The hegemonic modern human rights discourse
Harvard has an ‘Islamic chaplain’. Lucky Harvard.
Harvard Islamic chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser ’96 has recently come under fire for controversial statements in which he allegedly endorsed death as a punishment for Islamic apostates. In a private e-mail to a student last week, Abdul-Basser wrote that there was “great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment [for apostates]) and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand.”
Oooooookay, isn’t that interesting. One shouldn’t dismiss out of hand the idea that apostates from Islam should be executed, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse. So Harvard has a chaplain who not only quasi-approves (or perhaps fully approves, who knows) death for apostasy, it has one who is disdainful (in a Theoretical kind of way) of human rights. Harvard has a chaplain who not only thinks that perhaps it is ‘wisdom’ to kill people for leaving a religion, but also thinks killing people for leaving a religion is better than human rights. He doesn’t think, then, that people have or should have a human right to leave a religion without being killed for doing so. Harvard has a chaplain of this description. Isn’t that fascinating.
It’s good, under the circumstances, to see that students have no fear about speaking up.
“I believe he doesn’t belong as the official chaplain,” said one Islamic student, who asked that he not be named to avoid conflicts with Muslim religious authorities…“[His remarks] are the first step towards inciting intolerance and inciting people towards violence,” said a Muslim Harvard student, who requested that he not be named for fear of harming his relationship with the Islamic community…A Muslim student at MIT, who also asked to remain anonymous to preserve his relationship with the Islamic community, said the chaplain’s remarks wrongly suggested that only Westerners and Westernized Muslims who did not fully understand Islam would find the killing of apostates objectionable.
Spot on, Muslim student at MIT; that’s exactly what the chaplain’s remarks suggest, insultingly enough. But how sad it is that these students want to preserve their relationship with a ‘community’ that they think might disagree with them about this. How sad that their ‘community’ might agree with Abdul-Basser, and might shun the students for not agreeing with him. How depressing it all is.
I stared at the page for several minutes trying to think of something witty to say about Harvard, without results. It is depressing, as you say, and thoughtless in both senses of the word.
This is a situation in which words fail. But I will note that it’s ironic that people who are protected by “hegemonic human rights discourse” denigrate it so readily.
[deadpan] Oh goodness me. Another Muslim cleric who people thought was a generally reasonable human being turns out to be a reactionary at heart. The shock. The horror. [/deadpan]
No, I am not surprised or shocked in any way by this. But what did strike me as surprising about Abdul-Basser’s message was not the content, but the wording. The words “hegemonic” and “discourse” leap out, a sterling example of the over-used jargon-y phrasing so beloved by the po-mo crowd to designate some set of ideas as bad/immoral in an encoded way. Of course, the “Theory” people who inflicted that language on us in the first place were forced to use code words to indicate things they considered bad: They couldn’t very well openly admit that they embraced and endorsed universal moral values when they were always going on about how universal moral claims were nothing more than exercises of social power, could they? Of course not! Directly and repeatedly contradicting yourself is perfectly fine, as long as you thoroughly conceal it with cascades of bullshit.
(Universal moral claims are just exercises of social power to do what? Oppress people, of course. But you can’t bitch about oppression without implying the judgment that freedom is GOOD, which as it turns out is in fact a universal moral claim. Buy a fucking clue, kids! Yes, I’m shouting at you in the black turtlenecks!)
Anyway, seeing the phrase “hegemonic human rights discourse” in Abdul-Basser’s paean to the wisdom of killing people for daring to think for themselves really struck a chord of – I dunno, almost admiration. Such a clever way of saying that human rights are simply bad without coming right out and saying it! Oh sure, it’s morally reprehensible – but rhetorically, it’s very impressive. Shows what a Harvard education will do for a guy…
I guess the take home lesson is a warning: Say what you mean, and say it clearly. Language in general is a tool – and post-modern jargon in specific was and is a tool for concealment and obfuscation. Leave tools like that lying around, someone’s gonna come along and use ’em for purposes unintended by those who crafted them.
My clear statement of the day: Taha Abdul-Basser thinks it’s okay to kill people for changing their minds about their religious beliefs – or rather, for changing their minds about his particular religious beliefs. That is an evil belief, and he is an evil person for believing it and promulgating it. If Harvard fails to fire his sorry ass post haste, it is as an institution endorsing and supporting his promulgation of evil.
Now, I’m not a po-mo expert but “hegemonic human rights discourse” seems to have postmodernism written all over it. The chaplain is dismissing human rights partly because he is an Islamist but also because he has has mugged up on postmodernist language and ideas.
I find postmodernism deeply depressing. Its advocates claim to be politically engaged lefties but in their desire to find “alternative discourses” climb into bed with creationists, quacks and now Islamists. Even worse, they are quite often in positions of authority and influence, particularly over their students.
(I should point out that I find Islamism even more depressing but postmodernism is particularly depressing because it acts as a gateway for acceptance of Islamism)
“hegemonic…discourse” isn’t po-mo, at least not in the form any actual individual theorist would recognise. It’s a classic instance of a mashed-up phrase; a little from Gramscian Marxism, a little from Foucault, a hefty dose of underlying Said – and none of those three would be a ‘post-modernist’ by any meaningful definition [if, indeed, the idea of a meaningful definition can be applied…]
‘Cultural Marxism’ is closer to the mark, with a side-order of Subaltern Studies [noted catchphrase: “Overthrow Western Hegemony, through Literary Analysis!”], and a sprinkle of Stick-It-To-The-Man, Ethnic-Studies, You-Just-Don’t-Get-It-White-Boy, The-Chip-On-My-Shoulder-Is-A-Badge-Of-Pride, US-College-System clichéd Grade-A bullshit.
Or something like that.
No, it’s pomo. The entire point of pomo is that it’s a mashup of the sources you cite (all discourses being equal, apart from hegemonic ones of course).
Oh, OK, if you want to descend to their Any-wank-is-good-enough level. But there is absolutely nothing canonically ‘postmodernist’ about the idea of a hegemonic discourse. So you are, in fact, historically, and specifically, wrong. Not that that matters, of course. Unless you’re Part Of The System. But then you were wrong anyway.
OK, I know I’m going out on a limb/ out of my depth etc. I also know that this is a Wikipedia article and so not necessarily authoritative- its the best I can find in a short time.
Anyway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanarrative
Lyotard defines the “postmodern condition” as “incredulity towards metanarratives”.
Now, in my limited understanding, this looks very close to a criticism of “hegemonic discourses”
So, I think it is postmodernism, although with a heavy dose of what Dave said.
Hegemonic discourse is typical of pomo nonsense in my experience. Perhaps the famous gurus eschew such unoriginal forms of bullshit, but garden variety pomos mention hegemonic discourse in every other sentence.
A discourse is not a metanarrative, any more than a dolphin is a fish. They may share some common features, but if you want to use ‘post-modernism’ to mean anything more precise than ‘wanky shit I don’t like’, then you should either try to appreciate the distinctions, or do the other thing.
Come on Dave. A discourse may not be a metanarrative, but a hegemonic discourse is, which is precisely what makes talk about it pomo. And pomo isn’t just wanky shit I don’t like. It’s a form of relativising discourse that calls into question any kind of directive discourse (metanarrative) that shapes subordinate discourse.
So the hegemonic discourse of human rights is the metanarrative that amounts to a decision procedure for sorting out moral from immoral actions in relations between people, in particular relations as defined by social norms. That’s why the Muslim chaplain thought he could get away with it, and no doubt thought it would fade into the background of university discourse.
But killing people for believing the ‘wrong’ thing is precisely to accord excessive value to a particular form of hegemonic discourse, that of Muslim religious belief, and to oppose the values of creativity and freedom of thought and expression that universities should encourage (values which are contained in the hegemonic discourse of human rights). In fact, the chaplain should, in my view, be dismissed or barred from the campus for offending against the fundamental norms of civilised discourse.
Of course, in general, religious discourse conflicts with human rights discourse, both being metanarratives or hegemonic forms of discourse which are not coextensive.
I wonder what would be the reaction to a statement by the Jewish chaplain at Harvard affirming that hegemonic discourses on human rights don’t apply to the Israeli Army.
So this chap[lain] is *both* a religious fundamentalist *and* a postmodernist? It’s more complicated than I thought… I rather suspect he is a religious fundamentalist who thinks it is clever to throw the terms of wanky shit back in the faces of ‘liberals’. Either that, or he’s an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s saying. But then it is Harvard.
And more seriously, how exactly does being hegemonic, to wit, the property of an overarching dominant class, turn a discourse into a metanarrative? A metanarrative is a *particular kind* of thing, a story about stories, an underlying form of explanation that relies upon concepts of directional change over time to account for and give shape to particular narratives within that tradition. Being in possession of a metanarrative is a property of almost all belief-systems [including, of course, post-modernism, as indicated by the ‘post-‘, a point which would be clever of me to note, had it not been made ten million times before]. Hegemony, alas, [or not, if you like that kind of thing] comes only to a few such systems. This dolphin is not a fish.
Dave- I agree that the chaplain can’t be a *genuine* post- modernist. He is using post- modernist jargon to appeal to leftist types who are only to willing to agree with him because it fits into their postmodernist viewpoint.
However, I fail to see your point in your second part. “Hegemonic” has been used in a variety of ways as far as I can see in the literature and not necessarily connected to class at all. You may argue that a “hegemonic discourse” is a *type* of metanarrative but in that case it is not as disconnected as you claim.
I can’t believe I’m having this discussion- it really isn’t important!
It’s kind of fascinating that the chaplain is both a fundamentalist and a postmodernist (of sorts) – or a Foucauldian/Gramscian mashup if you prefer. Or is the one and poses as the other – but which is which? There’s a whole bizarro-world can of worms here.
One wonders which bit Harvard thought it was hiring.
Dave, isn’t it fair to say that there is more than one sense to ‘postmodernist’? (Quite like ‘cunt’ and ‘pussy’ in fact. Oh gawd.) It has a[n] (still fuzzy but not infinitely fuzzy) academic meaning, and what one might call an attributive meaning. Lots of people call themselves postmodernists or call what they’re doing postmodernist or call some particular point they want to make ‘postmodernist’ without necessarily knowing or grasping or agreeing to the academic meaning, and there are academic postmodernists who say no postmodernism is not that it’s this – and also that there is always a lot of sliding back and forth between the two? That’s been my experience. People use the term broadly when that’s convenient and narrowly when that is – so in a way it’s not entirely fair to insist on any one narrow definition. (Just as with – oh never mind.)
I lost my grip on the syntax during that third long sentence. Take the question ‘isn’t it fair to say that’ as governing the whole comment, and then it will make sense.
The Harvard ‘Muslim Chaplin’ is warning Muslims (a Muslim?) to refrain from hastily abandoning consideration of the great wisdom of killing apostates, if tempted to by a hegemonic (huh? hegemon? (leader)) modern (boo) Human Rights (double boo) discourse.
No, Tzimisces, this discussion isn’t important. What is important is to note that a Muslim cleric is using blatantly pomo language to speak to a university constituency. Of course, he’s not a post-modernist, because he does believe in a hegemonic discourse (or type of metanarrative) known as Islam (and whether Islam is a story of stories or a discourse of discourses need not be sorted out here).
But it’s important to recognise that much of our problem with religions today is based on the facile idea that we can work intelligibly with a society in which all we have are different discourses all running in parallel, without conflict. This is basically, as I see it, what multiculturalism is all about, and it’s causing and will continue to cause harm until we recognise that here in the west, at any rate, we had a very special kind of social consensus composed of a kind of discourse (we can call it hegemonic, if that helps some people come to terms with it) in which individual rights are foundational for just social order, and other stories have to take the stories of individuals into account. Other narratives must simply learn to fit in with that primary order of discourse, and none gets to be considered to be a meta language that trumps everyone else’s narratives. And, the fact that dolphins are not fish is not to the point – they swim.
Mr. Basser wasn’t so vulgar as to ask for the death-penalty for apostates. He’s an Islamic Sir Humphrey.
Well said Eric.
Whether the chaplain’s jargon is pomo or not is not terribly important, but I will just note that I decided not to call it that, for just this reason (not an exact fit; uses pomo in the mere abuse sense rather than a more precise sense; that kind of thing) and called it Theoretical instead. It’s definitely a recognizable bit of jargon (and deliberately so, of course), but it’s not specifically postmodernist – though shares common ground with postmodernism.
In a way this question is a little important to (cough) me, because it is a charge that some people make against Why Truth Matters: that it uses the term ‘postmodernism’ broadly and abusively and sloppily, and gets everything wrong – and that’s somewhat annoying, because the charge itself gets things wrong: we in fact use the word very seldom, and when we do we use it to refer to something specific. The charge is a strawman, but more than one critic has made it.
I thought you’d like to know that.
My use of it was also quite specific: The terms “hegemonic discourse” and their ilk are part of the language used to express a very much postmodern (by any reasonable definition) position that all moral assertions are really just expressions of power relations created and imposed by those who have power on those who don’t. Of course, they are simultaneously used as “boo” words to express negative moral opinions about the content of that “hegemonic discourse” or “metanarrative” or [insert jargon-y bullshit phrasing of choice here] even though the expression of such negative moral opinions does in fact imply that the speaker/writer adheres to some universal moral norms (by which they are judging the hegemonic discourse as a bad thing) – which is in direct contradiction with their stated position that all moral assertions are really just expressions of power. The fact that some individual self-styled post-modernists have eschewed or avoided this kind of embarrassing self-contradiction does not mean that it isn’t part of the postmodern movement.
Call it post-modernism, don’t call it post-modernism, whatever: I call it self-contradictory bullshit. When actual meaning is concealed by deliberately obfuscatory rhetoric in the form of an invented jargon whose only purpose is in fact that very obfuscation (as opposed to legitimate technical jargon which generally serves to streamline communication amongst experts), all manner of intellectual dishonesty is concealed thereby. It should surprise no one that a reactionary can use the exact same jargon for what is ultimately the same purpose for which it was invented – the deliberate obfuscation of the meaning and implication of his claims.
Yeah. All that. I avoided the word basically just in order not to have to explain all that. Entirely agree about the purpose.
The pathetic irony is that the ‘hegemonic discourse’ of the UDHR was favored by a broad range of countries, including ‘Afghanistan, China, Ethiopia, India, Liberia, Pakistan, Thailand and all of the UN Member States from Central and South America.’ The chaplain’s sly implication is that the UD was imposed by The West or The Colonial Powers – but that’s false.
Questions and answers about the UDHR.
A most interesting discussion. It would seem to me that the Muslim chaplain is onto the idea that if one throws the odd pomo sounding phrase into the conversation, it might get picked up by those most likely to provide one with useful political support in future. The idea is to ratchet one’s own side up towards hegemony rather than down towards dilution in the melting pot or being knocked out of the contest altogether.
Some countries have historically been more attractive to migrants than others, resulting in the reality of the actual multiculturisms we know about. As the generations pass the original cultural borders blur, but such societies to date have retained multicultural vitality because new immigrants keep arriving and starting on the generation by generation road to accomodation and absorption into a new synthesis.
I have just visited my niece who is of Scots-Danish extraction and is married to an American Jew. They live in Melbourne, one of the great multicultural cities of the world, and also its fourth largest Greek city.
It seems that this interplay of cultures will become one not of diffusion but osmosis if semi-permeable barriers are erected, and any one culture adopts a rule that one can join it but never leave it. The model is there in the osmotic processes we know about. The end state is monopoly: ie Islam takes all.
Pomo jargonistas are just handy pawns of the moment. That is, without countervailing processes that torpedo the whole scheme.
“Terence this is stupid stuff”, says the poet.
Using the language of the infidel to lie to the infidel is a time-honored Islamic tradition. More’s the pity that we’ve handed this cleric and his faith a gibbering academic vocabulary for the purpose.
Was I too obscure above? Do I miss the point that the cleric is not lying to the infidel (though, of course, writing to a fellow Muslim) but speaking forthrightly?
My point is that postmodern vocabularies turn the world on its head. Without a wink, they can call a sulphur cloud “sulphurous” AND “perfume” at the same time.
No I got it (except for the first line!). There’s a word for it – which I don’t remember what it is. Talfiq? No.
Taqiyya. Or as the Jesuits used to say [and who knows, maybe still do?] suppressio veri, suggestio falsi.
Interestingly, if we accept Wikipedia for a moment, it means “Concealing or disguising one’s beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of imminent danger, whether now or later in time, to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya
But it makes a great stick to beat people with, if you like a good conspiracy-theory. ‘Hah, you’re all such lying liars, you even have a foreign word for it!’
Ah, thank you.
Hahaha – I know, I’ve noticed that funny thing about bristling at ‘having a word for it.’ Then again I think that may be partly about a kind of piety toward Arabic words on the part of non-Arabs, which can seem a tad ritualistic, or fundamentalist. I think there’s a whiff of that in the chaplain’s email message – I think hikma is supposed to sound more authoritative than wisdom. Invoking The Magic Name.
But I will note that it’s ironic that people who are protected by “hegemonic human rights discourse” denigrate it so readily.
Exactly. That “hegemonic” discourse is what allows a Muslim chaplain to practice in a Christian country.
And Dave, part of the problem with words like ‘hegemonic discourse’ is that they’re not clearly defined, yet are used all the time as slurs. So whether a ‘hegemonic discourse’ is the same as a ‘metanarrative’ largely depends on the pomo person using the phrase.