying religious and political authority, and instilling loyalty to the secular sovereign state.5 Rousseau’s communitarian approach grapples with the problem in a direct and serious way. His solution, which had practical effects in the French Revolution, was a new civic religion of the state that initiates modern nationalism, whereby loyalty to the collective of the nation supersedes all other forms.

In this light, we are not surprised to find that Atatürk, the secular founder of the Turkish modern state, omitted one realm—the military, based on universal male conscription—from his policy of forced de-Islamization. In the military handbooks of the new Turkish nation, the language of jihad and religious martyrdom was maintained, in stark contrast to the secular discourse of the public sphere.

Dr. Kemerli demonstrates that this omission was not a case of incomplete modernization. On the contrary, it was fully in accord with the requirement of modern, national sovereignty to appeal to transcendent ideals in order to protect the state, even at the expense of the individuals of which it is composed. And finally, we can see how it happens that Islamic conscientious objectors protest against serving in the national military, due to its instrumental use of appeals to Islam to justify defense of a sovereign state that was founded in opposition to the public practice of religion.

5. Pinar Kemerli, “The sacrificial paradox of sovereignty: martyrdom and Islamist conscientious objection”, Ph.D. Dissertation (defended, August 2014), Chapter 1.

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Secular liberalism is based on the principle of self-interest and individual freedom. Yet modern states cannot ask for sacrifice from the citizenry without theological support.

And the consequence of this sacrificial paradox is that modern states make of the nation itself a transcendent value, and of its sovereign, as Hobbes wrote, a “mortal God”. One can see how Dr. Kemerli’s argument resonates with that of Dr. Faradj. Reading their work suggests to me that the power of theological legitimation needs to be not only separate from the state (laïcité), but also (contra Westphalia) superior to it, in order for the sacrificial paradox to be confronted, and perhaps resolved. Without it, international law rests merely on norms of Western state sovereignty that are imposed on the rest of the world. Moreover, the sacrificial paradox is repeated on this level. Western powers, as the source of the legitimating norms, are compelled to suspend those norms in order to preserve the global system of nation states that they have instituted. The practice of sustaining that system, which demands the sacrifice of human beings globally, has become, tragically, synonymous with global order itself. It is the very definition of peace.

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It will be necessary at this point to ask: How does the political form of the caliphate, which has come into recent prominence, speak to these issues? First, it will be clear

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that as a political form, caliphate (“succession”6) has no institutional standing in the Qur’an. It refers historically to the multiple relations between temporal and theological power that were established by the Prophet’s successors.

Second, if we are to sustain the spirit of the argument so far, what will interest us in posing the question of the caliphate is how it informs issues of universal relevance. Let us proceed with that in mind.

Well before Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi asked Muslims for an oath of allegiance (bay’ah7) to establish an Islamic State of Iraq and Syia (ISIS) the idea of reviving the caliphate was being discussed in multiple venues. Among academics, specifically in Great Britain, the United States and Latin America, there has been renewed interest in the caliphate as an alternative political form. The discussion occurs as an outgrowth of postcolonial theory, referred to as Critical Muslim Studies. It is concerned with what Latin American theorists describe as “epistemic decolonialization”, and the way theological traditions can inform and inspire movements for social justice and political liberation.8 6. The title of khalifa, or caliph, means deputy, or successor of the Prophet. But who this should be, or what powers the title should entail, was not determined.

7. Interestingly, the word bay’ah means, literally, contract transaction, a written pact that resonates with the Hobbes-Lockean idea of the social contract, and the Hobbsean idea of the military contract.

8. Discussions between Muslim and Latin American postcolonial theorists have taken place at an international Summer School, the faculty and affiliated faculty of which include well-known figures in postcolonial

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Salim Sayyid has published a book within the context of Critical Muslim Studies entitled Recalling the caliphate (2014). It is a troubling account, but not because of its endorsement of a caliphate political form. Rather, the argument is so thoroughly Western in its postmodern cynicism and instrumentalist approach to power that every appeal to transcendence is barred. Theology is reduced to a means of achieving Islamic world power, thereby qualifying as a new Islamic Caliphate. The power desired by Sayyid appears to be purely political. No moral threshold is required.

Not surprisingly, the theoretical understanding of sovereignty in his study is taken uncritically from Carl Schmitt.

The problematic status of Sayyid’s argument, its recourse to political realism, occurs at the expense of a transcendent principle that would embrace the struggles of others in the world (such as Latin American Liberation Theology). The argument does imply a challenge to the postcolonial thinking of those who oppose the imperial Western episteme by positing an idealized alternative discourse, one rooted in the traditions of the colonized Other that grants to the periphery a status of virtue denied to the center. But it acstudies, several of whom(*) have been with us at meetings of L’Académie de la Latinité: *Tariq Ramadan, Salman Sayyid, Asma Lamrabet, Hatem Bazian, Ramon Grosfoguel, Arzu Merali, Asma Barlas, Houria Bouteldja, Santiago Slabodsky, Farid Esack, *Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Ella Shohat, Samia Bano, Nadia Fadil, Abdennur Prado, Sirin Adlbi Sibai, Muhktar Ali, Talip Küçükcan, Munir Jiwa, Thomas Reifer, Enrique Dussel, Zahra Alí. In 2015 the summer school will be held in Cordoba, with the title “Decolonial Struggles and Liberation Theologies”.

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complishes this merely by extending the existing logic of Western political theology that conflates belief and power, onto Islam. “The answer to the Muslim question is the caliphate”, writes Sayyid, that can “build a new world”, not as an ethical force (“the caliphate does not have to be ethical”) but as an Islamic political identity that can wield power “as an actor on the world stage”.9 However, if the caliphate is understood in a different sense, neither as a state (the ISIS model), nor as a great power (Sayyid), but rather as a way of establishing political legitimacy beyond the state, then the alternative imagined community might encourage a different kind of solidarity, one based on allegiance to certain instances of moral practice rather than specific forms of temporal rule. This caliphate would share an ethics of action rather than a religiously circumscribed doctrine of power. It would be free to criticize the particular practices and policies of nation states (Muslim or otherwise), and would look across nations and religions to find allies in this task. And it would manifest the syncretism and cultural borrowing that mark all great moments in the history of humanity, finding a precedent in the era of the Abbasid Caliphate, when moving the capital from Damascus to Baghdad exposed the Arabic dynasty to the rich traditions of Persian civilization, and when the Abbasid dynasty of Arab rulers shared Islamic power with Umayyads in Mozarabic Spain, the Shi’ite Fatamids in Egypt, the Idrisi dynasty in Morocco, and Ibad9. Salim Sayyid, Recalling the caliphate, p. 182.

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is in Oman, and connected the Islamic world to cultural cross-currents in Africa, India, China, Southeast Asia, and Japan. Sayyid’s idea of an Islamic great power does not exclude multiple “experiments” within Islamic practice.10 But his insistence that the division between insider and outsider only becomes political when it is articulated in the Schmittian distinction of friend and enemy denies the cosmopolitan fundament that accounts for the greatness of any civilizational power.

How very different from Sayyid’s conception is the vision of Muhammad Asad (1900-1992)! As a Jew, he converted to Islam, translated the Qur’an into English, and wrote on Islamic state and government, advising the writers of the Constitution of Pakistan. Here is the way his relation to Islam is described by his son, my colleague at the CUNY Graduate Center, Talal Asad: “In the ‘real Islamic tradition’, he [Talal’s father] would say, there is no simple distinction between friend and enemy, no single divide that categorizes whole peoples of the world into good and evil.”11 Muhammad Asad did, however, believe that divine law must converge with that of the state. And it is this political conclusion that raises such troubling questions for his son.

Talal Asad observes that the modern state is unique in its demand for complete loyalty from its citizens, and that 10. Sayyid, Recalling the caliphate, p. 182.

11. Talal Asad, “Muhammad Asad, between religion and politics”, Islam & Science, Summer 2011, v. 10, n. 1, p. 77-88 (p. 80). Muhammad Asad considered certain texts of the Qur’an to be responses to specific historical circumstances during the Prophet’s lifetime.

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“nothing in the past (including the Muslim past), corresponds to it”.12 The friend/enemy distinction of the modern state constrains the ethical freedom of the individual uniquely. “Precisely because the modern state’s fundamental rationale is fear of external and internal enemies, it uses its power to demand obedience.”13 Granted, he notes, conscientious objection is allowed, so long as it is a matter of subjective, individual conscience. But as soon as this objection becomes collective, articulated as an ethical claim against the state, it is classified as civil disobedience, the limits to which are strongly circumscribed. We can elaborate: if civil disobedience threatens to break the social contract, the sovereign can legitimately proclaim an extralegal state of emergency that suspends the law, in order, as the highest value, to protect the state itself. Talal Asad continues: Given this feature of the modern state, it is not surprising that some Muslims consider that total loyalty to the state contradicts the absolute loyalty they are expected to give to the one and only God, and that they refer to [the modern state] as “the real idol of society” (…).14

Asad provides a brilliant analysis: Advocates [of an Islamic nation state] have suggested that non-Muslims cannot provide absolute loyalty to the Islamic state in which they happen to live, and I have argued not that they can [the liberal view], but that the very idea of such loy-

12. Asad, “Muhammad Asad”, p. 82.

13. Idem, p. 82.

14. Idem, p. 82.

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alty derives from the fact that it is modern and not from its civil or legal ideology.15

The issue of singular loyalty is thus a real political problem of modern nation states, whether secular, Islamic, or Jewish.16 Claiming that “Islamic reform is dependent on simultaneous reform in the West”, Talal Asad suggests a possible Islamic politics that, “without invoking the powers of the state and without presupposing ‘national unity’”, builds relationships and friendships among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, “in a continuous struggle through ‘civil disobedience’ against the commoditization of the environment, the economy, and human relations”, with awe and thanks to “the divine giver for his bounty to humankind (…)”.17 You can see where my argument leads. Modernity needs transcendent power. Precisely in a world system of sovereign states, an ethics that claims legitimacy beyond temporal sovereignty is required.

15. Asad, “Muhammad Asad”, p. 83. He continues: “If the moral authority of the state is truly essential for individual morality, non-Muslims cannot be regarded as living ethically in a state that is not theirs—and one might argue therefore, that the modern Islamic state prevents them from doing so” (p. 84).

16. “The Islamic state may have an obligation to protect non-Muslims and allow them total freedom in matters of speech and belief (…). [However, non-Muslims] have no right to participate fully in the life of the state (…) just as the non-Jewish citizens of Israel (whether Muslim or Christian) are excluded by the Jewish state—and therefore cannot enter critically into its life” (Asad, “Muhammad Asad”, p. 84).

17. Asad, “Muhammad Asad”, p. 87.

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Caption: Folio from Jami’ al-Tawarikh (Compendium of chronicles—A world history) by Rashid al Din, who served as vizier of the Ilkahn Mahmud Ghazan (Mongol Empire). He was from a Jewish, Persian family and converted to Islam. Ghazan was raised a Buddhist, but converted to Islam in 1295 when he took the throne. This manuscript, from the Khalili collection, was produced in the Tabriz scriptorium and dated “finished in the months of the year 714 [1314-1315CE]”. It is now held in the Edinburgh University Library (Or.Ms.20).

“And, verily, Jonah was one of the Messengers. When he ran to the laden ship, he agreed to cast lots and he was among the losers, Then a big fish swallowed him and he had done an act worthy of blame.

Had he not been of them who glorify Allah, he would have indeed remained inside its belly (the fish) till the Day of Resurrection. But We cast him forth on the naked shore while he was sick and We caused a plant of gourd to grow over him. And We sent him to a hundred thousand people or even more, and they believed; so We gave them enjoyment for a while.” (Ch 37:139-148 Quran.)

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Nineveh, to the city to which God sent the prophet Jonah to warn the people of its imminent destruction, is on the Euphrates River just over one hundred kilometers from the

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city of Mosel. Jonah is alleged to have been buried there. A Nestorian Christian church was built on the site, later transformed into the Mosque of the Prophet Younis. In the middle of the Mosque was Jonah’s sepulcher, covered with a Persian carpet of silk and silver. Four great copper candlesticks stood at the corners, while lamps and ostrich shells hung down from the roof. A whale’s tooth was said to be preserved there. At some point the tooth disappeared.

On November 30 2008, the US Army presented to the Mosque a “museum quality” replica of the tooth of a whale.

Four years later, on July 24, 2014, militants of ISIS, that claims the status of a sovereign state and asks for pledges of allegiance from Muslims everywhere, called for all worshippers to leave the Mosque. They placed explosives in the building, and as city residents looked on, turned the 14th century Mosque into rubble.

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Le religieux à l’épreuve du politique Hélé Béji

Deux évènements majeurs déterminent, au début du XXIème siècle, la nature de la relation entre l’Occident et l’Islam: le 11 septembre 2001 pour le pire, le 14 janvier 2011, jour de la Révolution tunisienne, peut-être pour le meilleur.

Ces deux coups de tonnerre proviennent du monde musulman, mais ils révèlent un visage exactement opposé des Musulmans.

Pour comprendre ce tournant, j’aimerais introduire en quelques lignes la Révolution tunisienne. C’est un conte moderne, jalonné de prodiges et de frayeurs. Tantôt on ouvre les yeux comme dans un rêve, tantôt on les ferme comme dans un cauchemar. Notre cœur est soumis à d’incroyables secousses. Mais le plus dur est d’ajuster notre es339

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prit à cette série de soubresauts qu’aucune science politique ne contient. Aucune théorie n’explique par exemple comment la société tunisienne a su résister à ce qui fait le lot ordinaire et tragique des révolutions: les massacres aveugles, les vengeances fratricides, les tribunaux sanglants qui marquent l’effondrement d’un régime. En quelques jours, toutes les structures autoritaires de l’Etat-Parti se sont effritées, nous nous retrouvons sans autorité, sans police, sans armée, sans Constitution, sans chef, sans représentant, sans idéologie, et pourtant, la guerre de tous contre tous n’a pas eu lieu.

Qu’est-ce qui a retenu les passions des Tunisiens au bord de l’abîme? Les politiciens et les partis ont fait vaciller le pays sous leurs coups, mais la population est restée sourde à leurs surenchères, elle s’est gardée de leurs excès avec une persévérance têtue, une obstination de paix, elle s’est gouvernée elle-même comme si de rien n’était, et elle a imposé aux convulsions révolutionnaires la puissance de son organisme civilisé. Pour le comprendre, il faut s’écarter de tout esprit de système, de toute théorie préconçue, et appliquer des mots simples à une réalité imprévisible, où notre intelligence n’est pas toujours au niveau de notre étonnement.

An I de la Révolution tunisienne. Souvenons-nous.

Les premières images de la Révolution tunisienne qui ont inondé les médias ont montré des femmes cheveux au vent, hissées sur des épaules d’hommes sans turban, statues de la liberté enveloppées du drapeau national. Aucun doute, la Révolution tunisienne n’est pas une révolution

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religieuse; cependant ses acteurs sont tous musulmans.

Aucun chef spirituel ou religieux n’a guidé les soulèvements qui ont conduit au 14 janvier 2011, aucun slogan n’était tiré du Coran, tous relevaient de la liberté. C’est un coup de théâtre. Dans une petite société qui n’avait jamais brisé l’emprise de la tyrannie, cette libération a précipité les Tunisiens dans la condition de l’homme moderne, celle où les droits naturels priment sur toute autre croyance culturelle, ethnique, religieuse. Mieux que cela, une nouvelle valeur est venue s’inscrire au frontispice des grands droits universels, la dignité, s’ajoutant aux valeurs classiques de la liberté et de l’égalité.

Pour autant, est-ce que cette révolution signe la “sortie du religieux”? Est-ce que les Tunisiens, comme les Français en 1789, sont en train de divorcer de leur culte, d’abandonner leur foi? Assiste-t-on à une désislamisation de la société, comme on parle de déchristianisation en Europe? Non. La Révolution tunisienne n’est pas une révolution religieuse, mais elle n’est pas non plus antireligieuse, se distinguant en cela de la Révolution française.

Pas de Coran brandi, mais pas de Coran brûlé. En s’affirmant hommes libres, les Tunisiens n’ont pas cessé d’être pieux. Comment vont s’arbitrer ces deux forces désormais aussi sacrées l’une que l’autre, la liberté et la foi? Controverse gigantesque qui a failli nous précipiter dans le cauchemar d’une guerre civile.

Après la divine surprise d’une révolution civile le 14 janvier, volte-face de la providence le 23 octobre 2011. Le parti islamiste Nahdha remporte une majorité écrasante

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d’élus à la Constituante. Stupeur générale. C’est le deuxième coup de théâtre: l’islam politique triomphe dans la plupart des régions. Les Tunisiens voient se profiler un régime pire que celui qu’ils ont renversé: une théocratie! Le zèle de factieux armés en faveur d’une Loi islamique, la Charia, lance une politique de terreur dans les quartiers les plus paisibles. L’Etat civil est ébranlé. Les acquis bourguibiens en matière d’égalité entre hommes et femmes semblent ruinés. L’an II de la révolution sera ponctué de rixes dramatiques entre le drapeau noir des salafistes et le drapeau rouge des patriotes.

An III de la Révolution, troisième coup de théâtre. Le 6 février 2013, le meurtre de Chokri Belaïd, libre penseur, pourfendeur de l’islamisme, précipite dans la rue, dans la seconde qui suit sa mort, des centaines de milliers de familles bouleversées par le crime. Cette colère homérique n’était commandée par personne, aucune organisation, aucun parti, aucun chef. Le peuple s’est levé seul dans sa majesté colossale, avec un “Dégage” unanime, mais cette fois contre les islamistes. Un fleuve humain de plus d’un million de personnes a accompagné la dépouille de Chokri Belaïd, sa veuve tête nue, debout avec ses filles sur le fourgon mortuaire, la main levée en V de la victoire. Un algérien nous a dit que si, après le premier citoyen assassiné par le FIS à Alger, les Algériens étaient massivement descendus dans la rue comme les Tunisiens, il n’y aurait pas eu de guerre civile. Imaginons qu’en France, des millions de Français aient déferlé après les crimes de Mohamed Merah… Ne serait-ce pas au fond la meilleure des ripostes?

Le religieux à l’épreuve du politique

Le même jour, un 4ème coup de théâtre se produit. Le premier ministre islamiste élu, Hamadi Jebali, à l’unisson de l’effroi populaire, démissionne, horrifié par le meurtre de celui qui était pourtant son détracteur le plus virulent.

Ici survient la première brèche du schisme irréversible qui va opposer le parti islamiste aux groupes jihadistes. Nous sommes début 2013, an III de la révolution. D’autres crimes fanatiques contre l’armée et la police, contre les députés eux-mêmes avec l’assassinat de Mohamed Brahmi, galvanisent la réaction collective, surtout quand de jeunes officiers en mission contre les terroristes sont sauvagement égorgés. L’été 2013 scelle l’union sacrée contre la violence. Des assises nationales imposent un dialogue au forceps, jusqu’au point final d’une Constitution civile votée à la quasi-unanimité. La guerre des laïcs et des religieux a résisté aux sirènes de l’enfer. La nation est soudée par ce qui devait la disloquer. La valeur patriotique a supplanté l’ascendant religieux. Dans ce tumulte tragique, l’équilibre moral du peuple n’a pas sombré.

Un peuple musulman croyant, pratiquant, s’est mis en posture d’insurrection pacifique contre la violence. C’est la première fois, dans une société arabe, que la liberté de conscience participe à la construction d’une morale politique dont le principe est la préservation de la vie. La crainte de Dieu ne dispense plus le Tunisien de se révolter contre ceux qui se réclament d’Allah pour le plonger dans le malheur et l’affliction, et ruiner sa douceur de vivre et sa liberté. Ainsi notre révolution, celle des droits naturels, a permis à la liberté de vaincre non la croyance comme

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telle, mais la soumission “innée” qui semblait faire du Musulman un être impropre à toute liberté. Ce préjugé a volé en éclats. L’orgueil des Tunisiens d’être libres n’est pas entré en conflit mortel avec leur humilité de croyant.

La nation n’a pas entamé une guerre sans merci contre la religion.

Par une voie inespérée, il s’est opéré une alliance indicible de sentiment national et d’attachement religieux, grandie par la confiance d’avoir vaincu la tyrannie sans recours aux armes, puis d’avoir affronté la terreur religieuse avec la même énergie morale. Quelque chose comme un idéal de soi plus fort que la haine de l’autre. En vérité, la tradition tunisienne, religieuse et profane, dégage une civilité où les liens humains ne se sont pas délités dans l’individualisme extrême des sociétés européennes. Le lien social, familial, national a résisté à l’éclatement moderne.

Le musulman est inapte à la solitude sociale. Son goût du progrès n’a pas tué son amour des anciens usages, des vieilles manières. Cet héritage épicurien, je n’ai vu personne, fût-il athée, en mépriser les bienfaits, et se priver de cette urbanité que les visiteurs connaissent bien chez nous, une présence affable des autres qui accompagne les vicissitudes de la vie. Peut-être que la souffrance des immigrés à “l’assimilation” est le symptôme de cette réminiscence affective impropre à l’atomisation sociale. A Tunis, qu’on soit croyant ou pas, le fonds social de la religion pénètre tous les aspects du quotidien. Et pourtant, l’islam n’est pas devenu une religion d’Etat, la souveraineté nationale ne se réfère pas à Dieu, mais au peuple. La résistance à la vio-

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lence est sortie de la tradition elle-même. Tandis que la violence fanatique, dite “archaïque”, participe au contraire de la cruauté contemporaine elle-même.

Dans ce contexte, on peut regarder l’islamisme tunisien sous un autre jour. A l’Indépendance, la modernité nationale avait caressé l’utopie d’éradiquer le religieux du paysage politique, de régner sans discussion sur les “conservateurs”, les théologiens, par crainte que la religion ne recouvre l’Etat-nation sous un empire archaïque et obscur. Tel était le républicanisme de Bourguiba. Le nationalisme s’est fait dans la persécution des islamistes.

Le dogme moderne a été despotique, d’où aujourd’hui sa faiblesse. En fait, notre modernisme fut privé de la vertu essentielle, centrale des modernes: la liberté. C’est là que la dissidence religieuse prend un sens inédit, la liberté de conscience, comme en Europe de l’Est le rôle de la foi chrétienne dans la chute du totalitarisme.

Voilà l’épreuve difficile qui attend les modernistes tunisiens: dissocier la modernité de son réflexe autoritaire, de son autoritarisme. L’instinct religieux se déploie aussi comme un instinct de liberté. La révolution tunisienne, bien que non religieuse, a dévoilé la scène cachée.

La démocratisation ne se fera plus dans le déclin religieux, comme cela avait été le cas en Europe. La sortie du religieux ne suit pas l’ordre du temps des Lumières, quand l’autonomie s’était constituée contre l’hégémonie de l’Eglise. La démocratie ne peut plus parier sur la régression du religieux, mais se penser dans sa progression.

C’est l’expérience que nous vivons maintenant. La déco-

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lonisation a propulsé la tradition à l’avant-garde de la modernité, comme sa figure pathétique et centrale.

Certes, il y a un risque. Le progressisme tunisien, miné par le manque de démocratie à l’Indépendance, pourrait se voir menacé par l’excès de démocratie qui libère les sectarismes se prévalant de “droits révolutionnaires”. Nos plages visitées par des fantômes noirs, nos rues hantées de croquemorts, nos mosquées aux prêches funèbres, nos crèches où les bébés voilées portent déjà le péché originel d’être filles, tout cela a révulsé les cœurs tolérants. Dans cette optique, beaucoup refusent encore à Nahdha le droit d’être un acteur légitime de la vie politique, l’accusant d’être le cheval de Troie d’une organisation criminelle introduite au cœur de l’Etat républicain pour saper la République.

Pourtant, trois ans d’âpres échecs ont acculé le parti islamiste à une révision déchirante de ses principes. L’islamisme tunisien révèle une capacité de résilience surprenante. Il a goûté au fruit amer de la défaite, et il en a tiré les conséquences. Il a renoncé à sa doctrine sacrée en retirant la Charia de la Constitution; il a adopté le code bourguibien de l’égalité des sexes, il a inscrit la nature civile de l’Etat dans la Constitution, il a enduré les quolibets des médias, il a déclaré ses extrémistes hors-la-loi en les pourchassant dans une guerre sans merci, il a accepté une société plus impatiente de bonheur que de mystique; enfin, il a quitté le pouvoir, prenant le risque de ne jamais le retrouver, au nom du dévouement national, et pas de la dévotion divine. Il s’est appliqué à subordonner la voix de Dieu à la souveraineté du peuple. Il prône une réconcilia-

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tion avec les destouriens et même les bourguibiens, ses anciens tortionnaires. Il a transformé sa défaite politique en victoire morale.

La question de l’islam politique est peut-être celle-ci: comment l’aspiration à la liberté va-t-elle se concilier avec l’autorité de la tradition? En face, les modernistes peinent à se délivrer de leurs idées fixes. Ils traînent encore le préjugé hérité du progressisme et du communisme, selon lequel la raison doit commencer par détruire la foi religieuse pour instaurer une cité moderne. Loin d’être exempts de dogmes, leurs certitudes montrent une vision arrêtée de leur société aussi éloignée de la tolérance dont ils se réclament, que le fanatique l’est de la religion qu’il croit servir.

Or, répondre à l’islamisme par la volonté de l’éradiquer historiquement, et non par celle de le résoudre politiquement, n’est plus admissible, non seulement sur le plan moral, mais parce que l’histoire a montré combien c’était dangereux et inefficace. Vivre sa foi religieuse comme une source morale de la vie publique n’est pas fanatique en soi. Mais surtout, la tradition ne doit pas être le seul souci des islamistes. En réalité, c’est aux modernes que revient de prendre en charge la tradition, pour ne pas que l’ignorance et l’obscurantisme s’en emparent et en fassent un usage falsifié. Le tumulte religieux est la mission de la modernité elle-même.

Paradoxalement, en gagnant les élections, les islamistes ont perdu leur pouvoir de séduction. Au fond, c’est une chance qu’ils aient gouverné, car l’heure du désenchantement a sonné, la sanction du réel n’a pas tardé. Le pou-

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voir politique a été leur purgatoire, la chute dans le domaine des affaires profanes, triviales. Ils apprennent ainsi que la nation ne se gouverne pas comme une réunion de fidèles prosternés pour une prière, mais comme une assemblée de citoyens indociles exigeant de la part des politiciens non des promesses, mais des preuves. Les Tunisiens savent désormais que la religion, si elle peut être un viatique de l’âme, n’est pas la science de guérir le malheur économique et social. Le poison de la critique est entré dans l’islam tunisien par l’épreuve du politique.

En vérité, la modernité tunisienne est trop avancée pour que l’islamisme n’en ait pas été contaminé. Le parti Nahdha, après la révolution, a évolué dans le droit fil du réformisme tunisien. En effet, depuis le XIXème siècle, les Tunisiens se sont engagés dans un long travail sur eux-mêmes.

Musulmans, ils ont choisi le droit positif pour rédiger leurs lois. Arabes, ils se sont tournés vers l’Occident plutôt que vers l’Orient. Pauvres, ils ont refusé la dictature du prolétariat. Monarchiques, ils ont opté pour la république. Anticolonialistes, ils ont gardé la langue française comme patrimoine. Croyants, ils ont bâti un Etat civil. Conservateurs, ils se sont épris de leur époque. Islamistes, ils ont renoncé au droit coranique.

La décolonisation a été l’expérience politique de la liberté la plus orpheline de langage en quête de son humanité. Mais avec la révolution tunisienne s’est produit une chose singulière: les cœurs “pleins de silence” se sont mis à parler, l’éloquence politique s’est instituée. Un art oratoire plébéien, enchâssé dans une haute et vieille distinc-

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tion langagière, occupe l’agora. L’espoir démocratique a été rehaussé par une langue de gentilhommes du peuple, une langue de lettrés accordée à la verve populaire, intelligible par n’importe qui. Cette civilité est un gage de reconnaissance pour tous. Au milieu du vacarme confus, cette langue est restée audible. Nous l’avons vu portée à un haut degré de complicité par les deux chefs tutélaires de la nation et de la religion, Beji Caïd Essebsi et Rached Ghannouchi, ennemis héréditaires, l’un comme mal-aimé du bourguibisme, l’autre comme son fils choyé, mais tous deux virtuoses de la civilité tunisienne, doués de ce verbe aristocratique qui préserve la dignité morale. Le langage est une économie de la dignité, et la civilité est la meilleure protection de notre dignité et de celle des autres. C’est ici je crois, dans cette grammaire commune où se parlent et s’écoutent la nation et la religion, qu’a agi le ressort secret de l’apaisement qui nous a éloignés de la guerre civile.

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Values through others.

Being weak in a world of cultural pluralism Santiago Zabala

“Whoever does not succeed in becoming an autonomous interpreter perishes, no longer lives like a person but like a number, a statistical item in the system of production and consumption.� (Gianni Vattimo, Dialogue with Nietzsche, 2004.)

One of the few things most continental philosophers agree upon today is that cultural, political, and religious achievements are not measured in relation to objective truths, but rather in relation to other people. But how is possible to relate to others when our beliefs are often anchored to hard principles supported by historical facts? Most contemporary hermeneutic philosophers believe dialogue to 351

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be the solution. But this dialogue is not a simple exchange of views where one of the two interlocutors becomes convinced that the other is right; it is a process wherein both change together. However, the problem is not how or whether this change will actually take place, but rather if we are willing to accept the interpretative nature of our existence, that is, our weakness. In order to share values in a world of cultural pluralism, it is necessary to be weak. But what does such weakness mean?

The aim of this paper is to outline the hermeneutic constitution of the individual who has liberated himself from metaphysics. This individual is the “Übermensch”, in other words, that person who is capable of living the end of metaphysics not only without resentment but also with irony toward his own beliefs. Although Friedrich Nietzsche is the first to have used this expression, he did not systematically explain its constitution. The only place he indicated its meaning is in a very famous fragment of “European Nihilism” where, responding to the question “who will be the strongest once the will to power will conflict between each other”? He affirmed that the strongest will be the most moderate, those who have no need of extreme articles of faith, who not only concede but even love a good deal of contingency and nonsense, who can think of man with a considerable moderation of his value and not therefore become small and weak: the richest in health, who are equal to the most misfortunes and therefore less afraid of misfortunes—men who are sure of their power and who represent with conscious pride the strength man has achieved.

As Gianni Vattimo explains, the meaning of the “Übermensch” can only be fully realized through hermeneutics,

Values through others. Being weak in a world of cultural pluralism

that is, after the destruction of metaphysics set in motion by Heidegger, because this ironic weakness is a direct consequence of this destruction. The “Übermensch” can be exposed and justified through the hermeneutic nature of ontology because, as we will see, interpretation is at the center of Dasein, that is, human existence. In order to outline the weakness of human existence, I will first expose the ontological constitution of the Übermensch, then its interpretative nature, and finally its relation with truth.

Hermeneutics philosophy situates itself after Heidegger’s destruction of metaphysics, that is, after the description of Being as “parousia” or “ousia”, which ontologically and temporally means “presence [Anwesenheit]”.

According to this metaphysical perspective, knowledge is nothing other than the correct apprehension of “something objectively present in its pure objective presence [Vorhandenheit]”, which, as Heidegger explains in Being and time, “Parmenides already used as a guide for interpreting Being”.1 As we can see, it was at the dawn of Western European thinking that Being was determined by time as presence, allowing it to be thought exclusively in terms of its relation to beings and their cause. This left the difference between Being and beings, the ontological difference, obscured, limiting Being to a conception exclusively in terms of its relation to beings, as their cause: Being is only the permanent nominal presence determined as ob1. M. Heidegger, Being and time, trans. J. Stambaugh, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1996, p. 22-3.

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jectness. In this condition, Being has been forgotten in favor of what is called “the condition of the possibility”, the rational ground of beings, creating a metaphysical-scientific way of looking not only at the world but also at its artistic production. But where is mankind situated in this aesthetic relation?

Heidegger, in order to avoid the traditional tripartition of man into body, soul, and spirit—that is, in order to avoid locating its essence in a specific faculty, in particular that of Reason, of the rational animal—coined the term “Dasein”, which is not the world, nor the subject, nor a property of both, but the relation, the in-between, which does not arise from the subject’s coming together with the world but is Being itself. The central feature of Dasein, along with “thrownness” and “fallenness”, is “existence”2 because it has to decide how to be. It is this essential characteristic that makes Dasein not a rational being but, more profoundly, a relationship to Being through which humanity must decide if it wants to exist as “a metaphysical describer of objectivity” or a “post-metaphysical interpreter of Being.”

The best example of a describer of objectivity can be found in Descartes, for whom the world consists of objects that 2. “Thrownness” refers to the fact that Dasein always finds itself already in a certain spiritual and material, historically conditioned environment; hence, in the world, in which the space of possibilities is always historically limited. It represents the phenomenon of the past as having-been. Dasein’s “fallenness” characterizes its existence in the midst of beings that are both Dasein and not Dasein. Existence means that Dasein is potentiality-for-being, “Seinkönnen”; it projects its being upon various possibilities, especially the phenomenon of the future.

Values through others. Being weak in a world of cultural pluralism

are already there as such even before they are investigated, that is, as if Dasein could only “understand its own being in terms of that being to which it is essentially, continually, and most of all closely related—the ‘world’ (...) in terms of what is objectively present”.3 If this were the case, our thought would only have to re-present objects in order to find objective accounts, but such a philosophy would imply that we all have an impossible God’s-eye view for which the truth of things exists in the form of a timeless presence.

This is why metaphysics can be defined as the “age of the world picture”,4 where the world is reduced, constituted, and presented as images.

As we have seen, metaphysics and, more specifically, Descartes’ conception of ontology depended upon the images of the world reproduced by modern science, which aimed at a timeless description and representation of the way the world really is. If Dasein conceived itself on the basis of what is objectively present, this would imply it is finished, determined, and completed as an object; instead, Dasein, as long as it lives, always remains open for the future because it implies “Möglich-sein”: being possible, possibilities. Heidegger insisted upon this ontological nature of objects, representing the world not as it is but rather as it could be, that is, by questioning the fact that it exists because, in contrast to the rest of the objects of the world, as 3. Heidegger, Being and time, p. 16.

4. This is the title of an essay by Heidegger, “The age of the world picture” (1938), in Off the beaten track, ed. and trans. J. Young and K. Haynes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 57-85.

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we have said above, Dasein has a relationship with its own Being, called “existence”. It is a self-relationship, hence a Being-relationship.

It is through the destruction of metaphysics that Dasein becomes that “post-metaphysical interpreter of Being”, forced to enter into dialogue with reality instead of recognizing the static perfection that it represents. Heidegger’s destruction of metaphysics, that is, the recognition of the ontological bearing of objects, has not only allowed us to “question the very fact of objects”, but has also and especially demanded an interpretative process that is required to enter into dialogue with reality. In this process, where reality becomes a point of departure rather than a point of arrival, we can finally stop asking what reality means, what it refers to, or even if it is beautiful, in order to begin asking what it wants to say. But in order to enter into this dialogue, it is necessary to understand the meaning of hermeneutics for ontology, that is, its consequence. Luigi Pareyson delineated these consequences in the early 1950s in two of his major books: Existence and person (1950) and Aesthetics (1954).5 He defined interpretation as the “form 5. Anticipating both Gadamer and Paul Ricœur, whose hermeneutic theses were revealed in the early 1960s, Pareyson had, in the early 1950s, already developed his theory of interpretation. His complete works are currently being published in twenty volumes by Mursia Publisher of Milan and are edited by Giuseppe Riconda, Giovanni Ferretti, Claudio Ciancio, and Francesco Tomatis. Robert Valgenti is translating volume 15 of Pareyson’s complete works, Truth and interpretation, for SUNY Press (forthcoming) and has published “The primacy of interpretation in Luigi Pareyson’s hermeneutics of common sense”, Philosophy Today, v. 49, n. 4, Winter 2005. Silvia Benso is currently translating Pareyson’s later work, Dos-

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of knowing in which receptivity and activity are inseparable, and where the known is a form and the knower a person”.6 Before venturing into Pareyson’s theory of interpretation, let us recall where it is situated in the history of hermeneutics.7 Although hermeneutics, which today has become the “koiné” of contemporary thought,8 has its etymological oritoevsky, also for SUNY Press (forthcoming). Existing translations of Pareyson’s work are limited to “The unity of philosophy”, Cross Currents, v.

4, n. 1, Fall 1953, p. 57-69; and “Pointless suffering in the Brothers Karamazov”, Cross Currents, v. 37, n. 2-3, Summer-Fall 1987, p. 271-86. See also H. T. Bredin, “The aesthetics of Luigi Pareyson”, The British Journal of Aesthetics (1966); M. E. Brown, “On Luigi Pareyson’s ‘L’estetica di Kant’”, Journal of Art and Art Criticism (1971).

6. Luigi Pareyson, Esistenza e interpretazione, 1950; Genoa, Il Melangolo, 1985, p. 218.

7. For a complete historical account of the different epochs of hermeneutics, see J. Grondin, Introduction to philosophical hermeneutics, trans. J. Weinsheimer, 1991, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1994; G. L. Bruns, Hermeneutics: ancient and modern, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1992; and D. Jasper, A short introduction to hermeneutics Louisville, Ky., Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.

8. Evidence that hermeneutics has become the common language of contemporary philosophy can be found in G. Vattimo, “The age of interpretation”, in The future of religion, ed. Santiago Zabala, p. 43-54; G. Vattimo, Beyond interpretation; and also in A. Ortiz-Osés and P. Lanceros, eds., Diccionario de hermenéutica, Bilbao, Universidad de Deusto, 2006. Recent series dedicated to hermeneutic thought, including Joel Weinsheimer, ed., Studies in hermeneutics, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press; Hermeneutics: studies in the history of religions, SUNY Press; Studies in American biblical hermeneutics, Mercer University Press; The interpretations series, Melbourne University Publishing; and Hermeneusis, Anthropos Editorial, make a very large library not only of Heidegger, Pareyson, and Gadamer but also contemporary authors such as J. Grondin, K. Eden, J. Sallis, J. Risser, and others.

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gins in the Greek god Hermes, the reputed messenger and interpreter of the gods, it first developed systematically as biblical exegesis and then in a theoretical framework to govern such exegetical practice.9 But starting in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, theologians and philosophers extended it into an encompassing theory of textual interpretation in general, regardless of the subject matter, which could be God, the Bible, nature, science, or even art. From the narrow interpretation of sacred texts, hermeneutics moved to the modern concern of interpretation in general.

Essential for Pareyson were Friedrich Schleiermacher’s and Nietzsche’s theories of interpretation. For them there are no things (facts) “out there” that could subsequently receive a certain shape through our (subjective) understanding of them; that is, neither the interpreter nor the interpreted depend on preestablished agreements but only on an involvement that occurs during the natural interpretive process of knowledge. While Schleiermacher recognized how one always understands a work “at first as well as and then even better than its author”, Nietzsche instead insisted that “there are no facts, but only interpretations, and this is also an interpretation”. Both found in hermeneutics the “ontological dimension” that Heidegger would then transform into the “ontological relation” that I point out above: Dasein as the in-between that does not arise from the subject 9. A fine study on the historical grounding of modern hermeneutics is Kathy Eden, Hermeneutics and the rhetorical tradition: chapters in the ancient legacy and its humanist reception, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1997.

Values through others. Being weak in a world of cultural pluralism

coming together with the world but rather in a relationship with its own Being. This is why for Heidegger Dasein “is in a hermeneutical relation”,10 that is, in an involvement in the world that takes the form of an interpretative process.

Pareyson, following Heidegger in Truth and Interpretation, explains that the “original ontological relation is necessarily hermeneutic and every interpretation has a necessary ontological nature”, meaning “that of truth there is nothing but interpretation and interpretation is only of truth”.11 For Pareyson the work of art is the “perfection of a formation” because the act of forming is “a making that, in making, invents a new way of making”.12 This theory, which he posited in Aesthetics, has been lauded by artists because it recognizes the originality that belongs to each creation and how it cannot be presupposed by any law that could eventually be applied at ease, as Schleiermacher and Nietzsche noted. Pareyson’s theory invites the artist not only to form her work with her own procedures, which will vary throughout the production of the work, but also to recognize how her own making will also generate (invent) new procedures. What Pareyson’s hermeneutics theory underlines is that “making” is nothing less than pure creativity, that is, creating forms during the same act of 10. M. Heidegger, On the way to language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (1959), New York, Harper & Row, 1982, p. 32.

11. Luigi Pareyson, Verità e interpretazione (1971), Milan, Mursia 1985, p. 53.

12. L. Pareyson, Estetica. Teoria della formatività (1950), Milan, Bompiani, 1988, p. 59.

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making. But is this not common to all human making? After all, even a driver does not adhere precisely to the letter of the traffic laws he is supposed to follow because of traffic situations that must be managed in different ways.

These different and new situations will oblige him not only to invent new driving approaches but also to create his own style of driving, the sort of creation which is a permanent component of all practices and productions. It is interesting to note that although styles are always recognizable, they are impossible to imitate without falling into mere replications because they always include new variables that make them unique within their own procedures. In fact, “making” is common to all human making, but in art it is more emphasized not only because the formative nature of the whole of human existence comes to light but also because it is not (always) conditioned by moral, theoretical, or utilitarian interest.

Exposing Heidegger’s ontology and Pareyson’s hermeneutics has finally delineated the hermeneutic constitution of the “Übermensch” because it shows how after metaphysics Dasein must institute a relationship with the world that is not just simple acknowledgment of reality as it is but a true re-creative interpretation. This implies the interpretative nature of all existence and, most of all, the moral obligation of Dasein to become an autonomous “interpreter”.

But why “moral”? Because it must decide how to be every single time; in other words, Dasein, having recognized its autonomous independence, becomes the only responsible subject of its actions.

Values through others. Being weak in a world of cultural pluralism

As Heidegger explains, Dasein cannot secure its surroundings just by looking for objective accounts of the world, such as God, governments, or even laws. It must engage in interpretative conversations with others because it is not a mirror of reality. This is also why Heidegger insists that we must all choose our own heroes. Although the ontological bearing of existence releases our obligation to depend upon ourselves, this independence also puts interpretation at the center of our existence because, as I have said earlier, reality is a point of departure rather than a point of arrival: we cannot just describe it, we must interpret it.

Another reason for the recognition of hermeneutics as the matrix of Dasein is that it depends not on preestablished agreements but only on an involvement that occurs through interpretations that it chooses to undertake rather than being forced to submit to. This is also why Pareyson insists on the ontological nature of interpretation by showing how truth is just a result of interpretation. But what is the meaning of truth if interpretation presupposes a variety of possible outcomes?

It is no surprise that the answer to this question comes from Gadamer, who was a direct disciple of Heidegger and an attentive reader of Pareyson. In Truth and method, Gadamer brings forward a hermeneuticization of ontology in order to displace the scientific conception of truth and method as the only model for understanding; that is, he removed truth from the exclusive control of method. Although this control was defended by both historicism and positivism, which for decades insisted that the humanities had to work

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out proper methods for themselves before they could attain to the status of science, it was a belief based on metaphysical grounds: methods as the sole guarantee and model of validity. But, as Gadamer explained, the fact that we apply certain methods to particular objects does not justify the pursuit of knowledge; in other words, what “method defines is precisely not truth. It in no way exhausts it”.13 Method does not exhaust truth because understanding is never an act that can be secured methodically and verified objectively, as science tries to persuade us, but an experience that we must undergo. In this experience we not only understand the object we are confronting but also become better acquainted with ourselves because understanding always brings self-understanding, and therefore a certain circularity, which Heidegger referred to as the “hermeneutical circle”. But the most important aspect of this process of circular understanding is not that it will never yield absolute knowledge (since Dasein is “finite”, that is, conditioned by its historical situation), but that it occurs through the model of “dialogue”. This model not only allows Gadamer to defend the extra-methodical truth of the human sciences, as we have just seen, but also to avoid the danger of arbitrariness because the “question concerning the truth of art is identical with that of the truth of the ‘Geisteswissenschaften’, that is to say, with the hermeneutical problem”.

This hermeneutical problem came up, as I have explained 13. H-G. Gadamer, Gadamer in conversation: reflections and commentary, ed. Richard Palmer, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 2003, p. 55.

Values through others. Being weak in a world of cultural pluralism

above, once man recognized that he is not “a metaphysical describer of objectivity” but a “post-metaphysical interpreter of Being”, since truth is not something that is already given as an actual present structure but rather an announcement that “demands an answer rather than an explanation”.

As we can see, the dialogic nature of interpretation is at the center of the hermeneutic constitution of Nietzsche’s “Übermensch”, of that individual who does not need extreme articles of faith but only recognition of everyone’s weakness. If being weak is nothing less than being aware of the contingency of the world in order to interpret it, then moderation is a consequence rather than the cause of the “Übermensch”. As I have said, this moderation can only occur through dialogue because truth is only a result of a conversation where different interpretations face each other. This is why, as Vattimo says, “Whoever does not succeed in becoming an autonomous interpreter perishes, no longer lives like a person but like a number, a statistical item in the system of production and consumption”. In this way, a sense of otherness emerges that is central not just to hermeneutics but also to philosophy at large.

In sum, otherness becomes the realm within which we must operate to avoid falling back into metaphysics, that is, those fundamentalist beliefs that obstruct true dialogue.

This is why being weak means being not only moderate or tolerant but also capable of considering others’ interpretations of the world without needing to believe their truth.

If hermeneutics is the philosophy of the “Übermensch”, it is not only because this implies a plurality of interpre-

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tations but also because it describes our way of being in a world without foundations. Such a world requires constant dialogue, a dialogue that becomes the recognition that it is only through others that we can overcome our own selves and our most immediate brutal interest. This is why “ethics”, as Emmanuelle Levinas explained, can only rise “by listening and responding to the request for help that the other addresses to us, and not from any rational awareness of what is good or bad”.

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Participants

Abdulrahman Al Salimi (Sultanate of Oman). Ph.D. (Durham University, UK, 2001). Editor of Al Tasamoh/ al-Tafahom (Tolerance/understanding) magazine, published by the ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs of the Sultanate of Oman. He is also the author and editor of numerous works, papers and articles in newspapers, magazines and encyclopedias. Recent publications: Early Ibadi theology (co-editor, 2014); Oman and overseas (co-editor, 2013); Portugal in the Oman sea (co-editor, 2012); and Early Ibadi literature (co-editor, 2011).

Candido Mendes (Brazil). President of Candido Mendes University, president of the Rio de Janeiro Forum of Rectors, member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, secretary-general of the Academy of Latinity, member of the Economic and Social Development Council to the Presidency of Brazil, president of the Senior Board of the International Social Science Council (ISSC), and Alliance of Civilizations Ambassador. Former secretarygeneral of the Brazilian Justice and Peace Commission and President of the International Political Science Association (IPSA). Among his most recent books are A 367

Participants

presidência afortunada (1999); Lula: a opção mais que o voto (2002); Lula depois de Lula (2005); Lula apesar de Lula (2006); Dr. Alceu, da ‘persona’ à pessoa (2009); Subcultura e mudança: por que me envergonho do meu país (2010); and Razão armada (2012).

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Daniel Innerarity (Spain). Professor of Political and Social Philosophy and Ikerbasque researcher at the University of the Basque Country. Visiting professor at the European University Institute (Florence). His latest books include The ethics of hospitality, the transformation of politics (3rd Miguel de Unamuno Essay Prize and 2003 National Literature Prize in the Essay category); The invisible society (21st Espasa Essay Prize); The new public realm, the future and its enemies, and The democracy of knowledge.

Enrique Ayala Mora (Ecuador). Historian, rector of Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Quito. Editor of Nueva Historia del Ecuador (15 volumes) and editorial coordinator of Historia de América Andina. Among the books he has published are Historia de la revolución liberal ecuatoriana and Resumen de Historia del Ecuador. Several times member of the Ecuadorian Congress and its Vice President.

Enrique Rodríguez Larreta (Uruguay). Director of the Cultural Pluralism Institute at Candido Mendes University.

His writings include Gold is illusion (2003); Gilberto Freyre e a sociologia crítica (2001); Collective imagination: limits and beyond (2001); Identity and difference

Participants

in the global era (2002); Reality / simulacra / artificial: ontologies of postmodernity (2006); and Subjectivity at the threshold of the digital culture: the self in network (2007). He is co-author, with Guillermo Giucci, of Gilberto Freyre, uma biografia cultural (2007).

François L’Yvonnet (France). Professor of Philosophy and publisher in Paris. His most recent works include: Michel Serres (2010); Louis Massignon, écrits mémorables (with Ch. Jambet, Fr. Angelier and S. Ayadâ), 2 volumes, coll. Bouquins (2009); Le Défi de la différence (with Candido Mendes) (2006); Simone Weil, le grand passage (2006); and Baudrillard (2005).

Hélé Béji (Tunisia) has taught French literature at the University of Tunis. She held an international post at UNESCO and in 1998 founded the International College of Tunis.

She has published several essays and novels, such as: Désenchantement national (1982); L’oeil du jour, a novel (1985); Itinéraire de Paris à Tunis, a satire (1992); L’art contre la culture (1994); L’imposture culturelle (1997); Une force qui demeure (2006); Nous, décolonisés (2008); and Islam pride (Derrière le voile) (2011).

Javier Sanjinés C. (Bolivia) is professor of Spanish at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has published extensively on Bolivian literature and culture. His books include: Estética y carnaval. Ensayos de sociología de la cultura (1985); Literatura contemporánea y grotesco social en Bolivia (1992); Mestizaje upside down: aesthetic politics in contemporary Bolivia (2004); and Rescoldos

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del pasado: conflictos culturales en sociedades poscoloniales (2004).

Marco Lucchesi (Brazil) is a Brazilian poet and writer. Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Fiocruz (Fundação Oswaldo Cruz). Post-doctorate studies at the University of Cologne. Member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and of the Lucchese Accademia delle Scienze Lettere e Arti. His publications include Caminhos do Islã; O dom do crime; Sphera; Meridiano celeste; and Ficções de um gabinete oriental. He has won the Jabuti, Brasília and Marin Sorescu awards, as well as a prize from the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities.

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Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto (Brazil). He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Boston University. He is a professor of Anthropology at Universidade Federal Fluminense (Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro), Brazil, where he is also director of the Centre for Middle East Studies.

His research is mainly concerned with Syria and Brazil on the subjects of Islam, ethnicity and transnationality.

He has conducted fieldwork in Syria since 1999 and with the Muslim communities in Brazil since 2003. He has published, among other works, Islã: religião e civilização, uma abordagem antropológica (2010); and Árabes no Rio de Janeiro: uma identidade plural (2010).

Razali Ismail (Malaysia). Chairman of the Global Movement of Moderates Foundation (GMMF). He retired from government in 1998 after a 35-year career in the Malaysian Diplomatic Service. At the UN he served

Participants

in various capacities: chairman of the Group of 77, president of the UN Security Council, chairman of the Commission on Sustainable Development and president of the United Nations General Assembly. In Malaysia he is involved in IT and environmental industries, specifically in renewable and solar energy, occupies the pro-chancellorship of the University Science Malaysia, and is chairman of the National Peace Volunteer Corp (Yayasan Salam).

Ridwan Al Sayyid (Lebanon) studied at the Religious Institute in Beirut and followed his academic courses at the Religious Academy of Al Azhar, Cairo in 1970. In 1973, he obtained a scholarship from the Konrad Adenauer Institution where he obtained a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1977. Dr. Al-Sayyed is a professor of Islamic studies at the Lebanese University. He was director of Arab Development Institute, editor of the Arab Thought Journal, director of Islamic Studies Institute and co-editor of the Al-Ijtihad Quarterly. He is an author of many books and studies since the 1970’s, mostly focusing on Islamic cultural history and ancient and modern Islamic Fiqh, as well as ancient and modern political Islamic thought. He worked as a visiting professor in various European and American Universities in the nineties.

Santiago Zabala (USA). He is ICREA research professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona. He is the author of The hermeneutic nature of analytic philosophy (2008); The remains of being (2009); and Hermeneutic communism (2011, co-authored with G. Vattimo); editor of Nihilism and emancipation (2004); The future of

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Participants

religion (2005); Weakening philosophy (2007); and Art’s claim to truth (2008); and co-editor (with Jeff Malpas) of Consequences of hermeneutics (2010); and Being Shaken (2013). He writes opinion articles for the New York Times, Al-Jazeera and the Guardian, and academic essays for several international journals. His forthcoming books are Only art can save us: the emergency of aesthetics; and Striving for existence: the anarchy of hermeneutics.

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Susan Buck-Morss (USA) is distinguished professor of Political Science at CUNY Graduate Center and core faculty member of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. Her books include Hegel, Haiti, and universal history (2009); Thinking past terror: Islamism and critical theory on the left (2003); Dreamworld and catastrophe: the passing of mass utopia in East and West (2000); The dialectics of seeing: Walter Benjamin and the arcades project (1989); and The origin of negative dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Critical theory of the Frankfurt School (1977; 2nd ed., 2002).

Syed Farid Alatas (Malaysia/Singapore). Associate professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore, Syed Farid Alatas lectured in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Malaya prior to joining NUS. His areas of interest are historical sociology, the sociology of social science, the sociology of religion and inter-religious dialogue. Some of his recent books are Alternative discourse in Asian social science: responses to Eurocentrism (2006); Ibn Khaldun (2013); and Applying Ibn Khadun: the recovery of a lost tradition in Sociology (2013).

T

he 28th Conference of the Academy of Latinity aims to give an answer to the questions gathered during the entire course of our meetings, questions relating to what it means, in these post-modern times, to truly acknowledge our collective identity and the dialectics derived from it. The cardinal points confront globalization and its new non-hegemonic dimensions; the impact of terrorism; the struggle for difference within multiculturalism; the advance of citizenship and human rights; and the new challenges for democracy faced with representation and the emergence of direct forms of revindication and collective protest.

Another motion to debate entails the universe of virtual communication: the significance of the new dynamics of consensus and the course taken by mobilization born of post-modernity.

In the wake of almost fifteen years of work, the Academy contemplates the awareness of multiculturalism vindicating more and more—beyond the various rhetorics of dialogue—bolder endeavors to truly understand otherness, beyond its reductionisms and simulacra.

At the same time, it is widely recognized that assimilation is not a solution, and that we need to move beyond mere tolerance. However, appreciation of diversity is something that enriches humanity and acceptance that diversity is not an obstacle to cohesion remains a widespread challenge.

Such a new scenario arises together with the wane of meta-polarities, as set forth by the center-periphery relations characteristic of colonial dependence.

One may speak of a new matrix of differentiation, as opposed to the formerly hegemonic profile of globalization. Pluralism is no longer a simple rule of coexistence but a real praxis, moved by the sense of otherness and the rise of a genuine ecumene of recognized collective subjectivities.

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