Salman Rushdie joins a group of prominent intellectuals & public figures in an anti-“Islamist” manifesto published in the now famous Jyllands-Posten (reprinted here in full because I agree with it so much) –
After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.
Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.
We reject cultural relativism, which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.
We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.
We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.
Cosigning with Salman is another SM profilee – Irshad Manji.
As the old saying goes, even a doctrine of tolerance requires certain things that you’ve gotta be uncompromising and, uh, intolerant about. Freedom of expression certainly fits that bill. And when everything that can be nudged around has been, what’s left is an essential clash of values – piety vs. discourse. Traditionalism vs. Women’s Lib. And so on.
Until recently, most of these values were wrapped up in the not-quite-appropriate moniker of Westernism. But, as Rushdie et. al. succinctly point out, to ascribe a name that’s also a place to these values dramatically understates their universal appeal. One of my favorite bloggers, Belmont Club, eloquently observes the origins of this particular declaration –
The intellectual gauntlet has been flung full in the face of Islamism by an unlikely group which includes a Somalian woman, Bangladeshis, exiled Iranians, Lebanese, fugitive British writers of subcontinental origin and an assortment of individuals with a vague left-wing background, none of whom would have been granted admittance to a London gentleman’s club in the 19th century.
Locke, Smith, and Mill would be proud of these Enlightenment children – born a continent away.
Dharmaserf –
My critique was not to knee-jerk poopoo the Enlightenment. I just find it amazing that somehow these “innovative” thinkers are proposing that the world is divided into Enlightened thought (i.e. good) and Traditionalism (or whatever they’re calling it – bad). They seem to have an uncritical acceptance of the Enlightenment and a vitriole against this constructed category of “Islamisism”. And I find that arrogant, simplistic and pandering to – as many of the posts have pointed out – a dubious audience and with dubious motives.
Where is the self-critical analysis? And who is Salman Rushdie, exactly, to condemn “Islamism”? And where is he speaking from? If he is speaking as a Muslim and being critical of Islam, then why is he not out and out critiquing Islam? No, he, as a self-avowed atheist, wants to condemn a particular radical, problematic form of Islam. Perhaps he is speaking as someone victimised by radical Islam. Fine. However, he is also a public intellectual. An that means he has a responsibility to have a deeper insight than the average person who, perhaps, does divide the world into black and white.
While Rushdie has certainly felt the brunt of radical Islam, I would have hoped he wouldn’t buy into secular Western liberal democracy so wholesale and with such little critical thought. This kind of thing just perpetuates the same tired discourses that create these binaries in the first place, instead of doing anything to challenge thier very foundations. The pen is his sword. It is his tool to fight injustice, not only in the most obvious, flashy of places, but in those places that are left uncovered, unnoticed and silenced. It is his weapon to reveal what is problematic about the very structure that is being sold to us. The “discourse” that the manifesto proposes is just as exclusionary and totalising (if, perhaps not as physically violent) as the “obscurantism” that it condemns.
ACTUALLY, FORGET EVERYTHING I WROTE UP THERE AND READ THIS INSTEAD:
If Irshad wants to change Islam she should do so at a more grassroots level. The problem with her is her outright attacking position. You wanna make an argument or a fruitful discussion of a serious matter then you must make concessions. Using phrases like “crazy muslims” or “misguided…” or judging a culture or religion will NOT take you anywhere. Neither does making generalizations about why attire is used in Islam, you wanna find out why ask mutiple sources ask a Mufti ask a Muslim, but whatever you do DO NOT generalize. Generalization is the tool used by all political wedges – communalism, nationalism,… – to win votes. Surely we shouldn’t be victims of such a tool.
Making an in-you-face video full of double entendres is not any more likely to prove your point than yelling in someones face. Be reasonable. The enitre video would have a billion times more credibility if it was shot in a more positive manner. A female prancing around in a bikini is hardly meant to be taken seriously.
NINA P & DESI DANCER: To be sexual is in a certain to degree to ojbectify yourself. To show off your body is in a way objectifying yourself. And, due to this, you loose credibility if you wish to make a video on a serious issue. Surely, you two will agree with me here. (Be more than happy to discuss this point further, but it is not necessary to delve into any deeper for this post.)
I hope you don’t forget the reason for my ridicule of the video: it is meant for the West – no eastern country would allow such a video nor would it have any credibility because of the seriousness of womens’ rights. The tools used to appeal to the west are as follows: exotic locations, women in burkha, other random purely exotica shots that appeal to the “foreign” eye.
I wish you would see there’s more to the video than meets the eye. The video is an oppurtunity for using a politically serious issue to sell a product. Deeya is no more an oppurtunist than Lou Dobbs on CNN, who built up the whole outsourcing issue and then wrote a book on it. Or Irshad, who through her personal struggles as a lesbian – which I sympathize with, has now everything anti-Islam. Surely there is more we should do than to entertain a one-eyed perspective on an issue which truly deserves mutiple views.
Vikash I just want to cyber-five you 🙂 And I think when I bemoan Rushdie’s latest work I’m thinking of The Ground Beneath Her Feet and Fury, neither of which I liked. His essays are still very well-written.
Thank you for your non-essentialist perspective. And yes, I find Manji very irritating, as much as I want to support her personal feminist/queer/anti-racism struggle – her public persona and general message are just too alienating and… annoying. She needs to read some more feminist/post-colonial theory or something. Anything.
the income disparity in india is pretty huge and its also fairly depressing. if anything that’s something that needs to change quite soon. its totally shocking to think of the abject poverty. there’s people without basic neccesities of life out there, and i think that diminishes all of us who consider ourselves desi. i mean yeah, colorful culture, good food, family values (sometimes), bhangra music, chai, food from cart vendors, mangoes, umma and papa, uncle and auntie, bollywood, satyajit rai, deepa mehta, indian writer in english, IIT….but poverty. its kind of too often lost in the mix. and what does that say about us that “we” just ignore this problem day in a day out as if the oppression of dalits is not something to feel sorry about until it stops?
yes, quite schoolmarmish i apologize
i think women should be able to dress however they want and its up to men to not be seduced or titalated. anything else is trying to control another person rather than have control on your own behavior. how can you ask someone else to control themself because you’d rather not have to control yourself?
brownfrown & vikash – love your work!
That’s right and it’s also why you won’t see Bob Geldof and Bono strip in front of the camera for their videos.
Ms Ariel Levy has written a lot about this phenomenon of women objectifying themselves.
sorry to go off topic…
“That’s right and it’s also why you won’t see Bob Geldof and Bono strip in front of the camera for their videos.” Ms. Bengali,
I think you haven’t seen the movie, “The Wall” – the Pink Floyd one. Bob Geldof did pretty strange things in that movie, to be specific, the swimming pool scene.
Bhai Logon
Aap log offtrack kahe ko ja rahein hain ??
Line mein aayee or mudde pe baat kijiyee
Also, if the Western media & entertainment industry is anything to go by, if you are a woman, to be successful it is absolutely essential to be sexy and beautiful. This is certainly not the case for men (compare ratio of average looking male news anchors to average looking female news anchors). What kind of equality is that and what message does that give to young girls? This is why you’ll see 10 year old girls (unknowingly) sexualise themselves by tromping around shopping centres in sexy attire not at all suitable for CHILDREN. Is this the emancipating sexual power everyone is talking about?
Naah. I haven’t seen it – was he bouncing around provocatively?
if you are a woman, to be successful it is absolutely essential to be sexy and beautiful. This is certainly not the case for men
You show me one society where this is not the case (east, west, north, south) on earth, i’ll eat my hair.
as for men, John F. Kennedy is believed to have defeated Richard Nixon because Nixon was uglier (the first televised debate and its effect) in addition to dead guys in illinios, and lyndon johnson carrying deep south.
Let’s go to South Asia – some examples where looks helped and defined them – Nehru, Benazir Bhutto. in South america, Eva Peron. Another example from US of A, Dukakis’s eye brows.
Seriously, if you read Ernest Hemingway’s “Farewell to Arms”, he talks of men of certain looks destined to become leaders.
Naah. I haven’t seen it – was he bouncing around provocatively?
Bob Geldof is lying butt naked in the pool. He does strange things in the movie – you have to see it.
He once boasted that he got into music “to get rich, get famous and get laid”.”
It is an excellent moive. In fact, a cult movie. It is a five star movie.
Thanks Bengali!
I’m going to geek out for a second – but I think it pertains to your post about the objectifiation of women and the original subject of this thread. Anti-oppressive struggles, whether they be dealing with gender or race or class, often mirror each other in both thier critiques and thier problematics. Luce Irigaray would say that “the feminine” is a linguistic impossibilty in a system that is male (even when it speaks of “the female”) and closed. Even the “other” of womanhood is a falsity because women can never be represented in this system – those half-naked women you see parading on TV are symptomatic of “malehood” and “phantasms of its own self-amplifying desire”. It is an impossibility, therefore, for women to have a place in this discourse.
Irigaray has been critiqued for her argument, saying it is again too monolithic in its reading of ‘patriarchy’ ect. but I think there is a useful parallel to be drawn here. In a similar way, this East v. West is just the West constantly reproducing itself. There is no East – it is an impossibility in a closed Euro-centric (for lack of a better term) system. And until this is acknowledged and consciously challenged there is no point claiming we are “bringing the other side to the table” because it’s basically like that John Malkovitch movie “West Westing West to the West”. We need the East to be “different”, its men to be “barbaric”, its women to be “oppressed” – all our terms. And then we need to “discourse” with what are, essentially, constructs of our own… discourse.
The Hijab, instead of being a complex issue at the juncture of class, race, religion, culture and yes, gender, gets simplified to a feminist concern. The cartoons again get decontextualised, de-historicized and become a cause celebre of “freedom of expression and democracy”. The Iraqi bombings get read outside of a long torturous history of imperalism and a brutal regime propped up by an opportunistic West and become one of “barbarianism” against “our troops”. We’ll do business with “thieves”, with “barbarians”, with “Islamists” when it suits us but lump them altogether as a backward group who need us to school them when things heat up too much for us to handle. And then we’ll get people who look like the other side who to become “our” spokespersons to implore “them” to stop the madness. Huh?
Ok I really have to stop and get back to work. Gah.
you guyz have really enlightened me. if i have daughters i think i’ll think about sending them back to brown land, or heck, how about one of them core muslim countries (as long as they have the right to drive and vote, that’s what really matters after all!). they won’t be objectified and stuff.
the west is worse than the rest! dump the west! (though please don’t take my levis!)
So if women are still behind and disadvantaged in virtually every society, what right does the bikini clad have to postulate to the burka clad? Let’s face it, ‘sexual power’ (whatever that is) is not the be all and end all of women’s lib.
What’s wrong with growing up in brownland? I did. And as fucked as it was, it’s just as fucked here. Except here we get to be a lot more self-rightous and live in hermetically sealed houses and have fluffy carpeting and stuff. Oh and drink milk straight out of the carton. Man, I love that.
Unless if women start imitating men and objectify themselves and/or other women in order to join the men’s club. This shift is exactly what we are seeing in popular culture in the West.
I just don’t understand why western imperialists can never get out of the ‘everything-we-do-is-right-and-you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us-dhishoom-dhishoom’ school of thought. There are some fantastic things about the West, just like there are some fantastic things about the East – but to have the attitude that ‘Eurocentric’ societies (to borrow from brownfrown) are the holy grail for all the inferior & uncivilised races is naturally offensive to non-Westerners. The West is not the Best for everyone (as we are seeing with Iraq nosediving into civil war).
And to the Rushdie article – no shit Sherlock!
The West is not the Best for everyone
yeah, that’s why so few people want to emigrate here!
yeah, that’s why so few people want to emigrate here!
Many desis also emigrate to Middle East, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. It is all about money.
brownfrown
But, you have to admit that a group of ‘muslims’ have made it very easy for such issues to become over-simplified. It’s cyclic. Western people don’t care if they offend muslims ‘because of the big crater in the middle of NYC’ just as they don’t care about the thousands of collateral damage in Iraq ‘because of the big crater in the middle of NYC’. The general population are becoming interested in national and international politics but without having much of a historical or contextual perspective.
But I do understand why Western people are scared of Islam and muslims. Heck – even muslims are scared!
A friend of mine came back from a visit to Bangers recently and he mentioned that sartorial profiling of people is very common. Due to the recent bombings, civilians have taken it upon themselves to do public strip searches of people wearing religious garb. Apparently his bearded mullah-esque driver was complaining that everyone stares at him suspiciously.
Didn’t know whether to laugh or cry 🙂
Gaurav beat me to it – it is about money. People would want to go to Japan & Korea too if they had an immigration system. But then again the Japanese don’t have colonial legacies to worry about 🙂
But then again the Japanese don’t have colonial legacies to worry about 🙂 Ms. Bengali,
With due respect, you are going on into the deep end. Japanese have one of the most brutal colonial legacy – if you normalize it with the fact thay were colonial power for a brief period of time.
And lot of people care about collatoral damage. A lot of people also care about what happened last week in Iraq and Pakistan between Shias and Sunnis.
Please be aware I do not believe West holds the “golden key”. But like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, one of the great reformers of India, you got to question yourself (yourself in generic term) pretty hard.
And every society objectifies beauty, it is hardwired in all of us. The modus operandi is slightly different.
They were brutal for a while sure, but their LEGACY is not as magnificent as the illustrious Europeans with their conquest and subsequent leeching of the world. Did they wipe out native populations? Did they steal and loot from ancient civilisations? Did they start anything as barbaric as the slave trade? The Japanese did to East Asia what the Europeans did to the entire world, so in those terms surely our Europeans friends win hands down.
sorry for another post – missed this point: Kust Tandon,
Most certainly. Muslims need to take a very long look at themselves in the mirror. But if they are forced by bullies to look into the mirror all they will see is their oppression – nothing else.
The Japanese did to East Asia what the Europeans did to the entire world, so in those terms surely our Europeans friends win hands down.
ah, were that the white had the gentility of the brown….
Speaking of Burqas and Hijabs, more Muslim women than Muslim men support Sharia laws in UK (41-39). The men also oppose the imposition of Sharia Law in greater numbers than women (45-38).
I would like to see the numbers on how many Muslim women prefer wearing Hijab/Niqab as compared to the men who want their women to do that. From what I have seen and observed, for Muslims living in the West, more women want to wear hijab than the percentage of men who want their women to be covered. I cant find any concrete numbers/polling on this issue though.
Ms bengali
Did they wipe out native populations?
Yes they did. But they are the last ones to do it. Arabs,Turks and Mongols did it before.
Did they steal and loot from ancient civilisations?
Yes they did. But they also preserved.Many Indian sites are still standing because of the conservation efforts of Lord Curzon.It was due to Europeans that many ancient civilisations and languages were discovered and deciphered.What is the record of others? Destruction and destruction.
Did they start anything as barbaric as the slave trade?
No. They didn’t. The origin of slave trade remains obscure. But it was Europeans who put an end to this barbaric practice and even fought a civil war over the issue.
Muslims need to take a very long look at themselves in the mirror. But if they are forced by bullies to look into the mirror all they will see is their oppression – nothing else.
Too bad ! Perhaps Muslims should take a hard look at their own record.
Kudos. Back to the issue of Rushdie et. al. and the Enlightenment. Many consider the postmodern the late-modern. One of the reasons is that both Enlightenment thought and pomo thought accept the notion of trenchant self-criticism. Its just that the latter “kicks it up a notch!”
One thing I tend to think is that fundamentalisms in all their forms are really just another aspect of modernism. They take up the same categories, and they pick and choose which aspects they consider “traditional” and “modern”. Cell phones and videos are fine, but don’t bring your “pluralism” or nihilistic self-questioning to us. Meh.
Dharmaserf – I agree. Fundies are the most modern of uh, men. And we certainly do live in a very modern era. But if the po-mo is the playground for intellectuals to actively critique our ‘realities’, what is up with these guys? Meh, indeed 🙂
bengali – It’s true that it was Muslims who had an obviously star role to play in the cartoon debacle. However, as “the West”, the side that holds the dominant voice and the much vaster economy and the tendency to roll around colonising /invading the world – I think the onus is left to us to be more self-critical because it’s the West that has the resources to perpetuate this schism or start making changes by trying to perhaps change a paradigm that clearly doesn’t work. We can only speak for ourselves, really. But I guess we could keep invading other countries to make them shut up and sit down – not that that seems to be working very well either 🙂 Your story about strip-searching the strip searches in Bangers (where is that btw?) is… um, whack. I shake my head and mumble “You will rue the day, oh civilians of Bangers!”
Brownfrown – Good comments. I specially appreciate your pointing out that there really is no East. The East is what the West considers the East to be. The only thing I don’t quite agree with in your comments is the universalization of this insight. Some things are offensive, uncomfortable, or unlikeable no matter who is doing the talking. I would put hijab in this category. It makes no difference if statistics show that some women actually like it or if the Saudi women challenge the upstart Americans on this. This doesn’t change that fact that many women feel it is an imposition. It’s time to take the next step after Said’s Orientalism and move away from buzzwords like “Other”. Recognizing that there is no east is a good place to start but I think we also need to move away from the entire framework that produced such (pseudo) knowledge in the first place.
Kush – I agree with your comments on beauty. Beauty is likeable and there’s nothing wrong with its glorification. I think we’ve come a long way anyway. Remember the childhood fairy tales where beauty was invariably linked with virtue and ugliness with evil? I don’t think we have as much of that any more.
Divya – I’m not condemning or defending the hijab – I can’t and I refuse to. I’m just saying that all too often, we look at issues like the hijab in terms that we have defined, within our own contexts and discourses and these issues really don’t have much possibility of expression within them. Therefore, the hijab is not “just” a feminist issue, in the narrow sense of the word “feminist”. It’s not just about “women”. It lies at the nexus of a much more complex set of relations. And while I lend my full support and solidarity with any woman who refuses it and I will defend her right to choose not to wear it, I will not applaud that decision as somehow more “enlightened” than another’s who excercises her agency to wear it – for reasons I will never fully understand. Don’t get me wrong – I’m ALL about personal choice – but I’m also wary of trying to comprehend issues within only the power-relations that I know.
oops, sorry about the typo in 79 – i meant strip-searching the people in religious wear.
(Its one thing for Irshad Manji to demand equality in Islam, its another to advocate women as sex objects via cameos in videos: Deeyah.)
FIRST of all, is this guy DESI?????!!!!!!! and then WTF. seems like most of it is shot in INDIA, where while there ARE still MANY acts of oppression against women, the govt does NOT endorse it,atleast not on the books, and therefore has taken a small baby step towards progress for that part of the female population and then there’s the other part of the female pop. who are complete free-thinking adults who choose who they want to marry (maybe not in the way that westerners can comprehend, but ummmmmm…. can u say 50% divorce rate) and what they want to wear (which is every woman I know in kerala). this guy is pandering WAY 2 much to a western audience.
Is the West homogeneous and the East heterogenous now? How does this move our understanding forward?
Dharmaserf – There exist real cultural differences between East and West. But the method of studying the west is western. The method of studying the east is also western. Thus the east that is dished out in academia is actually a western experience of the east and tells us more about the west than it does of the east. Indians who study the social sciences end up reproducing the same western experience of the east assuming it to be the gospel truth. India did not develop any social sciences. Right now there is no indigenous eastern methodology to reverse the gaze. But at least people are waking up to this now and as a first step beginning to realize that what is being described by the west does not match their experience of the east. It will take decades and decades to undo the damage done by the social sciences (both to the west and east).
Whether the “West” is really homogenous or not is kind of a moot point. There is, however, a sense of a cultural continuum that is based precisely on the truth claims of various Western discourses and the faith in the veracity of the discourses themselves. Is patriarchy homogeneous? No. But it’s left to feminists to uncover the inherent inconsistencies to patriarchy and assert that heterogeneity while (hopefully) being self-reflective about thier own discontinuities. Patriarchy, being a dominant system, likes its truth claims. Dominant systems in general like to posit themselves as homogeneous. They like identity and unity and logic.
So in a sense, yes, the West is homogeneous. We can pull those assumptions apart and unearth similar ruptures in both sides of this false binary, but that’s precisely the kind of critical examination that’s missing from those who would like to champion (even the relative) superiority of the West and go about signing things imploring the Others to get with the most excellent programme already.
Uh, am I the only one who has noticed a different definition of East and West amongst most Americans? I’m sure others notice this too, but whenever I hear someone in America use the term East(ern), they usually mean China, Japan, Korea. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use it in the sense to include Middle Eastern and South East Asian countries. Hell, most people around here aren’t referring to anything Indian/Bengali/Pakistani/etc when they say Asian. Now the word orient has different connotations.
And what about poor Africa and South America? They don’t even have cool terms like East and West to define them. They’re the real oppressed 😉
the “west” is not homogenous. in fact, maybe everyone is homogenious as we’re all homo sapiens. say what you will about Rushdie, but I doubt he is a panderer. i think he geniunely believes what he’s writing and he’s been doing it for a number of years now. I suppose there should be an adjustment made that one is not able to line up “sides” in an ideological debate by skin color
there’s scholarship being done in collaboration between indians and americans, including a few indian-americans in that category. its too simple to label indian-americans as either western-educated babus or “true eastern thinkers” are some such category. thats a gross over-simplification of what is happening in academia right now. it might sound good to a few, but the issues here are different. what is being argued here are universal, not the context. can you tell me that the goals of the freedom struggle in india were unfamiliar to those of the “West”? Context may change, but some things translate across languages. There are some things which people have a right to assert across cultures, and there is no reason to hide behind a nationalist wall and leave to “other” people certain issues. the world has always been globalized.
There exist real cultural differences between China and India. There exist real cultural differences between England and Russia.
My point exactly. And yet, don’t we buy into the same thinking when we lump in Rushdie et. al. with every other Euro-American as saying the same thing? Isn’t the way to deflate these kinds of essentializing categories (Said’s second definition of Orientalism, p.2-3) precisely to heterogenize them? Don’t we just buy into the categories and reify them when we keep using the terms East and West instead of distinguishing between China and India, Rushdie and Spivak? Can’t we say things like:
without having to frame it within East/West binaries? By responding to things using the same categories and frame of reference as those we are responding to don’t we just help to circulate those categories and frames of reference as legitimate ones?
I have tended to think that the critical ethic juncture of the response to an totalizing discourse is to not meet it head on (and thus continue to work within that discourse) but to reframe the issue and go beyond the categories.
Sahej – It makes absolutely no difference who is doing the scholarship – whether they are Indian or American or Indian-Americans or Persian. If they are using the existing social sciences to do this scholarship they are still coming from the western perspective. Why do they ask the questions they ask? Did the Asian cultures ask similar questions? If not, was the entire culture a culture of imbeciles or were such questions simply not important for these cultures. What was important for these cultures in that case?
This whole concept of universal experience is a very western one for starters. So is the notion of rights. The emphasis in Asia has always been on duties. No rights without duties. All of this makes for very skewed scholarship. This is compounded by the fact that the social sciences are based on Christian theology. All of these theological notions are presented as science and anyone asserting otherwise is instantly accused of nationalism!
Dharmaserf – I only mentioned east/west because to keep it in line with your post. But since you mention the rest of the world, of course there are cultural differences everywhere but so are there cultural similarities. In light of that the east/west divide is huge, with fewer similarities and more difference.
brownfrown & bengali,
thanks for the cyber-five and the props. its appreciated
vikash
i’m not able right now to give this the long comment i’d like to, but the original article/manifesto being blogged here strikes me as shallow, an example of rote, mechanical ideology, and i’d expect a more compelling argument from such a group of intellectuals than a crude “us versus them” statement of the problem. a critique of current trends in political islam, and their various manifestations in government and society, is obviously in order. but going back to the tired “18th-century enlightenment zindabad” is not the way to get there. i’m sorry.
more importantly, i need to give brownfrown a major shout (or “cyber-five,” per bengali — great term!) for bringing luce irigaray into the sepia conversation (comment #63). can julia kristeva be far behind?
peace
Merci, Siddhartha M. I totally agree with your comment about the shallowness of the manifesto. Like I mentioned before in some post – these people, as public intellectuals have a responsibility to represent more than just the tired, repetitive sound-bites of the ten o’clock news.
Dharmaserf – Maybe I’m being unclear. I’m not saying every Anglo-American says the same thing or is an oppressor (sometimes, if they work very hard – some of them can perhaps get “beyond” thier privilaged position and internalised sense of entitlement). However, in the specific context of this manifesto I don’t see a single asymetrical binary being challenged. The East and West are being reified with just as much zeal as behooves the apparent disciples of the Enlightenment fathers.
Um, how do you propose to escape discourse? We can acknowledge the emptiness of cohesive identities, and trace the power relations that produce these “identities” but the discourse is the discourse – all possibilities for “reframing” the catogries lie within it. And to bring it out of the theoretical for a moment – this is the very discourse that politicians, policy makers, corporations, advertising moghuls, novelists, and a large majority of the public buy into. So while we, as people who enjoy the theoretical and academia and blogging and debating may indeed see the inconsistencies that serve to disrupt the dominant discourse, without addressing these (constructed) categories head on, I wonder how much efficacy any of what is being said here has. People must – and do – adopt identities, no matter how temporarily (and arbritrarily), in order to function within our discursive framework – where would you propose we go outside of this?
As for the West v. East – that is one dichotomy but can just as easily be replaced (even though hinging on slightly different issues) with North v. South. China and India ARE very different – but they are both “over there”. The places where Bush visits on his trips abroad. We visit “those places” and “they” come “here”. “We” study “them”.
I’m not getting where everyone is coming from. plus I don’t have a training in discussing the social science about this. but I get the sense people are similiar to each other to the extent they can help each other secure rights for each other. Abd that people are generally able to respect the differences other people have. I don’t see a tremendous effort needed to appreciate the cultural practices of disparate societies. Maybe because personally I’ve seen it happen. Being in the United States, in which people from many regions live, I’ve been able to appreciate cultural practices from many settings, and it is really not that difficult in my opinion to respect cultural practices that one may see another person do, but that one personally does not do. And as a corrolary, is it really all that hard to have a sense for when another person is being in some way oppressed? One might not know the reason, or the exact ramification, but we can all sense it right? And if in doubt, all you have to do is ask….would you like help with situation X? That can be done broadly in communities and an answer does often become apparent
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In order to say that the concept of rights is a “western notion” one should show evidence for that. Its a broad claim to make.
Well, there’s plenty of written evidence for this. In fact this notion was cooked up or perpetuated by some of these same philosophers mentioned in this post. Other than that, the simplest thing to do would be to apply the linguistic test if you know any asian language. In the only asian language I know the word “right” translates to “adhikaar” which is very much tied to duty.
Also, it is only an illusion that the U.S. provides for a variety of cultural practices. Since they pay constant lip service to this, we somehow end up believing it to be true but this is not actually the case. In truth we are all made to fit into either the Judeo-Christian or more precisely the Protestant framework. True cultural diversity, to take just one example, would otherwise be reflected in things like declaring the rivers and mountains to be sacred. We don’t see this happening, although we are assured that Native American and Hindu views are tolerated. In the recent California textbook affair this was also reflected in parents wanting to assure the world that Indians were not polytheistic, and that our god must be capitalized, etc. etc. Why this angst in a supposedly diverse society?
yeah but there are people who’re receptive to thinking of rivers and other parts of nature as sacred. there’s a diversity to the U.S. that may be under the surface but there are people who are receptive to other points of view
Just for clarification, I didn’t and would never propose that we could escape discourse. However, there is a difference between discourse as a concept and particular kinds of discourses. I was talking about the latter.
I totally agree. The problem was that this then became, without any qualifications, a unified manifesto for how all of the West feels. This is patently not true. We might be able to say that much of the West (see, you guys are forcing me to use the word!!! hehe) responds quite similarily. But we can never forget (ala Heisenburg or Foucault) that looking at something affects it. So by saying that all the West thinks the same as these people we are helping it become more true. What I propose is to particularize things more and more.
This is so that we can then privilage those voices (which may be in the minority, for sure) in the West who disagree. By pointing these voices out, we give them more power, more representation. By doing that, we make it more available to be taken up by others, and make it more of a ready-to-hand trope in certain discursive contexts. And thus, analysis itself–that is, what we choose to look at even–becomes an ethico-political action.
Aside from all that, even the ways that particular European and North American countries tend, in general, to associate or interact with the East or with Eastern immigrants is different (not to even get into all the plethora of voices that contribute to this general mood). Lumping it all together does nothing to help us in all the particular countries develop particular strategies for reversing problematic discourses and activities. To make it totally trite: How does saying “The West is bad” help us figure out how to make it better?
So, to be real simplistic, my issue is not really with what anyone is saying about Rushdie et. al., but rather how people are talking about it and how that fits into broader discourse.
Not to pick on you in my post above, brownfrown, but I only focus on your posts cause they are the most articulate and intelligent.
Plus, I love you.
Not to pick on you in my posts above, brownfrown, but I only focus on your posts cause they are the most articulate and intelligent.
Plus, I love you.