Talk given at "The Present at History"
WATCH
These discussions evolved into a book:
The Present as History: Critical Perspectives on Global Power
edited by Nermeen Shaikh, published by Columbia UP, 2008.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
Penser la terreur, l’horrible et la mort : entretien avec Talal Asad
Penser la terreur, l’horrible et la mort : entretien avec Talal Asad
Cet entretien avec Talal Asad a été réalisé à New York le 5 décembre 2006
Marc Antoine Berthod, 2007. « Penser la terreur, l’horrible et la mort : entretien avec Talal Asad ». ethnographiques.org, Numéro 13 - juin 2007 [en ligne]. (http://www.ethnographiques.org/Pense r-la-terreur-l-horrible-et-la - consulté le 2.11.2010)
Avant-propos
Talal Asad est Distinguished Professor au Département d’anthropologie du Graduate Center de la City University of New York. Penseur incisif et stimulant, il questionne inlassablement depuis les années 1960 les modalités de production du savoir anthropologique et perturbe le confort de nos assurances conceptuelles les mieux établies — sinon les plus diffusées — sur les notions de modernité, de sécularisation, de laïcité et de religion. Il a notamment publié The Kababish Arabs : Power, Authority and Consent in a Nomadic Tribe (1970), Genealogies of Religion : Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (1993), Formations of the Secular : Christianity, Islam, Modernity (2003) et, tout récemment, On Suicide Bombing (2007) [1].Avant-propos
Cet entretien, réalisé à New York le 5 décembre 2006 et traduit de l’anglais par mes soins, porte tout d’abord un éclairage sur l’ancrage et la posture anthropologiques de Talal Asad ; il parcourt ensuite la réflexion que celui-ci a développée dans son dernier ouvrage sur les attentats-suicides et sur le sens de l’horreur qu’induisent de tels actes.
M. B. : Pour débuter, quels sont les éléments qui vous ont conduit à entreprendre des études en anthropologie ?
T. A. : Ayant grandi au Pakistan, dans un univers culturel bien spécifique, je suppose que j’ai rapidement pris conscience des différences entre les sociétés et les cultures. Aussi loin que je puisse me rappeler, j’entretenais déjà là-bas une fascination pour les multiples styles de vie. Dans une certaine mesure, des différences étaient déjà présentes au sein de ma famille. Mon père venait en effet d’une autre culture, puisqu’il était originaire d’Autriche. Il est né Juif avant de se convertir à l’Islam [2]. Ma mère, originaire d’Arabie Saoudite, venait également d’un milieu différent du Pakistan. J’étais ainsi conscient d’être au carrefour de plusieurs cultures.
M. B. : L’anthropologie comme discipline faisait déjà l’objet de discussions dans votre famille ?
T. A. : Non, pas directement dans ma famille. Un jour — je crois avoir en fait déjà raconté cette anecdote lors d’une interview avec David Scott (2006) — j’avais reçu un livre d’une Américaine fort sympathique qui m’avait fasciné : Patterns of Culture de Ruth Benedict (1934). C’est le premier livre d’anthropologie que j’ai lu. Mais ce n’était pas un sujet particulièrement discuté en famille.
M. B. : Vous êtes alors venu en Angleterre pour étudier l’anthropologie ?
T. A. : Je suis tout d’abord venu à Londres pour étudier l’architecture durant quelques années. Mais je n’étais pas très content de ce choix, qui répondait principalement au vœu de mon père ; je crois que je n’étais pas très bon architecte. J’ai ensuite connu un groupe d’amis qui étudiaient l’anthropologie et ont nourri mon intérêt pour cette discipline. J’ai fait mon premier cycle d’études dans ce domaine à Edimbourg avant d’aller à Oxford pour terminer un bachelor of literature, qui était une sorte de master et — en fait — l’un des plus anciens titres d’Oxford ; j’ai effectué une étude historique du développement de la loi islamique en Inde du nord sous le régime britannique. Après avoir achevé mon mémoire, je suis parti cinq ans au Soudan pour enseigner et faire une recherche de terrain dans le cadre de ma thèse, dirigée par Edward Evans-Pritchard.
M. B. : Comment s’est passée cette expérience soudanaise ?
T. A. : J’ai aimé le Soudan ; celui des années 60 bien sûr. C’était un Soudan très différent de celui d’aujourd’hui, où je ne suis d’ailleurs plus retourné depuis 1975. Mon expérience de terrain a été merveilleuse et très intéressante, même si elle a été un peu difficile et déconcertante parfois, car on ne savait pas toujours ce qu’on allait chercher. À cette époque, en Angleterre, quand il s’agissait de partir sur le terrain, on ne procédait pas comme on le fait maintenant en ayant défini au préalable ses hypothèses de départ, ses questions de recherche et sa future contribution à la littérature. C’était beaucoup plus ouvert qu’aujourd’hui : on allait faire une étude quelque part avec une idée assez vague de son objet. Par exemple, je voulais réaliser une étude sur un système politique et écologique, sans forcément savoir quoi chercher ni comment m’y prendre. Au bout d’un certain temps, j’ai aussi connu l’expérience — classique chez de si nombreux anthropologues — où l’on commence à être quelque peu déprimé et à se poser des questions sur ce que l’on fait là.
M. B. : Y avait-il d’autres anthropologues dans la même aire géographique que vous ?
T. A. : Non. Quand j’enseignais au Département d’anthropologie de l’Université de Khartoum, un ensemble de projets d’études au nord du Soudan avaient été prévus, étant donné que la plupart des recherches menées jusqu’à cette date, en particulier par Evans-Pritchard ou Godfrey Lienhardt, concernaient surtout le sud du pays. Après avoir obtenu d’importantes subventions de la Fondation Ford, le Département avait décidé de développer des projets dans des régions culturellement distinctes. Pour le nord, c’est Ian Cunnison, le chef du Département qui avait travaillé dans la région du Kordofan avec les Baggara — signifiant “vache” en arabe — qui m’a incité à choisir le groupe très intéressant des Kababish ; ce groupe peuplait l’extrême nord du Kordofan, une grande province à côté du Darfour que tout le monde connaît désormais. Aux abords du désert libyen, les Kababish élevaient des chameaux, des moutons, des chèvres, un peu de bétail. Lors de ma première expérience sur le terrain, je suis resté une année entière, me déplaçant continuellement avec la tribu nomade ; cela faisait partie de mon contrat de cinq ans.
M. B. : Et au terme de ces cinq années, vous êtes retourné en Angleterre ?
T. A. : Oui. Cunnison, qui avait rejoint l’Université de Hull, a suggéré que l’on m’y engage ; je suis entré en fonction en septembre 1966. J’étais alors très soucieux de terminer ma thèse, car je n’avais pas encore commencé à la rédiger ; à Khartoum, j’avais toujours l’impression de devoir compléter mes données. Et à partir du moment où je me suis mis à écrire, en Angleterre, j’ai progressivement ressenti le besoin de réfléchir à différentes dimensions historiques. Le débat sur la place de l’histoire en anthropologie devenait d’actualité et j’estimais que ce débat était important. J’étais particulièrement intéressé par tout ce qui touchait au colonialisme ; je crois que cet intérêt a résulté de la guerre de 1967 [3]. Cet événement a été pour moi une cassure importante. Cela m’a fait repenser à toutes sortes de choses, notamment à la question du pouvoir, question qui me préoccupait justement dans mon propre travail. Je n’étais pas intéressé à porter des jugements moraux ni sur le colonialisme, ni sur la question du rapport entre pouvoir et savoir, mais plutôt à réfléchir à l’impact que ces éléments avaient eu sur la façon de faire de l’anthropologie. Je pense avoir commencé à réfléchir à ces choses au moment d’écrire ma thèse, achevée en 1968. Un livre a ensuite été publié très rapidement, en 1970. J’espérais alors que les gens allaient s’intéresser de plus en plus à cette problématique.
M. B. : Ce n’a pas été le cas ?
T. A. : Non. En 1970 par exemple, année de la publication du livre, s’est tenu à Bristol le congrès de l’ASA (Association of Social Anthropologists), qui rassemblait comme chaque année à cette époque à peine plus d’une centaine de personnes. Au moment de proposer des thématiques pour les prochains congrès, j’ai suggéré de faire quelque chose sur le colonialisme, ce qui a été mis au tableau avec d’autres propositions ; mais au moment de les discuter, ce thème a été - à proprement parler - ignoré. J’étais un assez jeune anthropologue qui n’avait pas grand chose à dire en la matière ! Je suis donc retourné vers Ian Cunnison pour lui proposer de faire une plus petite conférence à Hull et nous avons commencé à rassembler quelques noms de personnes qui pouvaient être intéressées par ce thème. Mais nous avons dû attendre 1972 — j’ai en effet passé une année en Egypte entre 1970 et 1971 — pour organiser cette conférence, qui a débouché sur la publication de l’ouvrage Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (1973).
M. B. : Dans cet ouvrage justement, vous écriviez que les anthropologues étaient réticents à analyser sérieusement les structures de pouvoir dans lesquelles venait s’inscrire leur discipline. Comment perceviez-vous ces réticences ?
T. A. : Il n’y avait pas de discussion sérieuse à ce propos. Pour les anthropologues de l’ASA, ce n’était pas une question intéressante. Et à la parution du livre, il n’y avait pas beaucoup d’intérêt non plus. En fait, j’étais invité à différents endroits, aux Pays-Bas ou en France par exemple, pour présenter et discuter les enjeux soulevés par Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter ; je savais aussi par différents amis, notamment par James Farris qui avait travaillé au Soudan et enseignait à l’Université du Connecticut, que cet intérêt existait aux Etats-Unis. Mais personne ne s’y intéressait véritablement en Grande-Bretagne.
M. B. : Était-ce un manque d’intérêt ou la crainte d’avoir à dévoiler certaines choses ?
T. A. : Je ne crois pas qu’il s’agissait de crainte avant tout. J’ai plutôt l’impression que l’intention du livre n’a pas été bien comprise, car il ne s’agissait pas d’imposer un point de vue sur la question. Cela expliquerait pourquoi Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter a été partiellement mal compris, tant d’ailleurs par ceux qui ont aimé son contenu que par les autres. Pour autant que je puisse en juger, les deux camps ont pensé que j’avais formulé une critique du rôle que l’anthropologie jouait dans le colonialisme et que j’avais voulu traiter la question morale de savoir pourquoi l’anthropologie s’était associée au colonialisme, ce que je crois être une fausse et inintéressante question. En fait, c’était le début d’une conversation : je voulais vraiment réfléchir de façon systématique aux conditions dans lesquelles le savoir anthropologique était produit, en le mettant en relation avec le pouvoir. Et ces éléments n’étaient pas encore entièrement clairs pour moi à cette époque ; ils le sont devenus seulement après avoir lu Foucault. C’est chez cet auteur que j’ai trouvé une façon sophistiquée d’exposer les différents aspects de ce problème. Je recherchais quelque chose comme cela et je pense vraiment que l’œuvre de Foucault l’a très bien cristallisé ; c’est pourquoi j’étais si enthousiaste à le lire. Ce n’était donc pas seulement un manque d’intérêt de la part des anthropologues britanniques : ceux-ci avaient aussi l’impression d’être traités de colonialistes alors qu’ils estimaient avoir au contraire été si amicaux à l’égard des peuples étudiés, et avoir même souvent défendu ces derniers contre les agents officiels du colonialisme, ce qui est vrai. Finalement, je dirais qu’il y avait à la fois un malentendu et un manque d’intérêt.
M. B. : Traiter la question du pouvoir dans la constitution du savoir anthropologique a depuis lors conduit au renouvellement de certaines approches méthodologiques et théoriques. A ce propos, estimez-vous que la réticence à analyser le rapport du savoir au pouvoir a aujourd’hui disparu ? En d’autres termes, que pensez-vous des formes expérimentales d’écriture, des tentatives de co-construction des données avec les informateurs, de la notion de réflexivité ? Est-ce la bonne direction à prendre pour analyser la production du savoir anthropologique ?
T. A. : Comme vous le savez, j’ai contribué à Writing Culture (1986). Je suis très favorable à la réflexivité ; je ne crois pas cependant que la partie la plus intéressante du problème relève des formes d’écriture. Le problème ne peut pas être résolu simplement par l’adoption de différents styles d’écriture ou de collaborations entre les informateurs et les chercheurs. Dans ce “tournant littéraire”, il y a pour moi quelque chose d’intéressant et d’inintéressant tout à la fois. Il est trop subjectiviste ; il donne trop de poids aux sentiments et aux attitudes du chercheur individuel. Je reste toujours convaincu — est-ce dû au fait d’avoir été formé par la génération précédente ? — qu’il est possible de produire des études objectives, même si je n’aime guère ce mot maintenant car il est très problématique ; mais je l’utilise. Bien sûr, de nombreux intellectuels ayant écrit sur ce “tournant” sont fortement opposés à cette idée d’objectivité et ne croient plus en une telle possibilité. Je pense que c’est une erreur ; j’estime en effet que nous devrions être capables de produire certaines analyses objectives. Il ne suffit pas de dire que notre engagement est tellement subjectif qu’il faudrait abandonner cette idée, ni que le pouvoir est si profondément enraciné en nous que nous serions tous impliqués dans une forme ou une autre de domination entre le chercheur et l’informateur. A mon sens, ces éléments occupent une trop grande place dans ce “tournant”, ce que je n’apprécie pas. Je ne dis pas qu’il n’y a pas de dominants et de dominés, mais que c’est une caractéristique de toute forme de vie sociale, pas seulement de la recherche anthropologique. Dès lors que cette possibilité est inscrite dans toute relation sociale, les anthropologues devraient explorer cette question en des termes plus larges que celui de domination ; ou plutôt — et c’est pourquoi je pense que Foucault a des idées plus utiles sur la question du pouvoir — ils ne devraient pas simplement montrer le pouvoir comme une forme d’oppression, mais aussi comme un forme de productivité. Ce sont ces deux aspects — tant au niveau individuel et, plus important, au niveau institutionnel et social — qui sont intéressants à explorer, au lieu d’affirmer que nous sommes tous pris dans un rapport d’oppression et que nous devrions chercher à en sortir.
M. B. : Dans cette perspective, ne pensez-vous pas que ces expériences subjectivistes pourraient être une nouvelle manière de ne pas prendre au sérieux l’analyse du rapport entre pouvoir et savoir, d’exprimer différemment cette réticence que vous observiez dans les années 60 ou 70 ?
T. A. : C’est une très bonne question ; je n’y avais pas pensé sous cet angle. Il est sûr en tout cas que ces expériences ne prennent pas suffisamment au sérieux la question du rapport entre pouvoir et savoir tel que je l’approuve et le soutiens. Quant à savoir s’il s’agit là d’une nouvelle forme de réticence, je n’y ai pas assez réfléchi ; c’est possible. Mais il y a un autre élément qui, je crois, ne prend pas non plus au sérieux cet aspect : c’est une certaine forme d’activisme. A mon sens, de trop nombreux anthropologues de gauche — et je me considère moi-même de gauche — s’appliquent avant tout à faire la critique des formes de domination dans les différents contextes culturels et sociaux. Je ne suis pas en désaccord avec le fait qu’il puisse y avoir de l’exploitation, mais je suis moins intéressé, comme anthropologue, à entreprendre la critique morale de l’exploitation des travailleurs ou des groupes raciaux. Je suis intéressé — et je crois que l’anthropologie est le lieu d’une telle opportunité — par une exploration des idées et des concepts qui sous-tendent les différentes formations culturelles plutôt que par une dénonciation de ce qui est affreux. Je ne suis toutefois pas entièrement contre la critique. En tout cas, je pense que le faible intérêt pour le problème du pouvoir/savoir, du pouvoir en tant qu’élément constitutif du savoir anthropologique, est plutôt dû à l’activisme politique qu’au subjectivisme.
M. B. : Pourrait-on dire néanmoins qu’en explorant la formation des idées et des concepts, vous cherchez à lutter d’une certaine manière contre les préjugés, les contradictions ou les impasses de jugement ?
T. A. : Je suis quelque peu hésitant à accepter ce terme “lutter”. Il peut bien en être ainsi, mais quelque chose de très important dans ce que j’essaie de faire ne s’accorde pas avec ce terme. Dans un groupe de discussion critique sur le Moyen-Orient auquel j’ai participé au début des années 1970, et plus largement dans le domaine anthropologique, j’ai toujours estimé qu’il devait y avoir au moins deux sortes d’efforts : le premier relèverait franchement d’une critique des idées préconçues ; il se voudrait polémique pour essayer d’ébranler certains préjugés qui existent dans la littérature. L’autre effort, celui qui m’intéresse le plus, tiendrait simplement dans le fait d’explorer ces préjugés. Maintenant, quand on parle de “lutter” contre ces préjugés, on risque de passer à côté du fait que leur exploration ne demande pas, a priori, de les abandonner. Par exemple, certaines idées libérales sur la violence que j’explore et analyse peuvent très bien être des idées que je soutiens personnellement. En fait, je cherche à mieux connaître ce qui les sous-tend, à mieux connaître les contradictions et les tensions qu’elles contiennent. Ainsi, quand je dis que je suis intéressé à explorer des idées reçues, ou à les questionner, j’entends ce dernier terme dans une double acception : soit pour demander de les abandonner ou de les modifier, soit pour fournir de meilleures raisons de les conserver. Nous saurons mieux nous positionner si nous avons au moins regardé auparavant quelles sortes de suppositions culturelles sont logées dans ces concepts ! Il s’agit là d’une dimension analytique qui est faussement décrite par le terme de “lutte” contre les idées reçues. Et un autre aspect de ce travail exploratoire peut conduire parfois à considérer les idées et les concepts de façon purement expérimentale, pour voir non seulement comment les choses tiennent ensemble, mais aussi pour essayer de relier ces choses à des idées très différentes ; à nouveau, je m’inspire ici clairement de Foucault. Je nourris donc un intérêt pour une forme de pensée expérimentale ; pour cette raison, j’utilise parfois le langage de la théologie chrétienne, sans référence aucune à ma croyance ou à mon incrédulité. Mon but est de voir différentes connections : peut-être que cela ne conduira nulle part ou que cela ouvrira des perspectives intéressantes. Mon travail n’est pas seulement une stricte analyse rationnelle des concepts, mais également une tentative expérimentale de connecter et déconnecter les composants d’idées, ce qui peut être productif ou non.
M. B. : En vous écoutant, il apparaît que votre posture anthropologique se laisserait définir par cette approche intellectuelle expérimentale. Quelle place occupe dès lors l’ethnographie et, corollairement, la théorie dans votre travail ?
T. A. : En premier lieu, les théories qui m’intéressent font véritablement partie de la recherche empirique. J’associe en effet la notion de “théorie” à ce qui structure déjà le monde empirique lui-même. Des actions telles que voir ou écouter — et il s’agit là d’une observation fondamentale et bien établie par les philosophes, qui vaut aussi pour les sciences expérimentales — ne relèvent pas d’une pure impression : elles sont en quelque sorte “saturées” par la théorie. J’aime donc à penser que ces deux aspects restent étroitement liés. De ce fait, l’ethnographie est très importante ; mais je crains que l’anthropologie ne la fétichise trop pour son propre compte ; pour se définir comme discipline. Les détails de l’expérience, des idées, des relations, des processus matériels, sont extrêmement importants pour la théorie même et pour montrer comment celle-ci fait ou ne fait pas sens : ils la mettent en évidence et la rendent intelligible. Mais je ne crois pas que seule l’anthropologie puisse le faire. Les choses que j’apprécie dans l’ethnographie — qui reste pour moi indispensable — se retrouvent extrêmement bien dans la belle littérature, dans certains romans par exemple. Les menus détails qui caractérisent les relations sociales ou la vie des gens, les bons romanciers sont capables de nous les transmettre et, parfois du moins, de les révéler encore mieux que ne le feraient les anthropologues avec certaines données rapportées de leur terrain. Il me semble donc nécessaire de ne pas confondre l’importance du détail, de la matérialité de l’expérience, des interactions entre les gens, de leurs émotions, de leurs attentes, de leurs espoirs, de leurs imaginations, avec l’ethnographie exclusivement, dans un sens étroit du terme. La littérature peut aussi faire partie de l’analyse.
M. B. : Mais ne pourrait-on pas dire que la différence entre littérature et ethnographie tient dans le fait que l’ethnographie collecte ces détails de façon bien plus systématique ?
T. A. : C’est possible. Je pense toutefois que ce qui importe véritablement tient moins dans la collecte des détails et dans l’ethnographie en tant que telle — même si, vous avez raison, il y a là une tentative de systématicité — que dans l’analyse systématique du détail et de son développement. D’ailleurs chaque anthropologue, lorsqu’il est en phase d’exploration — et j’ai brièvement mentionné cela à propos des Kababish — ne sait pas exactement que faire de l’ethnographie. Dans mon propre travail de terrain par exemple, j’avais pensé que beaucoup de choses allaient être importantes alors qu’elles ne l’étaient pas du tout ; et les choses que j’avais estimé être sans importance le sont devenues ultérieurement. J’ai ainsi découvert des manques dans ce que j’avais collecté. Il devrait donc y avoir une continuité dialectique entre la préparation analytique pour rechercher la signification du matériel ethnographique et la recherche de ce même matériel. Maintenant, un très bon romancier peut le faire, surtout quand il s’applique à décrire les relations entre les personnes. Et dans ces relations, il y a toujours des éléments qui résistent à la systématisation. Récemment, j’ai lu un magnifique roman de l’écrivain irlandais John Banville (2005), intitulé The Sea ; c’est à la fois une superbe description et une analyse attentive de sensibilités, de peurs sincères, d’espoirs, de récriminations relatives au souvenir d’un proche. L’histoire est celle d’un homme dans la fleur de l’âge dont la femme est décédée d’un cancer ; cet homme retourne au bord de mer qu’il avait l’habitude de fréquenter, d’abord comme petit garçon puis avec sa femme. Il n’y pas beaucoup d’intrigue, mais ce roman est écrit avec une telle subtilité que je l’assimile à une véritable ethnographie : il nous fait voir de manière si pénétrante, si neuve, ces connections entre les sentiments, l’âge, les attentes relatives à la mort, à la vie, à l’amour ! Je dirais donc — pour revenir à votre question — que l’ethnographie est très importante mais que nous devons la considérer à la fois comme déjà “saturée” par la théorie et dialectiquement connectée à celle-ci. C’est donc extrêmement important de ne pas fétichiser la collecte d’informations systématiques. Mais cela ne signifie pas pour autant qu’il faille mettre l’ethnographie et la littérature au même niveau : les romans sont imaginés — ce qui ne veut pas nécessairement dire irréels — tandis que si vous allez chercher des informations auprès de n’importe quel groupe ou de n’importe quelle communauté, elles ne sortiront pas de votre imagination. Par contre, pour leur donner du sens, pour montrer les connections entre une chose et une autre, votre imagination doit constamment travailler : « comment ceci peut être mis en lien avec cela ? » L’idée peut provenir d’un roman ; je ne dirais donc pas qu’une donnée tirée de l’ethnographie doive être traitée de la même façon qu’une donnée tirée de la littérature. La dialectique entre ces deux domaines est plus compliquée ; elle doit permettre de soulever de nouvelles questions sur ce qui relie les choses entre elles.
M. B. : Pour revenir à la question de la théorie, comment cette dernière est-elle conçue dans votre œuvre ?
T. A. : Comme je l’ai dit, ma conception de la théorie est celle d’une série de questions déjà inscrites dans le matériel que je traite : il y a tout à la fois des “petites” questions, que certaines personnes appelleraient des questions factuelles, et des questions plus larges relatives aux connections possibles. Ma théorie n’est donc pas en attente de réponses définitives — naturellement, je m’attends à ce que certaines choses soient plus importantes que d’autres — mais elle est toujours sujette à réexamen. Je crois que l’une des erreurs de traditions aussi fortes et vibrantes que le marxisme ou le structuralisme de Lévi-Strauss était leurs attentes préalables et leur détermination à réaliser les analyses d’une certaine façon, tout en sachant parfois quelle allait être la réponse. Cela n’est certainement pas ma conception de la théorie, ni de mon travail théorique. Je conçois ce dernier de façon beaucoup plus ouverte ; je suis prêt à le réviser, même dans ses aspects les plus fondamentaux. Dans cette perspective, c’est une forme de scepticisme, comme l’ont écrit Hirschkind et Scott (2006) à propos de ma démarche. Etre sceptique signifie pour moi être continuellement prêt à dire que je ne suis pas sûr de la réponse à donner, que je ne suis pas sûr d’avoir les meilleurs outils intellectuels pour traiter telle ou telle question. Un autre aspect du scepticisme concerne aussi l’avenir d’un monde meilleur, mais c’est là une autre affaire.
M. B. : A ce propos, et pour me tourner à présent vers votre dernier ouvrage On Suicide Bombing (2007), j’aurais aimé savoir si une certaine forme de scepticisme n’avait justement pas nourri votre intérêt intellectuel pour les attentats-suicides et le sens de l’horreur que ceux-ci génèrent chez les Occidentaux ?
T. A. : Oui, si l’on entend par scepticisme le fait de ne pas être satisfait avec les discours ambiants sur le terrorisme et la guerre contre le terrorisme qui prévalent aux Etats-Unis et, dans une moindre mesure peut-être, en Europe de l’Ouest ; de ne pas être satisfait avec la façon d’expliquer les attentats-suicides et d’en attribuer les causes. En fait, ce sont des raisons conceptuelles et même politiques qui m’ont poussé dans cette réflexion ; il y a certainement des raisons personnelles aussi car en tant que personne issue d’un milieu musulman, je suis plus sensible à certaines questions. J’ai dès lors essayé de montrer que les explications — celles que je discute en particulier dans les deux premiers chapitres [4] — ne sont pas vraiment convaincantes ; à la base, mes analyses visent à les démanteler. D’un autre côté, ce scepticisme m’a littéralement conduit à me demander quelle était la raison de ces explications ; cet intérêt se reflète d’ailleurs bien dans le dernier chapitre. Quand certaines personnes disent être horrifiées par les attaques suicides, on ne peut pas se limiter à dire que cela sert la propagande ; il n’est pas correct de dire que parler d’horreur relève d’une pure hypocrisie. Non. Il s’agissait véritablement de dire : « il y a là quelque chose, qu’est-ce que c’est ? » Comme je l’ai écrit, c’est la partie la plus spéculative du livre, partie dans laquelle j’essaie de comprendre les différentes racines de ce qui pourrait être décrit comme “horrible” avant de suggérer, au final, un nombre de raisons expliquant pourquoi ce sens de l’horreur existe. Malgré mon propre pessimisme, la discussion sur l’horreur a aussi résulté de l’impression qu’il y avait là quelque chose à explorer en rapport avec une certaine idée de l’humain, indépendamment de toute configuration culturelle, sociale ou historique. Sur ce point, je ne suis pas sûr d’avoir trouvé une réponse ; je ne suis pas sûr que mes spéculations — je suis en fait persuadé qu’elles ne sont pas achevées — peuvent déboucher sur une réponse me permettant de savoir si l’on peut ou si l’on doit chercher quelque chose à ce niveau-là. Cela peut être ou non du scepticisme ; c’est en tout cas un essai de réflexion provisoire, marquée par une grande incertitude.
M. B. : Derrière cette grande incertitude, n’y a-t-il pas aussi un désir de sincérité et d’honnêteté dans votre façon de traiter les arguments ?
T. A. : Je ne crois pas que le problème de la sincérité m’ait beaucoup inquiété. Si j’étais malhonnête avec moi-même, alors je n’obtiendrais pas les réponses que je recherche ; je ne tromperais que moi-même. Etre sincère n’est donc pas une préoccupation majeure. Je pense d’ailleurs que la plupart des personnes essaient de l’être.
M. B. : À vous lire, je ressentais en fait une tension entre l’urgence de répondre aux questions que vous vous posez et la nécessité de rester sincère, d’aller au fond des arguments et de la discussion...
T. A. : Je n’utiliserais dès lors pas le mot “sincérité”, mais celui d’impartialité. Dans le chapitre final en tout cas, j’ai essayé d’être aussi neutre que possible — de nouveau, ce n’est pas un très bon terme — et de n’avoir aucun parti pris même si, par certains aspects, le fait de traiter cette vaste question demeure bien sûr lié à la situation présente, à la situation politique, à ma propre situation aux Etats-Unis, quand bien même je suis au bénéfice de la citoyenneté américaine [5]. J’ai essayé de comprendre, d’être critique à l’encontre de nombreux arguments : par exemple, quand je discute ceux de Michael Walzer (1977, 2004), éminent philosophe de la guerre “juste”, ma préoccupation était de poser les questions qui m’ont troublé et qui — je l’espère — le troubleront à son tour, ou troubleront le lecteur. Et je veux qu’il soit troublé ; je veux que nous soyons troublés. Je ressens d’ailleurs une grande perplexité quand les progressistes revendiquent une pensée absolument libre et ouverte alors que — si souvent — celle-ci ne l’est pas du tout : parce qu’on ne veut pas qu’elle le soit ; parce qu’on ne veut pas être troublé. Ainsi, il y a peut-être une différence — vous avez assez raison — entre ce qui m’a poussé à faire cette brève étude et ce que j’ai ensuite ouvert comme chantier d’investigation.
M. B. : Dans On Suicide Bombing , vous commencez par une discussion critique de la conception assez répandue selon laquelle il existerait une “culture islamique de la mort” avant d’argumenter contre l’idée de “clash des civilisations”. Pouvez-vous résumer ce point de départ et expliquer en quoi celui-ci vous aide à réfléchir à la question des attentats-suicides ?
T. A. : À mon sens, ces conceptions ont constitué l’orientation majeure pour parler tout à la fois des attentats-suicides et de la place des immigrants de culture musulmane, tant en Occident que dans le reste du monde. La notion de “clash des civilisations” semble avoir été le cadre à partir duquel on a tenté d’expliquer pourquoi les attentats-suicides seraient si prisés parmi les jihadistes musulmans. Or je pense que c’est vraiment inapproprié. Mon postulat est qu’il n’y a pas de “clash des civilisations”, c’est inacceptable. Je ne suis pas la première personne à le dire, beaucoup d’autres l’ont signalé ; mais bien plus de personnes ont colporté cette thèse plutôt qu’ils ne l’ont disputée. C’est important — au moins d’essayer — d’argumenter contre cette idée et de dire qu’elle n’est pas valable, pour toutes sortes de raisons. Et il importe de dire ensuite que la claire distinction que nous faisons entre notre préoccupation libérale pour la vie et, à l’opposé, la préoccupation musulmane pour la mort est beaucoup trop simple. Je m’applique donc à faire remarquer que si nous regardons soigneusement l’histoire de la pensée libérale et ses imbrications politiques, nous trouvons un scénario complexe dans lequel une certaine culture de la mort occupe aussi une place importante chez nous ; c’est pourquoi j’essaie avant tout d’examiner, d’une part, les connections entre la violence et la mort et, d’autre part, les aspects politiques de la continuité d’une communauté, d’une nation, d’une société, et la place de la violence dans cette continuité. Et c’est en voyant cela que les choses deviennent bien plus compliquées. Il ne suffit plus de dire simplement : « notre culture est tournée vers la vie, la leur vers la mort ». Ensuite, je dis qu’il faut éviter de toujours expliquer les attentats-suicides en termes de motifs, ce qui pour moi a été un échec complet pour les raisons que je détaille dans le deuxième chapitre. Au lieu de rechercher les causes et les justifications d’un attentat-suicide, intéressons-nous plutôt à quelques-uns de ses effets, et particulièrement à celui d’horreur. J’ai ainsi déplacé la question de savoir pourquoi ces personnes font de tels actes vers celle qui consiste à savoir pourquoi nous ressentons une telle horreur face à ces actes. Y a-t-il là seulement des explications politiques ou individuelles, ou y a-t-il aussi quelque chose autour du simple fait d’être humain ?
M. B. : Globalement, vous focalisez votre attention sur les discours occidentaux. Ne suggérez-vous pas dès lors une différence entre Occidentaux ou non Occidentaux dans la façon de réagir aux attentats-suicides ?
T. A. : Je n’ai pas fait de lien systématique entre Occidentaux et non Occidentaux en tant que tel. En réalité, j’ai tenté d’explorer ce que veut dire “être saisi d’horreur” ; c’est pourquoi je disais auparavant que j’ai cherché à identifier les contours de ce que signifie “être humain”, et non pas “être occidental” ou “être oriental” ; je n’ai pas systématiquement analysé de telles différences. Par contre, je me suis beaucoup plus intéressé à ce qui se passe en Occident. En fait, une partie de mon travail anthropologique a toujours été centrée sur les discours et perceptions des Occidentaux ; même si j’ai écrit — et continuerai à écrire — sur certaines formes de pensée et certaines pratiques du monde musulman, ce qui reste évidemment pour moi un sujet de première importance, je réfléchis aussi beaucoup à la façon dont les Occidentaux pensent ces choses-là. D’une certaine façon, cela relève du fait que je fais partie d’une tradition, d’une institution, qui se trouve en Occident : essayons par conséquent de penser aux descriptions et aux explications que nous donnons, de les regarder d’un œil critique. En d’autres termes, autant je suis intéressé par les questions de modernité et de laïcité, autant je demeure intéressé par l’anthropologie de la société occidentale en tant que telle, cette dernière étant devenue — comme chacun le sait — si fondamentale pour la destinée du reste du monde. Je pense ainsi qu’il nous est nécessaire de réfléchir autant à ces aspects qu’aux objets traditionnels étudiés par les anthropologues dans le monde non occidental. Maintenant, analyser les discours occidentaux sur l’horreur, ce qui m’a principalement occupé dans la troisième partie du livre, ne veut pas dire qu’il ne s’agit là que d’une notion occidentale, même si je focalise mon attention sur l’Europe, les Etats-Unis ou même Israël, qui est fondamentalement une société occidentale. Au cours de ces dernières années, j’ai constamment dit que si les Occidentaux étaient horrifiés parce que les leurs mouraient dans les attaques suicides, cela n’expliquait pas tout. Je pense qu’il y a quelque chose de plus ; et cette chose-là pourrait bien être cette dimension humaine à explorer.
Penser l’horrible et la mort
Penser l’horrible et la mort
M. B. : Comme vous le précisez, cette exploration constitue la troisième partie du livre, consacrée au “sens de l’horreur” que peuvent induire les attentats-suicides. Comment définissez-vous cette notion ?
T. A. : Je m’appuie tout d’abord sur Stanley Cavell (1999), un philosophe d’Harvard ayant non seulement beaucoup écrit sur Wittgenstein, mais ayant aussi utilisé ce dernier comme point de départ de ses différents travaux. Cavell associe l’horreur à la désintégration totale du sens de l’identité et fait remarquer que contrairement à la terreur, qui résulte de la peur, l’horreur est intransitive. Elle est, à strictement parler, un état. Il n’y a pas d’horreur “de” quelque chose : l’horreur est là où l’on est. J’ai donc essayé de la penser en ces termes : un état qui peut ensuite être transformé — de manière productive ou improductive — en quelque chose d’autre. C’est pourquoi, vers la fin du livre, je mets cet état en lien avec divers éléments, l’idée de réciprocité notamment, celle de la mort pour la mort que nous entretenons par rapport au châtiment. Je souligne l’impossibilité d’avoir cette réciprocité dans les situations où le tueur et le tué ne sont plus présents ; dans les situations où le tueur a physiquement disparu, si bien qu’il n’est plus possible — d’une certaine façon — de rétablir un équilibre, de faire justice en recherchant cet équilibre. Dans cette perspective, le sens de l’horreur — il s’agit là seulement d’un élément, je ne suis pas en train de suggérer que cela couvre l’ensemble du phénomène — peut alors se transformer en un désir de vengeance. Un tel désir peut durer ou être contrecarré : dans le cas du mythe chrétien, la Crucifixion du Christ peut être transformée bien qu’elle soit horrible à un certain niveau et génère ce sens de l’horreur ; et elle est transformée par la possibilité du salut. Ainsi, l’horreur, qui reste un état de complet effondrement du sens de l’identité humaine, est très souvent transformée, à l’exception peut-être de l’exemple ultime par lequel je termine : celui de Kafka (2004). Ce dernier nous fait comprendre dans La Métamorphose qu’il n’y a rien d’autre que la mort, qu’elle ne signifie rien, ne laissant dès lors rien d’autre que l’horreur. Finalement, si vous me poussez un peu, je dirais que je suis persuadé du fait que — je n’aime pas trop penser à cela, et je ne parle pas ici de ma propre mort — nous sommes tous pris par cette nécessité de construire une illusion de civilisation, de continuité, d’idées, de joie, de bonheur et de toutes ces choses-là. Mais ce que Kafka dit n’est pas une chose effrayante ; il évoque simplement un véritable anéantissement, ce qui ne signifie d’ailleurs pas qu’il n’est pas possible de faire de la recherche en la matière !
M. B. : Vous dites que l’horreur est intransitive parce qu’elle n’a pas d’objet. Dans votre livre, vous écrivez aussi que l’horreur fait “exploser” l’imagination et produit un sentiment d’insaisissable, d’inexplicable. N’y aurait-il donc pas quand même une présence — très proche, viscéralement proche — de quelque chose d’impossible à nommer, à atteindre ?
T. A. : Je crois que l’horreur est un état distinct de ce qui la génère, quelle qu’en soit la cause. La terreur au contraire, ou la peur, reste étroitement liée à l’objet qui produit cette émotion. Pour moi, l’horreur — du moins de la façon dont je la définis — est bien plus qu’une simple émotion. Plusieurs personnes ont d’ailleurs abordé ce point : dans sa discussion sur le “sublime” et le “beau”, Edmund Burke (1987) a par exemple associé l’horreur à une sorte d’état esthétique, à un aspect de l’esthétique telle qu’elle commence à être théorisée au XVIIIe siècle, par Emmanuel Kant et par d’autres. Et c’est absolument vrai que l’on ne peut pas saisir l’horreur, qui diffère ainsi de la peur ; quand cette dernière devient quelque chose qui ne peut plus être saisi, on s’approche de l’horreur. La citation de Burke que je donne dans mon livre renvoie à cet aspect d’insaisissabilité, à l’idée de quelque chose de vaste, sans limite ni forme, constituant elle-même une expérience de l’horreur.
M. B. : C’est alors l’expérience de l’informe et de l’insaisissable qui dissout le sens de l’identité d’une personne et qui génère ce sens de l’horreur ?
T. A. : Oui, quand l’identité elle-même commence à être questionnée ou n’est plus là pour “vous appuyer dessus”, apparaît le double sentiment d’une énorme possibilité aussi bien que d’une énorme impossibilité. L’horreur crée cela chez un individu. Et c’est peut-être pourquoi le mythe de l’état de néant revient et revient dans tellement de religions, mais certainement le plus dans le Christianisme et dans la religion judéo-chrétienne ; des parallèles existent aussi avec l’Islam. Ce mythe est exprimé le plus explicitement au début de la Bible où l’on donne lentement forme au néant ; non pas au “rien”, mais à l’absence complète de forme, à la déstructuration totale, à la non identité ; et j’entends identité non pas dans le sens où l’utilisent maintenant les “cultural studies”, mais au sens d’identifier, au sens même de la philosophie logique de l’identification de quelque chose. Dans le mythe, ce quelque chose ne peut pas être identifié. C’est Dieu qui commence à donner une identité à différents éléments, et cela commence à faire un monde ; et cela commence progressivement à remplacer l’horreur de l’informe, de la totale informité : il y a exigence de structuration et de forme.
M. B. : Dans cette perspective, lors d’un attentat-suicide, le sens de l’horreur provient de la “déformation” physique — mutilation et dispersion des corps — ou, plutôt, de l’impossibilité d’attribuer une signification à une telle action ?
T. A. : Des deux. Tout à la fin du livre, je présente quelques explications propres à l’horreur suscitée par les attentats-suicides. Qu’une personne voie les bras, la tête, les cheveux, les mains de quelqu’un d’autre qui n’est plus humain, que les conceptions faisant de toutes ces parties un corps humain ne tiennent plus, c’est un aspect très important de l’horreur d’un attentat-suicide. L’autre aspect étant bien sûr de ne pas être capable de donner un seul sens à cela, ce qui conduit à produire un vague sentiment — et je reviens à nouveau dans les dernières lignes sur ce point — qui doit être rapidement refoulé : le sentiment qu’il n’y a rien d’autre à la fin que la mort ; mort non pas comme une chose terrifiante, mais comme un vide ; un vide de toute signification, et de peur.
M. B. : Comme vide ou comme clôture ?
T. A. : Non pas comme clôture mais vraiment comme vide. Car penser en terme de clôture ferait déjà partie de la façon dont nous gérons la mort et son traitement ; de la façon dont nous appréhendons cette inévitabilité et nous lui donnons sens, comme beaucoup de bons anthropologues l’ont écrit.
M. B. : Dans ce troisième chapitre, vous associez également l’horreur à cette facilité avec laquelle nous pouvons franchir les limites entre l’humain et le non humain. Pouvez-vous encore commenter ce point ?
T. A. : Je me rappelle à ce propos d’un ou deux exemples, dont le film de Franju (1949), Le sang des bêtes. Je l’ai vu plusieurs fois ; c’est absolument dévastateur, parce qu’il montre justement comment un être organique et vivant est facilement transformé en une chose sans vie pouvant être divisée en autant de parties que nécessaire. À mon sens, voir que l’humain — ce que nous construisons pour nous-mêmes en tant qu’humain non seulement dans sa dimension intellectuelle, mais aussi comme l’un des présupposés de base de nos vies quotidiennes — peut être effacé ou nié devient une source très importante de ce sens de l’horreur. Et cela ne relève pas simplement d’un déplacement de l’humain vers le non humain, mais plus généralement de la transgression des formes et des catégories. Sur cet aspect, j’ai mentionné Mary Douglas (1967) et Franz Steiner (1956) — qui fait une analyse très froide, mais dont la potentialité est assez merveilleuse — et j’aurais aussi pu mentionner La nausée de Sartre (1938) qui traite en partie de l’horreur résultant de l’absence de forme. Premièrement, il y a la question du déplacement et de la transgression des catégories et, deuxièmement, celle de la cassure complète ou de l’effondrement complet de toute catégorie. Je me suis encore intéressé à Simone de Beauvoir (1963) qui réfléchit au vieillissement d’une manière très perspicace et pénétrante ; certains aspects de son autobiographie m’ont frappé parce que l’horreur n’a plus à voir avec la violence ; il n’y a pas de violence et, pourtant, il y a ici un sens de l’horreur.
M. B. : Dans la transformation du corps et de la façon de se le représenter ?
T. A. : Exactement. Quand l’image que l’on a du corps et de soi se désagrège progressivement. Je pense que beaucoup d’œuvres littéraires de la fin du dix-neuvième ou du début du vingtième siècle ont émergé d’une sorte de tradition littéraire romantique très stimulante et provocante — comme The Picture of Dorian Gray d’Oscar Wilde (2007) — où tout ce jeu entre la stabilité d’une certaine image et l’instabilité d’une autre, qui devrait être stable, devient source potentielle de l’horreur, notamment quand on réalise petit à petit l’instabilité de cette image. A un niveau littéraire, cela fait aussi partie de l’exploration de l’horreur. Et par certains aspects, le texte de Simone de Beauvoir, qui n’est pas à proprement parler une ethnographie, a été pour moi très stimulant car il m’a fait réfléchir au fait que l’horreur pouvait aussi provenir de quelque chose de non violent, contrairement au Sang des bêtes de Franju ou, même, au film de Haneke (2005), Caché, ainsi qu’à la plupart des autres exemples que je discute brièvement dans le livre, comme le supplice chinois des “cent morceaux” [6] évoqué par Georges Bataille (2006).
M. B. : Pour terminer, je me demandais si vous n’aviez pas finalement tenté de produire dans ce livre une mise en abîme de ce sens de l’horrible, en faisant ressentir au lecteur l’ horrible facilité avec laquelle nous pouvons construire une sorte de supériorité morale pour penser les attentats-suicides ?
T. A. : C’est possible ; il me semble en tout cas que la façon de penser les attentats-suicides est marquée par différentes sortes d’aveuglements. Il faut dire que ce livre a été écrit très vite après les Wellek Lectures [7] pour être publié dans la série du même nom des Columbia University Press. Et depuis le moment où j’ai remis le manuscrit, j’ai pensé à différentes choses que j’aurais pu développer, notamment aux manières de construire des excuses pour nous-mêmes. Un aspect dont je suis persuadé et qui, je suppose, ressort très clairement de mes deux premiers chapitres est que je ne crois pas un seul instant à la guerre “juste” ; cela ne signifie pas qu’il n’y a pas la nécessité de combattre à un certain moment — et les gens combattent tout le temps — mais parler de guerre “juste” reflète une pensée théologique qui remonte à Saint Augustin : n’est-il pas surprenant que des écrivains profanes se mettent à parler de guerre “juste” ? Les Romains n’avaient pas l’idée d’une guerre “juste”, même s’ils avaient certaines règles.
M. B. : C’était “juste” la guerre...
T. A. : Effectivement ! Et je pense que nous nous cramponnons toujours à cette idée de guerre “juste”, ce qui m’a conduit à m’intéresser de plus en plus au droit international, aux activités humanitaires, à la façon dont nous essayons de penser les “bonnes” interventions militaires et les “mauvaises” ; ce sont des sujets sur lesquels je souhaite lire un peu plus désormais. Au final, tout cela reste des excuses, nécessaires peut-être. Je pense néanmoins que toutes ces excuses pourraient bien être là pour empêcher la petite frange de l’horreur d’émerger, particulièrement dans notre monde moderne où la notion de l’individu est, potentiellement, celle d’un sujet complètement libre appartenant à une société qui pourrait absolument maîtriser les commandes de sa destinée. C’est pourquoi nous devons parler de guerre “juste” ; nous devons avoir les Conventions de Genève ; nous devons avoir ces éléments qui, en eux-mêmes — et je ne suis pas en train de dire ici qu’il faille les abandonner — peuvent être la fine pellicule susceptible de recouvrir et de faire disparaître l’horreur. Comme Freud (2004) le disait, nous avons besoin de certaines excuses pour vivre ; il a parlé de la civilisation comme d’une sorte d’appareil répressif, mais d’une répression des pulsions individuelles plutôt que de l’horreur en tant que telle. Pour ma part, je pense que nous sommes tous en train d’essayer de détourner de plus en plus notre regard de la réalité de l’horreur, qui ne cesse pourtant de montrer son visage ; collectivement, nous tentons de nous éloigner de l’horreur avec nos discours et nos institutions. J’ai donc voulu savoir comment nous construisons tous ces discours pour penser et, surtout, ne pas penser l’horreur ultime de ces actes.
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WALZER Michael, 2004, Arguing about war, New Haven, Yale University Press.
WILDE Oscar, 2007(1891), The Picture of Dorian Gray, New York, W.W. Norton and Co.
FRANJU Georges, 1949, Le sang des bêtes, France, 21 min.
HANEKE Michael, 2005, Caché, France, 117 min.
Notes |
[2] Muhammad Asad, né Léopold Weiss, est notamment connu pour avoir publié The Road to Mecca chez les éditeurs new-yorkais Simon and Schuster (1954).
[3] La guerre des Six Jours a été déclenchée par Israël contre l’Egypte et ses voisins arabes le 5 juin 1967. A l’issue de celle-ci, la conquête par l’Etat Hébreu de la bande de Gaza, du Sinaï, de la Cisjordanie et du Golan a durablement transformé l’équilibre diplomatique du Proche-Orient.
[4] L’ouvrage se compose de la façon suivante : Introduction - 1. Terrorism - 2. Suicide Terrorism - 3. Horror at Suicide Terrorism - Epilog.
[5] Après avoir enseigné plus d’une vingtaine d’années à Hull, Talal Asad s’est installé aux Etats-Unis en 1988 pour rejoindre le Département d’anthropologie de la Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, New York. Il a ensuite enseigné à la Johns Hopkins University entre 1995 et 1998, année à partir de laquelle il est affilié au Département d’anthropologie du Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
[6] Dans les Larmes d’Eros — cité par Asad — Bataille dit avoir été obsédé par l’image de la douleur, « à la fois extatique (?) et intolérable » d’un supplicié chinois, reproduite sur un cliché photographique en sa possession : « ce que soudainement je voyais et qui m’enfermait dans l’angoisse — mais qui dans le même temps m’en délivrait — était l’identité de ces parfaits contraires, opposant à l’extase divine une horreur extrême » (2006 : 122).
[7] Conférences données entre le 15 et le 17 mai 2006 à l’Université de Californie, Irvine. Depuis 1981, les Wellek Lectures sont annuellement sponsorisées et organisées par l’Institut de théorie critique de cette Université.
NEW ARTICLE: Thinking about terrorism and just war
Thinking about terrorism and just war
Talal Asad
Talal Asad
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Volume 23, Number 1, March 2010
Abstract
Since 2001 a new urge to moralize the use of violence as an instrument of state policy has appeared in liberal democracies. The American idea of a War against Terror, and the European notion of confronting a global terrorist threat, have together merged with a discourse on humanitarian military action: the political/moral ‘responsibility to protect’ is no longer to be confined to one’s own citizens. Renewed interest among academics in ‘just war’ theory, the tradition that seeks to humanize war through law, reflects this development. This article questions the assumption that there is an essential difference between war (civilized violence) and terrorism (barbaric violence). It argues that their similarity appears more clearly if we set intentions aside—such as the deliberate or accidental killing of ‘innocents’—and focus instead on three main facts: (a) modern war strategies and technologies are uniquely destructive, (b) armed hostilities increasingly occupy a single space of violence in which war and peace are not clearly demarcated, and (c) the law of war does not provide a set of ‘civilizing’ rules but a language for legal/moral argument in which the use of punitive violence is itself a central semantic element.
This article is presented by Prof. Asad as keynote lecture at 2010 EASA at Maynooth (a review of the event)
Talal Asad "Thinking About Religion, Secularism and Politics" (Kreisler Interview)
"Thinking About Religion, Secularism and Politics"
Talal Asad, Professor of Anthropology, Graduate Center of
the City University of New York
Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Professor Talal
Asad who reflects on his life and work as an anthropologist
focusing on religion, modernity, and the complex
relationships between Islam and the West.
Recorded October 2, 2008
Talal Asad, Professor of Anthropology, Graduate Center of
the City University of New York
Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Professor Talal
Asad who reflects on his life and work as an anthropologist
focusing on religion, modernity, and the complex
relationships between Islam and the West.
Recorded October 2, 2008
Modern Power and the Reconfiguration of Religious Traditions (Interviewed by Saba Mahmood)
Interview
source:
SEHR, volume 5, issue 1: Contested Polities
Updated February 27, 1996
http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-1/text/asad.html
Contemporary politico-religious movements, such as Islamism, are often understood by social scientists as expressions of tradition hampering the progress of modernity. But given the recent intellectual challenges posed against dualistic and static conceptions of modernity/tradition, and calls for parochializing Western European experiences of modernity, do you think the religio-political movements (such as Islamism) force us to rethink our conceptions of modernity? If so, how?
Well, I think they should force us to rethink many things. There has been a certain amount of response from people in Western universities who are interested in analyzing these movements. But many of them still make assumptions that prevent them from questioning aspects of Western modernity. For example, they call these movements "reactionary" or "invented," making the assumption that Western modernity is not only the standard by which all contemporary developments must be judged, but also the only authentic trajectory for every tradition. One of the things the existence of such movements ought to bring into question is the old opposition between modernity and tradition, which is still fashionable. For example, many writers describe the movements in Iran and Egypt as only partly modern and suggest that its their mixing of tradition and modernity that accounts for their "pathological" character. This kind of description paints Islamic movements as being somehow inauthentically traditional on the assumption that "real tradition" is unchanging, repetitive, and non-rational. In this way, these movements cannot be understood on their own terms as being at once modern and traditional, both authentic and creative at the same time. The development of politico-religious movements ought to force people to rethink the uniquely Western model of secular modernity. One may want to challenge aspects of these movements, but this ought to be done on specific grounds. It won't do to measure everything by grand conceptions of authentic modernity. But that's precisely the kind of a priori thinking that many people indulge in when analyzing contemporary religious movements.
It seems that you are using the term tradition differently here than it is commonly understood in the humanities and social sciences. Even the idea of "hybrid societies/cultures," which has gained ascendancy in certain intellectual circles, implies a coexistence of modern and traditional elements without necessarily decentering the normative meaning of these concepts.
Yes, many writers do describe certain societies as hybrids, part modern and part traditional. I don't agree with them, however. I think that one needs to recognize that when one talks about tradition, one should be talking about, in a sense, a dimension of social life and not a stage of social development. In an important sense, tradition and modernity are not really two mutually exclusive states of a culture or society but different aspects of historicity. Many of the things that are thought of as modern belong to traditions which have their roots in Western history. A changing tradition is often developing rapidly but a tradition nevertheless. When people talk about liberalism as a tradition, they recognize that it is a tradition in which there are possibilities of argument, reformulation, and encounter with other traditions, that there is a possibility of addressing contemporary problems through the liberal tradition. So one thinks of liberalism as a tradition central to modernity. How is it that one has something that is a tradition but that is also central to modernity? Clearly, liberalism is not a mixture of the traditional and the modern. It is a tradition that defines one central aspect of Western modernity. It is no less modern by virtue of being a tradition than anything else is modern. It has its critics, both within the West and outside, but it is perhaps the dominant tradition of political and moral thought and practice. And yet this is not the way in which most social scientists have talked about so-called "traditional" societies/cultures in the non-European world generally, and in the Islamic world in particular. So this is partly what I mean when I say that we must rethink the concept of tradition. In this sense, I think, we can regard the contemporary Islamic revival as consisting of attempts at articulating Islamic traditions that are adequate to the modern condition as experienced in the Muslim world, but also as attempts at formulating encounters with Western as well as Islamic history. This doesn't mean that they succeed. But at least they try in different ways.
In discussing different historical experiences of modernity, are you suggesting that there are also different kinds of modernities? There is a certain centrality to the project of modernity that scholars like Foucault have described and analyzed. How does one reconcile the European model of modernity, that modernization theorists and their critics alike pose, with different historical and cultural experiences of modernity?
In the first place, given that we are situated in contemporary Western society, and given that we are in a world in which "the West" is hegemonic, the term modernity already possesses a certain positive valence. Many of its opponents-- for example, the so-called postmodernists--to some extent have a defensive strategy towards what they think of as the central values of modernity. Very few postmodernist critics of modernity would be willing to argue against social equality, free speech, or individual self-fashioning. In fact, the very term "postmodernity" incorporates "modernity" as a stage in a distinct trajectory. So it may be a tactical matter in some cases to argue that there are multiple forms of modernity rather than contrasting modernity itself with something else. In other words, the equation of a specific Western history (which is specific and particular by definition) with something that at the same time claims to be universal and has become globalized is something that to my mind isn't sufficiently well thought out. An ideological weight is given to modernity as a universal model, even when it is merely a form of Westernization.
I think that at one level there is the problem of conceptualizing modernity as a term that refers to a whole set of disparate tendencies, attitudes, traditions, structures, and practices--some of which may be integrally related and some not. At times, people think of modernity as a certain kind of social structure (industrialization, secularization, democracy, etc.), and sometimes as a psychological experience (e.g., Simmel on "The Metropolis and Modern Life"), or as an aesthetic posture (e.g., Baudelaire on "The Painter of Modern Life"). Sometimes modernity is thought of as a certain kind of a philosophical project (in the Habermasian sense) and sometimes as a post-Kantian universal ethics. Do they all necessarily hang together? There is an implicit assumption that they do--that just because certain aspects of "modernity" ("modern" science, politics, ethics, etc.) have gone together historically in parts of Europe, all of these things must and should go together in the rest of the world as well. A curious kind of functionalism is actually at work in this assumption. Whereas in other contexts social scientists have become skeptical of functionalism, this doesn't seem to be the case here.
Part of the problem is deciding whether "modernity" is a single tradition, a singular structure, or an integrated set of practical knowledges. And if things go together, then does this mean that what we have is a moral imperative or a pragmatic fit? In other words: what criteria are we using when we call a person, a way of life, or a society, "modern"? Where do these criteria come from? Are they simply descriptive or normative? And if they are descriptive, then do they relate to some immutable essence? If they are normative, then on what authority? Such questions need to be worked through before we can decide meaningfully whether there are varieties of modernity and, if there is only one kind of modernity, then whether it is separable from Westernization or not. I have not encountered a satisfactory answer to this question, either by social scientists or philosophers.
Now, when Foucault talks about modernity, he is speaking quite specifically about a development in Western history. He is really not interested in the history of the non-Western world, of the West's encounter with that heterogeneous world. And he is not interested in different traditions. As you know, his emphasis is on breaks rather than continuities. It is possible to think of these breaks, of course, as occurring in certain kinds of continuities, and to some extent Foucault understood that. Otherwise, he would not have pushed his investigation into modernity back to early Christian and Greek beliefs and practices. This inquiry brought him to a conception of the Western tradition, with all its ruptures and breaks, although he didn't think systematically about "tradition" as such.
You also argue in your book Genealogies of Religion that modernity, by definition, is a teleological project in its desire to remake history, the nation, and the future. You argue that "actions seeking to maintain the local status quo are therefore always resisting the future."[1] Could you please speak to what you meant by this?
I meant that ironically, of course. I think what I said was that actions that only maintain the status quo--to conserve daily life--are not thought of as "making history," however long such efforts take. And movements which could be branded as "reactionary" were by definition trying "to resist the future" or "to turn the clock back." The point is that the advocates and defenders of Western modernity are explicitly committed to a certain kind of historicity, a temporal movement of social life in which "the future" pulls us forward. The idea is that, in some measure, "the future" represents something that can be anticipated and should be desired, and that at least the direction of that desirable future is known. The "future" becomes a kind of moral magnet, out there, pulling us toward itself. On the one hand, humans are thought of as having the freedom to shape their own (collective) destiny. On the other hand, "history," as an autonomous movement, has its own momentum, and those who act on a different assumption are thought of as being either morally blameworthy or practically self-defeating--or both. The concept of history-making relates to this grand and somewhat contradictory idea. And all societies--including non- Western ones--are judged by the phrases you quote. I briefly mentioned the frequent derogatory references to the situation in what has happened and is happening in Iran, to cargo cults, etc. My point is not that one should not criticize--or even denounce--what has happened and is happening in Iran, say. My point is that most people who do so are also employing a very peculiar notion of "history" and "history-making."
In discussing the relationship between Western and non-Western experiences of modernity, two different traditions of argument come to mind: the school of dependency theory in the 1970s and post-colonial theory more recently, of which the Subaltern Studies project from South Asia is an important part. It seems that whereas the dependency theorists had emphasized how Western modernity had effected and arrested the development of non-Western societies, post-colonial theorists (like Chatterjee, Prakash, and Chakrabarty) focus on the cultural and historical specificity of non-Western experiences of modernity. Chatterjee, for example, makes the point that privileging the Western-European liberal experience often occludes conceptions of polity and community that are an integral part of non-Western societies but remain untheorized in both radical and liberal analyses of modernity. How do you see the relationship between these two traditions of thought and their implications for understanding culturally and historically specific experiences of modernity?
Well, of course, the West is what it is in large part because of its relationship to the non-West, and vice versa. And if by Western modernity one means the economies, politics, and knowledges characteristic of European countries, then much of this is incomprehensible without reference to Europe's links with the non-European world. In its own way, this point was made by the so-called dependency theorists concerned with Third-World development. But one must not exaggerate this point. What I mean is that there are certain experiences that have nothing to do with the West/non-West relationship. After all, the term "non-West" is simply a negative term. It's important to keep this relationship in mind, but in itself it tells us very little about all the things it covers. There are experiences that have to do with other kinds of relationships, such as the relationship of a given people to a distinctive past.
I think whether certain societies can or cannot develop economically was an argument that was carried on by dependency theorists on the basis of certain economic models that had certain indicators, so that one was clear what the aim was supposed to be. So, many of the people who argued against modernization theorists said that economic development was not possible in the peripheral countries given their links with the core capitalist countries. People who belonged to the dependency tradition tended to argue over whether it made sense to try to break those links, skip the capitalist stage, and go straight for socialist development, or to make a strategic alliance with national capitalists, which was necessary for full economic development. (This was a repeat, of course, of the old Bolshevik/Menshivik dispute.) But the argument, anyway, was not about where all the countries should end up. The common assumption was that there were several roads to Rome but there was, of course, only one Rome. When one got to moral and cultural issues, this assumption became more difficult to sustain.
Whereas in the West political debate about liberal-democratic states more or less takes for granted where things are now, discussion about the Third World tends to be about where politics and morality ought to be heading. This is what needs to be noticed. Even when it is agreed that there are all kinds of changes that would improve conditions in Western societies (urban poverty, racism, etc.), it is usually assumed that this is the best of all possible political systems. The claim seems to be: yes, we do have racism, but where isn't there racism? At least we in the West have a system in which some kind of political fight for racial equality is possible, whereas other political systems don't allow this. The assumption, you see, is that even if the changes needed to eliminate the massive poverty, institutionalized racism, international power-play, etc. were effected, it would still be the same political system. And if a radically new future is desired, it is assumed that this is reachable only through the present Western "modern" system. Western "modernity" is, therefore, thought to be pregnant with positive futures in a way that no other cultural condition is. That wasn't explicit in the old argument about dependency, because the focus there was on the conditions for a productive industrial economy, which would, therefore, increase the possibilities of general wealth and material welfare. That was what "modernity" meant to dependency theorists (or to those who deliberately used this concept). Now it tends to mean a system of government (representative democracy, periodic elections, parliamentary pressure groups, continuous polls, controlled media presentations, etc.) and individualism in morality, law, aesthetics, etc. The emphasis on the individual as voter, moral personality, and consumer--whether of state or market goods--is certainly central to the liberal version of modernity. But so, too, is a faith in a boundless future. (That is not, by the way, the same thing as saying "a faith in limitless growth," which is not fashionable anymore.)
Chatterjee is absolutely right in pointing out that liberal modernity doesn't pay adequate attention to the idea of community. That has been the complaint of socialists (and of conservatives, of course). Even some liberals who were influenced by Hegel argued against unfettered contractarian individualism (Green and Bosanquet, for example). But I think we need to historicize the idea of community. At any rate, we shouldn't allow ourselves to be locked into the binary "individualism versus communitarianism" argument. This confrontation of principles sounds fundamental only because the language of liberalism has already acquired a hegemonic status.
Are different options really possible in this matter? Or will today's powerful countries force the rest of the world to adopt the only "sensible" and "decent" model--i.e., political, economic, and moral liberalism? I don't know. It's one thing to say that we ought not to accept their definition of "modernity" as binding on us. It's another thing to claim that we possess the material and moral resources to resist effectively and to create our own options--regardless of whether we wish to call these options "modern" or not.
In studying specific cultures, you have emphasized the necessity of using theoretical concepts that are relevant to the practices and assumptions of those cultures. Your work on religion, in this regard, is similar to the subalternist historian Dipesh Chakrabarty's work on Indian working-class movements, insofar he has criticized the concept of class consciousness in its inability to account for non-liberal solidarities and alliances that are not hegemonically structured by the ideology of liberal-humanism. To what extent do you think the task of analyzing politico-religious movements (such as Islamism) is hampered by a similar problem of deploying inadequate conceptual categories?
One of the valuable things that post-modernism has done is to help us be skeptical of "grand narratives." Once we get out of the habit of seeing everything in relation to the universal path to the future which the West has supposedly discovered, then it may be possible to describe things in their own terms. This is an eminently anthropological enterprise, too. The anthropologist must describe ways of life in appropriate terms. To begin with, at least, this means terms intrinsic to the social practices, beliefs, movements, and traditions of the people being referred to and not in relation to some supposed future the people are moving towards. These "intrinsic terms" are not the only ones that can be used-- of course not. But the concepts of people themselves must be taken as central in any adequate understanding of their life. This is why Chakrabarty rightly criticizes the use of categories, such as class-consciousness, where they don't make sense to the people themselves.
I repeat: That's not to say that we should never employ terms that don't immediately make sense to the people being studied. The trouble with using notions like "class-consciousness" for explanatory purposes is that you take for granted that a particular kind of historical change is normative. Political opposition, political activity is "more developed" if it is organized in terms of class-consciousness and "less developed" if it is not. Marxism tends to see class politics as essential to modernity and "modernity" as the most developed form of civilized society.
Once we set that grand narrative, that normative history, aside, we can start by asking not, "What should such-and-such a people be doing?" but, "What do they aim at doing? And why?". We can learn to elaborate that question in historically specific terms. This certainly applies to our attempts to understand politico-religious movements, especially Islamic movements. It is foolish, I think, to ask: "Why are these movements not moving in the direction History requires them to?". But that is precisely what is being asked when scholars say: "What leads the people in these movements to behave so irrationally, in such a reactionary manner?".
Given our discussion about polity and community, in what ways do you think the contemporary Islamist movements represent a vision of polity that is distinct from regnant conceptions of the nation, political debate, and consensus?
A different vision of polity. That is an aspect of Islamist thinking that requires much more original work. I feel that there is a need to rethink the nature of the political in a far more radical way than Islamic movements seem to have done. To a great extent, there has been an acceptance of the modernizing state (and the model of the Western state) and a translation of its projects into Islamist terms. Often Islamists simply subscribe to the parameters of the modern nation- state, adding only that it be controlled by a virtuous body of Muslims. A much more radical idea is needed before we can say that Islamists have a vision of a distinctive kind of polity.
However, I don't want to exaggerate the homogeneity of these movements. There have been some interesting schematic attempts at rethinking. For example, the Tunisian Islamic leader Ghannushi, who is banned from Tunis, has recently argued for the political institutionalization of multiple interpretations of the founding texts. In one sense, the institutionalization of divergent interpretations is already a part of the Islamic tradition (both Sunni and Shi`a). But, if I understand him correctly, Ghannushi is trying to politicize that traditional arrangement and make it more fluid, more open to negotiation. Starting from the classic distinction between the essential body of the text, on the one hand, and its commentaries (i.e., "consequences"--what follows), on the other, he argues that the latter be brought into the political arena. This would involve the electorate being asked to vote for or against the policies that flow from given interpretations--and always having the option of changing its mind about them. In other words, the political implications of an interpretation (not all "the meanings" of the text itself) would be open to acceptance or rejection like any other proposed legislation or project. This clearly needs to be much more elaborately developed and clarified if it is to make political sense.
Are elements of this kind of thinking part of the Islamic discursive tradition?
I certainly think they are. That's what ijtihad, the principle of original reasoning from within the tradition, is all about. There is a lot of talk about ijtihad nowadays among Muslims, but too often it's used as a device to bring Islamic tradition in line with modern liberal values for no good reason. I believe it ought to be used to argue with other Muslims within the tradition and to try to formulate solutions to problems that are recognized as problems for the tradition by other Muslims.
You discuss in your work the practice of nasiha in Saudi Arabia, as an example of public critique within the Islamic tradition, which is quite distinct from the liberal notion of public criticism.[2] Can you speak to that, given your comments on the limits and possibilities of specific traditions of thought?
Yes, nasiha is different from liberal notions of public criticism. For example, it doesn't constitute a right to criticize the monarch and/or political regime but an obligation. Similarly, the business of criticism is not restricted only to those expressly qualified--the educated and enlightened few. It's something that every Muslim has the duty to undertake, and whose theory the `ulama must continually reconsider and discuss for each time and place. It is, therefore, a form of criticism that is internal to a tradition. That is to say, only someone who has been educated in that tradition, who has been taught what "appropriate Islamic practices" are, can undertake it properly. This is not a criticism that anyone coming from the outside, a total stranger, say, armed with a fine sense of logical argument and a set of universal moral principles, can carry out. So it is quite different from the notion of abstract and generalized criticism that has to be confined to the enlightened, literate members of a polity.
So are you suggesting that there are traditions that can continue their own trajectory of debate, without necessarily coming into conversation with other parallel traditions--in this case the Western-liberal tradition of political and public critique?
No, that is not what I'm saying. My point, first of all, is that nasiha, in the way that I described it in my book, is a form of criticism that can only be mounted if the critic is familiar with the relevant tradition that provides the standards defining Islamic practices and also with the specific social conditions in which those standards are to be applied. But when social conditions change, the standards often have to be extended or modified. In the case I discuss, this process is closely connected with the development of the modern Saudi state. Many of the practices in that state are modeled on the practices of the modern nation-state. This also applies to various aspects of "private life." In other words, the new social conditions are beginning to include aspects of Western political traditions. Wahhabi religious discourse is, therefore, involved in a complex process of appropriating and rejecting parts of those traditions. Thus, even though the principles of nasiha still remain distinctive, and quite different from Enlightenment principles, the scope and objective of nasiha has changed very significantly. That's not exactly what I would call a "conversation" with another tradition, but it is certainly an engagement with it. I can't see how any non-Western tradition today can escape some sort of an engagement with Western modernity. Because aspects of Western modernity have come to be embodied in the life of non-European societies.
Do you think that the post-Reformation Protestant conception of religion, as an internal belief system that has little to do with arranging political and social life, influenced or transformed the character of Islamic debates in this century? If so, in what ways?
Well, I think to some extent they have--where Islamic reform movements have adopted standards of rationality from modern Western discourses or even where Muslim apologists claim that Islam does quite well when properly measured by Western standards of justice and decency. This influence is also evident whenever the shari`a is made compatible with Western law and practice and is subjected to institutions of the modern state. And the modern state gives rise to two quite distinct movements--those for whom religious faith is something that fits into "private space" (in both the legal and the psychological sense), and those for whom the "public functions" of the modern state must be captured by men with religious faith.
It has often been argued that the tradition of liberalism is based upon principles of pluralism and tolerance in ways that Islamic tradition is not, and that the concept of plurality remains foreign to Islam. How would you respond to that?
Well, I would say that it is certainly not a modern, liberal invention. The plurality of individual interests is what the liberal tradition has theorized best of all. On the other hand, the attempt to get some kind of representation for ethnic groups and minorities in Western countries has been difficult for liberalism to theorize. Liberalism has theories of tolerance by which spaces can be created for individuals to do what they wish, so long as they don't obstruct the ability of others to do likewise. But these aren't theories of pluralism in the sense we are beginning to understand the term today. Liberalism has theories of multiple "interests," interests which can be equalized, aggregated, and calculated through the electoral process and then negotiated in the process of formulating and applying governmental policies. But that is a very different kind of pluralism from the different ways of life which are (a) the preconditions and not the objects of individual interests, and which are, (b) in the final analysis, incommensurable.
Now the Islamic tradition, like many other non-liberal traditions, is based on the notion of plural social groupings and plural religious traditions--especially (but not only) of the Abrahamic traditions [ahl al-kitab]. And, of course, it has always accommodated a plurality of scriptural interpretations. There is a well- known dictum in the shari`a: ikhtilaf al-umma rahma [difference within the Islamic tradition is a blessing]. This is where the notions of ijtihad and ijm`a come in. As modes of developing and sustaining the Islamic tradition, they authorize the construction of coherent differences, not the imposition of homogeneity.
Of course there are always limits to difference if coherence is to be aimed at. If tolerance is not merely another name for indifference, there comes a point in every tradition beyond which difference cannot be tolerated. That simply means that there are differences which can't be accommodated within the tradition without threatening its very coherence. But there are, of course, many moments and conditions of such intolerance. One must not, therefore, equate intolerance with violence and cruelty.
On the whole, Muslim societies in the past have been much more accommodating of pluralism in the sense I have tried to outline than have European societies. It does not follow that they are therefore necessarily better. And I certainly don't wish to imply that Muslim rulers and populations were never prejudiced, that they never persecuted non-Muslims in their midst. My point is only that "the concept of plurality," as you put it, is not foreign to Islam.
Talking of pluralities of interpretations within the Islamic tradition, some scholars make a distinction between the Sufi [mystical] and Salafi [reformist] tradition within Islam. You have criticized the ways in which these two traditions are often mapped onto rural/urban, folk/elite, and oral/scriptural dichotomies, respectively.[3] Yet it is hard to deny the substantial differences between Sufi and Salafi thought. How can one fruitfully engage with these differences without falling into simplistic dichotomies?
Unfortunately, people continue to make these simplistic contrasts. It is true that for some sections of the Islamic tradition, such as the Hanbali tradition that is officially dominant in Saudi Arabia today, Sufism is thought to be quite different from what is defined as the central Islamic tradition. But the definition of the central Islamic tradition according to Saudi Hanbalis is not, strictly speaking, a Salafi one either. Wahhabi Islam has a specific connection with a particular state--even when it constitutes a contemporary language of opposition to the regime. This is a complicated question, and I don't want to get into details here. All I want to say here is that it's not as if there were only two options in Islam-- Sufi or Salafi. For reformers like Muhammad `Abduh, these were not mutually exclusive categories. `Abduh, one of the founders of the Salafiyya [reform] movement, always accepted the Sufi tradition. Certain aspects of his relationship with Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, including the Sufi language of love in which they sometimes communicated, can only be explained in terms of their familiarity with Sufism. `Abduh thought that certain kinds of reform were necessary for contemporary Islam, but he regarded these as compatible with Sufi thought and values. This was not a new attitude. The great medieval reformer, Imam Ghazali, was at once a scripturalist (an elitist, if you like) and a Sufi.
I think that most Salafi reformers would be critical of Sufism when it transgressed one of the basic doctrines of Islam: the separation between God and human beings. I've heard criticism of Sufi practices that seemed to imply the possibility of complete union with God as opposed to the possibility of complete openness to God. I think that that is the crucial point for many people who are critical of Sufism.
There is, incidentally, an interesting debate that occurred in the eighteenth century between Muhammad `Abd al-Wahhab (the Arabian reformer) and the chief qadi of Tunisia (whose name escapes me) about the so-called worship of saints' tombs which some reformers see as a feature of the Sufi tradition. The argument is over whether the frequenting of tombs and the invoking of saintly blessing constitutes `ibada [worship] or ziyara [visitation]. The qadi argues that this is not a case of `ibada, for the very reason that visitation to the Prophet's tomb at Mecca is not `ibada. The Prophet, after all, can't be worshipped (worship is reserved for God alone), but visiting his tomb is an act of piety that elicits blessing. I don't think that `Abd al-Wahab was persuaded by this argument, but there was an argument. The denunciation by some sections of the Islamic movement of other Muslims as kufar [infidels; sing. kafir] is, of course, a termination of argument. Even worse, it is a quasi-legal judgment which carries serious penalties.
It is curious that those in Islamic movements who declare other Muslims to be kufar are also the ones who argue that the door of ijtihad [exercise of independent judgment in a theological question] is open in Islam. Yet the entire idea of ijtihad, as an exercise in debate and reconsideration of scholarly argument, seems to contradict the kind of closure entailed in declaring someone a kafir.
Many Muslims would not accept, of course, that ijtihad is open to the introduction of new interpretations. Incidentally, among Sunnis, ijtihad is much more a central part of traditional Hanabli doctrine than of other schools-- for them the gate of ijtihad was never closed. But although they are open to the principle of ijtihad, they are hostile to what they regard as its arbitrary use. They are similar, in some ways, to the Khawarij in the seventh century who were prepared to call other Muslims kufar, even to make war on them. They decided that certain things were open to ijtihad and others were not. To talk about some things in the light of ijtihad was simply to open the door to kufr [infidelity]. So it is a question of where you draw the conceptual boundaries, and what action follows from the way you draw those boundaries.
In examining world traditions, theorists of religion have often contrasted deistic religiosity with a "traditional" sensibility that emphasizes, for example, correct bodily practices, literal understandings of texts, etc. Deism, on the other hand, is associated with an abstract understanding of the idea of divinity, sacred texts, and general principles of a religious doctrine. Evolutionary models of religious theory associate deism with a post-Enlightenment conception of religion, of which Post-Reformation Christianity is considered paradigmatic, and Islam, Hinduism, and certain forms of Judaism are associated with a literalist understanding of religion.[4] Even if we reject an evolutionary model of religious development in history, there are obvious differences in the focus on correct bodily practices in some of these religious traditions. Given your emphasis on historicizing the concept of religion, and on the inimical relationship between religious discourse and bodily practices (particularly in medieval Christianity), what do you suggest are some ways to engage with this characterization of religious traditions as deist and/or literalist?
I think this is a false opposition, because abstract principles and ideas are also integral to various Islamic, Judaic, and pre-Reformation Christian traditions. Abstract ideas are relevant not only for theology, they are important also for programs aiming to teach embodied practices. I talk about these programs in Genealogies of Religion. In this sense abstract ideas are not opposed to embodied practices. This point applies to the way Christian virtues are developed in the monastic context, and it applies equally to the way nasiha constitutes an embodied practice, as I try to show in my book. The point is that, in contemporary Protestant Christianity (and other religions now modeled on it), it is more important to have the right belief than to carry out specific prescribed practices. It is not that belief in every sense of the word was irrelevant in the Christian past, or irrelevant to Islamic tradition. It is that belief has now become a purely inner, private state of mind, a particular state of mind detached from everyday practices. But although it is in this sense "internal," belief has also become the object of systematic discourse, such that the system of statements about belief is now held to constitute the essence of "religion," a construction that makes it possible to compare and evaluate different "religions." These systematic statements, these texts, are now the real public form of "religion."
So I think the contrast one should make is between the development of prescribed moral-religious capabilities, which involve the cultivation of certain bodily attitudes (including emotions), the disciplined cultivation of habits, aspirations, desires, on one hand, and on the other hand, a more abstracted set of belief-statements, "texts" that contain meanings and define the core of the religion.
Now, insofar as certain modern forms of religiosity have been identified with sets of abstracted belief-statements which have barely anything to do with people's actual lives, you get the curious phenomenon of Christians, non- Christians, and atheists allegedly believing in or rejecting religion, but living the same kind of life. Now, if this is the case, then clearly it is different from embodied practices of various kinds. I think the important contrast to bear in mind is the difference between this kind of intellectualized abstracted system of doctrines that has no direct bearing on or relationship to forms of embodied practices, and lives that are organized around gradually learning and perfecting correct moral and religious practices. The former kind of religiosity is much more a feature of modern religion in Europe and, indeed, a part of what religion is defined to be: a set of belief-statements that makes it possible to compare one religion to another and to judge the validity--even the sense--of such abstract statements. This state of affairs is radically opposed to one in which correct practice is essential to the development of religious virtues and is itself an essential religious virtue. After all, while you can talk about certain belief- statements as being credible or non-credible, true or false, rational or irrational, you can't really talk like that about embodied practices. Practices aren't statements. As Austin pointed out in How to Do Things with Words, they are performatives and not constatives. We do not say of performatives that they are believable or unbelievable. We inquire, instead, as to whether they are well done or badly done; effectively done or ineffectively done. So different kinds of questions arise in these two contexts. That is the opposition one has to bear in mind, and that is partly what my two chapters on monastic discipline are about.[5]
In Islam, this is what matters, and if Muslims simply argue about whether or not a particular doctrine is "true Islam," and if the answer to that question makes no difference to how they learn to live, how they develop distinctive Islamic virtues, then it makes no difference whether that doctrine is the same as Christianity or not, because the way in which they live is the same, or pretty much the same. That is the point one has to bear in mind. The crucial question, it seems to me, is this: Are there practical rules and principles aimed at developing a distinctive set of virtues (articulated by din [religion]) which relate to how one structures one's life? That is what I mean by embodied practices.
Since you mostly focus on medieval Christianity in your book, I am curious if you think that this sense of embodied practice also exists in parts of the contemporary Islamic world, where the cultivation of correct bodily practices actually modifies the way people live on a daily basis?
Yes, I think it does in some areas. I tried to describe some aspects of that in the context of the Wahhabi concept and practice of morality,[6] as opposed to post-Kantian conceptions of morality. In varying degrees, you continue to have this sense of morality in parts of the Muslim world, although it is gradually becoming eroded there as elsewhere. I think that, in a way, the recent Islamist movements have a sense that the pursuit of correct bodily practices is important and has to be somehow reinstituted where it has eroded, and protected wherever it exists. Unfortunately, Islamists often tend to link the maintenance of these practices to the demand for a modernizing Islamic state. This seems to me very problematic for all sorts of reasons. Anyway, the learning of these moral capabilities did not originally depend on the existence of a modernizing state. Yet now most Islamic movements are concerned to capture the center that the modern state represents, instead of trying to cut across or dissolve it.
In closing, I would like to address aspects of your work that are perhaps most controversial given the present focus on resistance and agency in sections of academic scholarship. One of the more provocative things you criticize in your book, for example, is the tendency, among social scientists, to analyze relationships of domination through a dualism of repression and consent.[7] Given that you find such an approach problematic, what other options are there for us to think about relationships of domination--if not through concepts of repression and consent?
Well, what underlies my objection to this duality is that the repression/domination model is based on the assumption that something called consciousness is essential for explaining social structures and transformations. I discuss this point briefly in my introduction to The Genealogies of Religion. Two kinds of consciousness are posited (one is the forced/oppressed kind of consciousness and the other is the consenting consciousness), and it is assumed that domination, for example, is to be explained in terms either of force or of consent. What this overlooks is something that, incidentally, is one of the basic insights of Marx, and what I have elsewhere called, rather unsatisfactorily, "structures of exclusion." The fact is that there are certain situations in which you simply have no options but to do certain kinds of things. By this I don't mean that you are forced to, but simply that this is what the options are; or at least the "force" is not a matter of oppression but of circumstance. It is more like the situation in which one considers the kinds of move possible in a game of chess in which you oblige your opponent to make certain moves and prevent him/her from making other moves. In other words, there are certain circumstances and conditions which may or may not be immediately available to the consciousness of the person engaged in those activities but which constrain and structure the possibilities of his/her own actions. Whether such actions are undertaken reluctantly or gladly is another matter. But what is crucial here is: what it is that one is, in a sense, obliged to do by the structuration of conditions and possibilities, not the consciousness with which one does them, and the gladness, anger, or resentment with which one does them. This doesn't mean, of course, that people have no consciousness. It means that we are looking at the wrong thing if we look to consciousness to understand the changing patterns of our lives. For that, we ought to be looking at the circumstances by which possibilities are patterned and re-shaped.
But one may argue, in the name of the subject, that this a structuralist position that leaves no room for human agency--even though you draw a distinction between agency and subject. How would you answer the criticism that your analysis is over-determinist and structuralist?
Well, I would answer it in two ways. First of all, if it were the case that such a reading left no room for agency, it would still be crucial to know whether what I said was valid or not. Because I don't think that "agency" must be given priority in our reflections just because we like the idea of agency--that we must reject a theoretical approach which doesn't give adequate scope to agency simply because we disapprove morally of situations in which people can't shape their own lives. I think what one has to do is to show that the concept of "agency" is really essential for describing and analyzing every empirical state of affairs. We accept too easily that a theory is to be accepted only if it gives scope to agency. But the sense in which a theory gives scope to agency is quite different from the sense in which actual conditions give scope to agency. If it is the case that particular situations in the world do not give a person scope for shaping his or her life, such as in the case of imprisonment, there is no use blaming theories for that. It is the condition of imprisonment that doesn't give the prisoner that kind of scope. It is nonsense to complain about theory if, in fact, it is the situation in the world that is constraining. Of course, the prisoner's predicament is an extreme one in this context. But what one has to do always is to examine and analyze the conditions within which the possibilities of effective action (agency) are constituted.
Having said that, one also needs to remember that to say there are constraining conditions is not to imply that what an individual can or cannot do is determined by a structure, but only to inquire into the structure of possibilities. If you think about the metaphor of war, which is a more complex and brutal kind of situation akin to a game of chess in that it has its rules, you find that the possibilities of action may vary enormously with times and place, in which one side may have a wide range of options available and the other side very little. There, too, we have situations of extreme constraint--of little or no agency for one side.
Many devotees of "agency" fail to recognize that there are circumstances in which some people have more agency than others. In recent years, it has become common to hear students of "postcolonial discourse" demanding that historical relations between European powers and the Third World countries must be re- considered in terms that allow for agency and resistance on the part of the latter. That may be all very well, but it is important to describe what kinds of options were available. One must never forget that, right through the nineteenth century, the establishment and extension of colony and empire meant that one side won something and the other lost. If we are to agree that both sides were agents, we must also agree that the agency of one eventually gave it an empire and the agency of the other lost it--that major political, economic, and moral principles were gradually taken by the colonized agent from the colonizing. Which does not mean, of course, that the latter imposed their pure ideas on the former. What it means is that we must find adequate ways of dealing theoretically with historical asymmetries.
I must confess I'm really unsympathetic toward the constant celebration of agency in contemporary social science. Agency has become a catch word. In a way, this intoxication with "agency" is the product of liberal individualism. The ability of individuals to fashion themselves, to change their lives, is given ideological priority over the relations within which they themselves are actually formed, situated, and sustained. The vulgar saying with which we are all familiar--which ignores this fact--is: "You can (re-)make yourself if you really want to." All you need is a strong enough will.
But what is an agent? It is too easily assumed that agency must inhere in "a subject," an individual characterized by his or her consciousness. Even when the agent is said to be a class, it is still modeled on the idea of the subject, a quasi- individual who possesses a will distinct from the wills of other individuals. The conflict of wills, expressed in the pursuit of contradictory "interests," is where you are supposed to find true agency. But this seems to me a very questionable view. Earlier I talked about the problematic idea of "interests." Here, I think its worth noting that there are collective agents who have no locatable subjectivity, no continuous will: corporations, governments, armies, etc. Agency as the principle of effectivity doesn't require the notion of subjectivity. The allocation of legal and/or moral responsibility doesn't depend on the notion of a consciousness, but on that of attributable consequences. A business corporation may be held to be legally or morally accountable, to be an agent, simply because it acted (or failed to act--which is a kind of act) in a particular way and that fact had practical consequences. To say that an action was the cause of something is to argue that a particular agent was responsible for it. In politics, a cause is something you argue for, you support, you oppose. In addressing yourself to a cause you are helping to constitute agency. There is no need to invoke ideas of consciousness here--whether of the "true" or "false" variety. What matters is that a type of social group, or type of position in social space, sustains certain (probable) practices, and that these not only have (probable) social and moral consequences, but can become the objects of political intervention.
1. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993) 19.
2. Asad, 200-238.
3. Talal Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam, Occasional papers (Washington D.C.: Ctr. for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown, 1986).
4. See, e.g., Robert Bellah, Beyond Belief (New York: Harper, 1970).
5. Asad, Genealogies 83-170.
6. Asad, Genealogies 200-238.
7. Asad, Genealogies 14-16.
source:
SEHR, volume 5, issue 1: Contested Polities
Updated February 27, 1996
http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-1/text/asad.html
Talal Asad
modern power and the reconfiguration of religious traditions
Saba MahmoodContemporary politico-religious movements, such as Islamism, are often understood by social scientists as expressions of tradition hampering the progress of modernity. But given the recent intellectual challenges posed against dualistic and static conceptions of modernity/tradition, and calls for parochializing Western European experiences of modernity, do you think the religio-political movements (such as Islamism) force us to rethink our conceptions of modernity? If so, how?
Well, I think they should force us to rethink many things. There has been a certain amount of response from people in Western universities who are interested in analyzing these movements. But many of them still make assumptions that prevent them from questioning aspects of Western modernity. For example, they call these movements "reactionary" or "invented," making the assumption that Western modernity is not only the standard by which all contemporary developments must be judged, but also the only authentic trajectory for every tradition. One of the things the existence of such movements ought to bring into question is the old opposition between modernity and tradition, which is still fashionable. For example, many writers describe the movements in Iran and Egypt as only partly modern and suggest that its their mixing of tradition and modernity that accounts for their "pathological" character. This kind of description paints Islamic movements as being somehow inauthentically traditional on the assumption that "real tradition" is unchanging, repetitive, and non-rational. In this way, these movements cannot be understood on their own terms as being at once modern and traditional, both authentic and creative at the same time. The development of politico-religious movements ought to force people to rethink the uniquely Western model of secular modernity. One may want to challenge aspects of these movements, but this ought to be done on specific grounds. It won't do to measure everything by grand conceptions of authentic modernity. But that's precisely the kind of a priori thinking that many people indulge in when analyzing contemporary religious movements.
It seems that you are using the term tradition differently here than it is commonly understood in the humanities and social sciences. Even the idea of "hybrid societies/cultures," which has gained ascendancy in certain intellectual circles, implies a coexistence of modern and traditional elements without necessarily decentering the normative meaning of these concepts.
Yes, many writers do describe certain societies as hybrids, part modern and part traditional. I don't agree with them, however. I think that one needs to recognize that when one talks about tradition, one should be talking about, in a sense, a dimension of social life and not a stage of social development. In an important sense, tradition and modernity are not really two mutually exclusive states of a culture or society but different aspects of historicity. Many of the things that are thought of as modern belong to traditions which have their roots in Western history. A changing tradition is often developing rapidly but a tradition nevertheless. When people talk about liberalism as a tradition, they recognize that it is a tradition in which there are possibilities of argument, reformulation, and encounter with other traditions, that there is a possibility of addressing contemporary problems through the liberal tradition. So one thinks of liberalism as a tradition central to modernity. How is it that one has something that is a tradition but that is also central to modernity? Clearly, liberalism is not a mixture of the traditional and the modern. It is a tradition that defines one central aspect of Western modernity. It is no less modern by virtue of being a tradition than anything else is modern. It has its critics, both within the West and outside, but it is perhaps the dominant tradition of political and moral thought and practice. And yet this is not the way in which most social scientists have talked about so-called "traditional" societies/cultures in the non-European world generally, and in the Islamic world in particular. So this is partly what I mean when I say that we must rethink the concept of tradition. In this sense, I think, we can regard the contemporary Islamic revival as consisting of attempts at articulating Islamic traditions that are adequate to the modern condition as experienced in the Muslim world, but also as attempts at formulating encounters with Western as well as Islamic history. This doesn't mean that they succeed. But at least they try in different ways.
In discussing different historical experiences of modernity, are you suggesting that there are also different kinds of modernities? There is a certain centrality to the project of modernity that scholars like Foucault have described and analyzed. How does one reconcile the European model of modernity, that modernization theorists and their critics alike pose, with different historical and cultural experiences of modernity?
In the first place, given that we are situated in contemporary Western society, and given that we are in a world in which "the West" is hegemonic, the term modernity already possesses a certain positive valence. Many of its opponents-- for example, the so-called postmodernists--to some extent have a defensive strategy towards what they think of as the central values of modernity. Very few postmodernist critics of modernity would be willing to argue against social equality, free speech, or individual self-fashioning. In fact, the very term "postmodernity" incorporates "modernity" as a stage in a distinct trajectory. So it may be a tactical matter in some cases to argue that there are multiple forms of modernity rather than contrasting modernity itself with something else. In other words, the equation of a specific Western history (which is specific and particular by definition) with something that at the same time claims to be universal and has become globalized is something that to my mind isn't sufficiently well thought out. An ideological weight is given to modernity as a universal model, even when it is merely a form of Westernization.
I think that at one level there is the problem of conceptualizing modernity as a term that refers to a whole set of disparate tendencies, attitudes, traditions, structures, and practices--some of which may be integrally related and some not. At times, people think of modernity as a certain kind of social structure (industrialization, secularization, democracy, etc.), and sometimes as a psychological experience (e.g., Simmel on "The Metropolis and Modern Life"), or as an aesthetic posture (e.g., Baudelaire on "The Painter of Modern Life"). Sometimes modernity is thought of as a certain kind of a philosophical project (in the Habermasian sense) and sometimes as a post-Kantian universal ethics. Do they all necessarily hang together? There is an implicit assumption that they do--that just because certain aspects of "modernity" ("modern" science, politics, ethics, etc.) have gone together historically in parts of Europe, all of these things must and should go together in the rest of the world as well. A curious kind of functionalism is actually at work in this assumption. Whereas in other contexts social scientists have become skeptical of functionalism, this doesn't seem to be the case here.
Part of the problem is deciding whether "modernity" is a single tradition, a singular structure, or an integrated set of practical knowledges. And if things go together, then does this mean that what we have is a moral imperative or a pragmatic fit? In other words: what criteria are we using when we call a person, a way of life, or a society, "modern"? Where do these criteria come from? Are they simply descriptive or normative? And if they are descriptive, then do they relate to some immutable essence? If they are normative, then on what authority? Such questions need to be worked through before we can decide meaningfully whether there are varieties of modernity and, if there is only one kind of modernity, then whether it is separable from Westernization or not. I have not encountered a satisfactory answer to this question, either by social scientists or philosophers.
Now, when Foucault talks about modernity, he is speaking quite specifically about a development in Western history. He is really not interested in the history of the non-Western world, of the West's encounter with that heterogeneous world. And he is not interested in different traditions. As you know, his emphasis is on breaks rather than continuities. It is possible to think of these breaks, of course, as occurring in certain kinds of continuities, and to some extent Foucault understood that. Otherwise, he would not have pushed his investigation into modernity back to early Christian and Greek beliefs and practices. This inquiry brought him to a conception of the Western tradition, with all its ruptures and breaks, although he didn't think systematically about "tradition" as such.
You also argue in your book Genealogies of Religion that modernity, by definition, is a teleological project in its desire to remake history, the nation, and the future. You argue that "actions seeking to maintain the local status quo are therefore always resisting the future."[1] Could you please speak to what you meant by this?
I meant that ironically, of course. I think what I said was that actions that only maintain the status quo--to conserve daily life--are not thought of as "making history," however long such efforts take. And movements which could be branded as "reactionary" were by definition trying "to resist the future" or "to turn the clock back." The point is that the advocates and defenders of Western modernity are explicitly committed to a certain kind of historicity, a temporal movement of social life in which "the future" pulls us forward. The idea is that, in some measure, "the future" represents something that can be anticipated and should be desired, and that at least the direction of that desirable future is known. The "future" becomes a kind of moral magnet, out there, pulling us toward itself. On the one hand, humans are thought of as having the freedom to shape their own (collective) destiny. On the other hand, "history," as an autonomous movement, has its own momentum, and those who act on a different assumption are thought of as being either morally blameworthy or practically self-defeating--or both. The concept of history-making relates to this grand and somewhat contradictory idea. And all societies--including non- Western ones--are judged by the phrases you quote. I briefly mentioned the frequent derogatory references to the situation in what has happened and is happening in Iran, to cargo cults, etc. My point is not that one should not criticize--or even denounce--what has happened and is happening in Iran, say. My point is that most people who do so are also employing a very peculiar notion of "history" and "history-making."
In discussing the relationship between Western and non-Western experiences of modernity, two different traditions of argument come to mind: the school of dependency theory in the 1970s and post-colonial theory more recently, of which the Subaltern Studies project from South Asia is an important part. It seems that whereas the dependency theorists had emphasized how Western modernity had effected and arrested the development of non-Western societies, post-colonial theorists (like Chatterjee, Prakash, and Chakrabarty) focus on the cultural and historical specificity of non-Western experiences of modernity. Chatterjee, for example, makes the point that privileging the Western-European liberal experience often occludes conceptions of polity and community that are an integral part of non-Western societies but remain untheorized in both radical and liberal analyses of modernity. How do you see the relationship between these two traditions of thought and their implications for understanding culturally and historically specific experiences of modernity?
Well, of course, the West is what it is in large part because of its relationship to the non-West, and vice versa. And if by Western modernity one means the economies, politics, and knowledges characteristic of European countries, then much of this is incomprehensible without reference to Europe's links with the non-European world. In its own way, this point was made by the so-called dependency theorists concerned with Third-World development. But one must not exaggerate this point. What I mean is that there are certain experiences that have nothing to do with the West/non-West relationship. After all, the term "non-West" is simply a negative term. It's important to keep this relationship in mind, but in itself it tells us very little about all the things it covers. There are experiences that have to do with other kinds of relationships, such as the relationship of a given people to a distinctive past.
I think whether certain societies can or cannot develop economically was an argument that was carried on by dependency theorists on the basis of certain economic models that had certain indicators, so that one was clear what the aim was supposed to be. So, many of the people who argued against modernization theorists said that economic development was not possible in the peripheral countries given their links with the core capitalist countries. People who belonged to the dependency tradition tended to argue over whether it made sense to try to break those links, skip the capitalist stage, and go straight for socialist development, or to make a strategic alliance with national capitalists, which was necessary for full economic development. (This was a repeat, of course, of the old Bolshevik/Menshivik dispute.) But the argument, anyway, was not about where all the countries should end up. The common assumption was that there were several roads to Rome but there was, of course, only one Rome. When one got to moral and cultural issues, this assumption became more difficult to sustain.
Whereas in the West political debate about liberal-democratic states more or less takes for granted where things are now, discussion about the Third World tends to be about where politics and morality ought to be heading. This is what needs to be noticed. Even when it is agreed that there are all kinds of changes that would improve conditions in Western societies (urban poverty, racism, etc.), it is usually assumed that this is the best of all possible political systems. The claim seems to be: yes, we do have racism, but where isn't there racism? At least we in the West have a system in which some kind of political fight for racial equality is possible, whereas other political systems don't allow this. The assumption, you see, is that even if the changes needed to eliminate the massive poverty, institutionalized racism, international power-play, etc. were effected, it would still be the same political system. And if a radically new future is desired, it is assumed that this is reachable only through the present Western "modern" system. Western "modernity" is, therefore, thought to be pregnant with positive futures in a way that no other cultural condition is. That wasn't explicit in the old argument about dependency, because the focus there was on the conditions for a productive industrial economy, which would, therefore, increase the possibilities of general wealth and material welfare. That was what "modernity" meant to dependency theorists (or to those who deliberately used this concept). Now it tends to mean a system of government (representative democracy, periodic elections, parliamentary pressure groups, continuous polls, controlled media presentations, etc.) and individualism in morality, law, aesthetics, etc. The emphasis on the individual as voter, moral personality, and consumer--whether of state or market goods--is certainly central to the liberal version of modernity. But so, too, is a faith in a boundless future. (That is not, by the way, the same thing as saying "a faith in limitless growth," which is not fashionable anymore.)
Chatterjee is absolutely right in pointing out that liberal modernity doesn't pay adequate attention to the idea of community. That has been the complaint of socialists (and of conservatives, of course). Even some liberals who were influenced by Hegel argued against unfettered contractarian individualism (Green and Bosanquet, for example). But I think we need to historicize the idea of community. At any rate, we shouldn't allow ourselves to be locked into the binary "individualism versus communitarianism" argument. This confrontation of principles sounds fundamental only because the language of liberalism has already acquired a hegemonic status.
Are different options really possible in this matter? Or will today's powerful countries force the rest of the world to adopt the only "sensible" and "decent" model--i.e., political, economic, and moral liberalism? I don't know. It's one thing to say that we ought not to accept their definition of "modernity" as binding on us. It's another thing to claim that we possess the material and moral resources to resist effectively and to create our own options--regardless of whether we wish to call these options "modern" or not.
In studying specific cultures, you have emphasized the necessity of using theoretical concepts that are relevant to the practices and assumptions of those cultures. Your work on religion, in this regard, is similar to the subalternist historian Dipesh Chakrabarty's work on Indian working-class movements, insofar he has criticized the concept of class consciousness in its inability to account for non-liberal solidarities and alliances that are not hegemonically structured by the ideology of liberal-humanism. To what extent do you think the task of analyzing politico-religious movements (such as Islamism) is hampered by a similar problem of deploying inadequate conceptual categories?
One of the valuable things that post-modernism has done is to help us be skeptical of "grand narratives." Once we get out of the habit of seeing everything in relation to the universal path to the future which the West has supposedly discovered, then it may be possible to describe things in their own terms. This is an eminently anthropological enterprise, too. The anthropologist must describe ways of life in appropriate terms. To begin with, at least, this means terms intrinsic to the social practices, beliefs, movements, and traditions of the people being referred to and not in relation to some supposed future the people are moving towards. These "intrinsic terms" are not the only ones that can be used-- of course not. But the concepts of people themselves must be taken as central in any adequate understanding of their life. This is why Chakrabarty rightly criticizes the use of categories, such as class-consciousness, where they don't make sense to the people themselves.
I repeat: That's not to say that we should never employ terms that don't immediately make sense to the people being studied. The trouble with using notions like "class-consciousness" for explanatory purposes is that you take for granted that a particular kind of historical change is normative. Political opposition, political activity is "more developed" if it is organized in terms of class-consciousness and "less developed" if it is not. Marxism tends to see class politics as essential to modernity and "modernity" as the most developed form of civilized society.
Once we set that grand narrative, that normative history, aside, we can start by asking not, "What should such-and-such a people be doing?" but, "What do they aim at doing? And why?". We can learn to elaborate that question in historically specific terms. This certainly applies to our attempts to understand politico-religious movements, especially Islamic movements. It is foolish, I think, to ask: "Why are these movements not moving in the direction History requires them to?". But that is precisely what is being asked when scholars say: "What leads the people in these movements to behave so irrationally, in such a reactionary manner?".
Given our discussion about polity and community, in what ways do you think the contemporary Islamist movements represent a vision of polity that is distinct from regnant conceptions of the nation, political debate, and consensus?
A different vision of polity. That is an aspect of Islamist thinking that requires much more original work. I feel that there is a need to rethink the nature of the political in a far more radical way than Islamic movements seem to have done. To a great extent, there has been an acceptance of the modernizing state (and the model of the Western state) and a translation of its projects into Islamist terms. Often Islamists simply subscribe to the parameters of the modern nation- state, adding only that it be controlled by a virtuous body of Muslims. A much more radical idea is needed before we can say that Islamists have a vision of a distinctive kind of polity.
However, I don't want to exaggerate the homogeneity of these movements. There have been some interesting schematic attempts at rethinking. For example, the Tunisian Islamic leader Ghannushi, who is banned from Tunis, has recently argued for the political institutionalization of multiple interpretations of the founding texts. In one sense, the institutionalization of divergent interpretations is already a part of the Islamic tradition (both Sunni and Shi`a). But, if I understand him correctly, Ghannushi is trying to politicize that traditional arrangement and make it more fluid, more open to negotiation. Starting from the classic distinction between the essential body of the text, on the one hand, and its commentaries (i.e., "consequences"--what follows), on the other, he argues that the latter be brought into the political arena. This would involve the electorate being asked to vote for or against the policies that flow from given interpretations--and always having the option of changing its mind about them. In other words, the political implications of an interpretation (not all "the meanings" of the text itself) would be open to acceptance or rejection like any other proposed legislation or project. This clearly needs to be much more elaborately developed and clarified if it is to make political sense.
Are elements of this kind of thinking part of the Islamic discursive tradition?
I certainly think they are. That's what ijtihad, the principle of original reasoning from within the tradition, is all about. There is a lot of talk about ijtihad nowadays among Muslims, but too often it's used as a device to bring Islamic tradition in line with modern liberal values for no good reason. I believe it ought to be used to argue with other Muslims within the tradition and to try to formulate solutions to problems that are recognized as problems for the tradition by other Muslims.
You discuss in your work the practice of nasiha in Saudi Arabia, as an example of public critique within the Islamic tradition, which is quite distinct from the liberal notion of public criticism.[2] Can you speak to that, given your comments on the limits and possibilities of specific traditions of thought?
Yes, nasiha is different from liberal notions of public criticism. For example, it doesn't constitute a right to criticize the monarch and/or political regime but an obligation. Similarly, the business of criticism is not restricted only to those expressly qualified--the educated and enlightened few. It's something that every Muslim has the duty to undertake, and whose theory the `ulama must continually reconsider and discuss for each time and place. It is, therefore, a form of criticism that is internal to a tradition. That is to say, only someone who has been educated in that tradition, who has been taught what "appropriate Islamic practices" are, can undertake it properly. This is not a criticism that anyone coming from the outside, a total stranger, say, armed with a fine sense of logical argument and a set of universal moral principles, can carry out. So it is quite different from the notion of abstract and generalized criticism that has to be confined to the enlightened, literate members of a polity.
So are you suggesting that there are traditions that can continue their own trajectory of debate, without necessarily coming into conversation with other parallel traditions--in this case the Western-liberal tradition of political and public critique?
No, that is not what I'm saying. My point, first of all, is that nasiha, in the way that I described it in my book, is a form of criticism that can only be mounted if the critic is familiar with the relevant tradition that provides the standards defining Islamic practices and also with the specific social conditions in which those standards are to be applied. But when social conditions change, the standards often have to be extended or modified. In the case I discuss, this process is closely connected with the development of the modern Saudi state. Many of the practices in that state are modeled on the practices of the modern nation-state. This also applies to various aspects of "private life." In other words, the new social conditions are beginning to include aspects of Western political traditions. Wahhabi religious discourse is, therefore, involved in a complex process of appropriating and rejecting parts of those traditions. Thus, even though the principles of nasiha still remain distinctive, and quite different from Enlightenment principles, the scope and objective of nasiha has changed very significantly. That's not exactly what I would call a "conversation" with another tradition, but it is certainly an engagement with it. I can't see how any non-Western tradition today can escape some sort of an engagement with Western modernity. Because aspects of Western modernity have come to be embodied in the life of non-European societies.
Do you think that the post-Reformation Protestant conception of religion, as an internal belief system that has little to do with arranging political and social life, influenced or transformed the character of Islamic debates in this century? If so, in what ways?
Well, I think to some extent they have--where Islamic reform movements have adopted standards of rationality from modern Western discourses or even where Muslim apologists claim that Islam does quite well when properly measured by Western standards of justice and decency. This influence is also evident whenever the shari`a is made compatible with Western law and practice and is subjected to institutions of the modern state. And the modern state gives rise to two quite distinct movements--those for whom religious faith is something that fits into "private space" (in both the legal and the psychological sense), and those for whom the "public functions" of the modern state must be captured by men with religious faith.
It has often been argued that the tradition of liberalism is based upon principles of pluralism and tolerance in ways that Islamic tradition is not, and that the concept of plurality remains foreign to Islam. How would you respond to that?
Well, I would say that it is certainly not a modern, liberal invention. The plurality of individual interests is what the liberal tradition has theorized best of all. On the other hand, the attempt to get some kind of representation for ethnic groups and minorities in Western countries has been difficult for liberalism to theorize. Liberalism has theories of tolerance by which spaces can be created for individuals to do what they wish, so long as they don't obstruct the ability of others to do likewise. But these aren't theories of pluralism in the sense we are beginning to understand the term today. Liberalism has theories of multiple "interests," interests which can be equalized, aggregated, and calculated through the electoral process and then negotiated in the process of formulating and applying governmental policies. But that is a very different kind of pluralism from the different ways of life which are (a) the preconditions and not the objects of individual interests, and which are, (b) in the final analysis, incommensurable.
Now the Islamic tradition, like many other non-liberal traditions, is based on the notion of plural social groupings and plural religious traditions--especially (but not only) of the Abrahamic traditions [ahl al-kitab]. And, of course, it has always accommodated a plurality of scriptural interpretations. There is a well- known dictum in the shari`a: ikhtilaf al-umma rahma [difference within the Islamic tradition is a blessing]. This is where the notions of ijtihad and ijm`a come in. As modes of developing and sustaining the Islamic tradition, they authorize the construction of coherent differences, not the imposition of homogeneity.
Of course there are always limits to difference if coherence is to be aimed at. If tolerance is not merely another name for indifference, there comes a point in every tradition beyond which difference cannot be tolerated. That simply means that there are differences which can't be accommodated within the tradition without threatening its very coherence. But there are, of course, many moments and conditions of such intolerance. One must not, therefore, equate intolerance with violence and cruelty.
On the whole, Muslim societies in the past have been much more accommodating of pluralism in the sense I have tried to outline than have European societies. It does not follow that they are therefore necessarily better. And I certainly don't wish to imply that Muslim rulers and populations were never prejudiced, that they never persecuted non-Muslims in their midst. My point is only that "the concept of plurality," as you put it, is not foreign to Islam.
Talking of pluralities of interpretations within the Islamic tradition, some scholars make a distinction between the Sufi [mystical] and Salafi [reformist] tradition within Islam. You have criticized the ways in which these two traditions are often mapped onto rural/urban, folk/elite, and oral/scriptural dichotomies, respectively.[3] Yet it is hard to deny the substantial differences between Sufi and Salafi thought. How can one fruitfully engage with these differences without falling into simplistic dichotomies?
Unfortunately, people continue to make these simplistic contrasts. It is true that for some sections of the Islamic tradition, such as the Hanbali tradition that is officially dominant in Saudi Arabia today, Sufism is thought to be quite different from what is defined as the central Islamic tradition. But the definition of the central Islamic tradition according to Saudi Hanbalis is not, strictly speaking, a Salafi one either. Wahhabi Islam has a specific connection with a particular state--even when it constitutes a contemporary language of opposition to the regime. This is a complicated question, and I don't want to get into details here. All I want to say here is that it's not as if there were only two options in Islam-- Sufi or Salafi. For reformers like Muhammad `Abduh, these were not mutually exclusive categories. `Abduh, one of the founders of the Salafiyya [reform] movement, always accepted the Sufi tradition. Certain aspects of his relationship with Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, including the Sufi language of love in which they sometimes communicated, can only be explained in terms of their familiarity with Sufism. `Abduh thought that certain kinds of reform were necessary for contemporary Islam, but he regarded these as compatible with Sufi thought and values. This was not a new attitude. The great medieval reformer, Imam Ghazali, was at once a scripturalist (an elitist, if you like) and a Sufi.
I think that most Salafi reformers would be critical of Sufism when it transgressed one of the basic doctrines of Islam: the separation between God and human beings. I've heard criticism of Sufi practices that seemed to imply the possibility of complete union with God as opposed to the possibility of complete openness to God. I think that that is the crucial point for many people who are critical of Sufism.
There is, incidentally, an interesting debate that occurred in the eighteenth century between Muhammad `Abd al-Wahhab (the Arabian reformer) and the chief qadi of Tunisia (whose name escapes me) about the so-called worship of saints' tombs which some reformers see as a feature of the Sufi tradition. The argument is over whether the frequenting of tombs and the invoking of saintly blessing constitutes `ibada [worship] or ziyara [visitation]. The qadi argues that this is not a case of `ibada, for the very reason that visitation to the Prophet's tomb at Mecca is not `ibada. The Prophet, after all, can't be worshipped (worship is reserved for God alone), but visiting his tomb is an act of piety that elicits blessing. I don't think that `Abd al-Wahab was persuaded by this argument, but there was an argument. The denunciation by some sections of the Islamic movement of other Muslims as kufar [infidels; sing. kafir] is, of course, a termination of argument. Even worse, it is a quasi-legal judgment which carries serious penalties.
It is curious that those in Islamic movements who declare other Muslims to be kufar are also the ones who argue that the door of ijtihad [exercise of independent judgment in a theological question] is open in Islam. Yet the entire idea of ijtihad, as an exercise in debate and reconsideration of scholarly argument, seems to contradict the kind of closure entailed in declaring someone a kafir.
Many Muslims would not accept, of course, that ijtihad is open to the introduction of new interpretations. Incidentally, among Sunnis, ijtihad is much more a central part of traditional Hanabli doctrine than of other schools-- for them the gate of ijtihad was never closed. But although they are open to the principle of ijtihad, they are hostile to what they regard as its arbitrary use. They are similar, in some ways, to the Khawarij in the seventh century who were prepared to call other Muslims kufar, even to make war on them. They decided that certain things were open to ijtihad and others were not. To talk about some things in the light of ijtihad was simply to open the door to kufr [infidelity]. So it is a question of where you draw the conceptual boundaries, and what action follows from the way you draw those boundaries.
In examining world traditions, theorists of religion have often contrasted deistic religiosity with a "traditional" sensibility that emphasizes, for example, correct bodily practices, literal understandings of texts, etc. Deism, on the other hand, is associated with an abstract understanding of the idea of divinity, sacred texts, and general principles of a religious doctrine. Evolutionary models of religious theory associate deism with a post-Enlightenment conception of religion, of which Post-Reformation Christianity is considered paradigmatic, and Islam, Hinduism, and certain forms of Judaism are associated with a literalist understanding of religion.[4] Even if we reject an evolutionary model of religious development in history, there are obvious differences in the focus on correct bodily practices in some of these religious traditions. Given your emphasis on historicizing the concept of religion, and on the inimical relationship between religious discourse and bodily practices (particularly in medieval Christianity), what do you suggest are some ways to engage with this characterization of religious traditions as deist and/or literalist?
I think this is a false opposition, because abstract principles and ideas are also integral to various Islamic, Judaic, and pre-Reformation Christian traditions. Abstract ideas are relevant not only for theology, they are important also for programs aiming to teach embodied practices. I talk about these programs in Genealogies of Religion. In this sense abstract ideas are not opposed to embodied practices. This point applies to the way Christian virtues are developed in the monastic context, and it applies equally to the way nasiha constitutes an embodied practice, as I try to show in my book. The point is that, in contemporary Protestant Christianity (and other religions now modeled on it), it is more important to have the right belief than to carry out specific prescribed practices. It is not that belief in every sense of the word was irrelevant in the Christian past, or irrelevant to Islamic tradition. It is that belief has now become a purely inner, private state of mind, a particular state of mind detached from everyday practices. But although it is in this sense "internal," belief has also become the object of systematic discourse, such that the system of statements about belief is now held to constitute the essence of "religion," a construction that makes it possible to compare and evaluate different "religions." These systematic statements, these texts, are now the real public form of "religion."
So I think the contrast one should make is between the development of prescribed moral-religious capabilities, which involve the cultivation of certain bodily attitudes (including emotions), the disciplined cultivation of habits, aspirations, desires, on one hand, and on the other hand, a more abstracted set of belief-statements, "texts" that contain meanings and define the core of the religion.
Now, insofar as certain modern forms of religiosity have been identified with sets of abstracted belief-statements which have barely anything to do with people's actual lives, you get the curious phenomenon of Christians, non- Christians, and atheists allegedly believing in or rejecting religion, but living the same kind of life. Now, if this is the case, then clearly it is different from embodied practices of various kinds. I think the important contrast to bear in mind is the difference between this kind of intellectualized abstracted system of doctrines that has no direct bearing on or relationship to forms of embodied practices, and lives that are organized around gradually learning and perfecting correct moral and religious practices. The former kind of religiosity is much more a feature of modern religion in Europe and, indeed, a part of what religion is defined to be: a set of belief-statements that makes it possible to compare one religion to another and to judge the validity--even the sense--of such abstract statements. This state of affairs is radically opposed to one in which correct practice is essential to the development of religious virtues and is itself an essential religious virtue. After all, while you can talk about certain belief- statements as being credible or non-credible, true or false, rational or irrational, you can't really talk like that about embodied practices. Practices aren't statements. As Austin pointed out in How to Do Things with Words, they are performatives and not constatives. We do not say of performatives that they are believable or unbelievable. We inquire, instead, as to whether they are well done or badly done; effectively done or ineffectively done. So different kinds of questions arise in these two contexts. That is the opposition one has to bear in mind, and that is partly what my two chapters on monastic discipline are about.[5]
In Islam, this is what matters, and if Muslims simply argue about whether or not a particular doctrine is "true Islam," and if the answer to that question makes no difference to how they learn to live, how they develop distinctive Islamic virtues, then it makes no difference whether that doctrine is the same as Christianity or not, because the way in which they live is the same, or pretty much the same. That is the point one has to bear in mind. The crucial question, it seems to me, is this: Are there practical rules and principles aimed at developing a distinctive set of virtues (articulated by din [religion]) which relate to how one structures one's life? That is what I mean by embodied practices.
Since you mostly focus on medieval Christianity in your book, I am curious if you think that this sense of embodied practice also exists in parts of the contemporary Islamic world, where the cultivation of correct bodily practices actually modifies the way people live on a daily basis?
Yes, I think it does in some areas. I tried to describe some aspects of that in the context of the Wahhabi concept and practice of morality,[6] as opposed to post-Kantian conceptions of morality. In varying degrees, you continue to have this sense of morality in parts of the Muslim world, although it is gradually becoming eroded there as elsewhere. I think that, in a way, the recent Islamist movements have a sense that the pursuit of correct bodily practices is important and has to be somehow reinstituted where it has eroded, and protected wherever it exists. Unfortunately, Islamists often tend to link the maintenance of these practices to the demand for a modernizing Islamic state. This seems to me very problematic for all sorts of reasons. Anyway, the learning of these moral capabilities did not originally depend on the existence of a modernizing state. Yet now most Islamic movements are concerned to capture the center that the modern state represents, instead of trying to cut across or dissolve it.
In closing, I would like to address aspects of your work that are perhaps most controversial given the present focus on resistance and agency in sections of academic scholarship. One of the more provocative things you criticize in your book, for example, is the tendency, among social scientists, to analyze relationships of domination through a dualism of repression and consent.[7] Given that you find such an approach problematic, what other options are there for us to think about relationships of domination--if not through concepts of repression and consent?
Well, what underlies my objection to this duality is that the repression/domination model is based on the assumption that something called consciousness is essential for explaining social structures and transformations. I discuss this point briefly in my introduction to The Genealogies of Religion. Two kinds of consciousness are posited (one is the forced/oppressed kind of consciousness and the other is the consenting consciousness), and it is assumed that domination, for example, is to be explained in terms either of force or of consent. What this overlooks is something that, incidentally, is one of the basic insights of Marx, and what I have elsewhere called, rather unsatisfactorily, "structures of exclusion." The fact is that there are certain situations in which you simply have no options but to do certain kinds of things. By this I don't mean that you are forced to, but simply that this is what the options are; or at least the "force" is not a matter of oppression but of circumstance. It is more like the situation in which one considers the kinds of move possible in a game of chess in which you oblige your opponent to make certain moves and prevent him/her from making other moves. In other words, there are certain circumstances and conditions which may or may not be immediately available to the consciousness of the person engaged in those activities but which constrain and structure the possibilities of his/her own actions. Whether such actions are undertaken reluctantly or gladly is another matter. But what is crucial here is: what it is that one is, in a sense, obliged to do by the structuration of conditions and possibilities, not the consciousness with which one does them, and the gladness, anger, or resentment with which one does them. This doesn't mean, of course, that people have no consciousness. It means that we are looking at the wrong thing if we look to consciousness to understand the changing patterns of our lives. For that, we ought to be looking at the circumstances by which possibilities are patterned and re-shaped.
But one may argue, in the name of the subject, that this a structuralist position that leaves no room for human agency--even though you draw a distinction between agency and subject. How would you answer the criticism that your analysis is over-determinist and structuralist?
Well, I would answer it in two ways. First of all, if it were the case that such a reading left no room for agency, it would still be crucial to know whether what I said was valid or not. Because I don't think that "agency" must be given priority in our reflections just because we like the idea of agency--that we must reject a theoretical approach which doesn't give adequate scope to agency simply because we disapprove morally of situations in which people can't shape their own lives. I think what one has to do is to show that the concept of "agency" is really essential for describing and analyzing every empirical state of affairs. We accept too easily that a theory is to be accepted only if it gives scope to agency. But the sense in which a theory gives scope to agency is quite different from the sense in which actual conditions give scope to agency. If it is the case that particular situations in the world do not give a person scope for shaping his or her life, such as in the case of imprisonment, there is no use blaming theories for that. It is the condition of imprisonment that doesn't give the prisoner that kind of scope. It is nonsense to complain about theory if, in fact, it is the situation in the world that is constraining. Of course, the prisoner's predicament is an extreme one in this context. But what one has to do always is to examine and analyze the conditions within which the possibilities of effective action (agency) are constituted.
Having said that, one also needs to remember that to say there are constraining conditions is not to imply that what an individual can or cannot do is determined by a structure, but only to inquire into the structure of possibilities. If you think about the metaphor of war, which is a more complex and brutal kind of situation akin to a game of chess in that it has its rules, you find that the possibilities of action may vary enormously with times and place, in which one side may have a wide range of options available and the other side very little. There, too, we have situations of extreme constraint--of little or no agency for one side.
Many devotees of "agency" fail to recognize that there are circumstances in which some people have more agency than others. In recent years, it has become common to hear students of "postcolonial discourse" demanding that historical relations between European powers and the Third World countries must be re- considered in terms that allow for agency and resistance on the part of the latter. That may be all very well, but it is important to describe what kinds of options were available. One must never forget that, right through the nineteenth century, the establishment and extension of colony and empire meant that one side won something and the other lost. If we are to agree that both sides were agents, we must also agree that the agency of one eventually gave it an empire and the agency of the other lost it--that major political, economic, and moral principles were gradually taken by the colonized agent from the colonizing. Which does not mean, of course, that the latter imposed their pure ideas on the former. What it means is that we must find adequate ways of dealing theoretically with historical asymmetries.
I must confess I'm really unsympathetic toward the constant celebration of agency in contemporary social science. Agency has become a catch word. In a way, this intoxication with "agency" is the product of liberal individualism. The ability of individuals to fashion themselves, to change their lives, is given ideological priority over the relations within which they themselves are actually formed, situated, and sustained. The vulgar saying with which we are all familiar--which ignores this fact--is: "You can (re-)make yourself if you really want to." All you need is a strong enough will.
But what is an agent? It is too easily assumed that agency must inhere in "a subject," an individual characterized by his or her consciousness. Even when the agent is said to be a class, it is still modeled on the idea of the subject, a quasi- individual who possesses a will distinct from the wills of other individuals. The conflict of wills, expressed in the pursuit of contradictory "interests," is where you are supposed to find true agency. But this seems to me a very questionable view. Earlier I talked about the problematic idea of "interests." Here, I think its worth noting that there are collective agents who have no locatable subjectivity, no continuous will: corporations, governments, armies, etc. Agency as the principle of effectivity doesn't require the notion of subjectivity. The allocation of legal and/or moral responsibility doesn't depend on the notion of a consciousness, but on that of attributable consequences. A business corporation may be held to be legally or morally accountable, to be an agent, simply because it acted (or failed to act--which is a kind of act) in a particular way and that fact had practical consequences. To say that an action was the cause of something is to argue that a particular agent was responsible for it. In politics, a cause is something you argue for, you support, you oppose. In addressing yourself to a cause you are helping to constitute agency. There is no need to invoke ideas of consciousness here--whether of the "true" or "false" variety. What matters is that a type of social group, or type of position in social space, sustains certain (probable) practices, and that these not only have (probable) social and moral consequences, but can become the objects of political intervention.
Notes
1. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993) 19.
2. Asad, 200-238.
3. Talal Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam, Occasional papers (Washington D.C.: Ctr. for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown, 1986).
4. See, e.g., Robert Bellah, Beyond Belief (New York: Harper, 1970).
5. Asad, Genealogies 83-170.
6. Asad, Genealogies 200-238.
7. Asad, Genealogies 14-16.
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