Conference: « La République face aux communautarismes » at the Senate
On Friday November 24th I attended the conference « La République face aux communautarismes » [programme here] at the Senate (I’ve had quite a tour of Parisian landmark architecture in the last few months I can’t help thinking). “Communautarisme” is almost entirely untranslatable into English and indeed, so taken for granted in French now that I even found it quite hard to explain to an Italian friend later on that evening. The Petit Robert gives the following definition: “Système qui développe la formation de communautés (ethniques, religieues, culturelles, sociales…), pouvant diviser la nation au détriment de l’intégration” and gives a citation from the Nouvel Obs from 2003. Presumably, this was the way the word was understood by the majority of participants, since it is the definition cited on the website of the Observatoire du communautarisme [glossary here], which organised the conference in conjunction with the Comité Laïcité République.
My main purpose is attending was for ethnographic reasons, to try to gain a sense of who the keenest active supporters of Republic universalism might be; I didn’t really expect to hear any arguments that have not been well rehearsed in the media in the last few years. The conference was held in a stuffy underground room but I don’t think this was the only reason I found the atmosphere incredibly oppressive. The audience consisted largely of political activists from various ‘laic’ campaigning organisations and some interested members of the public, including several teachers it seemed. Many of the activists explained in their questions how they had come to these movements from a range of leftist groups, which they had left often on account of ideological differences over the Islamic headscarf (the leftist groups being seen as being too soft on Islamic groups and black groups (such as the CRAN) and too open to arguments these activists see as ‘ethnicizing’ e.g. a willingness to attribute some forms discrimination to the colonial legacy). For a group of people who basically all agreed with each other the debate was incredibly fraught; at one point one of the speakers nearly walked out and there were plenty of people standing up and shouting. One reason for this cocophony was, I felt at any rate, the complete intransigence of the participants on these questions and therefore their unwillingness to listen to anyone who had anything even slightly different to say on the topic. I don’t think I’ve found a meeting so frustrating since my student politics days and it made me very glad that the everyday bickering of French politics (and, particulary the Left, it seems) is not something I feel I have to get too closely involved in, either professionally or personally.
Whilst I have some sympathy with the analysis that the rise of ‘communautarian’ movements should be seen as a symptom of a social and economic crisis, set against the decline of older class-based social structures (such as trade unions, the Communist party and so on) I did feel that in their insistance on ‘equality’ the participants were extremely unwilling to acknowledge the existence of racist discrimination. This is a problem that requires radical solutions and to say there’s nothing that can be done in the name of ‘equality’, seems to me to be a way of preserving the grossly unjust status quo whilst preserving a clean Republican conscience. Even if they don’t agree with their methods it seems to me to be important to acknowledge the legitimacy of the objectives of those ‘community’ groups looking actively for concrete solutions to a very real problem.
Henri Pena-Ruiz’s paper on ‘laicite’ for me epitomized the very worst form of elitist arrogance. Laicite is, apparently, a universal value (nevermind the fact that it’s hard to even translate, let alone implement outside France) and we need to “roll up our sleeves and get to work helping the idea progress elsewhere in Europe.” Just because the French revolutionaries were isolated against the combined forces of Europe’s monarchies didn’t make the monarchies ‘right’ and so it is with laicite; just because it’s a French idea doesn’t make it any less universal. I found myself in the odd position of being extremely reluctant to confess my nationality for fear of being lynched and also extremely defensive; I happen to hold very strong secular views – I would like to see the disestablishment of the Church of England and in particular the abolition of the aberration that is faith schools – but I still riled at the idea of the likes of Pena-Ruiz coming uninvited to the UK to tell us how to put our house in order and I suspect the Germans (whom he seemed to have more strongly in mind) would probably feel very similar. And he also held some astonishingly confused (and in this sense highly revelatory) views about culture. According to him anthropologists see culture as ‘a reified sum of traditions’ (a view he attributed to Margaret Mead, although without a reference…) and this is opposed to the ‘original’ etymological view of culture meaning to cultivate (in the agricultural sense) and therefore to civilize. So the narrow elitist vision of (high) culture is more progressive and more open to change than the anthropological understanding since anthropologists trap ‘primitive peoples’ in a set of unchanging pratices. I could barely believe what I was hearing.
I felt myself compelled to leave before the end – I literally couldn’t take any more – but just before I did so one question from the floor really put a spanner in the works: “What about the harkis?” The pc thing these days is to acknowledge how horrendously they have been treated by the French state (all true) and that they therefore have a right to campaign for compensation. Ah. So they have a right to act collectively then? In which case why do other people who feel themselves to have been victims of an injustice (e.g. the black community) not also have this right? Of course, you could argue for days about the legitimacy of these various campaigns but the core of the issue is this: sometimes people need and want to come together on certain issues and sometimes this may not be along class or political lines, but on grounds of religion, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation and so on. The problem with this form of extreme Republicanism is that it fails to recognise the legitimacy of any intermediary group. And, moreover the discourse of ‘communautarianisme’ is based on the assumption that these ‘communities’ are mutually exclusive, that one cannot be a member of more than one at a time and certainly not also an active citizen.
