The private and the public

[Secularism's] power relies crucially upon the precariousness of the categories it establishes.

Hussein Ali Agrama has just had a paper published in Comparative Studies in Society and History (sub needed). Agrama is I think, from Egypt and now lives and works in Chicago. His paper is perhaps one of the best examples of how a doctoral thesis can be successfully translated into a well-researched paper. In discussion with herself on the train this morning about career paths post-PhD (well, I can dream), one of the things we spoke about was that transition from being obsessed with your subject matter to allowing access to the reasons why it is important.

Agrama’s paper contends that scales of secularity (with say, the Netherlands at one end and Iran on the other) accept secularism’s “normative standards” and he argues that we must instead explore the processes that put and keep those standards in place. As a methodology, he has captured what it is that makes most Dawkins-style atheists uncomfortable about religion: secularism is an “expression of the state’s sovereign power.” In this mode, he is following Talal Asad in believing that it is the state that decides what is religious and what is not and the analysis presented in Agrama’s paper presents it superbly.

Where is the line between the religious and the political drawn? He takes the example of family legal disputes in Egyptian courts. These take as their basis, at least for family matters, the precepts of Islamic law. This historical connection between ‘the law’ and ‘religion’ is central to any understanding of the power of secularism and its indeterminacy. This is about maintaining what is private and what is public and how these work to authorize the rules thought to be their respective jurisdictions.

He discusses the concept of public order in Egyptian law and how it is related to a crossing of the boundaries between what is deemed to be matters relating to the intimate, e.g. domestic abuse, and matters to relating to a concept of the public good. He states that:

“public order became a legal expression of the state’s domestic sovereignty”

by deciding where the exceptions to private international law lie. These are matters of regulation by means of legal codification and the state’s sovereignty is widened by the enactment of public order legislation, e.g. the decriminalisation of homosexuality. How such codifications act on bodies and communities is an act of determinacy for particular groups. Courts then decide what is the definition of what constitutes families, households, pension rights  which has been most recently expounded in the passing of the Civil Partnership Act here in Ireland. (Best not to see this act as the end of a process by the way.)

A search for the same terms in an Irish context yields very little about what is deemed to be right and proper for people living in Ireland but plenty on beating a Garda over the head, rioting and free association. This is perhaps something for another post but briefly: public order in Ireland tends to be descriptive and not proscriptive. As can be seen from the extract above from a recent report on Public Attitudes on Domestic Violence, most people disagree that domestic violence is a private matter but court hearings on family law are held in camera. Agrama points to similar indeterminacy of state power in Egypt where the work that he has done on family courts there points to a “blurring [of] the difference between legal equality and majority values, between norm and exception”. A clearer view of what ‘the public’ is thus comes into view.

Secularism then becomes about regulation, about discipline and about codification. It is about the (re)creation of contested boundaries between the given understandings of the ‘private’ and the legal interpretation of the ‘public’. The next time someone says that the Catholic church needs to leave education, think of this indeterminacy of state power. I have to admit: I never saw myself reading this kind of material.

How the ban travels

At this stage, several EU countries have introduced (or are in tjhe process of introducing) legislation banning the wearing of Islamic headscarves, the burqa, the hijab and other forms of dress. The French assembly, that august body of men and women at the vanguard of all things modern, uses the phrase voile integrale to describe the entire range of clothing. Of course the integral bit is not just a handy generic word but represents the entirety of the motivation behind these laws. Ban the burka and you ban the culture. There: it’s integral.

It is probably only a matter of time before the whole discussion gets imported into an Irish context. “But Joe, Joe, I can’t see her face like” yeh yeh go on “and if I can’t see her face, how do I know who she is?! We’ll have a load of motorbike couriers complaining how they have to remove their helmets when they go into the bank, so if we have to do it “why do they have to be any different?” What is striking about how this idea of banning face coverings moves from state to state is the entirely a-spatial nature of the discussion. What works in France will work here and here and here. On the train home last night, a friend told me that Quebec is also in advanced stages of legislatively banning the burqa. Not Canada, but Quebec. Hell, Quebec is almost a French department right? So how does such a debate introduce itself at the doors of a legislature. Here’s how it was introduced in Quebec earlier this year:

“Two words: Uncovered face,” (Quebec’s Premier Jean) Charest told reporters during a press conference in Quebec City. “The principle is clear.”

And yes, the angry and vehement principle is clear: if you live in Quebec and wear a face covering veil you will be denied access to public services. Never mind the fact that governments across the world are trying to make their services available online (the most faceless of all media) or that isolating a small group of people from public life has no seeming consequence. Your face must be uncovered to be quebecois. The men who bombed and killed in London 5 years ago, their faces were not hidden. The men who serially stalk younger women in UK towns, they do not hide their faces. The men who are charged and convicted of the most heinous sexual depravity in our courts here in Ireland: their faces are never hidden.

Instead we must make available to selective public gaze the faces of some women over others. The threat to ‘our’ security is compromised by a woman doing her shopping. How do these ideas travel across spaces and different territories? How does a brutal measure like national legislation on a ‘macro’ scale impact upon ‘micro’ scale social relations on our streets and bus stops? If this is secularisation, I’m going back to Mass. I’m writing a paper for the Cork conference right now which is trying to see how a discourse that takes its legitimacy from a post-9/11 environment of fear plants itself in new geographies.  And how does this become our idea of what is right and proper in ‘public’.  I’m not sure I am any closer to a firm idea.

Just two pieces of wood

So today’s the day that the French parliament votes on a law to ban the burqa, sitar or khimar. Sara Silvestri over on Comment is Free Belief does a pretty fine job summing up the problems with much of this ‘debate’ in Europe’s legislative assemblies. The comments left so far are also revealing.

I have heard it said many times that the Christian cross means nothing; it is merely two pieces of wood placed in a particular way that some people find meaningful. The burqa, on the other hand, is a “symbol”. It’s a symbol of women’s oppression, of ‘being’ a Muslim (notably only in Europe). It seemingly ‘represents’ the Muslim faith and its banishment will rid ‘us’ of these representations. Get rid of the ‘symbols’ and you get rid of the ‘culture’. You know, the culture that matters, like mosques, borders and…and…and…strange musical instruments. Not our culture, theirs! Our culture is Bizet, Monet and Proust.

But the cross? That’s just two pieces of wood. Means nothing.

Oh no! He might be right.

In all of the liveblogging, Mullen-filibustering and overdramatic speeches, the Civil Partnership Bill has been passed by the Seanad and, I am assuming, now becomes law once sent to the Park for signing. It’s a great thing, this Bill. It allows for state recognition of large groups of people and their relationships. It is a day to be celebrated because any day that love becomes legal is a good day. And it’s not just good news for lesbians and gay men either. People who currently prefer love of the heterosexual variety like me are brought within this legislation’s purview. It now means that if I split from my girlfriend and we fight over the property we are indentured into, we get the right to apply to the courts to decide who should pay what. (Among other things of course, but I’m over-simplifying.) But therein lies the problem: the legislation’s purview.

And this is why I (sharp intake of breath) find myself in partial agreement with David Quinn in his column for today’s racist (that’s you Ian O’Doherty) Irish Independent. In the last few weeks, we have heard lots of David on the radio, seen lots of him on television and a little bit less of him online. He’s been staunchly defending the indefensible position that a sexual relationship between a man and a woman is ‘more special’ than one between people of the same sex. David talks about first principles as if they ever existed. And, fair dues to him, he didn’t even mention God once. He knows that he loses the secular game if he brings God into it. So, he instead he corners the talk about family values and promoting marriage (you know, the good kind?). All harmless enough stuff really.

I happen to disagree with David’s ‘defence’ of heterosexual marriage, at least as defined in his combative radio interviews in recent weeks. Superficially you only have to look at how many people will get married this year to realise that Those Gays ™ are not turning ‘our’ precious off-spring, even ones I do not have. Marriage has never been more popular and does not need defending because (listen now) it is not under attack. Show me where marriage is under attack and where these attacks fundamentally alter people’s loving relationships and I’ll show you a regular society. However, I kind of agree with David’s analysis and here’s why.

He criticises those who deem changes in law like the Civil Partnership legislation as mature decisions. He is right, it is condescending. Regularising other forms of relationships in law is just that, it regularises for legal purposes, so that the State’s reach is made longer. Why does the state have to legalise any form of human relationship? Secularisation processes do this most precisely: it takes the previously-understood domain of the private and makes them public goods. It forces some behaviours into the ‘light’ of public scrutiny. Secularisation is as much about where we can and cannot park on the street as it is about who gets to wear what on their heads.

I don’t go along with any of this conscience clause nonsense but David ends up with this:

But the price we’re paying is a very badly judged piece of legislation…a de facto declaration that belief in traditional marriage amounts to a form of prejudice that must be placed beyond the Pale.

And the last phrase, beyond the Pale, is precisely where David and I can agree but for very different reasons. Some things are brought inside the Pale by legislation but others remain outside it like, for example, the regulation of unfettered currency speculation or the punishment of bankers who impoverish people and their communities. Like Suzy, I think it is best if we observe the rigour of some of the parliamentary system as we have it currently trained to do instead of setting up false dichotomies between those who believe in the fairness and righteousness of the modern metropole and the backwardness and modernity-hating of the people who hold back ‘progress’. The latter group are clearly all culchies, have “their dinner in the middle of the day” and bless themselves past a church. The Civil Parntership bill is a great development but don’t think that it brings us any closer to being a ‘mature’ democracy. As David says, that’s just condescending.

Fieldwork notes – July 2010

There is a small part of County Wexford, just past Tagoat, that’s an island but not one. The village is called Lady’s Island or Our Lady’s Island. The difference is crucial and here’s why. As my informant told me, there are two origins of the site as a sacred place. The first derives from Oilean na mBan or Women’s Island and comes from pre-Christian raiders taking shelter from the seas around the south coast of Ireland. The story goes that that they ‘brought their faith with them’ to this part of Ireland. The second name origin comes from a bequest of lands from a second Crusade lord to the Augustinian Order. It is not yet clear to me why the name of the place would reflect a dedication to Mary, mother of Jesus, arising from this story. As you can see from here, the Irish names recorded shed no more light than this.

My informant and I sat for 90 minutes talking about the place of the pilgrimage in local stories, why some places are sacred and others not and about secularism as ambiguity-hater. There’s a strange beauty to this part of Wexford. It is a very quiet spot, at least it will be until August 15th when the three week long pilgrimage season to Our Lady’s Island begins. Carne and Carnesore beaches nearby make this place a popular holiday (‘secular’ pilgrimage?) destination. The surrounding area contains many caravan parks and permanent mobile homes. It is clear that people come here for the proximity to the sea and for the sunnier weather than most other parts of the island.

There is also something about the physicality of pilgrimage to a place. My informant talked to me a little about the centrality of touch to this physicality. People come to touch the statue of Mary, usually with beads on that hand and they walk around the island. This is not an endurance pilgrimage like Lough Derg or Croagh Patrick in that there is not great physical hardship involved. Pilgrims lift beads to be blessed during the opening ceremony and above all, the word of God, in the physicality of the Bible, is core to the opening devotion in August. For my informant, the word of God takes precdence over representations such as borne statues. This too is a physical embodiment of faith: it is The Word made present in words, read and heard.

I’ll be back and forth to Wexford over the coming weekends. Going by the photographs I have seen of last year’s pilgrimage and devotions, it will be a fruitful time. Data to be gathered, people’s experiences to be hoovered up and spat out on the page. The reproduction of other’s experiences as mine and their misrepresentation is central to this process.

(I’m kidding about this last bit.)