[ITEMS.AND.ISSUES]

REFLECTIONS ON LAïCITÉ & THE PUBLIC SPHERE

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Reading signs
Because religion is of such capital importance to the lay Republic, the latter is the final authority that determines whether the meaning of given signs is “religious.” One might object that this applies only to the meaning of symbols in public places, but since the legal distinction between public and private space is itself a governmental construct, it is always a part of the Republic’s reach.

Now, the arguments presented in the media about the Islamic headscarf affair seemed to me not so much about tolerance towards Muslims in a religiously diverse society—not even about the strict separation between religion and the state. They were first and foremost about the structure of political liberties on which this state is built, the signs that properly refer to it. The dominant position in the debate assumed that in the event of a conflict between constitutional principles the state’s right to defend its personality would trump all other rights. The state’s inviolable personality was expressed in and through particular signs, including those properly attached to the abstract individuals whom it represented, and to which they owed unconditional obedience. The headscarf worn by Muslim women was held to be a religious sign conflicting with the secular personality of the French state.

The eventual outcome of such debates about the Islamic headscarf in the media and elsewhere was the government’s appointment of a commission of enquiry charged with reporting on the question of secularity in schools. The commission was headed by ex-minister Bernard Stasi, and it heard testimony from a wide array of persons. In December 2003 a report was finally submitted to the president recommending a law that would prohibit the display of any “conspicuous religious signs” (des signes ostensibles) in public schools—including Islamic headscarves, kippas, and crosses worn around the neck. On the other hand, medallions, little crosses, stars of David, hands of Fatima or miniature Qur’ans that the report designates “discreet signs” (les signes discrets) are authorized.5 In making all these stipulations the commission clearly felt the need to appear even-handed (the secular Republic must be neutral in its treatment of various religions). The proposed law was formally passed by the National Assembly in February 2004 by an almost unanimous vote. There were some demonstrations of young Muslims—as there had been earlier when the Stasi commission had formally made its recommendation—but the numbers who openly protested were small. Most French Muslims seemed prepared to follow the new law, many reluctantly.

I begin with something the Stasi report does not engage with: According to the Muslims who are against the ban for reasons of faith, the wearing of the headscarf by women in public is a religious duty but carrying “discreet signs” is not. Of course there are many Muslims, men and women, who maintain that the wearing of a headscarf is not a duty in Islam, and it is undoubtedly true that even those who wear it may do so for a variety of motives. But I do not offer a normative judgment about Islamic doctrine; I simply note that if the wearer regards the veil as her religious duty, it becomes an integral part of herself. For her it is not a sign that can be shed at will but part of a presence that indexes an embodied doctrine. For the Stasi commission all the wearables mentioned are signs, and they are regarded as displaceable signs as though “meaningful symbol” and the materiality of the object so regarded were identical. So the symbols are taken to have a “religious” meaning by virtue of their synecdochic relation to systems of collective representation—in which, for example,the kippa stands for “Judaism,” the cross for “Christianity,” the veil for “Islam.” What a given sign signifies is therefore a central question. The process of signification is ideally rational and clear, qualities that make it capable of being rationally criticized. It is assumed that a given sign signifies another sign which is clearly identifiable as “religious.” What is ignored in this assumption, however, is the entire realm of ongoing discourses that provide authoritative interpretations. The precision and fixity accorded to the relationship of signification is always an arbitrary act and often a spurious one where embodied language is concerned.

Bernard StasiSaget / AFP

Assuming for the sake of argument that certain signs are religious, where and how may they be used to make a statement? According to the Stasi report, secularism does not insist on religion being confined to the privacy of conscience, to its being denied public expression. On the contrary, it says that the free expression of religious signs (things, words, sounds) is an integral part of the liberty of the individual. As such it is not only legitimate but essential to the conduct of public debate in a secular democracy—so long as the representatives of the different religious opinions do not attempt to dominate it.6

At first sight this liberal formulation leaves something unclear: Does willing consent to a particular religious argument by a majority of those participating in public debate amount to domination? A clear answer to this question is given in the functions of the state, for the latter doesn’t only guarantee freedom of expression but also educates everyone into becoming autonomous and so able to judge freely. In this way it “inscribes secularism as a direct descendent of the [Revolutionary] Rights of Man.”7

The determination of meanings by the commission was not confined to visible signs. It included the deciphering of psychological elements such as desire and will.

Problems of interpretation plagued the new law on the headscarf from the beginning. For example French Sikhs made a special case to the president for allowing the wearing of the turban for boys in public schools. Their argument was that since it is long hair that is prescribed for males by the Sikh religion and not the wearing of a turban, the latter was a cultural and not a religious sign, and that therefore the law banning religious signs should not apply to it. In April 2004 the ministry accepted the Sikh argument: the new law did not apply to “traditional costumes which testify to the attachment of those who wear them to a culture or to a customary way of dressing.”8 However, this apparent exception was eventually voted down in August 2004 by the National Assembly, who considered the ban to apply equally to the turban (but not to long hair) for Sikh men as an obvious religious sign. This ambiguity in interpretation was resolved by law.

The determination of meanings by the commission was not confined to visible signs. It included the deciphering of psychological elements such as desire and will. Thus the wearer’s act of displaying the sign was said to incorporate the actor’s will to display it—and therefore became part of what the headscarf meant. As one of the commission members later explained, its use of the term “displaying,” manifestant, was meant to underline the fact that certain acts embodied “the will to make appear,” volonté d’apparaitre.9 Consequently, the Muslim identity of the headscarf wearer was crucial to the headscarf’s meaning because the will to display it was read from that identity. Paradoxically, Republican law realizes its universal character through a particular (i.e., Muslim) identity in the sense of a particular psychological internality. However, the mere existence of an internal dimension that is held to be accessible from outside opens up the universal prospect of cultivating Republican selves in public schools and pointing them in the right direction.

The commission’s concern with the desires of pupils is expressed in a distinction between those who didn’t really want to wear the headscarf and those who did. It is not very clear exactly how these “genuine desires” were deciphered, although reference is made to pressure by traditional parents and communities. Referring to the verbal and physical abuse offered young women who go bareheaded in the ghettoes, the report describes the headscarf as “offering them the protection that ought to be guaranteed by the Republic.” Does it follow from this that pupils should be subjected to a sartorial rule in public schools? This may seem an odd leap, but if the rule is put in the context of the project of cultivating and governing secular subjects—who are free, equal and tolerant only as properly-formed Republican citizens—this exercise of state authority makes good sense.

However, it is worth remarking that solicitude for the “real” desires of the pupils applied only to girls who wore the headscarf. No thought appears to have been given to determining the “real” desires of girls who did not wear the headscarf. Was it possible that some of them secretly wanted to wear a headscarf but were ashamed to do so because of what their French peers and people in the streets might think and say? Or could it be that they were hesitant for more complicated reasons? However, in their case surface appearance alone was sufficient for the commission: no-headscarf worn means no-desire to wear it. In this way “desire” is not discovered but semiotically constructed.

This asymmetry in the possible meanings of the headscarf as a sign again makes sense if the commission’s concern is seen to be not simply a matter of scrupulousness in interpreting abstract evidence but of promoting a certain kind of behavior—hence the commission’s employment of the binary “coerced” or “freely chosen” in defining desire. The point is that in ordinary life the wish to choose one thing rather than another is rooted in dominant conventions, in loyalties and habits one has acquired over time, as well as in the anxieties and pleasures experienced in interaction with lovers and friends, relatives, teachers and other authority figures. But when “desire” is the objective of discipline, there are only two options: it must either be encouraged (“natural”) or discouraged (“fictitious”). And the commission was certainly engaged in a disciplining project.

So the commission saw itself as being presented with a difficult decision between two forms of individual liberty—that of girls whose desire was to wear the headscarf (a minority) and that of girls who would rather not. It decided to accord freedom of choice to the latter on majoritarian grounds.10 This democratic decision is not inconsistent with laicïté but it does conflict with the idea that religious freedom is an inalienable right of every citizen (which is what the Rights of Man articulate). Because if a right is inalienable, it is held by each citizen regardless of what the majority wants and regardless also of whether the representative government decides for commendable reasons to put certain conditions on it.11

Let me sum up what I have said so far: I have been suggesting not only that government officials decide what sartorial signs mean, but that they do so by privileged access to the wearer’s motive and will—to her subjectivity—and that this is facilitated by resort to a certain kind of semiotics. A governmental commission of inquiry claims to bring private concerns, commitments and sentiments into the public sphere in order to assess their validity for a secular Republic, but it does much more than that. It constitutes meanings by drawing on internal (psychological) or external (social) signs, encourages certain desires and emotions at the expense of others.

The report insists that secularism presupposes the independence of political power as well as of different religious and spiritual choices. The latter have no influence over the state, it says, and the state has none over them.12 However, what emerges from the report is that the relationship is not symmetrical. The state’s neutrality claims to treat all religions equally. But this does not preclude the state’s taking decisions, on the basis of public opinion, that affect the exercise of religion although religion may not intervene in matters of state. This asymmetry is a measure of sovereign power.

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