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 After several posts, I tried to move on from the European Burqa Ban issue, and the NY Times’ coverage of it, but Martha Nussbaum’s eloquent explanation of John Locke’s and Roger Williams’s liberal conceptions of religious freedom and equally eloquent deconstruction of the most common arguments for such bans – all of which have been wheeled out as justification for the current Belgian Burqa Ban and similar proposals in other European states – certainly deserve a mention and a link. I would like to find a similarly cogent philosophical argument in favour of such bans – especially one that argues from a variant of a liberal position - if anyone can point me to one, or wishes to write one themselves I would be much obliged!
Nussbaum responds to readers comments (June 15, 2010)
 Not exactly what the marketing rep had in mind Is Fifa presiding over the running of a two-tierstyle police state in South Africa? Who on earth allowed them to do this? Every day on the BBC’s world cup commentary we get to hear about the indissoluble relation between football and freedom, how football was so important to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and how professional football embodies all that is good in this troubled world: team spirit, fair play, discipline, hard work, perversely inflated salaries, temper tantrums from grown men, child prostitution…oh sorry, I switched over to TF1 for a moment there. I even had the pleasure of watching former player, moralist, and BBC commentator Alan Shearer, without a hint of incredulity, ask a township resident if hosting the world cup was equal the overthrow of Apartheid.
Now we learn of the special world cup courts that have been convened by the South African ministry of justice at Fifa’s request to deal with such horrible crimes as “ambush marketing”, fans finding their way into team locker rooms and calmly asking the players to play a little better, local residents taking small sundries from VIP boxes. It seems these courts are also operating on an unofficial two-tier system. If you happen to be from a country where an embassy official will get on the phone and explain that the Netherlands (for example) will not take kindly to its nationals being locked up for wearing orange dresses, you’ve got a good chance of posting bail and having to pay only a small fine for your poor choice of colour. If you are a poor local who has nicked a few bottles from the VIP area the punishment is apparently likely to be somewhat harsher.
As the Guardian reports:
With the exception of the Dutch causes célèbres, a typical case features a Soweto man who stole two cans of Coke, two mini cans of soda water, and one mini can of lemonade from a Soccer City corporate hospitality lounge. He admitted guilt and paid a fine. Elsewhere, a pair of tourists who assaulted a local were fined £1,350 between them, while another Joburg resident who stole a few bottles of alcohol from Soccer City had his bail opposed and remains in custody, presumably lacking an irate foreign minister to intervene on his behalf.
In a country in which many residents feel the wheels of justice turn at a glacial pace, if at all, the speed of the World Cup courts was initially welcomed. But as more details emerge of their cost, and the nature of crimes being tried, some have predictably begun to ask whether time might not be better spent bringing more serious matters to court. For largely petty offences, the harsh sentences being handed down have a distinctly showy quality to them. At the weekend, the National Prosecuting Authority was forced to insist it was possible to mount a fair trial in 24 hours.
Though we need not worry too much about the fate of the young dutch women who committed the terrible crime of wearing orange dresses, it is their case that seems to involve the most egregious and worrying development vis-a-vis mutations of the rule of law in order to best serve the private commercial interests of large corporate entities. They will be tried under the special ’2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa Special Measures Act. The women in orange are accused of contravening two sections of this law, namely the parts that prohibit “unauthorised commercial activities inside an exclusion zone” [i.e. wearing orange dresses and attracting attention by cheering and singing] and “enter[ing] into a designated area while in unauthorised possession of a commercial object” [an unmarked orange dress].’
This is a mutation of the name of the Law that goes beyond the pale, the beautiful game has been tarninshed by a logic that “groups all forms of life under the perilous form of industrial productivity” (that is a line from Jan Patocka’s working notes, published in L’Europe après l’Europe - just so you don’t think I’m straying too far off topic).
 Etienne Balibar announces the death of the European Project. Does anyone disagree?
Balibar’s pronouncement reminded me of a paragraph in Jean-Paul Sartre’s introduction to Frantz Fanon’s Les Damnés de la Terre (1961), Sarte writes:
“When a Frenchman, for example, says to another, Frenchman: “We’re finished” – which, to my knowledge, has occurred roughly every day since 1930 – it is a discourse burning with rage and love. The orator puts himself in the same boat as all his countrymen. And then he generally adds: “Unless…” […]. In short, it is a threat followed by a piece of advice, and such remarks shock even less because they spring from a national intersubjectivity. When Fanon, to the contrary, says that Europe is headed for ruin, far from uttering a cry of alarm he is uttering a diagnostic. This doctor does not claim it is a hopeless cause – there have been miracles – nor is he offering a cure: he is stating that it is in its death throes.”
The humour in the beginning of Sartre’s remark should not put us off from its seriousness, nor lead us to dismiss the discourse of rage and love as somehow unserious or unscientific. Yet, Balibar’s voice is I think neither that of a national intersubjectivity or the removed diagnostic of the post-colonial revolutionary (Fanon). The “unless…” that Sarte points to is the hope that we need but make an alteration of course, a few more or less radical changes (an austerity package or bank bailout?) and the European status quo can be maintained at least for some. What Balibar seems to propose here is something rather different (something I think also pointed out by Jan Patočka when he used the term post-european): If we wish to continue to speak of a European Project, the aims, means, and boundaries of this project must be radically re-thought.
Here is a excerpt from Balibar’s article:
In its current form, under the influence of the dominant social forces, the European construction may have produced some degree of institutional harmonisation, and generalised some fundamental rights, which is not negligible, but, contrary to the stated goals, it has not produced a convergent evolution of national economies, a zone of shared prosperity. Some countries are dominant, others are dominated. The peoples of Europe may not have antagonistic interests, but the nations increasingly do.
Second, any Keynesian strategy to generate public “trust” in the economy rests on three interdependent pillars: a stable currency, a rational system of taxes, but also a social policy, aiming at full employment. This third aspect is systematically ignored in most current commentaries.
 Working Conditions Have Grown Increasingly Difficult For Many Philosophers Some posts ago – “Shaming and Naming” – I discussed the threat of cuts to the distinguished philosophy department at Kings College London. More recently I implored you to participate in whatever way possible in the campaign to save the philosophy department at Middlesex University. I am happy to report that the campaign at Kings has had success. An open letter yesterday from David Papineau, head of the department at Kings announced the following:
I’m pleased to report that King’s College London has just announced that it will be able to make the necessary cost savings in the School of Arts and Humanities without any forced redundancies.
This is excellent news, particularly for the Philosophy Department. One result of the difficult last few months has been to bring home to everyone the value of our Department and the importance of preserving its strengths.
Nobody is leaving the Department. In particular Shalom Lappin, Wilfried Meyer-Viol and Charles Travis will all be remaining with us.
What is more, we expect to be advertising one or more new appointments very soon.On behalf of my colleagues, I’d like to thank all those who have done so much to support us over the last few months. They have made all the difference. – David Papineau
The news from Middlesex University is not as positive. If I understand correctly, university management are still refusing to negotiate with student campaigners or faculty members. The justification for the decision to close the University’s best ranked department is, as it turns out, a rather crass economic one, having to do with the university’s business strategy (should universities be governed according to business strategies? I’ll leave that question aside for the moment, but no is the answer I think). Basically, philosophy students are cheap: they require a few books – not that many even – a couple seminar rooms, and a little bit of quiet to think. As a result, the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) allocates £3947/year per philosophy student, it is labeled a “Band D” discipline. Academic disciplines that might require a studio, lab or fieldwork project gets £5131/year per student, they are labeled “Band C” (this includes things like media studies). Disciplines requiring expensive equipment (chemistry, medicine, engineering) get more. Middlesex University calculates that by cutting the number of spots for Band D students and raising the number for Band C students, it can get more money out of HEFCE. So, it is an economically driven decision, but not of the type “we don’t have the money to continue to fund this programme” (after all philosophy departments are understandably cheap to run), but of the type “we think we could make more money if we cut this programme and free up spots for Band C students”. Sarah Amsler discusses this logic in her article on Opendemocracy.net (I don’t like the title of her article, in my experience philosophers are more likely to be suited and booted than most others in the humanities, but ok). If I have misunderstood the situation, I welcome corrections.
For the neo-liberally inclined amongst you (Guy) and the statistic lovers, here is a link where you will find a few (rather old, but I don’t imagine they have changed much) numbers on how well philosophy undergrads do.
For the New York Times faithful, here (and here) are two articles from the American newspaper of record on how philosophers fare in employment. They are from some time ago, but I think that being published prior to the global finance industry being exposed as largely inhabited by greedoholics with little common sense, and ethics and long-term thinking being rediscovered as perhaps helpful attributes of people in general and those handling very large sums of money in particular, makes these articles all the more pertinent. I find that professional philosophers are often loathe to discuss philosophy as good training for other things as well for philosophy itself – when people ask what is the point of philosophy, the proper answer is that philosophy is its own point. It is seen as demeaning the proper activity of philosophy itself to conceive it in instrumental terms, and many academics resent – rightfully – constantly having to do so in order to protect their discipline. But as has always been the case, most of those who study philosophy at university will not go on to be professional philosophers, what an education in philosophy provides them are the intellectual tools (logical reasoning, critical thinking, argumentation, and writing) to contribute in many ways to the communities they live within, no wonder they are so employable.
Here is a link to Roger Cohen’s op-ed in Tuesday’s NY Times on European Solidarity or lack thereof.
Here are a few remarks:
I think that while reading the complaints about Greece’s overly generous welfare state that currently abound in the Anglophone and German media (though I am not saying that this is all there is to [...]
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
As some of you may have already been made aware, on April 26 Middlesex University in the United Kingdom abruptly announced that it would shut down all of its philosophy programmes effective immediately. Middlesex’s Philosophy programmes are very highly regarded both in the United Kingdom and internationally. Middlesex’s Centre for Research in Modern European [...]
Tintin's outfit was deemed an afront to liberal society
Apologies for a long absence, my excellent philosophy students at the University of the West of England have been demanding my time and intellectual energy with their very good questions and essays… how insensitive to you my dear readers!
I was going to post this update on [...]
I sincerely apologize to my distinguished readership (and to all Belgians) for the extremely low-brow nature of the link in this post, it is so insidious that I am ashamed of it by the sheer fact that it is conducted in the language I call my own, all I can really say is UGH!
Nonetheless, [...]
Varia: In relation to my last post, I was very flattered to see that former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt is clearly a devoted post-europe reader! While it’s often said that the problem with liberals is that they are hard to find, Verhofstadt may be pretty close to the real thing. He has thoughtfully responded to my post [...]
The Rights of Woman?
I don’t mean for this to become a regular feature and I don’t want to do any free publicity for the New York Times (though they need all the help they can get these days), but I have been trying to follow this story and the way that it is presented in the [...]
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