Boteva-Richter, Bianca Dhouib, Sarhan & Garrison, James - Political Philosophy From An Intercultural Perspective. Power Relations in A Global World
Boteva-Richter, Bianca Dhouib, Sarhan & Garrison, James - Political Philosophy From An Intercultural Perspective. Power Relations in A Global World
Intercultural Perspective
PART I
Interculturality as the Basis for a Philosophy of Coexistence 1
PART II
Human Being in Times of Displacement 59
PART IV
Intercultural Approaches to Reconciliation 167
Afterword 241
JAMES GARRISON
Index 245
Notes on Contributors
* Sarhan Dhouib, writing on behalf of the editorial team of himself, Bianca Boteva-
Richter and James Garrison ORCiDs—Dhouib: 0000-0003-2553-1150, Boteva-
Richter: 0000-0001-9674-9910, Garrison: 0000-0002-9173-9075.
Foreword xiii
exercise of mobility, the horizon of experience would also be broadened
and that an image of the “stranger” would no longer emerges as phan-
tasmagorically exotic or threatening. This is no doubt the case. However,
freedom of movement between poor and rich, between residents of the
so-called “Global South” and “Global North,” is anything but equal. And
mobility not only brings the possibility of temporary encounters, but also
presents us with the challenge of long-term life together with each other.
As far as the concepts of the alien or the “Other” are concerned, it can be
observed that a dichotomous configuration of the “alien” emerges in dis-
tinguishing between a “good alien” (the technical-economic or academic
elite) and an “evil,” “illegal” alien as those who could not possibly ever be
citizens or who have not yet attained this status. This shows a paradoxi-
cal logic of globalization, where in certain areas the borders are falling
and people enjoy freedom of movement, while in other areas walls are
being built and controls tightened.
Although globalization opens up new avenues for trade and the
exchange of goods around the world and thus leads to a liberalization of
international markets, it brings with it numerous economic and ethical
problems. These problems are to be viewed not individually, but in their
entirety and their mutually affective condition. The overexploitation of
natural resources, pollution, and the destruction of local traditions and
industry are each closely related to issues of justice, environmental eth-
ics, and poverty. In addition, with large supranational corporations, new
global players emerge who raise questions as to the limits of economic,
political, and cultural actions taken by nation-states, thereby raising
questions of democratic legitimacy.
In short, globalization can be interpreted as “access to” or “denial of,”
which is, in turn, reflected in different economic, political, and cultural
forms of asymmetrical power relations that need to be examined from an
intercultural perspective.
But how can intercultural philosophy contribute to analyzing asym-
metrical power relations on a global and local level? Moreover, what
solutions does it provide? How can it leave the hegemony of a North-
South divide behind and enable a mobility of ideas more broadly?
Our Volume
In the treatment of contemporary issues such as migration, persecution,
human rights violations, and poverty—all of which can be classified
locally, but also have global dimensions—the contributions in this vol-
ume bring different philosophical traditions into conversation with one
another and offer insights into philosophical reflections taking place on
different continents under different political backgrounds and cultural
contexts. These pieces all in their own way show that global political
xvi Sarhan Dhouib
problems call for a pluralistic, a decentralized, comparative, and so too
an innovative political philosophy.
The contributions by Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, Sarhan Dhouib, and
Albert Kasanda, with which the volume begins, deal with intercultural
philosophizing as the principal topic. These pieces address concerns,
conditions, and possibilities for forming intercultural philosophy, but
certainly without ignoring the difficulties of such an endeavor. The ques-
tion regarding the conditions and forms of coexistence between different
cultures is of great relevance. Here, this question is dealt with in a way
that goes beyond essentialization from different philosophical traditions,
as is the case, for example, with the humanistic terms of convivence and
sociability (“muʾānasa” [ ]مؤانسةand “taʾānus” [ ]تآنسin Arabic).5 In addition
to a demand for a political anthropology, normative issues are dealt with,
such as the importance of recognition and the justification/implementa-
tion of human rights.
With methodical approaches like terminological comparison and high-
lighting/elaborating similarities and parallels in argumentation, intercul-
tural philosophizing gains more dynamism. Against this methodological
background, an attempt is made here to grasp the complexity of the
problem of identity.
And so, working on this basis, the next five contributions are prob-
lem-oriented. While Bianca Boteva-Richter and Christopher Allsobrook
focus on migration and displacement in the second section, Plamen
Makariev, Mongi Serbaji, and José Santos Herceg deal with minority
claims, cultural poverty, and torture and its consequences. These contri-
butions reflect on the loss of home—the loss of one’s place of birth or
place of abode, with human dignity, and with status, addressing vari-
ous forms of injustice and exclusion, all of which are examined using
individual paradigmatic examples in Eastern Europe, South and North
Africa, and Latin America. These contributions offer something of a
diagnosis of the fragility of human existence in different parts of our
planet.
Meanwhile, the reflections from James Garrison, Naoko Kumagai, and
Henning Hahn, with which the volume concludes, are solution-oriented
and deal with the possibility of (re-)harmonization or reconciliation. In
particular, such considerations arise against the background of authori-
tarian regimes or violent conflicts. Reconciliation of this sort can take
place within a single society or between societies and it can address vari-
ous forms of trauma and demands for reparation. In order to deal with
these conflicts, constant contextualization is required that does justice to
the various perpetrator/victim constellations (not simply dividing par-
ties dichotomously into good/bad groups) and that takes into account
differing or conflicting social and political demands. In the various con-
texts examined here, diverse philosophical traditions are called upon in
order to test the scope of philosophical terms and to develop theoretical
Foreword xvii
solutions. Therefore, intercultural philosophizing functions as a dynamic
“laboratory” of thinking.
We hope that what we’ve cooked up in our laboratory and presented
to you counts as a successful effort. More to the point, we sincerely hope
that this volume will appeal to audiences around the world with all of
the diversity of interest that that entails. And finally, we heartily thank
Andrew Weckenmann, his colleagues, and this project’s anonymous
reviewers for their constructive support to us in realizing our vision.
Notes
1 Cf. Franz Martin Wimmer, Interkulturelle Philosophie: Eine Einführung
(Vienna: WUV, 2004).
2 Cf. Abdelkebir Khatibi, Maghreb pluriel (Paris: Denoël, 1983), 43–112;
Abdelkebir Khatibi, Plural Maghreb: Writings on Postcolonialism (London:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 19–72.
3 Cf. Tetsuro Watsuji, Watsuji Tetsuros Rinrigaku: Ethics in Japan (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1996).
4 Cf. Fethi Meskini, “Excuses, pardons et justifications ou Politiques monothé-
istes,” in Justice, droit et justification. Perspectives transculturelles, ed. Jacques
Poulain et al (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010), 121–141.
5 Cf. Fathi Triki, Philosopher le vivre-ensemble (Tunis: L’Or du Temps, 1998).
Bibliography
Khatibi, Abdelkébir. Maghreb pluriel. Paris: Denoël, 1983.
Khatibi, Abdelkebir. Plural Maghreb: Writings on Postcolonialism. Translated by
P. Burcu Yalim. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Meskini, Fethi. “Excuses, pardons et justifications ou Politiques monothéistes.”
In Justice, droit et justification. Perspectives transculturelles. Edited by Jacques
Poulain et al. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010.
Triki, Fathi. Philosopher le vivre-ensemble. Tunis: L’Or du Temps, 1998.
Watsuji, Tetsurō. Watsuji Tetsurōs Rinrigaku: Ethics in Japan. Translated by
Yamamoto Seisaku and Robert E. Carter. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1996.
Wimmer, Franz Martin. Interkulturelle Philosophie: Eine Einführung. Wien: 4,
2004.
Part I
1.1 Introductory Remarks
A long time ago, the French sociologist Alain Touraine raised the ques-
tion as to whether we would be able to live with one another, given the
cultural differences that pervade humanity.1
This unsettling question is more relevant today than it was when Alain
Touraine posed it at the end of the 1990s, since current processes of the
so-called “globalized world” do not appear to lead to an improvement
human cohabitation, but rather to things worsening. When I speak of
“human coexistence” in the context of the present essay, I do not mean
the mere “being together” in the sense of cohabitation, which would be
synonymous with the simultaneous life of people in a social space with-
out any real interaction between them. Rather, the communicative prac-
tice among different groups grants their “being together” in the same
society the quality of “conviviality.”
* “There is nothing closer and more essential to human beings, men and women, than
“our own life.”… Human life is essentially, coexistence. [And even more: it is convivial-
ity. Moving from co-existence to conviviality] signals the idea that the true challenge
of a regulatory discussion regarding the fact of human coexistence in its ambivalent
factuality, lies in the search and the establishment of the conditions that can make
possible a transformation from coexistence to a space of conviviality… Here, convivi-
ality is proposed with more precision from a horizon that opens up with the prac-
tice of “agape-love” as an alternative principle of organization of human society as
in the primitive Christian communities, and also with ways more or less equivalent
condensed in the concept of “al-ouns,” developed in the classical Arab philosophy, and
specified in a humanism of sharing. Inscribed in the horizon of this plural tradition the
proposal to transform coexistence into conviviality recovers the valuable contributions
of the current theories of recognition as well as the ethics of friendship and hospital-
ity, and points to the complementary vision of those positions with a new requirement
of an “extra,” a “plus,” of a “gratifying element,” of something “good” for coexis-
tence, more than what is due by justice alone;” see Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, “From
Coexistence to Conviviality. An Introduction,” in Living Together: Problems and
Possibilities in Today’s World. An Intercultural Approximation. Documentation of the
IX. International Conference of Intercultural Philosophy (Aachen: Wissenschaftsverlag
Mainz, 2011), 27–30.
4 Raúl Fornet-Betancourt
This question is taken up by intercultural philosophy precisely in the
sense of the challenge, which—to put it briefly—consists in a transition
from “coexistence” to “convivance”/“conviviality” into effect in societies
in the so-called globalized world.2
Before I go into more detail about how philosophy or, put more pre-
cisely, intercultural philosophy, can contribute to the task at hand, I would
like to be allowed a brief note on the premises of the belief mentioned
in the title of this chapter. Here I mean the conviction that philosophy
can and must contribute to improving human cohabitation in the world
today. In other words, it is assumed here—as can already be taken from
the title—that philosophy must in no way flee from the horrors of the
world and retreat to its famous “ivory tower.” Instead, philosophy must
deal with this horror of the world that presents itself to us in the “wrong”
type of coexistence, in order to show that this is not an inconceivable
fate, but a historical reality that can be transformed. With that said, I can
explain these requirements in more detail:
First of all, I proceed on the assumption that we obviously live together,
i.e., cohabitate, as humanity; an assumption which - to name just one
example—therefore explains or justifies what we call the “migration
crisis” today—a “technical term” that actually hides the meager will to
promote a policy of welcoming reception of migrants. In my view, this
fact alone makes it sufficiently clear that, as already mentioned, we do
poorly when it comes to cohabitating. We live in a world that calls itself
global, but is actually a world that does not universalize the general wel-
fare, instead universalizing functional structures and habits that globalize
“general evil.” Using drastic and harsh words, the liberation philosopher
Ignacio Ellacuría (murdered by the military in El Salvador in 1989) diag-
noses the poor state of coexistence, characterizing it as devastating for
humanity today.3
Secondly, it is assumed, as was already anticipated above, that this also
concerns the task of philosophy. This means that philosophy qua philoso-
phy can contribute to the process of improving human conviviality in the
contemporary world. So I presuppose that philosophy is not resigned to
resisting the frustrating feeling of powerlessness of thought and reason
against the “spectacle” of irrationality and cynicism and to taking sides
against this course of the real world insofar as it tries to reverse its inhu-
man and self-destructive direction.
In other words, I trust in the good power that philosophical reflection
can and should develop in the historical world and in people.
But how can this trust in philosophy be explained?
From my perspective and by its insight I think that philosophy is not
determined by belonging to any school or by defending any system.
Rather philosophy is above all and fundamentally defined by loyalty
to the search for a knowledge that realizes the “tender relationship”4
and is expressed as an obligation in the Greek term “philo-sophia.” So
Intercultural Philosophy 5
understood, this represents the real reason for philosophy’s characteristic
search over time; more precisely, it represents the soul of its historical
course as a constantly renewed declaration of love of wisdom as a com-
panion to humanity’s struggle for its best self. To be true to this story of
“passion” for wisdom means, more specifically, being true to a memory
of veracity and goodness, in which “obligation” also takes command, giv-
ing a present to the history belonging to philosophy’s identity, and doing
this under the given conditions of the prevailing epoch.
Therefore, in our times and in view of the subject that concerns us
in this chapter, this allegiance means an “obligation” to contextualize
and continue the story of the “tender relationship” we have spoken of
by making a determined effort to define human conviviality through
relationships, to bring forth truth and common good, which is to say,
goodness.
To underline the importance of this moment in the second premise of
our contribution, I would like to add that, in my opinion, awareness of
this memory of love for truth and goodness is what nourishes the sensibil-
ity for philosophy. So understood, this sensibility exacerbates the rupture,
torn-ness, and division of the human race, “empathizing,” like an evil that
destroys us in our own human substance by generating people with no
sense of humanity, in the punishing world of absurd violent struggle with
the life of “the Other.”5
Nor can we keep silent about the fact that this implies an obligation
for us who practice philosophy to ask ourselves self-critically whether
or not the philosophy that we are doing today acts as guardian of this
millennia-old memory.
Are we who practice philosophy, us so-called “philosophers,” aware
of this memory, or are we already part of the troupe of the “great world
theater”?6 Do we perceive the memory of philosophy as an inheritance
of an ethical reason that makes us aware of the “necessity” of the task
of overcoming humanity’s gap here, which means bad cohabitation? Or,
on the other hand, do we nourish such bad coexistence with our habits
and vanities?
In my opinion, this self-critical questioning is of crucial importance
because our answer to these questions depends not only on the meaning
and direction of our philosophical reflection, but also on the possibility
of the beginning of philosophy as part of our life. By this I want to say
that philosophy, as I understand it, neither arises from scholarship nor is
it realized as an argument about ideas. Rather, philosophy stems from the
experience that the “tender relationship” that is supposed to encompass
all beings in the historical world has been broken, or, if we prefer the
metaphor of Octavio Paz to the concept of Hölderlin, the experience of
the “broken jug.”7 Not to mention that Hegel too—to refer to a “world-
renowned philosopher”—assumed that the “need” of philosophy con-
sists in one feeling that human life lacks unifying and reconciling power.
6 Raúl Fornet-Betancourt
To put it in his words: “Divisiveness is the source of the need for phi-
losophy… When the power of unification disappears from people’s lives
and the opposites have lost their living relationship and interaction and
become independent, the need for philosophy arises.”8
Philosophy thus should arise from this experience of contradictions
that threaten to destroy the possibilities from harmony and balance in
a diverse world. This is to say that philosophy should develop from the
experience of the wounds and humiliations created by the arrogance
and presumption of a hegemonic civilization that replaces tenderness
in dealing with the world with bargaining and military engagement and
at the same time closes the horizon of dialogue for human cohabita-
tion today. Philosophy should spring from this experience today; and it
should arise from it not as a specific form of entertainment for experts in
knowledge, but as a need for the world and for humanity. It is this “bro-
ken jug” that our societies and our world in general which show that
philosophy is needed; it is the wounded reality, the memory of truthful-
ness and goodness, that the balsamic action of philosophical reflection9
is urgently needed in order to put what is broken back together again
as a whole.
Finally, there is a third requirement worth mentioning, against the
background of which the following considerations can be seen. It is the
belief that interculturality offers the method to recognize the healing
memory of humanity in all its diversity. And in this sense we assume
here that it is intercultural philosophy that looks at humanity in terms
of memory and therefore is set on that memory becoming real in today’s
divided world.
1.3 Conclusion
From the considerations in the previous section it should have become
clear that for philosophy and especially for intercultural philosophy,
the task of improving human cohabitation (as conviviality) implies the
10 Raúl Fornet-Betancourt
anthropological challenge of promoting a radical transformation of
human affectivity.
Indeed, the moments listed in the previous section make it clear that
the improvement of human cohabitation is not a question that con-
cerns merely a cognitive change or a change in mentality, i.e., a change
in the way we understand the other is required. It is also and perhaps
fundamentally the challenge of affective change, especially since human
coexistence cannot be improved without an appreciative and benevolent
assessment of “the Other,”14 without affirming that one “gladly” accepts
“the Other,” in the proposed sense, such that it becomes a locus for the
real and full humanization of people. Ultimately, it will be good affectiv-
ity that will determine whether we as humanity regain the strength for
reconciliation referenced above and direct the course of history toward a
new humanization - a humanization that we designate as new because it
is the result of a patient process of listening and of solidarity with others
in our corresponding lifeworlds.
Therefore, I would like to conclude this brief presentation with a few
questions as suggestions for an in-depth dialogue: How do we ourselves
perceive the split of the conviviality of mankind, both on epochal terms
and as people? Do we feel bad when, for example, when dealing with
migrants or refugees, we observe a lack of recognition that is owed to
others as human beings? Can we hope, or better said, both in epochal
terms and as people, can we want to activate the politics of convivial-
ity, which, beyond what is legally owed to others as citizens, promotes a
warm relationship with the alterity of “the Other” as a dimension that
we urgently need, in order to be born together within a new human uni-
versality? Can we, in other words, be born together anew within the
universality that is interpreted and lived in every human being as a way
to restore the wholeness of human life?
Notes
1 Cf. Alain Touraine, Pourrons-nous vivre ensemble? Égaux et différents (Paris:
Fayard, 1997).
2 For paradigmatic examples for this discussion in intercultural philoso-
phy, cf. Raúl Fornet-Betancourt (Ed.), Das menschliche Zusammenleben:
Probleme und Möglichkeiten in der heutigen Welt. Eine interkulturelle
Annäherung/Living Together: Problems and Possibilities in Today’s World.
An intercultural Approximation/La convivencia humana: Problemas y posibi-
lidades en el mundo actual. Una aproximación intercultural, Denktraditionen
im Dialog: Studien zur Befreiung und Interkulturalität, Vol. 32 (Aachen:
Verlag Mainz, 2011).
3 Cf. Ignacio Ellacuría, “El mal común y los derechos humanos,” in Escritos
Filosóficos, Vol. III (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 2001), 447–450.
4 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung, in
Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 4 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1981), 155–157.
Intercultural Philosophy 11
5 For more on the repugnance of our epoch, see the descriptions in the chap-
ter “La función cultural de la filosofía en tiempos de crisis” in my book:
Filosofía y espiritualidad en diálogo, Concordia Reine Monographien, Vol.
68 (Aachen: Verlag Mainz, 2016), 11–24; as well as the chapter “Meditación
intercultural sobre la adversidad de la época” in my book: Justicia,
Restitución, Convivencia. Desafíos de la filosofía intercultural en América
Latina, Concordia Reine Monographien, Vol. 62 (Aachen: Verlag Mainz,
2014), 125–140, and the Bibliography given therein.
6 For more on the classical Spanish literary giant Calderón de la Barca’s use of
the great “metaphor,” cf.. Calderón de la Barca, “El gran teatro del mundo,”
in Piezas maestras del teatro teológico español, Vol. 1 (Madrid: Biblioteca de
Autores Cristianos, 1968), 426–454.
7 Octavio Paz, “El cántaro roto,” in Poemas (1935–1975) (Barcelona: Seix
Barral, 1979), 255–259.
8 G.W.F. Hegel, Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der
Philosophie, in Werke in zwanzig Bänden, Vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), 20–22 [emphasis preserved from the original].
9 The expression “balsamic action of philosophical reflection” is inspired by
José Martí’s idea of the “balsamic solution of love.” See, for example, José
Martí, “Discurso en el Liceo Cubano, Tampa”, in Obras Completas, Vol. 4
(La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975), 267–279; and “La proce-
sión moderna”, in Obras Completas, Vol. 10, op. cit., 75–89. In other words,
José Martí could be cited as another example to support the idea that there is
a need for philosophy that basically breaks out of this painful feeling in the
face of the division of the human race.
10 Cf. José Ortega y Gasset, La rebelión de las masas, in Obras Completas, Vol.
4 (Madrid: Alianza editorial, 1983), 117–119.
11 See, for example, the theories of Paul Ricœur, Jürgen Habermas, Charles
Taylor, or Axel Honneth.
12 Please see the discussion of this question using the relevant bibliography in
my work “¿Basta el reconocimiento para vivir en justicia y sin exclusión?” in
my book: Justicia, Restitución, Convivencia. Desafíos de la filosofía intercul-
tural en América Latina, Concordia Reihe Monographien, Vol. 62 (Aachen:
Verlag Mainz, 2014), 47–60.
13 See the work in the volume cited in footnote 2.
14 In the sense of the above-mentioned critical dialogue with theories of rec-
ognition, the debate with Axel Honneth and the perspective of his love/
appreciation that developed in connection to the early work of Hegel
would be of particular interest here as a central dimension of recognition
of the other.
Bibliography
de la Barca, Calderón. “El gran teatro Chapter 1 del mundo.” In Piezas maestras
del teatro teológico español, Vol. 1, 426–454. Edited by Nicolás González Ruiz.
Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1968.
Ellacuría, Ignacio. “El mal común y los derechos humanos.” In Escritos Filosóficos,
Vol. III, 447–450. San Salvador: UCA Editores, 2001.
Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl (Ed.). Living Together: Problems and Possibilities in
Today’s World. An intercultural Approximation. Documentation of the IX.
12 Raúl Fornet-Betancourt
Intern. Conference of Intercultural Philosophy, Vol. 32. Aachen: Verlag Mainz,
2011.
Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl. “From Coexistence to Conviviality. An Introduction.”
In Living Together: Problems and Possibilities in Today’s World. An
Intercultural Approximation. Documentation of the IX. Intern. Conference of
Intercultural Philosophy, 27–31. Edited by Raúl Fornet-Betancourt. Aachen:
Wissenschaftsverlag Mainz, 2011.
Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl. “La función cultural de la filosofía en tiempos de crisis.”
In Filosofía y espiritualidad en diálogo, Concordia Reine Monographien, Vol.
68. Edited by Raúl Fornet-Betancourt. Aachen: Wissenschaftsverlag Mainz,
2016
Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl. “Meditación intercultural sobre la adversidad de la
época.” In Justicia, Restitución, Convivencia. Desafíos de la filosofía intercul-
tural en América Latina, Concordia Reine Monographien, Vol. 62. Edited by
Raúl Fornet-Betancourt. Aachen: Wisenschaftsverlag Mainz, 2014a
Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl. “¿Basta el reconocimiento para vivir en justicia y sin
exclusión?” In Justicia, Restitución, Convivencia. Desafíos de la filosofía inter-
cultural en América Latina, Concordia Reihe Monographien, Vol. 62, 47–60.
Edited by Raúl Fornet-Betancourt. Aachen: Verlag Mainz, 2014b.
Heidegger, Martin. “Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung.” In Gesamtausgabe,
Vol. 4. Edited by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Frankfurt: Klostermann,
1981.
Hegel, G.W.F. “Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der
Philosophie.” In Werke in zwanzig Bänden, Vol. 2. Edited by Eva Moldenhauer
and Karl Markus Michel Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970.
Martí, José. “Discurso en el Liceo Cubano, Tampa.” In Obras Completas, Vol. 4.
Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975a.
Martí, José. “La procesión moderna.” In Obras Completas, Vol. 10, Havana:
Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975b.
Ortega y Gasset, José. “La rebelión de las masas.” In Obras Completas, Vol. 4.
Madrid: Alianza editorial, 1983.
Paz, Octavio. “El cántaro roto.” In Poemas (1935-1975). Barcelona: Seix Barral,
1979.
Touraine, Alain. Pourrons-nous vivre ensemble? Égaux et différents. Paris:
Fayard, 1997.
2 Responses to Past Injustice
in Democratizing Societies
and the Universalization of
Human Rights
Sarhan Dhouib
2.1 Introduction
Human rights are rights that should be granted to everyone regardless
of a person’s qualities and held solely by virtue of one’s being human.
The granting of human rights is not contingent on a set of facts, but is a
normative requirement.3 In considering the evolution of conceptions of
human rights and taking a closer look at the histories of their particular
implementation within individual cultural groups, one notes, however,
considerable differences in the definition of what is considered human in
debates over human rights.
These differences must be acknowledged at the outset instead of being
ignored.4 They require differentiation of the notion of human being and
call for a historically informed approach to understand the development
of a universalistic notion of human rights. In juxtaposing norms and
facts, the question arises as to which mode of human being can be used as
the basis for a normative claim. Which rights should people be granted,
and to what extent? And at what level should the attribution of rights be
negotiated? Does it concern the individual or the person, or is it about
people as legal subjects within a constitutional state?
My contribution does not question the universality of human rights but
rather problematizes their universality within an intercultural discourse
14 Sarhan Dhouib
and attempts to reorganize the problem of the universality of human
rights from a transcultural viewpoint. A critical reflection on the experi-
ence of injustice—e.g., under authoritarian regimes in Arab states—plays
a central role in my line of argument. My approach moves the critical
function of the normative claim of human rights back to the fore, while
at the same time (as I see it) freeing us from unproductive comparisons
between Islam and the West. Being interested less in normative stances
than in process, my approach focuses less on the concept of universality
than on the process of universalization.
The first part of my chapter examines the experience of injustice as
it was articulated conceptually in the 1948 Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and in the Tunisian Pact on Rights and Liberties from
2012. I am not interested in historical arguments, for example, the
assertion that demands for human rights are always associated with
an experience of injustice. And no more is it my aim to argue that an
experience of injustice necessarily leads to the emergence or realization
of human rights. A closer look at the two declarations of human rights
makes it clear that the development and formulation of human rights are
often related to experiences of injustice.
The second part of my chapter is dedicated to explicating the concept of
universality. My main aim therein is to illuminate a notion of transcultural
universality, in which criticism arising from an experience of injustice
plays a decisive role. The question is whether, and if indeed, human rights
might be operationalized from the experience of injustice, which can in
turn lead to human rights claims with transcultural potential. The third
part will examine the question of dignity; more specifically, what does it
mean to be “living with dignity” within the context of Tunisia’s process
of democratization. Working from a philosophical basis, the processes
which can contribute to a universalization and thus to a transculturality
of human rights will thus be analyzed.
Notes
1 Hélé Béji, Nous décolonialisés. Essai (Paris: Arléa, 2008), 29–30.
2 Yadh Ben Achour, La deuxième Fâtiha. L’islam et la pensée des droits de
l’homme (Tunis: Cérès éditions, 2011), 1.
3 Cf. Hans Jörg Sandkühler, “Menschenrechte,” in Enzyklopädie Philosophie,
in 3 vols, Vol. 2, (Hamburg: Meiner, 2010), 1530–1553.
4 Cf. Georg Mohr, “Sind die Menschenrechte auf ein bestimmtes Menschenbild
festgelegt? Plädoyer für eine Umkehr der Beweislast,” in Menschenrechte in
die Zukunft denken. 60 Jahre Allgemeine Erklärung der Menschenrechte
(Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009), 65–78.
5 Cf. Christoph Menke and Arnd Pollmann, Philosophie der Menschenrechte
zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius, 2008), 42.
6 Heiner Bielefeldt, “Interview,” in Junge Akademie Magazin. Wendepunkte 10
(2009), 4.
7 Johannes Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Origins,
Drafting, and Intent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1999), 36;
cf. Johannes Morsink, “World War Two and the Universal Declaration,” in
Human Rights Quarterly 15/2 (1993), 357–405. For Morsink, the Nazi bar-
barism is the main reason for the genesis of 1948 Universal Declaration of
Human Rights: “The motif running throughout their [delegations] adoptions
and rejections ist that the war and the ideology of National Socialism as
practiced by Hitler were in themselves enough to convince them of the truth
of the rights of the Declaration. They did not need a philosophical argument
in addition to the experience of the Holocaust. […] For each of the rights
proclaimed, they went back to the experience of the war as the epistemic
foundation of the particular right in question” (Johannes Morsink, “World
War Two and the Universal Declaration,” in Human Rights Quarterly 15/2
[1993], 358).
28 Sarhan Dhouib
8 Cf. Hans Joas, Die Sakralität der Person. Eine neue Genealogie der
Menschenrechte (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), 108–146.
9 Cf. Hans Joas, Die Sakralität der Person. Eine neue Genealogie der
Menschenrechte, 147–203 and 251–281.
10 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, preamble, [https://www.un.org/en/
universal-declaration-human-rights/, accessed on December 12, 2020].
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Cf. Hans Jörg Sandkühler, “Menschenrechte,” in Enzyklopädie Philosophie,
1531.
14 International Federation for Human Rights, The Tunisian Pact on Rights
and Liberties, May 6, 2013, https://www.refworld.org/docid/518ceec716.
html, accessed on December 12, 2020; cf. the Arabic version at http://www.
calameo.com/read/00158535200d7b99bad30, accessed on December 12,
2020.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid. Emphasis added.
17 Cf. Mohamed Charfi, Mon combat pour les Lumières (Tunis: Éditions Elyzad,
2015), 47–57.
18 Ibid.
19 Article 8: “Freedom of opinion, expression, the press, publication, assem-
bly and association are guaranteed and exercised according to the terms
defined by the law. The right to organize in trade unions is guaranteed.
Political parties contribute to supervising citizens, in order to organize their
participation in political life, and they should be established on democratic
foundations. Political parties must respect the sovereignty of the people,
the values of the republic, human rights, and the principles pertaining to
personal status. Political parties pledge to prohibit all forms of violence,
fanaticism, racism and discrimination. No political party may take religion,
language, race, sex or region as the foundation for its principles, objec-
tives, activity or programs. It is prohibited for any party to be dependent
upon foreign parties or interests. The law sets the rules governing the estab-
lishment and organization of parties.” The Constitution of Tunisia, 1959,
accessed December 12, 2020. www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/tn/
tn028en.pdf.
20 Cf. Mohamed Charfi, Mon combat pour les Lumières, 47–57.
21 Ibid.
22 Cf. Muḥammad aṣ-Ṣāliḥ Flīs, Saǧīn fī waṭanī. Ṣuwar min yaumīyāt muʿtaqal
siyāsī (Tunis: Arabesques 2016), 206.
23 Heiner Bielefeldt, “Universalismus/Universalisierung,” in Enzyklopädie
Philosophie, Vol. 3 (Hamburg: Meiner, 2010), 2831–2836.
24 Cf. Heiner Bielefeldt, “Menschenrechtlicher Universalismus ohne eurozen-
trische Verkürzung,” in Gelten Menschenrechte Universal? Begründungen
und Infragestellungen (Freiburg: Herder, 2008), 98–141.
25 Heiner Bielefeldt, “Menschenrechtlicher Universalismus ohne eurozentrische
Verkürzung,” 99.
26 Gregor Paul, “Der Diskurs über ‘asiatische Werte‘,” in Menschenrechte. Ein
interdisziplinäres Handbuch (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2012), 248–252.
27 Heiner Bielefeldt, “Menschenrechtlicher Universalismus ohne eurozentrische
Verkürzung,” 102.
28 Cf. Johannes Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins,
Drafting, and Intent.
Responses to Past Injustice 29
29 Cf. Georg Lohmann, “Interkulturalismus und ‘cross-culture,’” in
Menschenrechte. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2012),
210–215.
30 Georg Lohmann, “Interkulturalismus und ‘cross-culture,’” 211.
31 Cf. Hans Küng, Projekt Weltethos (München: Piper, 2008); Hans Küng, Der
Islam. Geschichte, Gegenwart, Zukunft (München/Zürich: Piper, 2006),
663–667.
32 Karl-Josef Kuschel, “Wie Menschenrechte, Weltreligionen und Weltfrieden
zusammenhängen,” in Weltfrieden durch Religionsfrieden. Antworten aus
den Weltreligionen (München: Piper, 1993), 211.
33 Cf. Georg Lohmann, “Interkulturalismus und ‘cross-culture,’” 210–215.
34 Otfried Höffe, Vernunft und Recht. Bausteine zu einem interkulturellen
Rechtsdiskurs (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), 67.
35 Georg Lohmann, “Interkulturalismus und ‘cross-culture,’” 211.
36 Georg Lohmann, “Interkulturalismus und ‘cross-culture,’” 212.
37 Cf. Heiner Bielefeldt, Philosophie der Menschenrechte. Grundlagen eines
weltweiten Freiheitsethos (Darmstadt: WBG 1998).
38 Georg Lohmann, “Interkulturalismus und ‘cross-culture,’” 212.
39 Georg Lohmann, “Interkulturalismus und ‘cross-culture,’” 211.
40 Cf. Wolfgang Welsch, “Transkulturalität,” in Enzyklopädie Philosophie, Vol.
2 (Hamburg: Meiner 2010), 2771–2777.
41 Fathi Triki, Ethique de la dignité. Révolution et vivre-ensemble (Tunis:
Arabesques, 2018), 129.
42 “Everything remains to be thought in dialogue with the most radical thoughts
and insurgencies that have shaken the West and still do, in ways themselves
different. Let us look straight away at what is realized before us and try
to transform it according to a double critique—that of this Western legacy
and of our very theological, very charismatic, and very patriarchal heritage.
Double critique—we believe only on the revelation of the visible, the end of
all celestial theology, and mortifying nostalgia.” Plural Maghreb. Writings on
Postcolonialism (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 2.
43 Heiner Bielefeldt, “Universalismus/Universalisierung,” 2831–2832.
44 Georg Lohmann, “Interkulturalismus und ‘cross-culture,’” 213.
45 International Federation for Human Rights, The Tunisian Pact on Rights and
Liberties, May 6, 2013, https://www.refworld.org/docid/518ceec716.html.
46 ibid.
47 Cf. Fathi Triki, Philosopher le vivre-ensemble (Tunis: L’Or du Temps, 1998).
48 Fathi Triki, Ethique de la dignité. Révolution et vivre-ensemble (Tunis:
Arabesques, 2018), 88. cf. Max Horkheimer/Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic
of Enlightenment [Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente]
(New York: Herder & Herder, 1972).
49 Fathi Triki, Ethique de la dignité. Révolution et vivre-ensemble, 92–93.
50 Fathi Triki, Ethique de la dignité. Révolution et vivre-ensemble, 93–94.
51 Fathi Triki, Ethique de la dignité. Révolution et vivre-ensemble, 95; cf.
Rachida Triki, “Kunst und Widerstand,” in Sprache und Diktatur. Formen des
Sprechens, Modi des Schweigens (Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2018),
461–466.
52 Fathi Triki, Ethique de la dignité. Révolution et vivre-ensemble, 96.
53 Fathi Triki, Ethique de la dignité. Révolution et vivre-ensemble, 150.
54 Cf. Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of The Renaissance (Ann Arbor:
The University of Michigan Press, 2003), 10–25; Walter D. Mignolo, Local
Histories/Global Designs (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2000),
30 Sarhan Dhouib
314–316; Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 27–74.
55 Salah Mosbah, “Die Frage nach der Toleranz im modernen arabischen
Denken. Ein dekolonialer Ansatz,” in Toleranz in transkultureller Perspektive
(Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft 2020), 51–69.
56 Cf. Salah Mosbah, “Les valeurs de la Révolution tunisienne ou La longue
histoire de la lutte pour la Dignité/«karāma»” EU-topías 4 (2012), 106.
57 Cf. Isabelle Mayault, “La révolution égyptienne selon Žižek,” Interview in
Al-Jazeera, February, 7, 2011.
58 Cf. Seyla Benhabib, “The Arab Spring: Religion, Revolution and the Public
Square,”Transformations of the Public Sphere (2011) [https://publicsphere.ssrc.
org/benhabib-the-arab-spring-religion-revolution-and-the-public-square/].
59 Cf. Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve
Lectures [Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Zwölf Vorlesungen]
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987).
60 Salah Mosbah, “Les valeurs de la Révolution tunisienne,” 107.
61 Ibid.
62 Salah Mosbah, “Les valeurs de la Révolution tunisienne,” 108.
63 Salah Mosbah, “Les valeurs de la Révolution tunisienne,” 110.
64 Cf. Sarhan Dhouib, “Von der interkulturellen Vermittlung zur Transkulturalität
der Menschenrechte,” in Transkulturalität der Menschenrechte. Arabische,
chinesische und europäische Perspektiven (Freiburg: Karl Alber Verlag, 2013),
173–198.
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3 Negotiating African Identity
in Times of Globalization
A Comparative Approach to
Afropolitanism and Negritude
Albert Kasanda
3.1 Theoretical Background
The concept of Afropolitanism does not emerge ex nihilo. It grows in
the fertile soil of contemporary critical theories and debates, including,
for example, critiques of Western claims of universalism,4 frameworks of
black diasporic studies,5 transnational migration, and African diasporic
literature,6 to mention but a few.
The critique of Western universalism presents a complex debate, the
roots of which can be found within the framework of Western philoso-
phy. Martin Heidegger (1889–1978), a seminal Western thinker of the
twentieth century, can be viewed as the person who opened the critical
breach in the self-proclaimed creed of Western universalism thanks to his
critique of industrial civilization and his preference for the local over the
universal.7
Various Western scholars have relied on this split to denounce both
Western-centered epistemology and pretensions of universalism. This
calls to mind the work of scholars such as Foucault (1926–1984), Derrida
(1930–2004), and Deleuze (1925–1995). A French scholar, Amselle,
observes that
It is worth mentioning also that scholars in the Global South have been
addressing issues such as the provincialization of Europe9 and epistemol-
ogies from their own domains. For them, people from the Global South
are not simply victims of a system, but should instead be seen as subjects
and bearers of both the speech (la parole) and culture (une culture autre)
worthy of consideration. Works of scholars such as Said (1935–2003),10
Mudimbe,11 Bhabha,12 Mbembe,13 to mention but a few, are illuminating
in this respect.
Additionally, this line of critique extends to the epistemological turn
in cultural studies, particularly in black diasporic studies.14 As regards
black diasporic studies, for example, new researchers privilege alternative
approaches to culture in denouncing postulates of cultural purity and
biological determinism. They reject the naturalization of differences and
they support the idea of multiple affiliations.15 They highlight the advent
of hybrid cultures and new identities. For them, the idea of identity refers
to a changing construct. In this respect, Awondo observes that
Negotiating African Identity 35
Following Stuart Hall, [Paul Gilroy] shows that there is no culture
that is specifically African, American, Caribbean, but rather all of
this at the same time, it is the “black Atlantic culture” whose themes,
techniques and uses transcend ethnicity and nationality to create a
new entity.16
[that] Africa and the West are no longer seen in stark binary opposi-
tion to each other. Instead, they are perceived as part of one world,
complementary rather than in irreconcilable cultural conflict, operat-
ing with the same or similar references, world views and values.20
The whole scene speaks of the Cultural Hybrid… Were you to ask
of these beautiful, brown-skinned people that basic question—where
are you from?—you’d get no single answer from a single smiling
dancer… Home for this lot is many things: where their parents are
from; where they go for vacation; where they went to school; where
they see old friends… They belong to no single geography, but feel at
home in many.28
From the same perspective, it can be observed that Selasi describes the
Afropolitan as being tied to both Africa and Europe. She insists that
this position does not imply a reality that is torn between both conti-
nents, but instead to something that refers to a harmonious experience
of social integration and a successful professional career. In this respect,
she reminds us that there is at least one place on the African continent to
which Afropolitans attach a sense of self: be it a nation-state (Ethiopia),
a city (Ibadan), or an aunt’s kitchen. Then there is the G8 city or two (or
three) that we know like the backs of our hands.31
The idea of race is also fundamental to Afropolitan theory. Selasi uses
this concept to reject racist rhetoric, biological determinism, and nativist-
inspired ways of thinking. She considers race to be a “political matter”
that calls for an open debate regarding the ability of human beings to live
together while being different. I agree with this intuition as it applies to
societies that are beset by multiple cleavages, including political, ethnic,
economic, and religious diversity. I argue that the human condition is not
reducible to skin color. It depends on both our mutual recognition and
our political decision to “set up a society” (faire société).32 In this respect,
Selasi observes that
So, too, the way we see our race—whether black or biracial or none
of the above—is a question of politics, rather than pigment; not all
of us claim to be black…Finally how we conceive of race will accord
with where we locate ourselves in the history that produced “black-
ness” and the political processes that continue to shape it.33
Then there is that deep abyss of Culture, ill-defined at best. One must
decide what comprises “African culture” beyond pepper soup and
38 Albert Kasanda
filial piety. The project can be utterly baffling—whether one lives in
an African country or not. But the process is enriching, in that it
expands one’s basic perspective on nation and selfhood. If nothing
else, the Afropolitan knows that nothing is neatly black or white: that
to be anything is a matter of being sure of who you are uniquely.34
[Afropolitanism is] our way of being in the world, our way of “being-
world,” of inhabiting the world—all of this has always been achieved
through cultural mixing, at least of the intertwining of the worlds,
in a slow and sometimes incoherent dance with signs that we hardly
and freely chose, but that we have managed, as best we could, to
domesticate and put at our service.47
The consciousness of this intertwining between both the here and the
elsewhere, the presence of the elsewhere in the here and vice versa,
this kind of moderation of the primary roots and identities and this
way of supporting, knowingly, the strange, the foreign, and the dis-
tant, the capacity to recognize his face in the face of the foreigner and
to value the traces of the distant in the near, to domesticate the unfa-
miliar, to work with what seems to be opposite—it is this cultural,
historical, and aesthetic sensibility that the term “Afropolitanism”
expresses.55
The negro cannot deny that he is a negro nor claim for himself this
abstract colorless humanity: he is black. Thus he is cornered with
authenticity: insulted, enslaved, he stands up, he picks up the word
“negro” that has been thrown at him like a stone, he claims to be
black, in front of white, with pride.64
44 Albert Kasanda
Pursuing his observation, Sartre notes:
As will be explained later, Senghor does not fully agree with the way in
which Sartre interprets his thinking. For Senghor, negritude is above all
consciousness of one’s race. Race—the color of skin—serves as a grid to
reading African history. Tragedies such as slavery, colonization, and sub-
sequent economic exploitation can be analyzed on the basis of racial dis-
crimination. The category of race also serves as a mobilizing resource to
fight against oppression and to rehabilitate both black people’s authentic-
ity and their pride. In this regard, Senghor develops an idyllic image of
Africa that ignores the vicissitudes of the continent. In other words, his
perception of African peculiarity is fully essentialist and romanticized.
It is with emotion that he describes black beauty, the harmony of the
African universe, and the invisible bonds connecting people sharing the
same black sensibility.66
Another postulate of Senghor—obviously the most-debated one—
consists of his perception of black people as a singularity. Senghor
defines black people on the basis of comparison and antagonism with
white people. This definition is noticeable, for example, in his poem
entitled “Prayer to Masks,” in which black people are described as
mystical artists whose task is to contribute to the renaissance of the
world through emotion and rhythm, while white people are depicted
as creators of world (destructive) technologies. Concluding this poem,
Senghor notes that
I personally take issue with Senghor’s attitude opposing reason and emo-
tion, as both modes of knowledge and being are inherent in every human
being regardless of skin color. The debate on this antagonism uncovers
Senghor’s thinking about race and racism. It is worth remembering that
Europe was under the deep influence of racist theories during the first half
of the last century.71 As was already mentioned, the negritude movement
aimed at emancipating black people from racism and domination. In this
respect, Sartre’s already-mentioned observation that negritude is both the
“anti-racist racism” and the “spearhead of the liberation of black people”
should be remembered.
As has already been suggested, Senghor does not fully agree with this
statement. He argues that
What then is this Negritude which scares people, which has been
presented to you as a new racism?… How would you like us to be
racists, we who have been, for centuries, the innocent victims, the
black victims of racism? Jean-Paul Sartre is not quite right when,
in Black Orpheus, he defines Negritude as “an anti-racist racism,”
he is surely right when he presents it as a “certain affective attitude
towards the world.”73
in his poetic work and even more in his theoretical works, [Senghor]
makes abundant use of the notion of race and its derivatives: “race is
a reality,” “race with its physical qualities,” “the purity of the race,”
“the ethnic group is the race,” “pure negroes,” “the race of Saba,”
“black race,” “the race, daughter of geography and history,” “Blood,
land, land,” “the most racial literature,” “the whole peasant race,”
“immortal race,” “noble must have been your race,” “mixed blood.”74
3.4.2 Worldview
Relying on his experience as a black student in Paris in the 1930s, Senghor
believes that it was this time when he discovered that the Western world
was imperfect, being based on racial discrimination and exploitation.
Contempt for Negro-African values and cultures also characterized this
world. Subsequently, black people were required to assimilate to the
dominant and Western culture. Senghor was so shocked by this world
such that he set up an opposing African worldview, which, according to
him, is made of harmony and beauty. This project of self-assertion and
cultural rehabilitation punctuates whole of his work. Art constituted one
of his preferred means to express such a view. In this respect, Diagne
attests that
The question of art was not of purely academic interest but was
embedded in the context of the colonial negation, in which access to
freedom had the very concrete sense of the affirmation of the equal
dignity of all cultures, thus removing all legitimacy from imperial
domination.81
Negotiating African Identity 49
Senghor’s poem, “Prayer to Masks,” already mentioned here, reveals an
antagonistic and totalizing worldview. On the one hand, Senghor evokes
the world of white people, which is dominated by both reason and tech-
nology; and, on the other hand, he mentions the Negro-African world,
which is marked by emotion and rhythm. For Senghor, both worlds are
connected by a mystical link and subsequently they are fated to evolve
together towards a cultural symbiosis.82 Senghor’s postulate concerning
the complementarity of cultures and civilizations constitutes the back-
ground of his project regarding the “civilization of the universal,” which,
according to his own view, will be a common or shared work of all races
and civilizations—or will not be.83
Hybridization is, for Senghor, a sign of freedom and of overcoming the
divisions ruling the world. But his theory of hybridization turns out to be
ambiguous, and thus it is difficult to articulate with this feature kept in
place.84 Two notions of hybridization overlap in Senghor’s thought: bio-
logical and cultural. But given the context of the emergence of these inter-
sections of identity and culture, there is seemingly little doubt concerning
the applicability of Senghor’s postulate. From a cultural point of view,
the mestizo is regarded as a being without roots. The mestizo is described
as an assimilate, as a non-authentic being, whose identity appears unfin-
ished. As for the biological mestizo, it should be noted that this person
struggles mightily to obtain recognition within any racial community. In
this respect, Nouss reminds us that
3.4.3 Epistemological Paradigms
Relying on ideas developed within negritude as a discourse of identity,
my feeling is that this discourse relies on a monocultural epistemological
paradigm. This paradigm rests on a double statement: on the one hand,
it considers cultural, social, and/or ethnic identities as static and objec-
tive data of the social field. As such, and this is my second postulate,
these data are viewed as homogenous regardless of the particular time
and space in which they might be examined. In other words, this para-
digm conceives of identities as being free from all historicity, as a kind
of metaphysical substance that ignores all social, political, and economic
contexts in which human life develops.
Like a tidal wave, this paradigm looms in Senghor’s narrative on negri-
tude. As already noted, Senghor stubbornly defends the idea that emo-
tion constitutes the peculiar character of Negro-African people. He sees
rhythm as the essential contribution of black people to the reconstruction
of the world that has been degraded by technology of white people. He
sets all of this forth without paying much attention to potential for new
social and cultural configurations to emerge. Even the advent of “the civi-
lization of the universal” is conditioned on the rejection of assimilation
that somehow might lead to the idea of cultural purity.
A relevant observation by Diagne allows me to identify the ambiguity
of Senghor’s thought, and, subsequently, to re-adjust my opinion con-
cerning Senghor’s essentialism. Diagne recognizes this trait of Senghor’s
thought, which he rapidly developed, calling to mind the fluidity of
Senghor’s own thought and his back-and-forth strategy. While sharing
Diagne’s point of view, I personally insist that a permanent dichotomy
characterizes Senghor’s thought. Building on Diagne’s expression, I
note that
it is precisely not that simple, which is to say that there has never
existed, with Senghor in particular, a pure essentialism, all of a piece,
to be taken of to be left… Hybridity is always at work deconstructing
his essentialist assertions and the Senghorian obsession with mixture
is a Penelope ceaselessly making sure to undo fixed differences: “the
humanism of hybridity” could very well have been one of the poet’s
slogans.87
Negotiating African Identity 51
The narratives that both Selasi and Mbembe present concerning
Afropolitanism rest on a multicultural view of identity and value sys-
tems. For defenders of this paradigm, every identity—including African
identity—does not fall from the sky. It is a result of historical develop-
ment—the political and/or economic choices of the entities concerned.
Identity is hardly an effect of a metaphysical decree. As such, it develops
through continuous interactions between cultures. The postulate of exis-
tential experience—be it related to exodus, exile, and/or other existen-
tial contexts—contributes to freeing this paradigm from the tyranny of
essentialism.
I argue that the discourses on Afropolitanism analyzed here rely on a
multicultural epistemological paradigm. Selasi and Mbembe employ their
existential experience to approach African identity. The former refers to
the phenomenon of African migration in G8 countries, while the latter
develops the principle of “worlds in movement.” For both thinkers, as a
moving reality, African peculiarity is an issue of permanent negotiation,
since it involves a variety of parameters including, for example, time and
space, economy, politics, ethnicity, and culture, to mention but a few.
3.5 Conclusion
I would like to conclude this reflection with the point that should have
been the beginning, namely Mbembe’s observation that “Afropolitanism
is not the same thing as Pan-Africanism or Negritude.”88 This statement
accompanied every step of my exploration of the similarities and dif-
ferences between Afropolitanism and negritude. Concluding this analy-
sis, I note that both theories face the same challenge, i.e., defining what
African identity is today. They both struggle to shed light on what negro-
African peculiarity is made of amidst the current era of globalization.
In my opinion, simply conceiving of such a topic in terms of both sides
already constitutes an important point of convergence, even if differing
prospects for response result.
My analysis of African identity in light Afropolitanism relied on the
narratives of both Selasi and Mbembe. Beyond their different starting
points and respective points of emphasis, both thinkers shed light on
principles of cultural mobility, hybridity, and multiple affiliations, to
mention but a few. For each of them, African identity is far from being a
metaphysical substance; instead, it is a continuously negotiated process
regarding an African way of being in and relating to the world.
My approach to negritude focused on Senghor’s theory. For him,
negritude is awareness of being black and the determination to embrace
this fact. He conceives of the particular character of Africans in terms
of opposition to white people. For him, black people distinguish them-
selves from white people through both emotion and rhythm. White peo-
ple define themselves by both reason and technology. I have argued that
52 Albert Kasanda
Senghor relies on a monocultural epistemological paradigm and that he
perceives African identity as a reality that is defined once and forever as
a kind of essence.
Coming back to my initial question, I note that, for both Afropolitanism
and negritude, the search for African identity is not an end in and of itself.
Beyond this quest there is a supreme claim of equal human dignity. As
Ana Julia Cooper wrote:
Facing this objective, I argue that both lines of thought analyzed here
are still perfectible. They both need a permanent critical renewal to face
globalization’s challenges regarding African identity.
Notes
1 Albert Kasanda, Contemporary African Social and Political Philosophy.
Trends, Debates and Challenges (London and New York: Routledge, 2018),
128–133.
2 Cf. Taiye Selasi, “Bye Bye Babar,” The Lip Magazine (2005).
3 Cf. Achille Mbembe, “Afropolitanisme,” Africultures (2005).
4 Cf. Jean-Lou Amselle, L’Occident décroché. Enquête sur les postcolonial-
ismes (Paris: Stock, 2008).
5 Cf. Paul Gilroy, Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness.
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
6 Cf. Suzanne Gehrmann, “Cosmopolitanism with African Roots.
Afropolitanism’s Ambivalent Mobilities,” Journal of African Cultural Studies
28, no. 1 (2016).
7 Amselle, L’Occident décroché. Enquête sur les postcolonialismes, 171.
8 Amselle, L’Occident décroché. Enquête sur les postcolonialismes, 231.
(Author’s translation. Emphasis added).
9 Cf. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York:
Routledge, 2007).
10 Cf. Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London:
Penguin Classics, 2003).
11 Cf. Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and
the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1988).
12 Cf. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 2007.
13 Cf. Achille Mbembe, De la postcolonie. Essai sur l’imagination politique dans
l’Afrique contemporaine (Paris: Karthala, 2000).
14 Albert Bastenier, “Provincialiser l’Europe,” La revue nouvelle 7-8 (2010);
Armand Mattelart and Erik Neveu, Introduction aux Cultural Studies (Paris:
La Découverte, 2003), 54-59.
15 Cf. Bastenier, “Provincialiser l’Europe,” 2010.
16 Patrick Awondo, “L’afropolitanisme en débat.” Politique africaine 136 (2014):
108. (Author’s translation).
17 Gehrmann, “Cosmopolitanism with African Roots: Afropolitanism’s
Ambivalent Mobilities,” 61.
Negotiating African Identity 53
18 Cf. Hamidou Kane, C. L’aventure ambigue (Paris: Union Générale de l’édition,
2003).
19 Cf. Chinua Achebe, Le monde s’éffondre (Paris: Présence Africaine, 2000).
20 Dobrota Pucherová, “Afropolitan Narratives and Empathy: Migrants iden-
tities in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Sefi Atta’s a Bit of
Difference,” Human Affairs 28, (2018): 410.
21 Kasanda, Contemporary African Social and Political Philosophy: Trends,
Debates and Challenge, 129-140.
22 Cf. Selasi, “Bye Bye Babar,” 2005.
23 Cf. Mbembe, “Afropolitanisme,” 2005.
24 See special issue of Journal of African Cultural Studies 28, no. 1 (2016). Also,
see Jennifer Wawrzinek and J.K.S. Makokha, Negotiating Afropolitanism:
Essays on Borders and Spaces in Contemporary African Literature and
Folklore (Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2011).
25 Gehrmann, “Cosmopolitanism with African Roots. Afropolitanism’s
Ambivalent Mobilities,” 62.
26 Amatoritsero Ede, “Afropolitan Genealogies,” African Diaspora 2 (2018): 36.
27 Selasi, “Bye Bye Babar,” 2005.
28 Selasi, “Bye Bye Babar,” 2005.
29 Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism (London, New York: Verso, 2006).
30 Selasi, “Bye Bye Babar,” 2005.
31 Cf. Selasi, “Bye Bye Babar,” 2005.
32 Cf. Hannah Arendt, La condition de l’homme moderne (Paris: Pocket, 1994).
33 Selasi, “Bye Bye Babar,” 2005.
34 Selasi, “Bye Bye Babar,” 2005.
35 Cf. Ede, “Afropolitan Genealogies,”2018.
36 Ede, “Afropolitan Genealogies,” 37.
37 Selasi, “Bye Bye Babar,” 2005.
38 Cf. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (New York: Random House,
2013).
39 Sefi Atta, A Bit of Difference (Northampton: Interlink Books, 2013), 11.
40 Chielozona Eze, “Rethinking African Culture and Identity: The Afropolitan
Model,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 24, no. 2 (2014): 114–119.
41 Stephanie Bosch Santana, “Exorcizing the Future: Afropolitanism’s Spectral
Origins,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 28, no. 1 (2016): 122.
42 Emma Dabiri, “Why I Am (still) Not Afropolitan,” Journal of African Cultural
Studies 28, no. 1 (2016): 104–108.
43 Cf. Achille Mbembe, “Afropolitanisme,” Africultures. Les Modes en Relation
(2005)
44 Cf. Mbembe, “Afropolitanisme,” 2005.
45 Achille Mbembe, “African Modes of Self-Writing,” Public Culture 14, no. 1
(2002): 239–273.
46 Cf. Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony: Studies on the History of Society
and Culture (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California
Press, 2001).
47 Mbembe, “Afropolitanisme,” 2005. Author’s translation.
48 Adeshina Afolayan, “African Philosophy, Afropolitanism, and Africa,” in The
Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2017), 397.
49 Mbembe, “Afropolitanisme,” 2005. Author’s translation.
50 Mbembe, “Afropolitanisme,” 2005. Author’s translation.
51 Cf. Achille Mbembe, Critique de la raison negre (Paris: La Découverte, 2013).
54 Albert Kasanda
52 Christian Delacampagne, Une histoire du racisme (Paris: Librairie générale
francaise, 2000), 132–139.
53 Cf. Mbembe, “Afropolitanisme,” 2005.
54 Godefroid Bidima, La philosophie négro-africaine (Paris: Presses universita-
ires de France, 1985), 3.
55 Mbembe, “Afropolitanisme,” 2005. Author’s translation.
56 Mbembe, “Afropolitanisme,” 2005. Author’s translation.
57 Cf. Mbembe, Critique de la raison negre, 54–55.
58 Mbembe, Critique de la raison negre, 54.
59 Lynn Thomas, “Modernity’s Failings. Political Claims, and Intermediate
Concepts,” American Historical Review 116, no. 3 (2011): 727.
60 Thomas, “Modernity’s Failings. Political Claims, and Intermediate
Concepts,” 727.
61 Mbembe, “Afropolitanisme,” 2005. Author’s translation.
62 Léopold Sédar Senghor, Liberté 3. Négritude et civilisation de l’universel
(Paris: Seuil, 1977), 90. Author’s translation. For further comments on
negritude’s genesis and trends, see: Dismas A. Masolo, African Philosophy
in Search of Identity (Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press,
1994), 15.
63 Cf. Bennetta Jules-Rosette, “Jean-Paul Sartre and the Philosophy of Négritude:
Race, Self, and Society,” Theory and Society 36, no. 3 (2007).
64 Jean-Paul Sartre, “Orphée noir,” in Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie negre et
malgache de langue française (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), xiv.
Author’s translation.
65 Sartre, “Orphée noir,” XIV. Author’s translation.
66 Kahiudi Claver Mabana, “Léopold Sédar Senghor et la civilisation de
l’universel,” Diogene 3–4, no. 235–236 (2011), 4.
67 Léopold Sédar Senghor, Poemes (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1964), 23. Author’s
translation.
68 Cf. Léopold Sédar Senghor, Liberté I. Négritude et humanisme (Paris: Editions
du Seuil, 1964).
69 Stanislas Spero Adotevi, Négritude et négrologues (Paris: Le Castor Astral,
1998). Author’s translation.
70 Léopold Sédar Senghor, “On Negrohood: Psychology of the African Negro,”
in African Philosophy. Selected Readings (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1995),
121. Author’s translation.
71 Delacampagne, Une histoire du racisme, 157–174.
72 Sartre, “Orphée noir,” XIV. Author’s translation.
73 Senghor, Liberté I. Négritude et humanisme, 316. Author’s translation.
74 Bourahima Ouattara, “Senghor, lecteur de Barrès,” Études de lettres 2 (2017):
123. Author’s translation.
75 Senghor, Poemes, 23. Author’s translation.
76 Achille Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason (Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 2017), 48–49.
77 Pieter Boele van Hensbroek, African Political Philosophy, 1860-1995:
An Inquiry through Three Families of Discourse (Groningen: Centre for
Development Studies, University of Groningen, 1998), 159.
78 Kasanda, Contemporary African Social and Political Philosophy: Trends,
Debates and Challenges, 49.
79 Mabana, “Léopold Sédar Senghor et la civilisation de l’universel,” 4. Author’s
translation.
80 Souleymane Bachir Diagne, African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson and
the Idea of Negritude (London, New York and Calcutta: Rosalind C. Morris,
2011), 188.
Negotiating African Identity 55
81 Diagne, African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson and the Idea of
Negritude, 187.
82 Mabana, “Léopold Sédar Senghor et la civilisation de l’universel,” 5.
83 Senghor, Liberté 3. Négritude et civilisation de l’universel, 9. Author’s
translation.
84 Mabana, “Léopold Sédar Senghor et la civilisation de l’universel,” 10.
85 Alexis Nouss, Plaidoyer pour un monde métis (Paris: Les éditions Textuel,
2005), 95. Author’s translation.
86 Nouss, Plaidoyer pour un monde métis, 95–113.
87 Diagne, African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson and the Idea of
Negritude, 190.
88 Cf. Mbembe, “Afropolitanisme,” Africultures, 2005.
89 Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2000), 120–121.
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Part II
Jean Améry9 describes what a loss of belonging feels like. In his escape
he not only lost the place of his childhood. Above all, he lost the people;
he lost the people who betrayed and handed him over as a person—as
an Austrian and as a Jew. So it was not the loss of the silhouette of the
church or the smell of the forest that changed the emotional entangle-
ment with the surrounding world in the greatest possible way. The breach
in intersubjective connections pulled the ground from beneath his feet,
changed the silhouette of the topography of his existence at the time, and
made him, who had been previously connected to home, into a homeless
person for the first time.
With the help of such experiences it becomes obvious that “home” is
an a priori intersubjective concept, and Jean Améry is not the only one
who has emphasized the importance of interpersonal connections in the
interpretation of home. According to the Japanese philosopher Tesuro
Watsuji,10 humans lead a dialectical existence that consists of an indi-
vidual-social network, living both of these two aspects simultaneously.
“Home” is, according his analysis, the home of women who are not only
as individuals, but simultaneously socially connected as mothers of their/
her children, colleagues in the workplace, and citizens of a nation.11 Home
is a place where individuals and families can situate themselves and live,
and where people can experience and express values such as justice, secu-
rity, safety, and also belonging in respective interpersonal relationships of
different intensities.
Also, according to Hannah Arendt, affiliation can take on “non-
nationalistic forms,”12 which are intersubjectively constituted, woven
from interpersonal networks and acts. This interpretation of the concept
of intersubjectivity counteracts nationalistic constructs, as it is not based
64 Bianca Boteva-Richter
on a purely geographical situation. Belonging shows, according to this
way of thinking, the intimacy of a group, the members of which usually
decide who they want to include or exclude. Thus, it is intersubjective
acts that decide home and belonging, and not place of birth.
Even if the term etymologically indicates a location in many lan-
guages,13 it takes more than a local assignment to turn a place into a
home and a home into an inhabited house.14 As home is above all “secu-
rity,” Jean Améry writes, continuing:
4.2.1.1 Language as Home
Language can build such a location if it can offer a home inside and pre-
serve it by enticing us with security and belonging in intimate conversa-
tion. Language can be “home” if it can give rise to an insight into what is
The Value of Home 65
said in a familiar way and gives us ontological security.16 It thus offers a
sense of belonging17 to the commonly spoken “we” and allows it to flow
“on the way into its own.”18 Everything else is “strange” and “goes in its
search toward the site where it may stay in its wandering.”19
Therefore, if the wandering “I” is looking for a new place as home,20
it can create with the spoken “we” a mobile intersubjective network. A
network, in which a common formula is expressed and offers a real or
imaginary place of refuge.
But in the other case, in the case of its loss,21 the importance of the
language grows in a negative way, because, through its non-pronounce-
ability, home can be definitively stolen, a person dislocated, and the work
of his expulsion completed. In such a case,
The loss of language reveals the loss of home in the clearest possible way,
because in
So people first lose language, together with their home, when they set out
on their way to a new home. And, according to the previously mentioned
dual structure of existence (individual-social),24 the loss of language is
also dialectical. On the one hand, it is a real loss, outwardly, in the inter-
subjective, social area. However, on the other hand, it is an apparent loss
if the language is moved inside, in the individual domain.
In the social arena, the loss of language to the outside world expresses
itself, first intersubjectively, in an initial “between” stage and in the
original movement—the movement that is counted as the beginning of
migration and that motivates people to migrate. There is speechlessness
between person and person, and between a person and a respective new
society. In this terrible state of not yet being able to articulate themselves
again socially, in a social in-between, people are then individually thrown
back onto themselves.
However, in the domain of the individual, people speak to themselves
intrasubjectively, because in the individual part of existence, people
66 Bianca Boteva-Richter
cannot lose their language. They speak to themselves because they have
to speak and because they cannot be silent.
And in this way, by means of this natural gift, home can be transported
and taken along in the respective language. This is embedded in a sepa-
rate realm through the individual aspect and home can therein be remem-
bered, longed-for, cursed, or insulted.
But language can also be shared again and communicated with oth-
ers: with old and new companions, with old and new fellow citizens.
Through our second, social aspect of existence and in this new com-
munication, home can learn to speak again and will no longer be able
to be silenced.
Home can therefore be dislocated, transported, and re-situated, but
only through language that connects and maintains intersubjective con-
nections. And with these connections, life becomes “contemplation in
language” and this contemplation makes it possible to accept the foreign
and to make it habitable for oneself and also for others.26
This kind of “home on the move” is therefore filled and transported along
with religious practices and with the sensuality of starved perception. This
creates an invisible, placeless “home,” a mobile place that at the same
time allows a simultaneous experience of intersubjective temporality (as
past, present, and future). The concern for children or loved ones left
behind stands as the past, the present is represented by everyday effort for
a speedy reunion, and the future is dreamed of as a better life for all. All
of this intersubjective temporality can be found in the placeless space of
spirituality—in Friday prayer as well as in the liturgy. Here the intersub-
jective connection reaches from the interpersonal to the transcendental
and it is raised and thus postulated as being between a person and God.
However, this “home on the move” is fragile if it is not based on real
interpersonal connections that take place in real life. This is because in
the construction of these connections there lurks the danger of a retroac-
tive orientation and in a view that sees the old home as it no longer exists
in reality. Therefore, all the more important is the real, factually lived
spirituality, which connects the transcendental with the living intersub-
jective and transfers and translates the old home into a new one through
real and just29 intersubjective connections.
[to] lead a life between those who want to forget and preserve the
memory, between farewell and memory, loss and new beginning,
wherever it may be.31
68 Bianca Boteva-Richter
In this departure and memory, in this loss and new beginning, intersub-
jective connections oscillate between old and new loyalties, between
former and new colleagues, between old and new fellow citizens. Here
the processual nature and renewing power of the home becomes visible.
It constantly develops anew or eludes a person, depending on how one
remembers, enters, leaves, or rediscovers it. However, if new interper-
sonal connections do not hold, if the new semantics of the new place
still remain unknown and there are no helpful translators on the way
to a new life, home is then in danger of being lost for a long time or
even forever. Home is especially endangered if the loss has not yet been
overcome, but a new beginning cannot yet be made out, which is to say
if the departure and the memory still hurts, but no new welcome can
be heard.
But it is not only being in exile that presents a threat to migrants;
a return to an old home can also endanger one’s relationship with it.
After all, returning to an old home and the associated experiences can
create a fragile state. Experiences of return bear witness to our past
and present relationship with our home; they bear witness to loss, pain,
remembering, and wanting to forget. But they also open up new semi-
otic battlefields and show the fractures, the pain, the coldness of step-
ping away from home. In a certain sense, returning opens up the real
sense of the “ex-sistere,” because existence is in a certain way “out of
oneself” and “stepping out into the cold;” it is a hard, difficult, and real-
life experience.32
Upon returning, the individual-social structure of human existence
becomes apparent, because individual decisions to emigrate are situated
here, reacting to the former social or political environment, and mixing
with later opportunities and one’s individual willingness (or unwilling-
ness) to return. Remigration reflects the most varied of experiences, uses
different buttons of memory, and satisfies or disappoints the expectations
of the individual.
René König,33 for example, wrote about his own voluntary-involun-
tary return and about the feeling of foreignness in his new-old home,
noting that only people with similar experiences of exile could restore the
feeling of familiarity for him. Because of the fragmentation of his original
and new interpersonal connections, he had not actually returned home.34
He felt, that he
For the home to which we return is no longer the home it once was,
apart from the fact that we ourselves have been changed in this pro-
cess. In this sense, home is always a lost home… Basically, it refuses
to be a place that is completely known and transparent to us.37
So here, “home” and also “place,” are two ambiguous terms that need
a clear and sharp dividing line. In an attempt to get this problem under
control, they are used correlatively here: on the one hand with home or
its loss, “place” can be revealed, whereas on the other, with place or un-
place, “home” can be clearly elaborated.
The first steps of working this out have already been taken: home is
assigned a location, the soil of which is woven or constituted by interper-
sonal connections. And precisely because of these intersubjective conno-
tations, home is emotionally charged and causes pain, longing, suffering
in people amidst forced dislocation. The migrants miss their homes, just
as they miss their loved ones, and also the security of “justified trust.” It
is connections to friends, family, and colleagues that turn land into native
soil by spinning the meshes of the intersubjective web in different intensi-
ties, tying them down under social pressure, or individually fraying them.
The Japanese anthropologist Nobuko Adachi proclaims how important
interpersonal connections are for a feeling of home and belonging. She
says:
Even if you live in a big house, if there are no other people there,
you will soon realize that it is not a home. Home is the place where
people are. [Everything else is] an empty house.41
4.2.2.1 Home as Place
So home is only a home, a house full of people or a good and safe place, if
intersubjective networking works well. “Working well” means, however,
that, on the level of the person and on that of society, one can interchange
and live in a dialogical and fair cooperation, and that people are allowed
to be “authentic self.”42 Only in such a case is place a just ground, which
is built up through intersubjective exchange, through authentic indi-
vidual ability to be, as well as through well-justified trust-confidence,
recognition-familiarity. For this, however, safe environmental conditions
are required; no danger must hover over one’s own life or over the life of
family members and friends. The interweaving of biography and sociog-
raphy, as biographical and semiotic knowledge and memory, shows a
strong, equal financial and educational marbling in such cases. Life in a
“home” as a place does not just mean semiotic security: a home offers
The Value of Home 71
residents equity in the distribution of financial goods; it provides educa-
tion for all and cares for future generations. Here, citizens do not betray
a real home by denouncing the ideals of a better society, by separating
mothers from their children and sending them to distant countries to earn
a living, by putting fathers in prison as political prisoners, by forbidding
artists from practicing their crafts, and by influencing philosophers in
their thinking. If these conditions are not met, home is neither a place nor
a place of abode.
4.2.2.2 “Home” as Un-place
In cases where there is war and dictatorship, as well as in cases of inade-
quate financial support, home is not a real home: it becomes an un-place,
where staying there, persisting, or enduring is bound up with breaches
in intersubjective relationships associated with fighting, physical vio-
lence, and denunciation. “Home” becomes an un-place when political
conditions are unstable and dangerous, such that even class comrades
and neighbors become enemies, removing the intersubjective ground
from under one’s feet.43 Such experiences of injustice or of a danger-
ous home are not only addressed by Jean Améry, the Nazi resistance
fighter. Contemporary Syrian literature also records such conditions and
denounces home as a dangerous and unsafe place.44 In this case, in the
case of staying in a un-place, the intersubjective safety net is violated; it
no longer works and is torn or completely destroyed by fractures and
betrayals. “Home” then is no longer a home; it is no longer an abode or
a place, it is just an “empty house.”
But home also becomes an un-place when narratives are misused to
guide political goals or social debates. Here the connection between the
individual and society is posed on a manipulative, i.e., on a false basis.
The intersubjective social-individual connection is abused in order to
achieve egoistic and sometimes dangerous goals for society’s members.
Populist debates in recent times, especially in Europe, bear witness to this.
Nationalist parties in Germany and Austria as well as groups emerg-
ing in former Eastern Bloc nations such as Bulgaria, Poland, etc. are now
increasingly using the concept of home to form a new, strong national
identity and to mobilize their citizens.45 By working out home as a more
exclusive, but also traditionally uniform soil, which in very few cases
existed in the form depicted, they try to manipulate and rehabilitate his-
tory, closing off a supposedly homogeneous inside and trying to defend it
from an equally constructed outside.
But by manipulating and violating just, moral coexistence, the home
becomes an un-place, in which constructs of the essence of home46 are
offered as a real home, narratives from past times are brought out, and
supposedly real cultural artefacts, clothing items, eating habits along
with more intangible cultural practices and/or rituals are bundled in
72 Bianca Boteva-Richter
an essentialist way. For this purpose, retroactive artifacts and cultural
practices are bundled in a homogenizing manner in order to simplify
them and make them manageable. Here, in this construct of home, mem-
bers or affiliates should find themselves as a complete unit, wearing the
same costume, singing and dancing together, speaking in one dialect, and
responding in a restricted manner in a simple customary style.47 Here
home speaks as an un-place in the dangerous voice of unreason.
But home can also become an un-place if it is depopulated and
thus desubjectified. Mainly mothers from poorer countries in Eastern
Europe—from Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, etc.—leave their children,
spouses, and parents to earn a living in the richer countries elsewhere in
the world. Due to the migration of the mothers and/or fathers, a “falling
out of the nest” takes place not only for those who leave, but also for
those who might have stayed at home. Not only do migrants suffer a
sharp break in the intersubjective, intensive, and intimate relationships,
but also those who are left behind—spouses, parents, but above all the
children. Leaving one’s country deprives those left behind, as well as the
society left, in that that the intersubjective connections between parents
and children are reversed and perverted: the grandparents left behind
become parents, and the grandchildren become children. This perversion
of actual family structure and intimate, close intersubjective connections,
being imposed by unequal social conditions, contradicts the theory of
autonomous, self-sufficient subjects of migrants and their families.48
Figures published by UNICEF bear witness to these cases and speak
a cruel, clear language: 126,000 children were left by both parents with
relatives or grandparents in Romania in 2008,49 along with 100,000 in
2012 in Moldova,50 and 200,000 in the Ukraine.51 And in view of these
numbers, each case of which calls for reckoning for the individual people
affected, the abstractness of the terms “just,” “unjust,” “good,” and “bad”
is wiped out in practice and thus gains new etymological sharpness. Due
to biological and sociological breaches of the children concerned and
of their mothers and fathers, home is desubjectivized and becomes an
un-place, in which they are now left unloved and undersupplied. Suicide
notes from children in Romania bear witness to this in a harrowing way.52
Here “home” appears as an intersubjective network that no longer sup-
ports its members; it is a place without compassion and without justified
trust, in this case home is an un-place, a deserted location.
Spoken from their rule and being, [as] the language of a home, [as a]
language that awakens domestically and speaks in the home of the
parents’ [or of the new] house.53
But in order to manifest the final location as a place, new fellow citizens
should be given the opportunity to raise their voices and thus be able to
make their own concerns heard. Though in order to speak of success in
the transition from “I” to “we,” joint action is required, as an intersub-
jective political negotiation, where “there are no a priori characteristics
or properties of an individual, but […] a relationship of equality among
those acting equally.”54
4.3 Conclusion
In this chapter I have tried to show the value of “home” and also its
importance through lack and loss, and I have also tried to locate “home”
as intersubjective soil; a location that can be given, lost, and regained.
“Home” is occupied emotionally due to interpersonal connections and
resembles an intimate, amorous, and even “sexual” relationship, in
which people feel themselves to be in good hands or to be unloved and
abandoned.
The intersubjective home gives sure recognition and forms the interlac-
ing of semiotic-biographical memory from which people generate narra-
tives, practices, and also emotional affiliations. “Home,” however, is also
an elusive and complex place that, as an emotional zone of recognition,
trust or mistrust, lays the ground for individual-social development that
is just or unjust respectively. The loss of this emotional zone is sometimes
felt as a kind of loss of self—as the loss of the individual and also of
74 Bianca Boteva-Richter
society. In this respect, the view from the perspective of loss is not simply
a view from a camera obscura. Loss of home is the tableau for presenting
interpersonal location and shows quite well how varied and how com-
plex the relationship to home discloses itself and also how this is evalu-
ated in our era and world.
Notes
1 Kai Hammermeister, “Heimat in Heidegger and Gadamer,” Philosophy and
Literature 24, no. 2 (2000).
2 Cf. Martin Heidegger, “Sprache und Heimat (1960)” [Language and Home],
in Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens 1910-1976, GA, Vol. 13 (Frankfurt a. M.,
Germany: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983).
3 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Heimat und Sprache,” in Ästhetik und Poetik
(Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1993), 366–372.
4 Anna Krasteva, “Bulgarian Cultural Identity,” in Creating Democratic
Societies: Values and Norms, Bulgarian Philosophical Studies II, Cultural
Heritage and Contemporary Change (Washington: Council for Research in
Values and Philosophy, 1999), 214.
5 This chapter deals with the connection between the value of home and the
respective situation of migrants. In contrast to immigrants, migrants are peo-
ple who willingly or unwillingly migrate, have to leave an old home to find a
new one, and sometimes have to leave it again to move on or to return to their
old home. In contrast to immigration, which is mainly concerned with immi-
gration to a destination country and its consequences, the term migration
or migrants refers to human migration that has to do with bio- and socio-
cultural breaks and their consequences or coping with them. The migration
is therefore a multiple movement that only comes to a standstill temporarily.
Rather, immigration is understood to be a one-sided movement that brings
people and their bio- and socio-cultural experiences into a country in order
to stay there.
6 The term “globally” is not explicitly pursued here, but I understand it to mean
a world and time that on the one hand is condensed by new communication
media, but on the other hand dispersed again by the worldwide migration
movements.
7 Jean Améry, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne. Bewältigungsversuche eines
Überwältigten [Beyond Guilt and Atonement: Coping Attempts of the
Overwhelmed] (München: dtv Klett-Cotta, 1988), 62.
8 Améry, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne. Bewältigungsversuche eines
Überwältigten, 60.
9 Jean Améry is the fighter and stage name of the writer and philosopher
Hans Mayer. He was born in Austria in 1912, fled the National Socialists to
Belgium in 1938, fought in the resistance there and survived Auschwitz and
other concentration camps between 1943 and 1945. He is buried under his
maiden name, Hans Mayer, in a grave of honor at Vienna’s central cemetery.
10 “Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960) was one of a small group of philosophers in
Japan during the twentieth century who brought Japanese philosophy to
the world. He wrote important works on both Eastern and Western phi-
losophy and philosophers, from ancient Greek, to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche,
Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, and from primitive Buddhism and ancient
Japanese culture, to Dōgen (whose now famous writings Watsuji single-hand-
edly rediscovered), aesthetics, and Japanese ethics. His works on Japanese
The Value of Home 75
ethics are still regarded as the definitive studies,” see Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy online, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/watsuji-tetsuro/
11 For the dialectic being “ningen [人間]” (human-between) according to Watsuji
see: Tetsurō Watsuji, Watsuji Tetsurōs Rinrigaku. Ethics in Japan (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1996), 90.
12 Judith Butler, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Sprache, Politik, Zugehörigkeit
[Who sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging] (Zürich: dia-
phanes, 2007), 35.
13 For example, in German - Heimat/Heim is home, while in Russian and
Bulgarian this is rodina (place of birth), and in Japanese kokyoo (the place or
village of one’s birth).
14 For more on home as an inhabited house: see Nobuko Adachi, “Die Dynamik
von Rasse und Ethnizität als Kategorisierungs- und Klassifizierungsprozess:
Benennung, Rassenzuweisung und Ethnisierung in einer japanisch-brasil-
ianischen Kommune” [The Dynamics of Race and Ethnicity as a Process
of Categorization and Classification: Naming, Racial Allocation and
Ethnicization in a Japanese-Brazilian Commune], Polylog 30 (2013), 62.
15 Améry, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne. Bewältigungsversuche eines
Überwältigten, 65–66.
16 Heidegger, “Sprache und Heimat 1960” [Language and Home], 155–156.
17 Heidegger, “Sprache und Heimat 1960” [Language and Home], 156.
18 Martin Heidegger, “Language in the Poem,” in On the Way to Language
(New York: HarperOne/HarperCollins Publishers, 1982), 163.
19 Heidegger, “Language in the Poem,” 163.
20 There are many scientific studies on global migratory movements, including
the annual UNHCR report, which publishes the following figures for 2019
regarding the population affected by migration or thereby falling into UNHCR
employment: 18% of the population of both Americas, 39% of Africa, 14%
Europe, 11% Asia and Pacific, 18% Middle East and North Africa. These
are broken down in: Refugees Asylum-seekers Returnees (refugees and IDPs),
Stateless persons Internally displaced people (IDPs) and Others of concern
Venezuelans displaced abroad, see: https://www.unhcr.org/globalreport2019/
21 Cf. Améry, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne. Bewältigungsversuche eines
Überwältigten [Beyond Guilt and Atonement: Coping Attempts of the
Overwhelmed] (München: dtv Klett-Cotta, 1988).
22 Bianca Boteva-Richter, “Wie viel neue Heimat braucht der Mensch? Heimat
und Heimatlosigkeit in und durch Migration” [How much new home does a
person need? Home and homelessness in and through migration], Concordia
68 (2015), 6.
23 Heidegger, “Sprache und Heimat 1960” [Language and Home], 156.
24 According to the structure of existence worked out by Watsuji.
25 Martin Heidegger, “Die Sprache” [Language] in Unterwegs zur Sprache
(Stuttgart: Verlag Günther Neske, 2001), 11.
26 Hans Georg Gadamer, “Heimat und Sprache” [Home and Language], in
Ästhetik und Poetik I. Kunst als Aussage (Tübingen: C.B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck,
1993), 367.
27 Améry, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne. Bewältigungsversuche eines
Überwältigten, 62.
28 Martin Baumann, “Religion und ihre Bedeutung für Migranten. Zur
Parallelität von ‚fremd‘ -religiöser Loyalität und gesellschaftlicher Integration”
[“Religion and its Meaning for Migrants: On the Parallelism of ‘Foreign’
Religious Loyalty and Social Integration”], in Religion-Migration-Integration
in Wissenschaft, Politik und Gesellschaft (Berlin/Bonn: Beauftragte der
Bundesregierung für Migration, Flüchtlinge und Integration, 2004), 22.
76 Bianca Boteva-Richter
29 For more on just intersubjective connections, see: 4.2.2. Home (as Place and
Un-Place).
30 Améry, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne. Bewältigungsversuche eines
Überwältigten, 66.
31 Gadamer, “Heimat und Sprache” [Home and Language], 366.
32 Tetsurō Watsuji, FUDO. Wind und Erde. Der Zusammenhang von Klima
und Kultur [Climate and Culture: A Philosophical Study] (Darmstadt: Primus
Verlag, 1997), 8.
33 Rene König was one of the scientists, philosophers and sociologists who
returned to Germany, such as Theodor W. Adorno and Helmut Schelsky.
34 Marita Kraus, Heimkehr in ein fremdes Land: Geschichte der Remigration
nach 1945 (München: C.H. Beck, 2001), 7.
35 Kraus, Heimkehr in ein fremdes Land: Geschichte der Remigration nach
1945, 7.
36 Tetsurō Watsuji, Watsuji Tetsurōs Rinrigaku. Ethics in Japan (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1996), 90.
37 Tsutomu Ben Yagi, “‘Exiled in the Mother Tongue’. Gadamers Beitrag zur
Frage nach Heimat und Fremde” [Gadamer’s Contribution to the Question
of Home and Abroad], Polylog 31 (2014), 38.
38 Heidegger, “Sprache und Heimat 1960” [Language and Home], 156.
39 Emilian Stanev, Kradezat na praskovi [The peach thief] (Sofia: Balgarski
Pisatel, 1987), 17.
40 Giuseppe Menditto, “Nishidas bashō im Gespräch mit dem griechischen und
phänomenologischen Denken” [Nishidas bashō in Dialogue with Greek and
Phenomenological Thinking], Polylog 31 (2014), 24.
41 Adachi, “Die Dynamik von Rasse und Ethnizität als Kategorisierungs- und
Klassifizierungsprozess: Benennung, Rassenzuweisung und Ethnisierung in
einer japanisch-brasilianischen Kommune,” 62.
42 An important concept of Martin Heidegger is that of “eigentliches Selbst,” but
this is very difficult to translate into English. German–English dictionaries of
philosophical terms offer the translation as “authentic self.” See Elmar Waibl
and Philip Herdina, Dictionary of Philosophical Terms (Vienna, Cologne,
Weimar: faculras, Böhlau Verlag, 2011).
43 Améry, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne. Bewältigungsversuche eines
Überwältigten, 60.
44 Cf. Dima Wannous, The Frightened Ones (New York: Alfred A. Knopf/
Penguin Random House, 2020).
45 On the populist debates and the effects of the new nationalism in Europe see
(in addition to the reports in the press), amongst others, the widely acclaimed
analyses of the Institute for Human Science in Vienna: https://www.iwm.at/
closedbutacitve/weekly-focus/week-xi/
46 In 2016 during the election campaign for the Federal Presidential election,
countless advertising posters from almost all parties were labelled with the
essentials of their home country—mountains, traditional clothing, etc.—and
displayed throughout the city of Vienna.
47 E.g., Procedure of the FPÖ in Austria.
48 Laura Brace, “Borders of emptiness: gender, migration and belonging,”
Citizenship Studies, 17, no. 6–7 (2013), 875.
49 Anca Gheaus, “Care drain: who should provide for the children left behind?,”
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 16, no. 1
(2013), 1–23.
50 Liza Yanovich, “Children Left Behind: The Impact of Labor Migration in
Moldova and Ukraine,” in MPI Migration Information Source, January 23,
2015.
The Value of Home 77
51 Yanovich, “Children Left Behind: The Impact of Labor Migration in Moldova
and Ukraine,” January 23, 2015.
52 Gheaus, “Care drain: who should provide for the children left behind?,”
1–23.
53 Heidegger, “Sprache und Heimat (1960)” [Language and Home], 156.
54 Butler, Spivak, Sprache, Politik, Zugehörigkeit [Who sings the Nation-State?
Language, Politics, Belonging], 40.
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5 A Genealogy of
Displacement in the South
African Land Question
Christopher Allsobrook
Not long ago, here in South Africa, at a wealthy, traditional public boys’
school, Maritzburg College, three black matric pupils posted a picture of
themselves on social media, one holding a t-shirt painted with the slogan,
“EFF: our last hope of getting our land back.” This spread virally, caus-
ing a major fuss with alumni, parents, and teachers. The school brought
disciplinary charges against the three pupils. But outraged public pres-
sure soon helped the school see the error of their ways. They dropped
the charges, to investigate allegations of pervasive white racism at the
school. The EFF campaign for “expropriation without compensation”;
with conviction that the state should take white land, stolen from blacks,
without paying for it, to restore it to its rightful owners, black Africans.
It may seem odd that three matriculants, on their last day of school, were
considering land restitution. My overriding concern on the last day of
school was to get to Plettenberg Bay for a week of parties. The subse-
quent public attention revealed this had less to do with land than to do
with cultural and racial hegemony at the school, alongside a deficit of
mutual recognition..
None of these reflections ought to detract from urgent material con-
cerns regarding racially skewed ownership of the economy, including
agricultural land in South Africa, nor of enduring zones of white exclu-
sivity. Nevertheless, one may suggest that “the land question” stands in
for many economic, political, and ethical problems, of social and eco-
nomic injustice, exploitation, and alienation, which lie beyond the scope
of land reform and land restitution. To do justice to public discourse
on land, we ought to disaggregate its many meanings and to distinguish
the ideology of land discourse from direct concerns about land tenure
and land ownership. To deal with the land question, we need to widen
our analysis beyond the narrow political economic constraints of land-
reform solutions. Ideological analysis, and even ideology critique, of the
South African land question is warranted.
Or, at least, it seems warranted, until one tries to interpret the land
question as ideology. Land is an unlikely object for ideology critique. If
80 Christopher Allsobrook
land is ideology, what does that even mean? Each distinct term, land and
ideology, meaningful enough on its own, stops making sense the minute
they sit together. What could be more directly material and less ideo-
logical than the ground? How can land act as ideology? What the land
question means, as a matter of ideology, at any one time, depends on the
context of statements or claims made about it. In this chapter I examine
how land discourse functions as ideology, as an effect of displacement,
after withdrawal of the directly repressive state apparatus of the apart-
heid regime. My objective is to offer, first, a few methodological pre-
cautions for the interpretive critique of land discourse as ideology and,
second, a conceptual framework of displacement, with which to explain
the mechanism by which land discourse functions as ideology.
The end and object of conquest is to avoid doing the same thing as
the conquered (Alexander III)”31
To prove the Egyptian identity of Moses and of his faith, Freud rejects
the “folk etymology” of the story, that his Hebrew name Moshe—“the
drawer out”—was bestowed by an Egyptian princess who drew him out
of the water. First, the term is too far from “he that was drawn out of
the water” and second, he writes, “it is nonsensical to credit an Egyptian
90 Christopher Allsobrook
princess with a knowledge of Hebrew etymology.”32 Freud notices, “It
might have been expected that one of the many authors who recognized
the name Moses to be an Egyptian name would have drawn the con-
clusion;” but, perhaps, the thought that Moses was Egyptian “seemed
monstrous.” At any rate, the Egyptian name “Mose”—child—is a “not
uncommon” abridgment of the fuller form of a name, such as “Amun-
mose” (Alexander’s title when he freed Egypt), “Thut-mose” (Thothmes),
or “Ra-mose” (Ramses).33
If the universalist ideology of faith in One God was displaced
from Africa by the Scroll—since its hegemony was unsustainable
among evidence and customs that told the genealogy of its embodied
emplacement—then it is apt that it should return through the displaced
modalities of Byzantine imperial diplomacy, Islamic conquest, and
European Enlightenment. Likewise, it is apt for our South African high
priest of Black Consciousness Mogobe Ramose, who received his PhD in
Philosophy from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, then, to return to
Africa, with the fall of the colonial regime, to indict decolonization for
displacing the colonial function of imperial domination.
In developing a defetishizing, immanent critique of its universal preten-
sions to deterritorialization, Ramose deploys the language of universal
justice and human rights to fight back against syncretic, indirect rule,
with a call for the return of all land to Africans, for the redrawing of
African borders, a new international order, the right to development,
cancellation of foreign debt, and compensation for slavery and coloni-
zation.34 Decolonization, Ramose argues, makes the mistake of adopt-
ing the colonial technique of government; instead of moving on, with
state succession. This process is, “a device to protect and perpetuate the
privileges acquired through conquest in the unjust wars of colonization,”
but it “did not eliminate the African quest for historical justice.” Rather,
it imposes—in the name of historical justice—“necessity upon Africa to
correct the situation.”35
Ramose accords the cultural context of colonization with principles of
ancient Western philosophy and of medieval Christian orthodoxy. These
principles distinguish human from non-human property with honorific
distinctions of reason, or of enlightened maturity, which European con-
querors attribute to themselves, in opposition to uncivilized savages, bar-
barians or infidels.36 By virtue of conquest, “lawlessness, utter disregard
for morality, manifest injustice and the unprovoked use of armed force,
was vested in the conqueror’s title to the territory of the conquered and
absolute sovereignty over them.”37 But acquisition of title to territory and
sovereignty over it, by “fraud, forgery and use of brute force,” Ramose
explains, is invalid from “a juridical perspective.”38 That is to say, it trans-
gresses, “the line of divine justice,” and the sovereignty of a people, with
a substantive identity, within specific boundaries, which, “[i]s held by a
people in perpetuity.”39
A Genealogy of Displacement 91
Ramose ridicules Rome’s assertion of its sole and exclusive right to
universal spiritual sovereignty, invoked against Constantinople in the
Petrine Commission, with the dismissive observation of “one basic prob-
lem,” with such extraterritorial metaphysical sovereignty, which is, “to be
human is to be an embodied being…located in space and time… fixed or
located in a territory.” He concludes, “it is clear that the idea of universal
sovereignty without territory is imaginary…”40 But where, one may ask,
lies the line of divine justice; and when is the perpetuity of national sov-
ereignty? If the teleology of this African theodicy is Promised Land, then
it appears, at present, at best, utopian.
Ramose rejects the principle of extinctive prescription, which he dis-
putes as just a right of conquest, with the maxim ex injuria ius non oritur,
that is, “original lawlessness cannot change into lawfulness.” Since “a
right cannot arise from a wrong… a claim to territorial title which origi-
nates in an illegal act is invalid.” “Effective occupation and lapse of time
would not necessarily eliminate permanently this original right to terri-
tory and sovereignty over it.”41 Thus, since it was unjustly taken away,
Ramose calls for restoration of recognized sovereignty of the conquered
over their land.42 But, to whom and on whose terms does he address this
call? To the conqueror, by his law, I’d venture, which imposed a duty on
the people of Zimbabwe and South Africa to purchase back their own
land that was taken from them wrongly in the first place, violating even
Robert Nozick’s first law of just holdings. Despite this injustice, Ramose
insists, the post-colonial constitutions of Zimbabwe and South Africa
preserved the right of conquest as a juristic fact, by allowing the land
holdings of the conqueror.
Ramose contends, in addition to his appeal to historic justice, as
equilibrium, that any legitimate state must recognize we all “have an
equal right to life… which everyone must recognise, respect and protect.”
Since “food is produced on and from the land… there is an indivisible
connection between land and life,” such that, “the right to land means
at the same time the right to food and life.”43 Moreover, by the principle
of recoverability (ad repetendas res), the conquered may invoke just
war to recover this lost land, justifiably including the use of force, with
the possibility of killing.44 The grave injustice, for the independence
of Zimbabwe and South Africa, is the substitution of the struggle for
decolonization for democratization, state succession, and extinctive
prescription. The foundational land question, which demands title to
territory and sovereignty over it, is thereby reduced to a q
uestion of private
law, with special reference to land ownership, reform, and r esettlement.
Thus, a “universe of juristic facts excludes, discards and ignores a matter
of natural and fundamental justice.”45 The concession “lost sight of the
fact that the land question was a basic issue long before apartheid.”46
Moreover, Ramose adds, “This tension is sharpened particularly by the
fact that the conception of law of the indigenous conquered peoples
92 Christopher Allsobrook
does not recognize the statute of limitation.”47 Having done with the
immanent critique of universal law, he finally returns home from exiled
displacement, to conclude, “[p]rescription is unknown in African law.”48
Thus, “restitution and reparation must be counted among the basic pil-
lars of the post-conquest constitution.”49
In a later interview with Derek Hook in 2016, Ramose reflects on his
fundamental concern as follows,
There is no reason why we should be soft on the point that this is our
land (Izwe Lethu)… There is unfinished business precisely regarding
who is the owner of the land… Land ownership… does not pertain
to questions of private law, the right to private property… No, this
one is specific. It is the question of sovereign title to territory… One
would say the Izwe Lethu slogan of the PAC is still important in
today’s South Africa because today’s South Africa is yet to answer
the question.50
Hook suggests,
It is almost as if you could take that historical scene where the PAC
cautions against the problematic things that are being enshrined in the
Freedom Charter… and make the same argument today in relation
to the constitution… that contains many of the same problems. That
argument holds?
To which Ramose responds, “It holds, it holds, yes.”51 Once they had
settled property rights in the longest clause of the constitution, white
South Africa traded parliamentary for constitutional sovereignty. For this
reason, he argues, “it is not the Constitution of the people.”52 In a curi-
ous development, the African ethical concept of Ubuntu was included in
the interim constitution, deployed to defend the preference for restitu-
tion and forgiveness over retribution and punishment at the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission; then, dropped from the final constitution.
What we have now [is] a law that actively retards the process of
justice for the indigenous conquered peoples of South Africa. It is
quite ironical that most of the of the so-called negotiators includ-
ing Mandela himself were trained lawyers, how could they not see
that?… Ramaphosa, lawyer, Matthew Phosa, lawyer, Mandela, law-
yer. Where did they study the law, how could they not see? I don’t
think it makes sense! It just cannot make sense.53
To say that ubuntu was actively dropped from the constitution perhaps
understates the insidious character of displacement. Ubuntu entered law
in the “postamble” to the 1993 Interim Constitution, with a call in Act 200
A Genealogy of Displacement 93
for the divisions of apartheid “to be addressed on the basis that there is a
need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for r eparation but
not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation.” Although
there is no explicit mention of Ubuntu in the final 1996 constitution,
as Bennett explains, “with no solid legal foundation, apart from this
aspirational clause, ubuntu was then absorbed into the mainstream of
legal discourse by a series of judgments in the Constitutional and High
Courts.”54 However, this recognition has not extended to expropriation
of whites’ title deeds. Though the 1996 constitution makes allowance
for African customary law as a legitimate recourse for civil disputes, this
code stands in an inferior relationship to the Bill of Rights, including the
Property Clause, which overrides it.55
Notes
1 Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981), 12–19.
2 Christopher Allsobrook, “Phenomenology as First Philosophy,” in SA Journal
of Philosophy 33, No. 3 (2014), 323–324.
3 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, with Selections from
Parts Two and Three, Together with Marx’s “Introduction to a Critique of
Political Economy” (New York: International Publishers, 1970), chapter 3,
section 5.
4 Maeve Cook, “Adorno, Ideology and Ideology Critique,” Philosophy and
Social Criticism 27, No. 1 (2001), 9.
5 Amanda Holpuch, “They’re Dying… It is what it is,” The Guardian, Aug. 4,
2020.
6 William Beinart and Peter Delius, “The Historical Context and Legacy of the
Natives Land Act of 1913,” Journal of Southern African Studies 40, No. 4
(2014), 668.
7 Abdul Hamid Kwarteng and Thomas Prehi Botchway, “State responsibility
and the question of expropriation: A preliminary to the ‘Land Expropriation
without Compensation’ Policy in South Africa,” Journal of Politics and Law
12, No. 1 (2019), 100.
98 Christopher Allsobrook
8 Donna Hornby et al., “Introduction: Tenure Practices, Concepts and Theories
in South Africa,” Untitled: Securing Land Tenure in Urban and Rural South
Africa (Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press, 2017), 4.
9 Hornby et al., “Introduction: Tenure Practices, Concepts and Theories in
South Africa,” 5–6.
10 Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite (London: Heinemann, 1963), xvii.
11 Cf. Marianne Thamm, “Bell Pottinger has Taught Us What to Treasure in the
Long Painful Haul Back to Freedom,” Daily Maverick, Oct. 7, 2017.
12 Cf. Marianne Thamm, “Hawks Round Up Bigger Fish in the Estina Scandal
Edge Closer to Ace Magashule,” Daily Maverick, Aug. 19, 2020.
13 Cf. Thamm, “Hawks Round Up Bigger Fish in the Estina Scandal Edge Closer
to Ace Magashule,” 2020.
14 Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (London:
New Left Books, 1974), §2.
15 Peter Sloterdijk, Derrida, an Egyptian: on the Problem of the Jewish Pyramid
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 16.
16 Sloterdijk, Derrida, an Egyptian: on the Problem of the Jewish Pyramid, 12.
17 Sloterdijk, Derrida, an Egyptian: on the Problem of the Jewish Pyramid, 13.
18 Sloterdijk, Derrida, an Egyptian: on the Problem of the Jewish Pyramid,
14–15.
19 Sloterdijk, Derrida, an Egyptian: on the Problem of the Jewish Pyramid, 47.
20 Sloterdijk, Derrida, an Egyptian: on the Problem of the Jewish Pyramid, 15.
21 Sloterdijk, Derrida, an Egyptian: on the Problem of the Jewish Pyramid, 16.
22 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological
Ontology (London: Routledge, 1995), 95.
23 Mogobe Ramose, “Towards a Post-Conquest South Africa: beyond the con-
stitution of 1996,” South African Journal of Human Rights, 34, No. 3 (2018),
13.
24 Abraham Olivier, “Place and Displacement: Towards a Distopological
Approach,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 27, No. 1
(2019), 33.
25 Jeff Malpas, Place and Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 160.
26 Olivier, “Place and Displacement: Towards a Distopological Approach,” 39.
27 Olivier, “Place and Displacement: Towards a Distopological Approach,” 41.
28 Olivier, “Place and Displacement: Towards a Distopological Approach,” 42.
29 Olivier, “Place and Displacement: Towards a Distopological Approach,” 42.
30 Olivier, “Place and Displacement: Towards a Distopological Approach,” 33.
31 Plutarch, Lives, 345.
32 Sloterdijk, Derrida, an Egyptian: on the Problem of the Jewish Pyramid, 13.
33 Sloterdijk, Derrida, an Egyptian: on the Problem of the Jewish Pyramid,
14–15.
34 Mogobe Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” in
The African Philosophy Reader (London: Routledge, 2003), 542.
35 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 542.
36 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 544.
37 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 544.
38 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 548.
39 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 550.
40 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 550.
41 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 553.
42 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 552.
A Genealogy of Displacement 99
3 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 555–556.
4
44 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 556.
45 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 543.
46 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 570.
47 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 569.
48 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 569; cf.
M’Baye, ‘The African conception of law’, International Encyclopedia of
Comparative Law, vol. II, edited by U. Drobnig, et al. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr,
1974), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2589-4021_IECO_COM_020107.
49 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought,” 576.
50 Mogobe Ramose, “‘To Whom Does the Land Belong?’: Mogobe Bernard
Ramose Talks to Derek Hook,” Psychology in Society, 50 (2016), 93.
51 Ramose, “‘To Whom Does the Land Belong?’: Mogobe Bernard Ramose
Talks to Derek Hook,” 96.
52 Ramose, “‘To Whom Does the Land Belong?’: Mogobe Bernard Ramose
Talks to Derek Hook,” 97.
53 Ramose, “‘To Whom Does the Land Belong?’: Mogobe Bernard Ramose
Talks to Derek Hook,” 97–98.
54 Thomas William Bennett, “Ubuntu: an African Equity,” Potchefstroomse
Elektroniese Regsblad, 14, No. 4 (2011), 30.
55 For arguments regarding suppression of African customary rights recogni-
tion by Western legal principles in South African law, see Ndumiso Dladla,
“Towards an African Critical Philosophy of Race: Ubuntu as a Philo-Praxis of
Liberation,” Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and
Religions 6, No. 1, 39–68 (2017) and Christopher Allsobrook, “Universal
Human Rights from an African Social Contract,” in Perspectives in Social
Contract Theory, 275–318 (Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values
and Philosophy, 2018).
56 Ramose, “Justice and Restitution in African Political Thought;” Ramose,
“Justice and Restitution,” 543.
57 Avela Njwambe et al., “Ekhayeni: Rural–Urban Migration, Belonging and
Landscapes of Home in South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies,
45, No. 2 (2019), 414–415.
58 Mogobe B. Ramose, “An African perspective on justice and race,” polylog:
Forum for Intercultural Philosophy, 3 (2001), 572.
59 Cf. Bongani Fuzile, “Graveyard Scam Raking in Piles of Cash for Dodgy
Funeral Parlours,” Daily Dispatch, 20 June 2020.
60 Ramose, “An African perspective on justice and race,” 574.
61 Ramose, “An African perspective on justice and race,” 574.
62 Ramose, “An African perspective on justice and race,” 574.
63 Thembeka Kepe and Ruth Hall, “Land Redistribution in South
Africa: Towards Decolonisation or Recolonisation?” Politikon 45, No. 1
(2018), 8.
64 Ben Cousins et al., “Will formalising property rights reduce poverty in South
Africa’s ‘second economy’? Questioning the mythologies of Hernando de
Soto,” PLAAS Policy Brief 18 (2005), 2.
65 Hornby et al., “Introduction: Tenure Practices, Concepts and Theories in
South Africa,” 9.
66 Hornby et al., “Introduction: Tenure Practices, Concepts and Theories in
South Africa,” 10.
67 Steven Bantu Biko, I Write What I Like: Steve Biko. A selection of his writings
(Oxford: Heinemann, 1987), 133–134.
100 Christopher Allsobrook
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Part III
6.1 Introduction
Put briefly, my aim here is to present an idea of another form of minority
empowerment. I have called it, proceeding from Jürgen Habermas’ term
“communicative power,”1 “communicative empowerment.” I regard it as
an alternative to “traditional” forms of minority empowerment, such as
collective and group rights, as well as certain political models—consocia-
tional democracy,2 the politics of presence,3 and the participation of eth-
nic parties in political life.4 By “communicative empowerment,” I mean
development of a capacity of minority groups to legitimate in the public
sphere claims related to their status in society in such a way that public
opinion in the country would support them, thus motivating authorities
to implement appropriate public policies.
In particular, such claims would concern the social conditions for
maintaining and reproducing over time the identities of such groups with
regard to language issues, education, the media, the arts, religion, etc.
Obviously, even the strictest observance of universal, individual human
rights would not suffice to ensure proper conditions for the realization
of minority identities.5 On the other hand, the multiculturalist policies of
the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century have provoked negative
reactions among the mainstream public—in the form mostly of concerns
about the integrity of society.6 As a result, nowadays such multicultural-
ist policies have lost “momentum” in Western Europe, and nationalism
is gaining ground in most of the countries in the Central and Eastern
parts of the continent. Similar concerns have been expressed regarding
collective and group rights.7 Therefore, this “wavering” between univer-
salist and particularist approaches to cultural diversity does not seem to
be a promising way to find a satisfactory answer to the question: How
can minority identities be granted proper recognition without impairing
national integrity?
106 Plamen Makariev
That is why I think it would be a good idea to seek such an answer
in the field of public communication. If claims made by representatives
of a minority community concerning the conditions for the reproduc-
tion of its identity over time are justified before the general public, then
government policies which are more favorable for its identity would be
regarded as legitimate in public opinion. In such a case, greater oppor-
tunities that its members would get to “enjoy” their culture—e.g., to use
and develop their language, to be properly represented in the media and
in the arts, to practice their religion, etc.—would not be regarded as a
threat to the integrity of society, as has been the case with the multicul-
turalist “celebration of diversity.” Such a legitimization would be a kind
of “social contract” that would balance the interests of all of the parties
involved.
How can this be done? I rely in this respect on a methodological para-
digm which has not only been theoretically refined through the recent
decades, but has also found considerable practical application. By this,
I mean the theory and practice of public deliberation. Philosophically,
it “rests” on more than one “pillars”—the communicative approach to
reason, the theory of communicative action, the consensualist ideal of
democracy, discourse ethics, theories of the public sphere, and so forth.
The procedural criteria that differentiate public deliberation from other
modes of public communication aim at guaranteeing that the consent of
the parties in an agreement is genuine, i.e., that each of the parties has
agreed not because of coercion, or yielding to an emotional impulse, or
trust in some authority, or some other kind of manipulation. Public delib-
eration is a procedure of communication, which is designed to help the
parties come to an agreement, knowing what they are doing.
That is why, within this paradigm, it is accepted that true legitimization
can come about only through communication that meets the criteria of
public deliberation. The reason is that such communication is especially
protected from manipulation. Public legitimization has always been one
of the favorite targets of such “mischievous” activities. A rogue “player”
in politics can profit a lot from manipulating public opinion. This is all the
more true in the field of minority issues. Undertakings that have aimed at
protecting minority identities have been tarnished as subversive actions,
and the self-interests of corrupt minority leaders have been promoted
under the banner of “just” struggles for rights and freedoms. Hence, the
only possible means of legitimizing minority claims in a fair way seems
to be public deliberation.
However, the “philosophy” of public deliberation is a distinctly mod-
ernist one. A norm or a social practice is legitimate for someone if it is
approved by them in an agent-like manner,8 i.e., if it has been accepted
as justified by that person themselves, and not because someone else has
decided that this should be so. In such a case, what can be said about the
applicability of this method of legitimization with regard more precisely
The Public Legitimacy 107
to minority claims? Can we imagine, for example, people who belong
to an immigrant community in a Western European country, one which
might be characterized by traditional mores and a profoundly religious
mentality, as engaging in a publically deliberative debate?
Obviously, we cannot. That is why I will focus my study on a particular
type of minority—namely national, ethnic, and religious non-immigrant
communities in the countries of Eastern Europe. More particularly, I have
in mind groups like the Turks in Bulgaria (about 8% of the country’s pop-
ulation),9 the Serbs in Croatia (4.36%), the Hungarians in Serbia (3.53%)
and in Romania (6.5%), the Russians in Latvia (26.9%), Lithuania (5.8%)
and Estonia (24.8%), the Albanians in North Macedonia (25.2%), and
the Roma in Bulgaria (4.4%), Romania (3.3%), Hungary (3.2%). As
regards religion, the breakdown is as follows: there are Muslim popu-
lations in Bulgaria (7.78%) and North Macedonia (33.33%), Eastern
Orthodox Christian populations in Latvia (24.1%), Lithuania (4.1%)
and Estonia (16%), Roman Catholics in Albania (10.03%), Romania
(4.6%), and Serbia (5%). These groups have inhabited the places where
they live now for ages, but in most cases they have become minorities10
as a result of redistribution of territories occurring without caring for
the interests of the groups affected—for example, with the disintegra-
tion of the Ottoman Empire, the territorial changes resulting from World
Wars I and II, as well as the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet
Union. It should be noted though that a special case here is that of the
Roma minorities, whose presence in the countries where they live is due
to migrations having taken place many centuries ago.
Why do I think that it is in this social environment, that communica-
tive empowerment can help solve minority issues better than collective or
group rights, or involving minority communities in the struggles for polit-
ical power? My reason for thinking so is that these groups have inhabited
the territory of these countries for centuries. A modern mentality prevails
among their members. The reproduction of their collective identities over
time is in most cases of a self-reflective nature. Most of these people have
enough experience in participation in public communication—at least
as “consumers” of mass-media content. More generally, these communi-
ties are a part of the civil societies in their countries. In a word, there is
enough capacity available here for participation in debates which meet
the criteria of public deliberation.
The great challenge in this respect are, however, the cultural differences
between most of these communities and the mainstream public. One of
the main characteristics of public deliberation is that it is rational com-
munication. The negotiating parties are trying to come to an agreement
by convincing each other—exchanging arguments—that a given solution
would fit best the interests of all of them. In the case of the legitimiza-
tion of minority claims the arguments refer to such communities’ cultural
needs. But how can needs of this sort be assessed from without?
108 Plamen Makariev
Let us imagine that, for example, representatives of a Muslim commu-
nity in a given country argue in the social media, that the obligation to
wear a niqab is a necessary element of the self-awareness of any Muslim
woman, and that a ban on wearing such garments in public space would
hurt deeply her personality, which would be a gross injustice. Therefore,
the wearing of niqabs should be allowed everywhere, including public
institutions, schools, hospitals, etc. How can non-Muslim citizens evalu-
ate the legitimacy of such a claim? In order to do that they should be
able to assure themselves that female Muslim self-awareness does indeed
include necessarily such an element. But how can this be done? Just
by asking people? By a sociological survey? How can we be sure that
the respondents would reveal their true cultural identity, even if their
answers are anonymous? Maybe these answers would be influenced by
certain “strategic” (in the sense of Habermas’ Theory of Communicative
Action)11 considerations? Or maybe such a self-awareness, even if it does
exist, is an instance of false consciousness altogether, and should not be
encouraged by too permissive policies?
It is something of an analytical statement, that it is impossible to find
out what someone’s true identity is from an external perspective. And this
concerns not only religious, but also national and ethnic identities. How
can we know what really matters for a community to which we do not
belong—if their self-awareness is different from ours. What about a claim
regarding, for example, the names of geographical areas, rivers, towns,
villages in regions, where a minority population numerically prevails—a
claim that they should bear, beside their names in the official language of
the country, also their traditional names in the minority language? What
if such a claim is substantiated by referring to the cultural self-awareness
of the minority community—in the sense that if these places are named
exclusively in a way which feels alien to these people, they would not feel
at home in this country, they would not identify really with this nation,
etc.? How can the general public tell whether this is actually the case?
A local referendum would not be convincing enough, because the result
might be due to political propaganda, or to other factors, which have
nothing to do with how the members of this community really feel.
So, summing up, I shall be trying here to clarify how communicative
empowerment of minority communities would be possible. More spe-
cifically—how could public deliberation be used as means of legitimizing
minority claims before the public opinion in the respective country. And
the great challenge that I shall be dealing with in this regard is—how
could public deliberation be realized across the “barrier” of cultural dif-
ferences. In what follows I shall first present briefly the procedure of pub-
lic deliberation (Section 6.2); then I shall comment more extensively what
difficulties for the application of this kind of communication for legiti-
mizing minority claims arise from cultural “intransparency” (Section
6.3); and lastly, I shall sketch out the solution that I propose (Section 6.4).
The Public Legitimacy 109
6.2 Why Public Deliberation?
In most general terms, to legitimize a claim before someone means to con-
vince the interlocutor, that this claim is consistent with her own beliefs
and awareness of her interests. In cases when a decision is being made
by two or more parties, it would be legitimate for all of them, if they
accept that it is in the equal interest of each one affected. In such case the
decision would be made by consensus. In the theory of public delibera-
tion this approach to decision-making is contrasted to the majority-vote
approach.12 To make a decision by voting is characterized as doing so by
“aggregating preferences.” The alternative is to adjust the decision to the
interests of all parties which would be affected by it—and this is called
to decide by “transforming preferences.” The negotiating parties are try-
ing to convince each other to modify their claims, if necessary, so that to
achieve a balance of interests. This consensualist approach is oriented to
justice, unlike the “majoritarian” one, which leads to some people impos-
ing their will on others.
However, since times immemorial people have been fooling each other
on this matter—whether a claim, or a state of affairs is consistent with
the “other’s” beliefs and interests. When such mischiefs are done in the
field of public communication, the latter is being manipulated. As a result,
fictitious legitimacy is produced. People do believe that a claim, a norm, a
state of affairs, etc. is consistent with their understandings, values, faith,
interests. They are prepared to conform voluntarily their behavior to
such norms, to bear the consequences of such policies without objection.
However, they are wrong in doing that. Actually their judgment regard-
ing the legitimacy of norms or practices is only nominally theirs. It is in
fact predetermined by the one who has manipulated them. James Fishkin
defines manipulative communication in the following way.
Rawls, for example, points out that arguments, which refer to beliefs that
are specific for a “comprehensive doctrine” (e.g., a religion), cannot be
convincing for the public at large, and that is why they have to be supple-
mented also by generally accessible ones.21 Nancy Fraser underscores the
importance of the “sociocultural means of interpretation and communi-
cation.” She means “the historically and culturally specific ensemble of
discursive resources available to members of a given social collectivity
in pressing claims against one another.”22 In her opinion there are no
absolute means of argumentative communication that are recognized as
convincing throughout the public sphere as a whole.
Some authors claim that the “cleavages” between distinct publics are
due to class differences—a proletarian public sphere and a bourgeois
one.23 Others see cultural differences as the factor which brings about
the formation of separate religious, ethnic, racial, and gender publics.24
Besides, another difference between types of publics is discussed—
between stable ones, which are divided by substantial cultural or social
differences, on the one hand, and contingent publics, which come up in
the course of particular debates, on the other.
Audiences that coalesce into publics who talk about political issues—
and begin to enact their civic identities and make use of their civic
competencies—move from the private realm into the public one,
making use of and further developing their cultures of citizenship.25
But what exactly is the meaning of the girls’ actions? Is this an act
of religious observance and subversion, or one of cultural defiance,
or of adolescent acting—out to gain attention and prominence? Are
the girls acting out of fear, out of conviction, or out of narcissism?28
Notes
1 Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press, 1996), 486.
2 Cf. Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1977).
3 Cf. Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
4 Cf. Nancy L. Rosenblum, “Banning Parties: Religious and Ethnic Partisanship
in Multicultural Democracies,” Law & Ethics of Human Rights 1, No. 1
(2007); Christina Isabel Zuber, “Beyond Outbidding? Ethnic party strategies
in Serbia,” Party Politics 19, no. 5 (2013).
The Public Legitimacy 121
5 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship. A Liberal Theory of Minority
Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 76.
6 Brian Barry, Culture and Equality. An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism
(Polity Press, Cambridge, 2001), 300.
7 Cf. Peter Jones, “Cultures, Group Rights, and Group-Differentiated Rights,”
in Multiculturalism and Moral Conflict (New York: Routledge, 2010);
Miodrag A. Jovanović, Collective Rights: A Legal Theory (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012); Corsin Bisaz, The Concept of Group
Rights in International Law. Groups as Contested Right-Holders, Subjects
and Legal Persons 41 (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2012).
8 Cf. Peter Muhlberger, “Human Agency and the Revitalization of the Public
Sphere,” Political Communication 22, no. 2 (2005).
9 Data concerning the relative size of these minority populations are presented
according to the latest censuses by the respective countries.
10 I regard being in a non-dominant position in the societies where these people
live as decisive for the minority status of a group or category of people (cf. for
example the definition in the Report of the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights from 2010—OHCHR 2010, 2).
11 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1 (Boston:
Beacon Press 1984), 302.
12 Joshua Cohen, “Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy,” in
Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997), 411.
13 James S. Fishkin, When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public
Consultation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 6.
14 Joshua Cohen, “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy,” in The Good
Polity: Normative Analysis of the State (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1989), 23.
15 Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 306.
16 Jon Elster, “Introduction,” in Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 12.
17 John Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” University of Chicago
Law Review 64, no. 3 (1997): 807.
18 Frans H. van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of
Argumentation. The Pragma-Dialectical Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 15.
19 van Eemeren, and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation. The
Pragma-Dialectical Approach, 15.
20 Elisabeth Butler Breese, “Mapping the Variety of Public Spheres,”
Communication Theory 21, no. 2 (2011): 132.
21 Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” 784.
22 Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in
Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1989), 164.
23 Cf. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Public Sphere and Experience: Toward
an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
24 Cf. Lucas Swaine, “Deliberate and Free. Heteronomy in the Public Sphere,”
Philosophy & Social Criticism 35, no. 1–2 (2009); Jacob Z. Hess and Nathan
R. Todd, “From Culture War to Difficult Dialogue: Exploring Distinct Frames
for Citizen Exchange about Social Problems,” Journal of Public Deliberation
5, no. 1 (2009).
25 Peter Dahlgren, “Doing citizenship: The cultural origins of civic agency in the
public sphere,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 9 (2006): 275.
122 Plamen Makariev
26 Melissa Williams, “The Uneasy Alliance of Group Representation and
Deliberative Democracy,” in Citizenship in Diverse Societies (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000), 138.
27 Williams, “The Uneasy Alliance of Group Representation and Deliberative
Democracy,” 140.
28 Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2002), 117.
29 Cf. Ranjoo Seodu Herr, “Cultural Claims and the Limits of Liberal
Democracy,” Social Theory and Practice 34, no. 1 (2008).
30 Andrea Baumeister, “Gender, culture and the politics of identity in the public
realm,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 12,
no. 2 (2009): 260.
31 The founding of ethnic and religious parties is not allowed by the Constitution
of Bulgaria, but the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, a de facto Turkish
ethnic party, was registered as a nominally liberal political formation which
defends the rights and freedoms of all.
32 Baumeister, “Gender, culture and the politics of identity in the public
realm,” 267.
33 James Bohman, Public Deliberation (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2000), 6.
34 Jorge Valadez, Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy and Self-
Determination in Multicultural Societies (Oxford: Westview Press, 2001), 6.
35 Valadez, Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy and Self-Determination
in Multicultural Societies, 5.
36 Valadez, Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy and Self-Determination
in Multicultural Societies, 6–7.
37 Michael Rabinder James, Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 52.
38 Monique Deveaux, Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States
(Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 349–350.
39 Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 163.
40 Jürgen Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion. Philosophical Essays
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 18.
41 See, for example, Maria Simone, “CODEPINK Alert: Mediated Citizenship
in the Public Sphere,” Social Semiotics 16, no. 2 (2006); Robert Cavalier,
Miso Kim and Zachary Sam Zaiss, “Deliberative Democracy, Online
Discussion, and Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly),
Online Deliberation. Design, Research and Practice (2009); Tim Van Gelder,
“Cultivating Deliberation for Democracy,” Journal of Public Deliberation 8,
no. 1 (2012).
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Lijphart, Arend. Democracy in Plural Societies. New Haven: Yale University
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7 Cultural Impoverishment
The Hidden Dimension of
Global Injustice
Mongi Serbaji
7.1 Introduction
In his Theory of Communicative Action, Jürgen Habermas makes use of
the notion of “cultural impoverishment” to designate a modern process
of separation between the expert cultures and the context of communi-
cation in the lifeworld. Habermas develops this concept relying on the
Weberian thesis of the “loss of meaning” in modern societies coupled
with the cultural rationalization as a professionalized treatment of cul-
ture, i.e., sciences, moral and legal theory, and arts.1 Modifying this thesis
according to the premises of the theory of communication, Habermas
pays attention mostly to the threat this impoverishment represents to the
communicational structures of the lifeworld.2 The German philosopher
argues that it is an elitist splitting-off of expert cultures from contexts of
communicative action that is at the origin of the cultural impoverishment
of everyday communicative practice.3 However, more recently Meyer-
Bisch defined “cultural poverty,” in a juridical perspective, as a denial of
cultural human rights.4 He mentions that poverty cannot be reduced to
the privation of elementary goods. It must also be conceived as a con-
tempt of the capacities, choices, and relationships of the poor that also
signifies a huge waste of all possible sources of richness. As cultural pov-
erty could be caused by systematic disinformation and misinformation,
Meyer-Bisch concludes that it is a question of logic of impoverishment.5 In
another perspective, hermeneutical impoverishment is the term Miranda
Fricker used in order to highlight the lack of cognitive resources enabling
individuals or groups to make adequate sense of their own experiences of
injustice.6 In fact, Fricker focuses on the experiences of epistemic injus-
tices in their testimonial and hermeneutical dimensions. These dimen-
sions cluster around the inability of certain persons or groups to express
their own feelings of injustice for lack of necessary cultural and epistemic
resources such as information and education. She asserts that epistemic
injustice has to deal with “a wrong done to someone specifically in their
capacity as a knower.”7 Therefore, Fricker describes an unfair situation
characterized by a huge disparity, not only in terms of material goods
126 Mongi Serbaji
possession but also in terms of capacity to access to symbolic, cognitive,
and cultural resources. In this context, if a lack of material resources
can be associated with material poverty, a lack of cultural and cogni-
tive resources, like education, information, or academic research, would
express a situation of cultural poverty.
This multilevel use of the term cultural—or hermeneutical—
impoverishment improves its complexity as a term describing a multitude
of experiences related, at least, to three normative claims which are
communication, human rights, and justice. Habermas, departing from
a social critique, focuses on the critical aspect of this notion with regard
to the systemic conception of society and its impact on the processes of
communication. Meyer-Bisch underlines its juridical aspect as a negation
of specific human rights. Fricker, finally, situates it in the context of a
theory of (in)justice, revealing, hence, its political aspects. Each of the three
philosophers, in their own way, brings about a conception of deprivation
that is not related to material goods but related to an adequate symbolic
and cognitive apparatus. In a world where almost nothing is equally
shared, these deprivations become a factor of exclusion, marginalization,
and other unjust, and harmful practices. The victims of these deprivations
do not possess the epistemic and hermeneutic means to express the
disadvantaged situation to which they are condemned.
In its first section, this chapter endeavors to reconstruct the definition
of “cultural impoverishment,” taking these different forms of deprivation
into account. Extracting its twofold aspect as a descriptive and as a
normative-critical concept, I will try, in the second section, to describe
different situations of this kind of impoverishment and, especially, to
understand the politics and mechanisms that are feeding it on a global
scale. It is in this regard that cultural impoverishment can be regarded
as a hidden, but influential, dimension of the global injustice. Finally,
the chapter proposes an applied study of the Tunisian case that would
underline how cultural impoverishment constitutes a real challenge for a
society in democratic transition.
This means that more than one-half—56%—of all children will not
be able to read or handle mathematics with proficiency by the time
they are of age to complete primary education. The proportion is
even higher for adolescents, with 61% unable to achieve minimum
proficiency levels when they should be completing lower secondary
school.18
The ratio of pupils to trained teachers has the potential to say a lot about
the quality of education in several regions around the world. In primary
education, this ratio is for example 40:1 in low-income countries, com-
pared to 13:1 in the European Union.19
As regards international trade in cultural goods,20 Sub-Saharan African
countries, which account for 13 percent of the world population, contrib-
ute 0.23 percent of the total of global exports of cultural goods. The quan-
tity of cultural goods exported by these countries remains limited and does
not exceed 0.2 percent of the total of their international goods trade. These
shares are insignificant compared to those of, for example, European states
which control 34 percent of exports of international cultural goods.21 As
concerns scientific research, the figures also show a weak level of produc-
tion and activities in many regions compared to others. For instance, while
the world average of the number of researchers per million inhabitants
in 2017 was slightly under 1,200, in Sub-Saharan Africa the average was
only 98.22 In 2018, researchers in America have published almost 699,000
scientific documents.23 In Sweden, the number of the documents reaches
44,178,24 with approximately 4,417 documents per million inhabitants.
On the other hand, similar statistical entries from Africa and some regions
in Asia do not exceed 100 published documents per million inhabitants.
These rates summarize the situation of research institutions, expenditure
on scientific activities, and the mobility of the academics.
Cultural Impoverishment 131
Concerning the use of the Internet and access to other communication
media, the World Bank confirms that half of the world’s inhabitants did
not use the Internet in 2017.25 While in high-income countries, Internet
usage rates reached 85%, in low-income countries this number was only
16%. In the Arab World, including high-income countries, the number
of Internet users does not exceed 50% of the population. Hence, in our
globalized world, a great number of people are still deprived of a crucial
source of information. They are living at the fringes of the conduits of
communication and opinion exchange. They do not take part in the vir-
tual processes of meaning production.
Consequently, it seems that we are living in a frail world where a great
number of people are under the educational poverty line due either to a
low level of education or a complete lack of schooling. The epistemic and
cultural handicap produced by this situation is reinforced by very limited
access to the media, the Internet, and other resources of information.
However, frailty does not cover only in these alarming figures but also
points to the economic and political repercussions of this situation of
disadvantage and deprivation. Victims of cultural impoverishment are
always seen as a burden for the politics of development in a world
economy that is increasingly geared towards knowledge-based a ctivities.
Those victims are economically excluded insofar as they become
economically superfluous. At this level, cultural impoverishment feeds
the spiral of material poverty and the lack of necessary resources for
development. These economically superfluous people are also p olitically
excluded, as they are deprived of the cultural and epistemic potential
required to p articipate in public debates, to be a bearer of knowledge,
and to be visible in public space. Cultural impoverishment is a factor that
aggravates the frailty of the social, economic, and political status of its
victims.
Providing us a state of play of the lack in resources and capabilities
related to cultural production and activities, these statistics also reveal
the degree of inequity in the global distribution of cultural wealth and
poverty. In general, this inequity reflects economic disparities between
the rich and the poor countries. The map of the world’s material injus-
tice seems to coincide with a map of unequal redistribution of cultural
goods and resources. However, regardless of the fact that “increased edu-
cational inequality is linked with a higher probability of conflict,”26 we
have to pay attention to two observations:
First, this coincidence is not perfect. In many lower-middle- and
middle-income countries, governments are achieving successful e ducation
policies and devoting reasonable material resources for research and
development. In Qatar, the state with the highest GDP per capita, c oming
in at almost 69,000 USD,27 out-of-school children, adolescents, and youth
make up 10.69% of the population between 6 and 17 years old.28 In the
former Soviet republic of Georgia, where the GDP is under 4,400 USD,
132 Mongi Serbaji
the portion is about 1.95%. Yet Georgia is not an exception in this regard.
Whereas their GDP is inferior to 10,000 USD, Cuba, Iran, Kyrgyzstan,
Serbia, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, and other countries record only less than 7%
being out of school among the same age group. This means that the mate-
rial richness of a country or a society cannot exclusively explain certain
cultural impoverishment indicators. The problem is instead related to
public policies and choices, and not, precisely, to a lack of resources. This
can be illustrated by a comparison between expenditures on cultural or
scientific activities and those in other domains, especially in the military
sector.
Located in two regions of high political and military tension, the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) lead
different politics in terms of public expenditure. According to the latest
statistics, while the KSA devotes 8.8 percent of its GDP to the military
and 0.82 percent to research and development; the ROK expenditures
in these areas are respectively 2.5 and 4.23 percent. In Sweden, expen-
diture on research and development is three 3 greater than military
spending, while in the UAE it is 5 times less.29 In addition to this dis-
parity between societies, there are other levels of inequality inherent
to almost all societies and based on sex, location, social class, and eth-
nicity. According to an OECD report, belonging to a disadvantaged
socio-economic milieu in France has a significant impact on the perfor-
mance of students. The performance gap in the sciences, for example,
is the equivalent of almost four years of schooling. School has but a
limited contribution to social mobility, however. For example, adults
with tertiary-educated parents were 14 times more likely to complete
tertiary education than adults with less-educated parents.30 In the USA,
the performance gap in science is the equivalent of three full years of
schooling and only 15% of adults with parents who did not complete
upper secondary education completed tertiary education.31 Some indi-
cators show that, in 2017, 13% of dependent family members in the
lowest family income quartile had obtained a bachelor’s degree by age
24, compared with 62% of those in the highest quartile.32 Over time,
these conditions could increase the cultural and social gaps threatening
the social texture of affluent Western societies and pose real challenges
of integration to them.
Moreover, looking at respect for the cultural rights of minorities and
individuals in many countries, be they rich or low-income countries,
reveals that cultural impoverishment is not organically associated with
material poverty. Refusing any politics of difference, the repression of
free creative activities, and the drastic control of cultural production—
especially in some Arab countries—deprive the society of the diversity it
requires to activate its own intellectual and material potential. Cultural
totalitarianism is an injustice where victims are not defined on the ground
of their class membership.
Cultural Impoverishment 133
All of this consolidates the idea that the cultural impoverishment is,
mainly, a matter of policies and political decisions, expressing as well
as causing other forms of injustice. Disparities between nations and
between different categories of people in the same country attest to the
finding that the cultural impoverishment is at the core of the dynamics
of injustices. This model of impoverishment is more than an appendix
to social inequalities. However, a legitimate problematic arises here. It
consists of knowing if respect for cultural rights and the improvement of
educational and scientific research would eradicate, mutatis mutandis,
cultural impoverishment. Do not right systems, education, and science
contribute, from a certain point of view, to this impoverishment and to
the injustices it entails, by relating local cultures to Western norms and
epistemology?
From its introduction five decades ago, Bourdieu’s critical sociology
has underlined the dynamic of social exclusion infinitely reproducible
by the unequal redistribution of the symbolic capital. Pierre Bourdieu
and Jean-Claude Passeron underline the role of the school in reproduc-
ing and keeping the same domination relationship. As social institution,
the pedagogical act is an act of symbolic violence through which the
dominant social class imposes its cultural model.33 Hence, material and
symbolic poverty interminably inter-reproduce. However, the French
authors focused specifically on the symbolic violence as an expression of
the social-class domination.
In a closely related context, Axel Honneth explains how the pro-
cess of cultural exclusion functions. He especially emphasizes strategies
which systematically withhold the appropriate linguistic and symbolic
means of class-specific experiences of injustice using public education
agencies, media of cultural industry, or even public political forums.34
Social exclusion due to material poverty is duplicated and supported
by cultural exclusion due to cultural impoverishment. This impoverish-
ment is illustrated in this context by privation and control of the lan-
guage and by the narrowing of opportunities to be visible in the public
space, i.e., in media. Obliged to silence, the disadvantaged class would
be invisible.
Honneth, Bourdieu, and Passeron share more or less the same perspec-
tive. They understand the process of cultural exclusion as a mechanism of
social control used by the dominant classes. In this perspective, cultural
impoverishment takes the form of a deprivation of the material resources
that are necessary to attend to the social production of meaning and
of cultural expressions. The victims of this deprivation are resigned to
silence. This can give an overview as to how the cultural impoverishment
becomes a strategy of social domination in an unjust society. But the
schema seems to be incomplete. In fact, this perspective would hide the
global aspect of cultural exclusion which erodes the ability of individuals
and communities to be visible and to confirm their existence in global
134 Mongi Serbaji
intercultural spheres. The production and use of knowledge, the spread
and treatment of information, and the capitalization of mainstream
media and cultural industries systematically widen the gap between cul-
turally dominant societies, who control “symbolic capital,” and cultur-
ally impoverished groups. This leads to a fatal elimination of diversities:
diversity of public opinions, diversity of culture, and diversity of identity,
etc. As Habermas noted, the lifeworld seems to be ignored as a con-
text of communication, but it is not as he described in 1981 because of
the elitist spilling-off of culture,35 but because culture is becoming less
and less a human activity that enhances understanding and conviviality.
Instead, culture is an industry that is economically and politically gain-
ful. Culture’s value is often reduced to its economic dividend: tourism,
amusement, cinema, etc. Social domination in the local field depends on
a culture’s ability of adaptation with the transnational forms of domina-
tion. Corrupted local authorities, often supported by Western democra-
cies, contribute to the sustainability of the policies of domination and
cultural impoverishment. However, the divide in this context is not only,
materially structured, i.e., rich dominant societies vs. poor dominated
societies. The situation is more complex. Global cultural hegemony
seems to be a structural aspect of modern Western thinking. There are
even some well-to-do Asian and Middle-Eastern societies that have been
exposed to the challenge of impoverishment caused by the hegemonic
tendency of modernity. Relying on Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ thesis
about cultural hegemony and the cognitive injustice it entails, I would
identify some aspects of cultural impoverishment that are instances of
global injustices.
The Portuguese sociologist defines “cognitive injustice” as scorn for
the knowledge and wisdom of the world on behalf of the monopoly of
science and the technologies sanctioned by science.36 This knowledge is
viewed as mere incomprehensible beliefs, idolatry, and magic. He argues
that modern Western thinking is abyssal thinking, since it supposes an
epistemic and juridical divide between modern Western societies and
other societies. On the epistemic level, this division has created a chasm
between the realm of scientific-rational knowledge associated with the
modern, Western societies and the realm of ignorance and idolatry con-
nected with colonized territories. Santos explains that this divide haunts
the political and social imaginary of Western societies and it leads to a
devaluation—nay a “radical negation”37—of the culture and knowledge
of others. Indeed, the logic through which colonized societies are treated
exhibits the complex duality of appropriation/violence. He attests that
− The independent state has failed to build policies for citizenship inte-
gration that enhance liberties of expression, of publication, media, and
even academic liberties. In addition to social injustices, social integra-
tion is enhanced by an unequal distribution of material and cultural
wealth between regions and between social classes. Improvement of
living standards after independence has been accompanied by grow-
ing social inequalities and by concentration of wealth, income, and
investments in the littoral regions.62 Modernization as an openness to
the Western culture failed to foreground a political culture of democ-
racy and human rights.
− The state has a clear penchant for controlling cultural and symbolic
production, including religion, as an efficient mean to dominate
society. The secularist aspect of the state did not prevent a certain
complex relationship with religion. Once the dominant political
elite came into an ideological conflict with the religious establish-
ment, the Al-Zaytuna Mosque, and with the traditional forms of
religiosity, it hurried to completely submit religious concerns to the
control of state power. The official institutions of the state, namely
the Office of Fatwa63 and the Higher Islamic Council,64 monopo-
lized the right to interpret religious texts.65 This monopoly may
have temporarily limited the orthodox and intolerant tendency
of some religious-political groups, but it has, at the same time,
precluded also the accumulation of rational critiques of religious
discourse.
7.5 Conclusion
Cultural impoverishment as a consequence of political impositions of a
narrow understanding and interpretation of the culture is not specific to
the Tunisian case. Other Arab and Muslim countries impose an official
understanding of traditions. This is a part of such states’ control over
142 Mongi Serbaji
society. They do not tolerate any politics of difference and show no
respect to cultural rights. In this context, cultural impoverishment is not
the result of material poverty; it is, rather, the result of state policies.
This local process of impoverishment is accentuated by the hegemonic
aspect of Western globalized culture. It must be taken seriously as a factor
behind local and global injustice.
In this chapter, we have been primarily interested in the global dimen-
sion. On the one hand, the obvious inequities between countries and
between regions in the areas of education, scientific and cultural produc-
tion, media and information, etc. feed social and economic injustices. It
gives the image of a divided world where surplus and excessive posses-
sions here coexist with lack and dispossession there. On the other hand,
modern globalization contributes to the impoverishment of local cultures
by imposing its own epistemology, i.e., its own understanding of the
world. In this condition, even plans for emancipation and development
would be seen as building on Western models. It was in this sense that
Santos accurately observed that “there is no global social injustice with-
out global epistemic injustice.”68
In the modern globalized world, hegemonic culture imposes its rules
of inclusion-exclusion and visibility-invisibility, through its mainstream
media, cultural industry, law of intellectual proprieties, etc. This provokes
a situation of marginalization and extraversion. Marginalization occurs
when all local cultural productions are scorned and devalued. Extraversion
occurs when non-Western intellectuals and scientists become obliged to
turn their works outside, i.e., to promote the benefit and agendas of the
Western societies. People who are socially and economically poor are
excluded and dependent, and so are culturally poor groups as well.
Notes
1 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2: Life
World and System: A Critique of a Functionalist Reason (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1987), 326.
2 Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2: Life World and
System: A Critique of a Functionalist Reason, 327.
3 Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2: Life World and
System: A Critique of a Functionalist Reason, 330.
4 Patrice Meyer-Bisch, “Le droit de participer à la vie culturelle, premier facteur
de liberté et d’inclusion sociale,” in Le rôle de la culture dans la lutte con-
tre la pauvreté et l’exclusion sociale (Bruxelles, Ministère de la Fédération
Wallonie-Bruxelles, Service général de la Jeunesse et de l’Education perman-
ente, No19, 2013), 64.
5 Meyer-Bisch, “Le droit de participer à la vie culturelle, premier facteur de
liberté et d’inclusion sociale,” 56–57.
6 Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and Ethics of Knowing (New
York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 16.
7 Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and Ethics of Knowing, 1.
Cultural Impoverishment 143
8 Cf. UNESCO, Mexico City Declaration on Cultural Policies World Conference
on Cultural Policies (Mexico City: UNESCO Publishing, 1982).
9 World Development Report: Attacking Poverty 2000/2001 (Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 15.
10 World Development Report: Attacking Poverty 2000/2001, 15–18.
11 Human Development Report 1997 (New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 17.
12 Amartya Sen, “Development as Capability Expansion,” Journal of
Development Planning 19 (New York: United Nations. Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, 1989): 43.
13 UNESCO Institute for Statistics, New Methodology Shows that 258 Million
Children, Adolescents and Youth Are Out of School, Fact Sheet 56, September
2019 (New York: UNESCO Publications, 2019), 1.
14 UNESCO Institute for Statistics, New Methodology Shows that 258 Million
Children, Adolescents and Youth Are Out of School, 6–8.
15 UNESCO Institute for Statistics, New Methodology Shows that 258 Million
Children, Adolescents and Youth Are Out of School, 4.
16 UNESCO Institute for Statistics Website, Mean Years of Schooling, http://
data.uis.unesco.org/index.aspx?queryid=3803.
17 UNESCO Institute for Statistics. More than One-Half of Children and
Adolescents Are not Learning Worldwide, Fact Sheet no. 46, September 2017
(New York: UNESCO Publications, 2017), 2.
18 UNESCO Institute for Statistics. More than One-Half of Children and
Adolescents Are not Learning Worldwide, 2.
19 The World Bank Data, Pupil-Teacher Ratio Primary, https://data.worldbank.
org/indicator/SE.PRM.ENRL.TC.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=false.
20 Referring to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “cultural goods are defined
as consumer goods that convey ideas, symbols and ways of life, i.e., books,
magazines, multimedia products, software, recordings, films, videos, audio-
visual programs, crafts and fashion.” Cf. The 2009 UNESCO Framework for
Cultural Statistics (Montreal: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2009), 87.
21 UNESCO Institute for Statistics Website/International Trade in Cultural
Goods, http://data.uis.unesco.org/?lang=en&SubSessionId=f7c1c9f4-9518-
48f5-a823-39be879bab28&themetreeid=-200.
22 UNESCO Institute for Statistics Website/Researchers by sex per million
inhabitants, http://data.uis.unesco.org/index.aspx?lang=en&SubSessionId=b
7951eaf-45f3-4541-9b24-b63aeddad366&themetreeid=-200.
23 Scimago Journal & Country Rank (a), https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.
php? year=2018.
24 Scimago Journal & Country Rank (a), https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.
php? year=2018.
25 World Bank data/Individual using the Internet 2017 (% of population), https://
data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?mostrecent_year_desc=true.
26 UNESCO, Teaching and Learning: Achieving Quality for All: EFA Global
Monitoring Report, 2013-2014 (New York: UNESCO Publishing, 2014), 17.
27 For more information concerning the 2018 statistics related to the GDP in
this paragraph, see the World Bank data available at https://data.worldbank.
org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD.
28 UIS UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Out-of-School Children and Youth (New
York: UNESCO Publications, 2020). For more on the 2017 statistics related
to the “out-of-school children, adolescents and youth,” see the UIS data avail-
able at http://data.uis.unesco.org/?lang=en&SubSessionId=67b1e20c-e2cc-
4527-be6f-bcf69ebaa3bf&themetreeid=-200, accessed June, 24, 2019 or
144 Mongi Serbaji
https://web.archive.org/web/20200326082221/http://data.uis.unesco.org//
Index.aspx?QueryId=3369.
29 This comparison rests on data collected from the World Bank website. Data
regarding the research expenditure can be found at https://data.worldbank.
org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS and data regarding the military expen-
diture can be found at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.
GD.ZS (Accessed October 21, 2020).
30 Cf. OECD report (2018a), “Country notes: France,” in Equity in Education:
Breaking Down Barriers to Social Mobility (Paris: OECD publishing, 2018),
https://www.oecd.org/pisa/Equity-in-Education-country-note-France.pdf.
31 Cf. OECD report (2018b), “Country notes: United States,” in Equity in
Education: Breaking Down Barriers to Social Mobility (Paris: OECD publish-
ing, 2018), https://www.oecd.org/pisa/Equity-in-Education-country-note-US.
pdf.
32 Cf. Pell Institute, Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States,
http://pellinstitute.org/indicators/reports_2019.shtml.
33 Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education,
Society, and Culture (Thousand Oaks and London: Sage Publishing, 1977), 11.
34 Axel Honneth, “Moral Consciousness and Class Domination: Some
Problems in the Analyses of Hidden Morality,” PRAXIS International 2, no.
1 (1982): 18.
35 Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2: Life World and
System: A Critique of a Functionalist Reason, 330.
36 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South (London and New
York: Routledge, 2016), 15.
37 Santos, Epistemologies of the South, 123.
38 Santos, Epistemologies of the South, 123.
39 Florence Piron, “Justice et injustice cognitive: de l’epistémologie à la matéri-
alité des savoirs humains,” in Les Classiques des Sciences Sociales: 25 ans de
Partage des savoirs dans la Francophonie (Québec: ESBC, 2018), 267.
40 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “Public Sphere and the epistemologies of the
South,” African Development 37, no. 1 (2012): 52.
41 Paulin Hountondji, “Knowledge of Africa, Knowledge by Africans: Two per-
spectives on African Studies,” in RCCS Annual Review 1/2009 (Coimbra:
Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, 2009), 128.
42 Paulin Hountondji, “Recherche et extraversion: éléments pour une sociologie
de la science dans les pays de la périphérie,” Africa Development 15, no. 3–4
(1990): 152.
43 Raewyn Connell, “Social Sciences on a World Scale. Connecting the Pages,”
Journal of the Brazilian Sociological Society 1, no. 1 (2015): 4.
44 Albert Memmi (1920–2020).
45 Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (London: Earthscan
Publishings, 2003), 150.
46 Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, 150.
47 W. Marçais, quoted by Mondher Kilani, “Langue et domination de la relation
coloniale à la relation de dépendance,” Revue Européenne des sciences socia-
les 15, no. 40 (1977): 136.
48 Mondher Kilani, “Langue et domination de la relation coloniale à la relation
de dépendance,” 134.
49 Nabiha Jerad, “La Politique Linguistique de la Tunisie Postcoloniale,” in Trames
de Langues. Usages et Métissages Linguistiques dans l’histoire du Maghreb
(Rabat: Istitut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain, 2004), 429.
50 Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, 158.
Cultural Impoverishment 145
51 INS, Institut National de Statistiques, “Caractéristiques d’éducation de la
population,” Recensement General de la Population et de l’Habitat 2014/4,
January 2017 (CEDEX TUNIS: Institut National de la Statistique, 2017), 13.
52 INS, Institut National de Statistiques, “Caractéristiques d’éducation de la
population,” p. 19.
53 Iyad Dhaoui,“Efficacité du Système Educatif Tunisien: Analyses et Perspectives,”
Notes et Analyses de L’ITCEQ, No. 29, June 2015 (Tunis: Institut Tunisien de
la Compétitivité et des Etudes Quantitatives, 2015), 41–43.
54 Cf. Bibliographie Nationale Tunisienne 2018. ed. Bibilothèque Nationale
de Tunisie (Tunisian National Library: Tunis, 2018), 1, https://www.biblio-
theque.nat.tn/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Bibliographie-fr2018.pdf.
55 Youssra Sghir, “Academic Publishing in Tunisia: Between Economic Pressures
and the Challenges of the Digital Environment,” The Maghrebian Review of
Documentation and Information 1, no. 28 (2019): 237–255.
56 Imen Kochbati, “L’enseignement universitaire tunisien dans les régions: iné-
galité des chances et disparité démographique,” in University and Society
within the Context of Arab Revolutions and New Humanism (Tunis: Rosa
Luxemburg Foundation, 2017), 196.
57 Mouldi Guessoumi, “Tunisian University and Society under the Condition of
the New Global Division of Labor” (Al-ǧāmiʿaẗ al-tūnisiyaẗ wāl-muǧtamaʿ fī
ẓil al-taqsīm al-ʿālamī al-ǧdīd lil-ʿamal,) in University and Society within the
Context of Arab Revolutions and New Humanism (Tunis: Rosa Luxemburg
Foundation, 2017), 103.
58 SJRWebsite(b),https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php?region=ARAB%20
COUNTRIES.
59 Khaireddin Pasha At-tunisi (1820–1890): Tunisian politician and reformer.
His major book is The Surest Path to knowledge regarding the Condition
of Countries (ʾAqwam al-masālik fī maʿrifaẗ āḥwāl al-mamālik). An English
translation of the introduction of this treatise was done by Leon Carl Brown,
The Surest Path: The political Treatise of a Nineteenth-Century Muslim
Statesman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967).
60 Tahar Haddad (1899–1935) was a Tunisian author and reformer. He is
known for his audacious attitude regarding Women’s rights. His major book
Muslim Woman in Law and Society (Imraʾatunā fī al-šarīʿaẗ wāl-muǧtamaʿ)
was translated by Ronak Husni and Daniel L. Newman (London and New
York: Routledge, 2007).
61 Moncef Ouannass, The State and the Cultural Issue in The Maghreb
(Ad-dawlaẗ wal-masʾalaẗ aṯ-ṯwaqāfīyaẗ fī al-maġrib al-ʿarabī) (Tunis: Ceres,
1995), 201.
62 Amor Belhadi, “L’inégale développement régional en Tunisie. Accumulation
spatiale et littoralisation,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 49 (1994), 153.
63 Office of Fatwa (1957).
64 Higher Islamic Council (1989).
65 Ouannass, The State and the Cultural Issue in The Maghreb, 105.
66 Mehdi Mabrouk, “Tunisia: The Radicalisation of Religious Policy,” in Islamist
Radicalisation in North Africa. Politics and Process (London and New York:
Routledge, 2012), 66.
67 Mohammed Hadj Salem, “Towards a Psycho-social Approach to the
Phenomena of Salafism in Tunisia” (Min āǧl muqārabaẗ nafsiyaẗ iǧtimāʿiyẗ liz-
ẓāhiraẗ al-salafīyaẗ fī tūnis) in The Salafism Djihadist in Tunisia (As-slafīyaẗ
al-ǧihādiyaẗ fī tūnis. Al-wāqiʿ wāl-maʾālāt) (Tunis: Tunisia Institute for
Strategic Researches, 2014), 171.
68 Santos, Epistemologies of the South, 133.
146 Mongi Serbaji
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8 “Detention and Torture Centers”
in Latin American Dictatorships
Places of Subjective and Social
Reconfiguration*
José Santos Herceg
* This work is part of the research project “Tortura: concept and experience“
(FONDECYT No. 1180001).
150 José Santos Herceg
dictatorship, there were reportedly 1,1324 of these places.5 In Argentina,
on the other hand, 640 came into existence, although since many were
only temporary, the number stabilized at 364 such sites.
“Concentration Camps” has been used as a name for these places. (This
name is a possible translation of the German term “Konzentrationslager.”)
It is a fact that there are some respects in which what happened during
the Southern Cone dictatorships resembles the Nazi phenomenon, which
would explain matches between the two phenomena and even justify the
use of the same name. Without claiming to be exhaustive, it could be said
that from their appearance, there is something in these places used in
Latin America that is reminiscent of those used in Germany—i.e., watch-
towers, barbed wire, heavy weaponry, etc. On the other hand, there is
something in the disproportionate magnitude of what happened, of what
was damaged, that would make it possible to relate both phenomena
since the disproportion of horror is present in both cases in a notable
way. The fact that the existence of these places is the result of a state
policy also allows a link between the phenomena. In both cases, on the
other hand, the places are intended for the isolation of certain types of
subjects: political opponents or Jews. The elimination of these groups,
either through death or through terror and the dismantling of the organi-
zation in question, is, in both cases, the aim.
These similarities between the two phenomena justify the use of the
same name: concentration camp. The pertinence of the use of this term
for the case of Latin American dictatorships, however, has been the sub-
ject of controversy. For some, it is justified and necessary to insist on the
use of the name;6 for others, using the name would no longer be justified.7
The starting point for the position against the use of the name lies in the
differences between what happened in Germany and what happened in
the Southern Cone. The differences are, in fact, most remarkable when
looked closely at the two historical realities. The detention centers used
during the dictatorships of the Southern Cone were qualitatively different
from the Konzentrationslager. Mariela Avila points out that “it is possible
to see certain structural similarities between the Latin American concen-
tration camps and the Nazi Lager. However, it is necessary to emphasize
that these places have numerous differences.”8
These differences concern, for example, their location and construc-
tion. In Latin America, existing spaces located in urban centers were
mainly used, while Lager were mostly built especially in isolated places
outside the cities. The Nazi Konzentrationslager and the Latin American
experience also differ in terms of the population of these places. It is dif-
ferent having been a “deportee” than a “prisoner of war” or a “political
detainee.” Being imprisoned in a Lager did not necessarily have to do with
political affiliation; in the case of Latin America, however, this is precisely
the reason someone was detained. On the other hand, it was a charac-
teristic of the Konzentrationslager that the deportees were systematically
Detention and Torture Centers 151
and permanently subjected to forced labor, even to death. Forced labor
only occurred as an exception to the rule in the Southern Cone; and, as
far as we know, prisoners were not made to work as a means of collective
extermination, nor was forced labor used as a productive force in the way
the Nazis did.
Death was a permanent presence in both places; nevertheless, it was
different both qualitatively and quantitatively. According to the way in
which it occurred, the Nazi extermination took forms such as the “final
solution” (Endlösung) with its concretion in gas chambers and trans-
ports, death by medical experimentation, death by an excess of work and
lack of food, etc. In the case of Latin America, death has taken the form
of executions, of the “escape law” in Chile, and of “flights of death” in
Argentina. “Forced disappearance” is, without a doubt, a very particular
way of extermination typical of Southern Cone dictatorships. Considered
from a quantitative point of view, both experiences of death also differ
radically. In the case of the Konzentrationslager, there were between 15
and 20 million deaths. In the Southern Cone, the death victims are much
lower, despite the fact that there are more than thousands of deaths.9
Although they have much in common with Konzentrationslager, the
phenomenon of imprisonment in the Southern Cone dictatorships was
different. The analyses that have been made, however, have been based
largely on analyses already existing regarding the reality of the Nazis. In
this way, the tendency has been to resort to existing theoretical work from
the European philosophical domain. When analyzing the reality of the
political prison in the Southern Cone, the constant and permanent refer-
ences are the works of Giorgio Agamben, and Hannah Arendt, although
authors such as Michel Foucault, Robert Antelme, Walter Benjamin,
and Viktor Frankl, among others can also often be found. The works of
Avila,10 López,11 and Raffin,12 among others, are examples of this. This
fact is clearly not surprising at all. Western European philosophy has
systematically and deeply given thematic attention to many topics, and,
without a doubt, it seems reasonable to explore the way they have done
it. In this body of work there is a large collection of reflections, concepts,
and categories that are extremely useful and necessary for thinking philo-
sophically that would be unreasonable to ignore or devalue. From this
perspective, approaching the European authors who have thought about
Konzentrationslager in order to elucidate what happened with the Latin
American political imprisonment seems to be reasonable.
The use of the categories and conceptual developments designed to
understand the reality of Konzentrationslager for the Latin American
case has nevertheless had two possibly undesirable effects. On the one
hand, it could prevent us from finding exactly what we are looking
for. Whoever has insights from the Nazi case will try to find this in the
Southern Cone, for example, forced labor, industrial extermination, med-
ical experiments, etc. No matter how much effort is made, no matter how
152 José Santos Herceg
flexible the analysis becomes in looking for analogies, nothing of the sort
will be finally found. This experience can lead to the sensation that the
Latin American experience is less horrifying, a bad copy, or a washed-
out imitation of the Shoah.13 From this, it is, as López says, logical that
it becomes uncomfortable to use the same categories and that they are
merely qualified with quotation marks. What happened in the Southern
Cone would have been something like “concentration camps,” but with-
out the crematoriums, without the forced labor until death, etc.
Making use of categories and conceptual developments created to
apprehend the particular case of Nazism in order to think about the case
of the Southern Cone has the consequence that it becomes impossible to
see the particular reality, the novelty of what happened in these countries
during their military dictatorships. Within examples of imprisonment
in the Southern Cone, the atrocities committed are no less horrific than
those of Nazism, but they were nevertheless different. In Chile, for exam-
ple, there were instances of permanent torture, constant transfers; there
were bandages, “poroteos,” war trials, executions, and mock drills, “ley
de fuga,” etc. In Argentina, there were also “chupaderos,” death flights,
etc. Whoever allows themselves to be uncritically guided by the case of
Nazism and the theory that has been built on understanding it and insists
on using some categories and names coined for other contexts without
caution will not notice the specificity of the horror of the political prison
during these dictatorships: a horror, which, as such, is incomparable.
Jorge Montealegre notes for the Chilean case that more than forty
years since the military coup, it has become necessary to start the work of
seeking a particular representation and, therefore, original and adequate
names for the phenomena concretely and theoretically. Montealegre
maintains that Nazi imaginary can be used but only when it is relevant.
This appeal cannot, however, be “mechanical,”14 nor can the identification
be total. The risk of not operating with these precautions is that “projec-
tions and transfers end up being deformed in an impertinent frame of the
memory to be recovered.”15 The invitation is to a “creative confrontation
of the new realities that bring their own words and images” that could
be delayed by a “world of appearance, which facilitates the first relation-
ships of similarity.”16 The excessive and uncritical use of Nazi imaginary
could end up hiding the reality of the political prison. Reflection on dicta-
torship goes through a conceptual, categorical exercise, namely creating
concepts and categories that correspond to the particularity of the Latin
American experience, which can show that it was something new and
different.
What was previously said explains the proposals for different names
being given to the places where imprisonment was carried out. In the
case of Argentina, the terms “Centros clandestinos de detención, tortura y
exterminio” (CCDTyE),17 “Centros clandestinos de detención” (CCD),18
or “Centros clandestinos de detención y tortura” (CCDyT)19 are used.20
Detention and Torture Centers 153
For the Chilean case, the “Rettig Report”21 uses the category “Recintos
de detención”22 or “Lugares de detención,”23 but for other cases classi-
fied as “special,” it uses the generic category “Campo de detención.”24
I have proposed the use of the generic name “Centros de detención y/o
tortura”25 for the Chilean case.26 In any case, no generic name has been
determined as of yet in Chile. There are differing proposals to name these
places depending on their functions.27 Studies about CCDyT have tran-
scended the problem of the name and have gone on to other issues. In this
sense, the work of some Latin American intellectuals who have made an
effort to develop adequate concepts to understand the specific reality of
these places should be mentioned.28
As is well known, Hannah Arendt called Nazi camps “laboratories of
total domination.”29 This name is not random, because it gives an account
of the purpose of these spaces: to experiment with the humanity of men/
women. The aim of Arendt’s analysis is to show that in the camps, the
aim is to exorcize every trace of humanity from the imprisoned. In the
Southern Cone CCDyT, it is possible to find traces of the same objec-
tive. However, this was not its ultimate purpose. They were places that
had a very specific political purpose: destruction and reconfiguration of
the subjects as well as of social structures. The CCDyT were, therefore,
the place from which reconfiguration of entire societies was projected.
To achieve this goal, torture played a key role. Among the many specific
characteristics of the political prison in Latin America, the presence of
torture undoubtedly has a prominent place. This becomes evident just
by observing that it was a massive and systematic practice. Practically
all of those who were imprisoned in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina during
their respective dictatorships were tortured. Thousands of people were
tortured in the CCDyT.
Torture is not a specific or particular phenomenon of Southern Cone
dictatorships. In fact, it extends to all corners of the world, and, as
Briceño has written, “the practice of torture is as old as humanity.”30 The
way in which torture was practiced during military dictatorships in the
Southern Cone, however, is marked by its own particular contours, thus
making torture in this region a specific and particular phenomenon. As a
result, a critical reflection has emerged in Latin America in recent times.
Part of this work focuses on the phenomenon of torture in the Southern
Cone in general.31 There is also, however, a prolific theoretical framework
for the subject from the point of view of each country: Chile, Argentine,
Uruguay, and Brazil.
The torture practiced during dictatorship was especially characterized
by its purposes. In literature, torture has always been considered to be
a means to a further end. It works as a tool with a goal that transcends
it. In the case of Latin American dictatorships, that goal is characterized
by being multiple and changing. Briseño,32 for example, lists eleven pur-
poses of torture applied in Latin America during military dictatorships,
154 José Santos Herceg
but there could be more. In a recently published text, I have tried to
demonstrate that all of these purposes constitute a coordinated system of
intentions that justify the very existence of torture.33 From my point of
view, three types of purposes can be distinguished: subjective ones, stra-
tegic ones, and political ends.
Subjective purposes are those motivations that the torturer may have
at the time of torture that individually move them to engage in the prac-
tice.34 Among these types of objectives, there were, for example, revenge,
celebration, pleasure, and enjoyment of power, etc. According to Vidal, in
some cases, the torturer, when exercising their function, also carries out a
kind of ritual in which the victors “orgiastically celebrate their victory.” It
would be “the violent and pleasant relaxation of energies accumulated by
hatred.”35 This purpose was undoubtedly present in the case of Southern
Cone military dictatorships, although it is not exclusive to this experi-
ence. Torture also
In torture, in a very succinct way, one could say that the subject is
exposed in his condition of being vulnerable; and everything ends
right there, there is nothing more: the consensual relationship with
others is missing, the possibility, even minimal, of being able to deter-
mine how to live is missing, the presence of shelter is missing. In a
sense, everything is missing.45
The victim of torture during the dictatorships of the Southern Cone was a
particularly helpless subject. In fact, if there is something that character-
izes such a victim, it is the most absolute helplessness. That is to say, it is
the awareness that no one will come to the victim’s aid, that no one will
stop the pain unless the torturer wishes to do so, or death comes.
156 José Santos Herceg
Those tortured under dictatorships were exposed to the most serious
damages. The damage to the victim is completed when the victim is sub-
jected to an enormous amount of pain and suffering. The verification of
pain and/or suffering is essential to talk about torture, and it is present
in all existing definitions. Following Le Breton’s suggestion to distinguish
between types of pain—acute pain,46 persistent pain,47 chronic pain,48 and
total pain49—the case of Latin American torture can be qualified as “total
pain.” Although the author refers to terminal patients, it resembles the
pain present in torture. Le Breton writes, “Total pain signals the moment
when the individual is no longer bound to the world except by the irrup-
tion of his pain; his sensations or feelings are immersed in suffering that
surrounds him completely.”50 Total pain is associated with the anguish
of impending death; it is “an absolute pain that annihilates the subject
and only leaves a residual consciousness. Life has ceased to be of interest;
curled up in his hell, the individual wishes to die as soon as possible.”51
This experience is repeated in many testimonies given by tortured people.
The pain of torture is so intense that only death seems to be the way out,
and it is desired, requested, and demanded.
Going through torture and suffering this “total pain” cannot leave
anyone unharmed. Corbi states that “torture is undoubtedly a paradig-
matic case of damage… The description of how someone has been the
victim of torture grants sense to some of the most characteristic aspects
of damage.”52 There are many damages caused by torture, giving rise to
what Thiebaut has called “total damage,” that is to say, the damage from
torture “is not only being or falling into a relatively specific state but
something that is integrated into a whole life, damaging it.”53 Successful
torture, when achieved, generates what in the Chilean case is known
as “los quebrados” (the broken ones) and in Argentina “los arrasados”
(the devastated ones). Here we can precisely talk of a “demolition.”54 To
achieve this complete destruction is one of the central purposes of the
torture that was practiced in the Latin American CCDyT.
The damage to the victim, however, does not end when he or she is
released from prison and is no longer subjected to direct torture. Torture
does not end when the act of torturing ends; that is a fact corroborated in
the Latin American case. It is permanent: it is forever attached to the vic-
tim. Rojas mentions an “acute exogenous reaction that describes by enu-
merating a series of disorders at the level of conscience, mimetic disorders,
disorders of perception as well as disorders of thought and imagination.”55
Full recovery seems ultimately impossible. According to Rojas, the phrase
that is repeated most frequently in consultations is: “I was never the same
again.”56 Moulian has written that a tortured person “carries the mark
forever… He survived hell, and that footprint goes with him to the end.”57
From Corbi’s perspective, the victim of torture loses confidence in the
world.58 Uribe extends this statement by saying that, in reality, the tortured
person loses the world itself: they become inhabitants of a non-world.59
Detention and Torture Centers 157
The political objectives that torture had during the Southern Cone dic-
tatorships are closely related to this disarticulation of the victim. Among
political purposes, there are four that stand out. In the first place, there is
clearly the search for information, “intelligence.” They torture to know,
to access the data that allows them to have an advantage, disrupt a group,
capture more subjects, etc. Second, there is the purpose of terrorizing
and intimidating a group or even the entire population. In the case of
dictatorial Chile, for example, as Moya says, “it was applied to terrorize
an entire society.”60 Calveiro has written that torture “allows terror to
spread on and off the field.”61 This leads us to a third political objective
that, as López and Otero have written, refers to the educational nature
of torture. “Torture educates: replaces criticism with consent. It models
in a certain way that it interests power. It is a form of pedagogy, but in
its own version: it is a pedagogy of terror.”62 Finally, it follows from the
previous purpose that torture was used in order to dismantle the social
fabric. Marrades shows that torture destroys trust in others.63 In Bulo’s
terms, “torture is the exercise of unwriting a we, tearing it apart, breaking
the general body, the collective body.”64 Mistrust, betrayal, and suspicion
of collaboration rot away the social fabric until it breaks down.
Torture was, during these dictatorships, a powerful tool in the disman-
tling of the existing social structure and in the imposition of a new form of
relationship between the subjects. In order to achieve this objective, pro-
fessional torturers, with special preparation and training, were required.
These subjects were part of well-organized groups that acted in a coordi-
nated manner under the protection of institutions. The torture was never
carried out by a solitary individual, but rather was a collective exercise.65
In most cases, it is not possible to argue that the torturer was the only one
who directly and concretely performed the action on the victim’s body.
The torturer was always accompanied by a set of subjects who performed
different functions in the act of torture. That is what Moulian has called
the “device.”66 In Argentina these were called “Intelligence teams,”67 and
in Chile “Operating Groups.”68 Torture is a crime of collective action, i.e.,
it is committed by a collective, which raises problems regarding the issue
of moral and criminal responsibility.
The presence of a collective torture community is also linked to the
character of “civil servant” who have been party to torture.69 The tor-
ture community is in these cases related to institutions that are organized
hierarchically. Institutions have also been responsible for developing
structures for the formation of torturers. A common subject is taken and
transformed, through a systematic training process, into a torturer. In
the CCDyT “torture is exercised by normal subjects.”70 Mallol points
out that “Any human being, ordinary, good father, good neighbor, can
be found, potentially, in the turns of life, performing tasks of an efficient
torturer.”71 He wonders, then: How do you get there?72 The answer is
that they have been trained to perform that function. Those who torture
158 José Santos Herceg
within the framework of dictatorships possessed technical knowledge,
acquired through systematic training and perfected with experience. For
their part, those who develop and teach torture have scientific knowl-
edge, formed from a systematic and informed investigation. As Pérez
Vilar writes,
Notes
1 Luis Scherz, “La intelectualidad crítica en el Chile de hoy, Santiago de Chile:
Instituto Chileno de Estudios Humanísticos,” in La Universidad chilena desde
los extramuros. Obra y vida de Luis Scherz G. (Santiago de Chile: Universidad
Alberto Hurtado, 2004), 4.
Detention and Torture Centers 159
2 José Jara, “Un siglo corto de filosofía,” Archivos. Revista de Filosofía 1
(2009), 84.
3 “Valech Report” is the name given to the report of the “Comisión Nacional
sobre Prisión Política y Tortura” (National Commission on Political Prison
and Torture) summoned by President Ricardo Lagos in 2003.
4 Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura, Informe Valech: Informe
de la Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura (Santiago de Chile:
Ministerio del Interior, 2004), 261.
5 This amount is, without a doubt, less than what was the reality. Considering
the clandestine nature of most of these places, there are some of which we still
do not have knowledge.
6 Mariela Avila, “Campos de concentración de las dictaduras latinoamerica-
nas. Una mirada filosófica,” La Cañada. Revista del pensamiento filosófico en
Chile 4 (2013).
7 Jorge Montealegre, “Construcción social de la memoria: presencia del imagi-
nario del holocausto en testimonios latinoamericanos” [Social Construction
of Memory: Presence of Holocaust Images in Latin American Testimonies],
Alpha 36 (2013); José Santos Herceg, “Konzentrationslagern en Chile. Sobre
la (im)pertinencia del nombre,” Hermenéutica Intercultural, Revista de
Filosofía 26 (2016).
8 Avila, “Campos de concentración de las dictaduras latinoamericanas. Una
mirada filosófica,” 225.
9 In Chile, the “Comisón nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación” (Truth and
Reconciliation National Commission) established, after some corrections,
that there were 1,319 deaths and 979 disappeared, that is, a total of 2,298
politically motivated deaths in the period from 1973 to 1990. The National
Corporation for Reparation and Reconciliation (1992) added 776 dead and
123 disappeared persons. In Argentina the figure given by human rights orga-
nizations is 30,000 dead/disappeared. The Argentine Secretariat for Human
Rights, working on the basis of the people who received compensation from
the State up to 2003, speaks, however, of 13,000 victims of state terrorism.
The CONADEP (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) in
1984 collected 9,089 cases of enforced disappearance.
10 Cf. Avila, “Campos de concentración de las dictaduras latinoamericanas. Una
mirada filosófica” (2013).
11 Cf. Loreto López, “De los Centros de Detención a lugares de Memoria del
terrorismo de Estado,” Revista Praxis 15 (2009).
12 Cf. Marcelo Raffin, La experiencia del horror. Subjetividad y derechos huma-
nos en las dictaduras del Cono Sur (Buenos Aires: Editorial Del Puerto, 2006).
13 Cf. María José López, Tiempo de oscuridad. Diálogos con Hannah Arendt
(Santiago de Chile: Universitaria, 2018).
14 Montealegre, “Construcción social de la memoria: presencia del imaginario
del holocausto en testimonios latinoamericanos,” 129.
15 Montealegre, “Construcción social de la memoria: presencia del imaginario
del holocausto en testimonios latinoamericanos,” 129.
16 Montealegre, “Construcción social de la memoria: presencia del imaginario
del holocausto en testimonios latinoamericanos,” 130.
17 Clandestine detention, torture, and extermination center.
18 Clandestine detention center.
19 Clandestine detention, and torture center.
20 Cf. Valeria Durán, Luciana Messina and Valentina Salvi, “Dossier ‘Espacios
de memoria: controversias en torno a los usos y las estrategias de represen-
tación’,” Clepsidra. Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios sobre Memoria
160 José Santos Herceg
(2014); Ana Guglielmucci and Loreto López, “Restituir lo político: los lugares
de memoria en Argentina, Chile y Colombia,” Kamchatka. Revista de análisis
cultural (2019).
21 “Rettig Report” is the name given to the report of the “Comisión de Verdad
y Reconciliación” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) summoned by
President Patricio Aylwin in 1994.
22 Detention facilities.
23 Places of detention.
24 Detention camp.
25 Detention and/or torture center.
26 José Santos Herceg, “Konzentrationslagern en Chile. Sobre la (im)pertinencia
del nombre,” Hermenéutica Intercultural, Revista de Filosofía (2016).
27 Macarena Silva and Fernanda Rojas, Sufrimiento y desapariciones. El manejo
urbano-arquitectónico de la memoria urbana traumatizada, in Seminario de
investigación, Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo (Santiago de Chile:
Universidad de Chile, 2004), 47–48; Loreto López, “De los Centros de
Detención a lugares de Memoria del terrorismo de Estado,” Revista Praxis 15
(2009).
28 Cf. Pilar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición. Los campos de concentración en
Argentina (Buenos Aires: Colihue, 2006 [1984]); Pilar Calveiro, “La ver-
dad de la tortura en las democracias,” Revista Venezolana de Economía y
Ciencias Sociales 14, no. 2 (2008); Pamela Colombo, Espacios de desapar-
ición. Espacios vividos e imaginarios tras la desaparición forzada de per-
sonas (1974–1983) en la provincia de Tucumán (Argentina, 2013); Jorge
Montealegre, Derecho a fuga. Una extraña felicidad compartida (Santiago de
Chile: Asterión, Colección Tierras Altas, 2018); Jorge Montealegre, Memorias
eclipsadas. Duelo y resiliencia comunitaria en la prisión Política (Santiago
de Chile: Asterión/USACH, 2013); Jorge Montealegre, “Construcción social
de la memoria: presencia del imaginario del holocausto en testimonios lati-
noamericanos” [Social Construction of Memory: Presence of Holocaust
Images in Latin American Testimonies], Alpha (Osorno) 36, (2013); Estella
Schindel, “En los zapatos del que sufre. Aproximaciones epistemológicas y
éticas a los ex Centros Clandestinos de Detención. O ¿con qué calzado visitar
un camp o de concentración?” Papeles del CEIC-International Journal On
Collective Identity Research 1, no. 93 (Leioa, Spain: Centro de Estudios sobre
la Identidad Colectiva/Universidad del País Vasco, 2013); Estela Schindel,
Espacios de Memoria (Argentina: Magoya Films, 2012); Luis Vitale, La
vida cotidiana en los campos de concentración en Chile (Caracas, Venezuela:
Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1979); Pía Montalva, Tejidos Blandos.
Indumentaria y Violencia política en Chile, 1973–1990 (Santiago de Chile,
FCE, 2013); José Santos Herceg. Lugares espectrales. Topología testimonial
de la prisión política en Chile, Colección IDEA, Segunda Época (Santiago de
Chile: Universidad de Santiago de Chile, 2019), among others.
29 Hannah Arendt, Los orígenes del totalitarismo (Madrid: Taurus, 1998), 533.
30 Lesley Briceño, “Tortura y torturadores,” Encuentro XXI (Santiago de Chile:
LOM Ediciones, 1998), 29.
31 The figure of Pilar Calveiro (2006 and 2008) stands out again, but we also
need to mention the works of Carlos Figueroa Ibarra, “Dictaduras, tortura
y terror en America latina,” Bajo el Volcán (México: Benemérita Universidad
Autónoma de Puebla, 2001); Luciano Oliveira, Do nunca mais ao eterno
retorno: uma reflexão sobre a tortura, 2 (São Paulo, Brasil: Brasiliense, 2009);
Luciano Oliveira, “Ditadura militar, tortura e história: a ‘vitória simbólica‘ dos
vencidos,” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 26 (2011); Olga Alicia Paz,
Detention and Torture Centers 161
La Tortura, Efectos y Afrontamiento: Estudio Psicosocial (Guatemala: ECAP-
F&G Editores, 2004); Daniel Pereyra, “Argentina: militares torturadores,”
in Mientras Tanto, No. 90 (Barcelona, Spain: Icaria Editorial, 2004); Natalia
Pérez Vilar, “La tortura como inscripción del dolor en el cuerpo,” TRAMAS
32 (2009); Eduardo Subirats, Pilar Calveiro, Contra la tortura: Cinco ensayos
y un manifiesto. (Fineo, México: Editorial Fineo, 2006); José Santos Herceg,
“Konzentrationslagern en Chile. Sobre la (im)pertinencia del nombre,”
Hermenéutica Intercultural, Revista de Filosofía 26 (2016), among others.
32 Cf. Lesley Briceño, “Tortura y torturadores,” Encuentro XXI (Santiago de
Chile: LOM Ediciones, 1998).
33 Cf. José Santos Herceg, “La tortura como sistema coordinado de finali-
dades múltiples,” Revista Encuentros Latinoamericanos, segunda época. Los
derechos humanos en el siglo XXI, Vol. IV, No. 1 (2020).
34 Cf. Bernhard Kraak, “Was motiviert Folterer? Eine handlungstheoretische
Analyse,” Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie 4, no. 2 (1996).
35 Hernán Vidal, Chile: poética de la tortura política (Santiago de Chile:
Mosquito Editores, 2000), 42.
36 David Le Breton, Antropología del dolor (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1999), 248.
37 Le Breton, Antropología del dolor, 247.
38 Julina Marrades, “La vida robada. Sobre la dialéctica de dolor y poder en la
tortura,” Pasajes: Revista de pensamiento contemporáneo 17 (2005), 32.
39 Marrades, “La vida robada. Sobre la dialéctica de dolor y poder en la tor-
tura,” 32.
40 Marrades, “La vida robada. Sobre la dialéctica de dolor y poder en la tor-
tura,” 32.
41 Vidal, Chile: poética de la tortura política, 11.
42 Valentina Bulo, “Tabula rasa de los cuerpos,” La Cañada. Revista del pensa-
miento filosófico chileno 4 (2013), 209.
43 Bulo, “Tabula rasa de los cuerpos,” 210.
44 Adriana Cavarero, Horrorismo. Nombrando la violencia contemporánea
(México: Anthropos, 2009), 59.
45 Ignacio Mendiola, Habitar lo inhabitable. La práctica político-punitiva de la
tortura (Barcelona: Edicions Bellaterra, 2014), 142.
46 Le Breton, Antropología del dolor, 28.
47 Le Breton, Antropología del dolor, 29.
48 Le Breton, Antropología del dolor, 31.
49 Le Breton, Antropología del dolor, 34.
50 Le Breton, Antropología del dolor, 34.
51 Le Breton, Antropología del dolor, 35.
52 Josep E. Corbi, Morality, Self-Knowledge and Human Suffering. An Essay on
the Loss of Confidence in the World (New York: Routledge, 2012), 45–47.
53 Carlos Thiebaut, “La experiencia del daño y su resolución. Una indagación
conceptual,” Confrontando el mal, Ensayos sobre violencia, memoria y
democracia (Plaza y Valdés, España, 2017), 16.
54 Natalia Pérez Vilar, “La tortura como inscripción del dolor en el cuerpo,”
TRAMAS 32 (México: UAM-X, 2009), 113.
55 Baeza Paz Rojas, “Torturas. Romper el silencio,” in De la tortura no se habla,
Agüero Versus Meneses (Catalonia, Chile: Patricia Verdugo, 2004), 167–198.
56 Paz Rojas, “Torturas. Romper el silencio,” 172.
57 Tomás Moulián, “El gesto de agüero y la amnesia,” in De la tortura no se
habla, Agüero Versus Meneses (Catalonia, Chile: Patricia Verdugo, 2004), 54.
58 Josep E. Corbi, Morality, Self-Knowledge and Human Suffering: An Essay on
the Loss of Confidence in the World (New York: Routledge, 2012), 455.
162 José Santos Herceg
59 Ángela Uribe Botero, “Sobre la construcción del no-mundo en la tortura,”
REVISTA FILOSOFÍA UIS 13, no. 2 (2014), 1.
60 Laura C. V. Moya, Tortura en poblaciones del gran Santiago (1973–1990)
(Santiago: Corp. José Domingo Cañas, 2005).
61 Pilar Calveiro, “La verdad de la tortura en las democracias,” Revista
Venezolana de Economía y Ciencias Sociales 14, no. 2 (2008), 79.
62 Ricardo López Pérez and Edison Otero, Pedagogía del terror: un ensayo sobre
la tortura (Santiago de Chile: Atena, 1989), 77.
63 Julina Marrades, “La vida robada. Sobre la dialéctica de dolor y poder en la
tortura,” Pasajes: Revista de pensamiento contemporáneo 17 (2005), 31.
64 Bulo, “Tabula rasa de los cuerpos,” 209.
65 Rafael Egaña Rojas, Narraciones de la tortura. Su representación en tres
textos dramáticos (Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Chile, 2005), 92;
Corporación de defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo (CODEPU), Informe de
Denuncia CODEPU (Santiago de Chile, 1985), 16; Tomás Moulián, “El gesto
de agüero y la amnesia,” (Catalonia, Chile: Patricia Verdugo (comp), 2004),
49; López and Otero, Pedagogía del terror: un ensayo sobre la tortura, 127.
66 Moulián, “El gesto de agüero y la amnesia,” 49.
67 Pilar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición. Los campos de concentración en
Argentina (Buenos Aires: Colihue, 2006 [1984]), 35–36.
68 Marcia Merino (Flaca Alejandra) in her testimony includes detailed descrip-
tions in this regard, she dedicates specific chapters to describe the adminis-
trative structure in José Domingo Cañas (2003: 60–62), in Villa Grimaldi
(82–89)—she establishes names, ranks, positions, headquarters, functions,
brigades, groups, etc.—and even writes a chapter entitled “III Structure of the
DINA“ Marcia Merino, Mi verdad: más allá del horror, yo acuso (Santiago
de Chile: ATGSA, 1993), 106–119.
69 Corporación de defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo (CODEPU). Informe
de Denuncia CODEPU (Santiago de Chile, 1985), 17; López and Otero,
Pedagogía del terror: un ensayo sobre la tortura, 111.
70 Corporación de defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo (CODEPU), Informe de
Denuncia CODEPU, 37.
71 Cristián Mallol Comandari, “Renacer en la Agonía. De la sobrevida a la
vida,” Estudios Públicos 115 (2009), 46.
72 Mallol Comandari, “Renacer en la Agonía. De la sobrevida a la vida,” 46.
73 Pérez Vilar, “La tortura como inscripción del dolor en el cuerpo, 108–109.
74 Confinement and overcrowding, beatings, stoning, plucking of nails, eye-
brows, hair and other parts of the body, dragging on the ground tied to the
neck or limbs, throwing excrement and filth on the detainee, suffocation, ice
baths, cuts in hands, veins and other parts of the body, shots next to the
ears, drugs and hypnosis, exposure to ultraviolet or infrared rays, exposure to
very high or very low temperatures, removal of body parts, fractures of body
parts, systematic hitting to an area of the body, gunshot wounds, standing
indefinitely, obligation to remain in forced positions, genital burns, acid burns
in the eyes, mouth, nose, vagina, testicles or other parts of the body, nudity,
sensory deprivation (isolation, prohibition of speaking, hoods or bandages to
cover vision), food and water deprivation, ingestion of feces, vomiting and
filth, abortions caused by fists and feet beating, sexual abuse, including rape
and the use of specially trained animals.
75 “The dove” consists of tying the detainee‘s hands to his back and hanging
him/her by the hands; his feet are often tied. Then the detainee is beaten or
receives electric shocks. This is also performed in tubs or pools, and then “the
dove” is applied.
Detention and Torture Centers 163
76 “The telephone” consists of hitting with open palms in both ears at the
same time.
77 “The submarine” consists of tying the detainee‘s feet and hands and immers-
ing him/her in a tank of foul liquid (urine, sewage, oil), which causes a tem-
porary asphyxiation.
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Part IV
Intercultural Approaches
to Reconciliation
9 Confucian Remonstrance in the
Dialectics of Self-Conscious Identity
between the People’s Republic of
China and Hong Kong*
James Garrison
Introduction
Though it might not be intuitive or obvious to analyze current events in
Hong Kong in terms of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Master–Slave
Dialectic and what he identifies as the resultant Unhappy Consciousness,
there is in fact good reason to do so. Beyond the long history of using
Hegelian thinking to conceptualize real-world colonialism, there is a trend
across the political spectrum of turning to this framework to help pro-
cess historical and contemporaneous events in China more particularly,
which likely results from influence of Hegelian-Marxist philosophy on
the official ideology of the Communist Party of China (CPC).1 However,
Hegelian thinking does not play a particularly prominent role in the more
particular current discourse unfolding in Hong Kong. So, while it is cer-
tainly not the only lens through which to view events there, this approach
can be useful for two interrelated reasons. First, for political philosophy
* Professors Liya Wang and Kelly Coble of Baldwin Wallace University deserve thanks
for taking time to read an early draft of this paper. Likewise, the crucial support of
Baldwin Wallace University’s Faculty Development Summer Grant must be acknowl-
edged. Finally, I absolutely must express my profound and enduring gratitude to
Professor Roger T. Ames and the late Professor Henry Rosemont, Jr. for all that they
each have done in their classrooms, in their texts, and in their personal lives to show
what it truly means to be a junzi 君子 or exemplary person.
A note on the representation of Chinese terms: Language politics represent a point of
contention between Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China [PRC], where the
former uses traditional script (fantizi 繁體字) and the latter uses simplified script (jiantizi
简体字) to depict the same characters/terms. In any case, differences between the two
different styles should not hinder capable readers of Chinese. So, with this in mind, and
in order to make it easier to search out information, this article will use traditional script
when referring to terms from classical Chinese history (as this was the style of writing
used at the time) or when referring to matters specific to Hong Kong (where it is still the
official standard). Likewise, simplified script will be used when referring to things having
to do primarily with the PRC (where, almost since its founding in 1949, the government
has been standardizing and promoting simplified script). Additionally, bibliographic
entries will represent author names in line with how they are represented in the work
being cited, so as to facilitate follow-up research (even if widespread inconsistency in the
rendering of names English over the years proves maddening for readers of Chinese).
170 James Garrison
qua philosophy, this approach enriches Hegel’s thinking by taking part of
the long-enduring project undertaken by thinkers throughout the world
of applying the Master–Slave Dialectic to real-world power disparities.
Second, for political philosophy qua politics, this approach helps in
anticipating possible ways in which conceptual dynamics might develop
in the relation between Mainland China and Hong Kong, particularly
as “philosophy with Chinese characteristics”—i.e., Confucianism—can
add to these Hegelian insights in a way that speaks to the political situ-
ation more on China’s own terms, with particular focus on criticism as
remonstrative.
With that said, where precisely does one begin in rendering Chinese his-
tory with a particular focus on Hong Kong in any way, let alone through
a Hegelian matrix? For the purposes of this examination of events in
Hong Kong in the early decades of the 2000s, which, as will be argued
here, have had the major effect of constructing a distinct stage of self-
conscious Hongkonger identity, it seems smart to look at the beginnings
of the construction of Chinese self-conscious identity in Hegelian terms.
This means looking to where a primal conflict with “The Other” has
prompted to China to see itself through the eyes of another (and examin-
ing Hong Kong in turn).
It turns out though that neither China nor Hong Kong can account
for the construction of their respective forms of self-conscious identity
in terms of a singular existential conflict with one and only one big, bad
“Other,” which is quite different than what one sees in Hegel’s account.
In the real world, self-conscious Chinese identity and self-conscious Hong
Kong identity were not built in one day; rather, an ongoing series of inter-
connected conflicts has been necessary. In the real world, conflict takes
place on particular territory; particular people, places, events inexorably
determine how broad conceptual dynamics (which tend to be explicable
only retrospectively) actually unfold in the moment. In the real world,
conflict is not just limited to two parties; there are many groups seeking
to secure their continued existence, with alliances, proxies, and valences
to conflict developing almost inevitably. In short, looking for the grounds
of self-conscious, seeing-self-from-the-outside Chinese identity (and then
Hong Kong identity) becomes more and more complex upon delving into
practical concerns. And so, first a preliminary (and overly brief) recount-
ing of the history of the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong is
in order, before moving on to an examination of that history in light of
Hegel’s Master–Slave Dialectic.
Historical Overview
Colonial-era encounters with China initially did not go well for Western
powers, as there was often not a similar of interest in trade for European
goods.2 Great Britain, however, could create “loyal” and ultimately
Confucian Remonstrance 171
dependent consumers with a rather profitable product—opium produced
in its Indian colony.3 And so, being armed with opium and advanced
weaponry, British forces pressed the issue in the coastal towns of China.4
Flooding these areas with opium and subjugating local populations,
Great Britain was quickly rebuked by China’s Qing imperial court, lead-
ing to the First and Second Opium Wars (1839–1842 and 1856–1860,
respectively), whereby Western Powers led by Great Britain (along with
the then-westernizing Japan) routed Chinese forces and obtained extra-
territorial concessions up and down the Chinese coast, with the result
being that Western law would reign in a manner that often enslaved
local populations.5 This period, referred to colloquially in China as the
“Century of Humiliation [bainian chiru 百年恥辱],” would come to an
end first with the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 and finally with the
end of World War II in 1945 and the subsequent Communist Revolution
of 1949, but not before leaving territories like Hong Kong and Macau in
the hands of the British and Portuguese respectively as part of unequal
100-year-long treaties forced on China in the 1800s, setting the stage for
more recent developments.6
As the British lease was coming to an end, so too was the feasibility
of its continued presence in Hong Kong, given China’s rising economic
and military power.7 And so, conceding to the inevitable in anticipation
of the end of colonial rule in 1997, Britain sought and obtained a series
of guarantees ensuring that Hong Kong would be governed with a degree
of independence as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) according to
the democratic principles of its founding Basic Law under the principle
of “One Country, Two Systems一国两制” for fifty years and its full rever-
sion to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2047.8 As of 2020, Hong
Kong is administered as a quasi-foreign domain within the PRC, with its
own passport, border control, flag, currency, language standards, legal
codes, and liberal democratic framework; however, 2047 looms. And so,
Hong Kong is very much in a period of transition, and it has been one of
sadly predictable rising unrest. Democratic norms and material wealth
have grown side by side in Hong Kong, and there is a great deal of worry
on the part of citizens of diverse political leanings that one or both are
under threat at the moment. However, to understand how this unrest
might arise and to get a better grasp on the particular way in which
Hongkongers might feel their position to be precarious, this historical
overview needs to go back a bit further.
During the “Reform and Opening up Movement 改革开放” led
by Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the
PRC moved to a kind of state-managed capitalism officially heralded
as “socialism with Chinese characteristics 中国特色的社会主义” after
decades of ideologically stringent Maoist leadership following the 1949
Communist Revolution.9 At the same time, the then-British colony of
Hong Kong rose to prominence as a major economic force on the world
172 James Garrison
stage. A chief reason for this was and continues to be Hong Kong’s ability
to leverage its combination of geographical position, cultural connection,
and rule-of-law apparatus to become a base for shipping, banking, and
administration for major business interests operating in the PRC’s grow-
ing industrial centers.10 However, this growth throughout the 1980s and
early 1990s also occurred with the 1997 handover well in view, since:
(1) the date was set forth as part of the 100-year “lease” that the British
government “negotiated” with Imperial China at gunpoint as part of the
conclusion of the Opium Wars (well before the founding of the PRC);
and (2) as mentioned, the British position on Hong Kong was becoming
politically and militarily untenable amid the rise of the PRC. Again, this is
all against the backdrop that Hong Kong, along with what was Portugal’s
colony of Macau, was one of the last vestiges of Western extraterritorial
domination over China’s coastal region in the period referred to in China
with a distinct lack of nostalgia as “the century of humiliation.” Suffice to
say that things could not help but be volatile.
And so, despite the formal handover of Hong Kong to the PRC in
1997 actually going relatively smoothly in terms of the niceties of diplo-
macy and international law, tensions have in fact been building. Figuring
out what precisely Hong Kong will look like moving forward has been
quite contentious (to say nothing of what this might mean for any kind
of collective Hongkonger identity). This is all amid increasing demand
from the PRC on Hong Kong to integrate and adopt norms more akin
to those on the Chinese mainland than to those familiar to citizens of
liberal democracies. This pressure has been building in advance of the
end of the “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement in 2047 negoti-
ated with Great Britain as part of the 1997 handover and with the PRC’s
thorough crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in
1989 haunting pro-democracy Hong Kong activists and sympathizers.11
In any case, this dynamic has accelerated greatly since Xi Jinping
習近平 ascended to power as General Secretary of the Communist Party
of China in 2012, with a number of measures being introduced that many
Hongkongers see as being at odds with democratic principles, a threat to
economic stability, or both. While a certain level of dissent with the PRC’s
control over Hong Kong was inevitable, given the entrenchment of demo-
cratic norms during the later years British colonial rule and the nascent
independence movement, a series of cultural and national security mea-
sures introduced by the PRC has been met with increasingly widespread
unrest within Hong Kong.
2019 saw this dynamic intensify amid a great deal of tumult in Hong
Kong as the government of the PRC sought to solidify its position in its
semi-independent polity. This has come about with the introduction of
measures withdrawn in the face of mass protest that would have facili-
tated the already-occurring extradition of Hong Kong citizens—includ-
ing high-profile political dissidents like Lee Bo 呂波 and Lam Wing-kee
Confucian Remonstrance 173
林榮基—to the PRC, which many observers saw as threatening demo-
cratic reform and Hong Kong’s autonomy.12 This led to a series of con-
flicts occurring somewhere on the continuum between protest and riot,
where many Hongkongers aligned themselves socially and economically
(often using smartphones) with either the generally younger “yellow”
pro-democracy bloc or with the generally older “blue” pro-police side,
which tends to represent the Mainland PRC interest in maintaining social
harmony.13 Even though the extradition law was withdrawn, further
standoffs with police led to the imposition of additional laws aimed at
limiting the activity of dissidents, including laws prohibiting the use of
laser pointers and of masks (even amid the COVID-19 outbreak), and
these laws in turn have led to heightened opposition, culminating in the
triumph of the pro-democratic bloc in 2019 elections.14
However, with the COVID-19 crisis gripping East Asia and crippling
the ongoing street actions that had been propelling the yellow pro-democ-
racy bloc and amid dissatisfaction that local authorities had been unable
to implement the kind of domestic security laws mandated by Section
23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the PRC government enacted a series of
laws in 2020 that have had a chilling effect on all forms of protest and
are widely seen by observers as introducing unprecedented limits on free
speech rights in Hong Kong.15 Indeed, the United States government has
weighed in and indicated that it will cease recognizing Hong Kong as a
separate entity for trade purposes in protest of what it sees as an abroga-
tion by the PRC of the principles of the 1997 handover and the promise
to retain the “One Country, Two Systems” framework.16 Furthermore,
United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson has signaled that his gov-
ernment might also offer some form of long-term right of abode to a
large number of former British colonial subjects seeking to flee Hong
Kong,17 a prospect which would almost certainly raise the ire of the PRC
in the process. At the time of this essay’s composition, it is unclear where
precisely things will go, but widespread unrest looks likely to continue.
However, what is clear is that the status of Hong Kong moving for-
ward is a point of active contention. This contention is playing out not
just physically on the streets of Hong Kong but also in the hearts and
minds of people in Hong Kong, in the Mainland PRC, and beyond. This
contention ultimately is about determining what it means for China to
be Chinese, for Hong Kong to be Hong Kong, and for Hong Kong to
be Chinese. Moreover, it turns out that Western powers have acted col-
lectively for quite some time as the “Other,” as foreignness incarnate, the
mere presence of which leads to conflict over who gets to continue their
way of existence and who will be subjugated and ultimately condemned
to see themselves painfully through the eyes of that “Other.” As such, the
question of how it is that any such sense of identity might emerge from
such conflict calls for examination; and it is here that Hegel’s thinking
can be helpful.
174 James Garrison
Conflict, the Other, and Self-Conscious Identity
The resonances with Hegel’s account soon become clear. First, consider
in detail the Hegelian account of self-consciousness, terms from which
have already been informally introduced in this argument. Hegel’s mag-
num opus The Phenomenology of Spirit [Phänomenologie des Geistes]
is, by its very design as well as the time and place of its composition, far
from speaking to Hong Kong’s contemporary situation directly. Instead,
in this work Hegel aims to give an account of how the phenomenon
Geist, meaning spirit or mind, has a certain necessary logic underlying
its development arising from a fundamental tension between two poles
of being—being-for-self and being-in-self. Here, Geist can and perhaps
should be read in a manifold of senses, which would encompass the
course of human spirit on the macro-level of the history of humanity
and the development of an individual mind on a micro-level. In any case,
what Hegel presents unfolds through a series of conceptual stages driven
by a basic tension that he takes to be inherent in being, splitting all exis-
tence in two—being-for-self and being-in-self. Hegel’s account attempts
the impossible, namely giving a comprehensive, multivalent, yet rigidly
dualistic account of human development, and so it would be odd to
expect him to succeed on all counts. Initiating all of this are Hegel’s key
words: “Self-consciousness exists in an for itself when, and by the fact
that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged
[recognized].”18
It is in the fateful encounter with the “Other” that the self-conscious
“I” emerges, per Hegel’s crucial insight. One can imagine that amid all the
simple things that exist in what is here being called infantile conscious-
ness (manifesting being-for-self), there might be a kind of not-so-simple
thing, which is to say another person (manifesting being-in-self).19 Prior
to becoming conscious of this other person as another person (e.g., as
happens with real-life infants and the dawning realization that an infant’s
mother might just have her own independent existence), there might have
been a feeling of self-certainty with regard to other things, the feeling that
one is at the very center of existence. When that “Other” comes on to
the scene and fails to act like a thing that simply exists for this infantile
consciousness, there is thus a threat to the feeling of self-certainty that
places one’s simple consciousness at the center of all things.20 However,
since there can be only one center of all being, one side’s existence has to
prove itself to be necessary over and against its “Other.” This occurs by
showing that the other side’s existence is only contingent, i.e., that it is
the sort of thing whose existence could end.21 This means, quite simply,
a fight to the death.
What does this lead to? Eventually one side either stops existing or
yields to its “Other,” acknowledging the necessity of the victor’s existence
at the center of all being. Acknowledgement/recognition then becomes
Confucian Remonstrance 175
key to having a sense of self. These two parties are split into necessary
and contingent—into recognized and recognizer22—with the losing side
bonded to the victorious “Other,” depending on it as an absolute lord
for continued existence. What emerges is a polar dynamic between what
in German are called “Herr” and “Knecht,” which best translate respec-
tively word-for-word as “Lord” and “Servant,” though the discussion has
rather famously entered English-language discourse as the Master–Slave
Dialectic.23
Initially, the Master–Slave Dialectic casts the Master after winning the
conflict with the “Other” as once again being content. By making the
Slave into an instrument of that desire, the Master continues to exist as
the veritable center of all being. However, this continuation of the infan-
tile mindset cannot continue, for it is undercut by its own basic logic.
Why? The fight to the death occurred in order to prove one party’s
existence as necessary and that of “the Other” as contingent. However,
that necessary party—the Master—comes to depend on its “Other”—the
Slave—for both recognition and the fulfillment of desire through work.24
Moreover, that recognition rings hollow, as it is recognition from an
inferior, which cannot effectively validate the supposed “truth” of the
Master’s existence at the center of all being. Thus, for Hegel, “[t]he out-
come is a recognition that is one-sided and unequal.”25 This means that
the Master’s self-consciousness comes to be contingent on the Slave, who
becomes necessary in a strange, truncated way.
Meanwhile, the Slave, initially cast as abject and contingent, takes on
features of its “Other”— the Master—including a sense of necessity and
recognition from outside. The Slave, it turns out, is required to complete
desire. Desire alone does not bring an apple, an orange, or any other
good; work is needed, as it takes over where desire ends. Hegel, engaging
in his characteristic approach of treating concepts as terrain with quasi-
physical borders, declares “Work… is desire held in check” (translated
more literally: “Work...is desire hemmed in [ist gehemmte Begierde]”).26
Hence the Slave’s story ceases to be solely about recognizing the Master
and also includes an acquisition of mastery over things and a recognition
of self in the activity of forming permanent, lasting things in connection
to “natural existence.”27 This means that the supposedly contingent Slave
comes to be necessary (and to be self-consciously aware of this).
Hence, Mastery and Slavery, as concepts, each show themselves to be
the reverse of what the purport to be.28 Hence, for Hegel, the intertwined
modes of being of the Master and Slave, each being drawn into such a
contradiction, must end and only serve as a stage in the development of
human spirit. As part of Hegel’s more general method, such contradic-
tion means that what was the current stage must be negated. However,
rather than just being annihilated, this now-old stage is instead preserved,
thereby determining content for the next upheaval (Aufhebung) and
unfolding of spirit.29
176 James Garrison
What remains is self-consciousness as constituted by mutual depen-
dence, but still not yet formed by full and proper mutual recognition.
However, the primary conflict with, and dread of, “the Other” that
started everything off all remains unresolved. And so, on both sides
there is a similar unhappiness with self-consciousness existing in limbo
between necessity and contingency. For Hegel, this means that, after self-
consciousness initially forms through conflict with “the Other,” what
then comes is a state of Unhappy Consciousness.
Now, ultimately the whole dynamic leading to Unhappy Consciousness
is about continued existence, which is to say being at the center of all
things, yet independent of determination by anything else, by anything
“Other.” With the whole dynamic being about continuing to exist at the
center of all being and with the Master–Slave Dialectic having taught that
dependence on material things implodes on conceptual level,30 a quasi-
Stoic withdrawal into existence as a matter of absolute, inflexible prin-
ciple makes a certain amount of sense.31 Hegel describes this Stoic turn
within Unhappy Consciousness thusly, “[i]ts principle is that conscious-
ness is a being that thinks, and that consciousness holds something to be
essentially important, or true and good only in so far as it thinks it to
be such.”32
That Stoic side to Unhappy Consciousness is built on repudiation of
dependence/materiality. Stoic withdrawal into pure existence as a matter
of principle means thoroughly disavowing bodily life, and this in turn
requires a curious dependence on what is disavowed. Sadly, self-con-
scious formed in this way can never be absolutely certain of itself, since
it always needs to consign part of itself to the shadows. On this point,
Hegel writes:
And so, Confucianism makes social harmony clearly dependent upon the
fulfillment of socially named roles in practice. However, what is the nature of
that harmony? Does harmony here mean a nullification of criticism? What
exactly does it mean for a ruler to rule and for a minister to minister, since
that would seem to be the exemplary political relationship that is relevant
here? More to the point with regard to Hong Kong, how does Confucianism
deal with heterodoxy, with political controversy, with protest?
The Governor of She in conversation with [Kong Zi] said, “In our
village there is someone called ‘True Person.’ When his father took a
sheep on the sly, he reported him to the authorities.”
[Kong Zi] replied, “Those who are true in my village conduct
themselves differently. A father covers for his son, and a son covers
for his father. And being true lies in this.”50
When combined with the strong warning that “To become accomplished
in some heterodox doctrine will bring nothing but harm,”51 a trend
emerges in the Confucian texts that also manifests in China’s real-world
history, which is characterized by authoritarianism, brooking no open
dissent. Even leading voices like Roger T. Ames and Peter D. Hershock,
who are relatively sanguine about the prospects for Confucian culture to
thrive amid and within modern liberal democracy, readily concede that
And so, with Confucianism having become state orthodoxy for suc-
cessive dynasties in China and with these dynasties having appealed to
Confucian Remonstrance 183
various sources within the Confucian canon to justify oppressive rule
and more recent generations grappling with that cultural inheritance,53 it
seems undeniable that there is at least a side of Confucianism that can be
characterized as authoritarian.
However, this is far from the whole of the story. Even on a textual
level, and without getting into sociological or historical observation,
Confucianism cannot simply be reduced down to authoritarianism; there
is considerably more nuance in both the early classics and the subsequent
tradition. It is necessary here to understand that, while Confucianism
might not be keen on open dissent, other possibilities for voicing dis-
sent might exist—namely, remonstrance [jian 諫]. To wit, The Analects
records Kong Zi as saying “In serving your father and mother, remon-
strate with them gently. On seeing that they do not heed your suggestions,
remain respectful and do not act contrary. Although concerned, voice no
resentment.”54 Extended to political rule, Kong Zi likewise demands, “Let
there be no duplicity when taking a stand against [one’s lord],” where
such remonstrance occurs “only once they have won the confidence of
their lord… otherwise, their lord would think himself maligned.”55 This
presents the spirit of remonstrance within Confucian political culture.
Taking the clear template analogizing parent–child and ruler–minis-
ter relations that runs throughout Confucian texts and post-Confucian
culture, it seems as though there might be space within the decidedly
Confucian concept of “Harmonious Society” to articulate a more private
type of political criticism (one which admittedly is quite different from
the direct physical confrontations that have played out on the streets of
Hong Kong).
Nonetheless, within the principle held onto with almost Stoic-like
tenacity by the PRC, remonstrance may stand as an antithesis that com-
plicates the authoritarian picture and its promotion of social harmony
for social harmony’s sake. Alongside the early remarks by Kong Zi decry-
ing heterodox doctrine and the kind of social chaos that develops when
names and language are not properly rectified and made good on in
practice, there is also a clear preference for harmony as both stable and
complex, which means not taking harmony to be reducible to uniformity.
This is what is conveyed in the key statement from The Analects, wherein
Kong Zi proclaims that “Exemplary persons seek harmony not sameness;
petty persons, then, are the opposite.”56
This complex harmony uses that diversity of opinion to attain stability,
and this ultimately happens through remonstrance—a mode of private,
non-intrusive criticism that preserves social harmony while calling atten-
tion to deviation from roles. It is all about saving “face”—a notion with
deep roots in Confucian culture.57 And so, extending and crucially modi-
fying what may be called an authoritarian streak within Confucianism,
comes a complementary spirit—a remonstrative spirit, which uses diver-
sity of gently, discreetly voiced opinion to maintain social harmony.
184 James Garrison
This side of Confucianism is well encapsulated by a second exemplary
quote, this time from the similarly canonical entry The Classic of Family
Reverence (Xiaojing 孝經). Here Kong Zi offers an account that is decid-
edly skeptical of simply doing what the father, and by extension the
ruler, might command without in turn offering any protest whatsoever,
remarking:
And so, to the extent that the meaning of social harmony is being con-
tested in a Chinese context, Confucian vocabulary and concepts cannot
help but be part of the discussion. Understanding the scene in Hong Kong
in terms of Hegel’s dialectic helps at getting at what it means for the prin-
ciple of “One Country, Two Systems” to play out in terms of the concep-
tual logic of recognition through the eyes of the “Other.”
Further examining this dynamic in terms of Confucianism allows for
a more locally attuned understanding of how rhetoric around social har-
mony might play out along the poles of authoritarianism and remon-
stration in Confucianism. There is reason to think that both strands
of Confucianism might manifest as things develop. Drawing upon
Confucian-rooted authoritarianism makes sense as a primary option for
the PRC, very much in line with a general aim of preserving stability,
but the situation in Hong Kong, with its many diverse factions, means
there is the need to show the positive appeal of the PRC’s “socialism
with Chinese characteristics” ahead of 2047. A simply authoritarian
insistence on principle has its limits to the extent that quasi-Stoic prin-
ciple is staked on social harmony, which is imperiled by authoritarian-
ism. The logic of the situation may demand that the goal be harmony,
Confucian Remonstrance 185
not sameness. Authoritarianism’s peril to social harmony is spelled out
where Confucius is recorded as drawing a distinction between authori-
tarian rule and a ritual-based approach more in line with Confucianism’s
notion of spontaneous order coalescing around a stable North Star or
Middle Kingdom, remarking:
This means that there ought to be conceptual room for something that
complements, yet calls into question, an authoritarian principled insis-
tence on social harmony for social harmony’s sake. The further impli-
cation here is that remonstration can do this and can do so in a way
that can preserve harmony by taking place in private while still taking a
stand where necessary to prevent a descent into social chaos. Such con-
temporary remonstration in Hong Kong might be akin to what nowa-
days is called a back-channel overture, in this case with characteristically
Confucian emphasis on the need to fulfill roles in practice. However, what
this specifically would look like is difficult to say, since the Confucian
model of remonstration is in fact private and since, as will be shown by
way of conclusion, the language of remonstrance may prove difficult to
hear amid the cacophony of public events.
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10 Politics and Reconciliation
The Issue of Comfort Women
in the Dynamics of Political
Reconciliation between Japan
and South Korea
Naoko Kumagai
10.1 Introduction
The issue of reconciliation became a distinctive agenda item in inter-
national politics after World War II when the feeling of need to punish
the vanquished countries gave way to an emphasis on ways of living
together among former adversaries and on restoring damaged relation-
ships between them, even though post-World War II reconciliation still
embraced notions of territorial resettlements and state reparations. Such
interstate reconciliation was mostly the result of cost–benefit calculations
amid the geopolitical background of the Cold War.
At the same time, however, reconciliation on an individual basis has
slowly become a growing topic in postwar international politics. Veterans
and noncombatants, dissatisfied with interstate peace treaties, have
demanded apologies and individual compensation. The trend has intensi-
fied since the end of the Cold War with the universalization of human
rights norms and growing activism.
With the growing voices of postwar individual compensation, the
meaning of reconciliation has come to assume more individual-based
precepts. It has come to take on a more ethical meaning with a heavier
weight being placed on the elements of apologies, remorse, forgiveness,
and confidence-building than on cost–benefit calculation and coex-
istence. Accordingly, emotional factors, such as despair, dignity, pride,
humiliation, shame, and healing, have become involved in the reconcilia-
tion process. Thus, reconciliation is no longer as simple as the traditional
measures of state reparation and territorial compensation.
Reconciliation in postwar individual compensation issues also posed
legal questions to governments, since most issues involving postwar
individual compensation had already been settled by intergovernmental
agreements under the cause of diplomatic protection. This is the question
of how to respect and reflect the voices of the victims while maintaining
the stability of law required to achieve reconciliation on individual basis.
Politics and Reconciliation 197
Efforts at postwar individual compensation as regards the issue of
comfort women faced a significant challenge due to the survivors’ ada-
mant demand for legal responsibility which the Japanese government
could not accept. Comfort women were young women from many parts
of Asia who were taken to Japanese military compounds and, in many
cases, forced to provide sexual services to officers and soldiers in the
Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II. Though Japan
has been able to undertake measures aiming at the political settlement of
moral atonement with the Philippines and the Netherlands, South Korea
has been adamant about legal responsibility.
This chapter explores Japan’s reconciliation efforts with South Korea
to examine the complexity and dynamism of reconciliation in postwar
individual compensation issues. Even in comparison with other similarly
polemical cases, such as issues of individual compensation for Taiwanese
and Korean soldiers who fought for Japan, the issue of comfort women
demonstrates a higher level of tension and complexity in reconciliation
efforts, and thus remains unresolved.1 The issue of comfort women involves
the diversity of actors involved, various emotions related to nationalism,
the novel nature of the problem of sexual violence against women on the
battlefield, retroactive morality, and subsequent progress of legal codes.
The analysis relies on the concept of political reconciliation, as sug-
gested by Andrew Schaap,2 to highlight dynamic interactions among rel-
evant actors in the reconciliation process with incommensurability and
uncertainty. Schaap explores Hannah Arendt’s idea of worldly ethics and
her view of politics as open-ended interactions toward commonality3 in
examining political reconciliation, while taking into consideration Carl
Schmidt’s notion of politics as the friend–enemy relation of interminable
conflict among actors with senses of fear and enmity.4
Dynamics of political reconciliation are not only competitive and
antagonistic but also communicative, serving as a public space of dia-
logue. Schaap refers to Arendt’s idea that politics is an arena in which
people form intersubjective reality through their discourse and actions
being heard and seen, albeit with frustration and uncertainty.5 Schaap
sees political reconciliation as an incessant and continual discourse
toward the possibility for commonality, but also as conditioned by an
“awareness of its own impossibility.”6 Political reconciliation does not
expect natural harmony.
10.2 Political Reconciliation
Political reconciliation involves diverse actors and their mutual influences at
every stage, thus making it neither progressive nor regressive automatically.
Contemporary interdisciplinary conflict resolution studies, with numerous
cases of conflicts involving non-state actors, accordingly capture diverse
steps of reconciliation, addressing the perpetrator’s acknowledgment of
198 Naoko Kumagai
the facts of perpetration and acceptance of responsibility, as well as the
victim’s forgiveness of apologies for offensive deeds and cooperation in
reconciliation policies (compensation, memorials, etc.).7
Politics, whether conflictual or cooperative, unfolds with the dynamism
of self-identities of the actors involved. Tetsurō Watusji’s explanation of
human existence will help to clarify the complex dynamics of identity forma-
tion in political reconciliation as regards postwar individual compensation.
According to Watsuji, a human being exists in a space in which one connects
with others through diverse acts.8 These acts involve the dual character of
individuals as both social and historical beings who never exist as purely
atomic entities. Historically, an individual’s past and their memories affect
their consciousness, thus establishing their active selves. Moreover, individu-
als are affected by the social environment that constitutes an interconnected
network of influences between people and the environment. Actions then
constitute a dialectic process with others through language and conscious-
ness under certain tempo-spatial circumstances.9 In this process, individuals
emancipate their viewpoints, undergo dynamic self-formation, and form an
intersubjective understanding and new mutual perceptions with new identi-
ties.10 Throughout the dialectical process, individuals transcend the limit of
their private being and become a public being.11
In the issue of postwar individual compensation, complex dialectical
interactions take place. At base, this occurs between the perpetrator side
and the victim side. Furthermore, internal dynamics also exist within
each side involving diverse actors, such as victims (or perpetrators), their
families, supporter groups, and their governments. Dialectical integra-
tion, once achieved between the victim and perpetrator sides, means the
creation of a new acceptable reality,12 which would transcend the identi-
ties of both perpetrator and victim.
Political reconciliation as regards the issue of individual compensa-
tion sits on a spectrum between pragmatism and genuine morality. States’
pragmatic interest calculations based on Max Weber’s notion of the “ethic
of responsibility,”13 with the duty of self-preservation for the population
in question,14 are influenced by diverse voices of individuals and groups.
Political reconciliation reaching genuine remorse and forgiveness,
with the perpetrator’s full acknowledgement of guilt without any excuse
and the victim’s forgiveness, is surely ideal. The perpetrator side would
neither hold victims in contempt nor make a hypocritical or insincere
apology for the sake of evading responsibility. The victim side would go
beyond grudges and have no desire for revenge15 or to abuse its moral
superiority, turning it into power over the perpetrator.16
Still, the dialectic process is not necessarily smooth. In the process
of acknowledgement of facts causing offense, diverse tensions unfold.
Some resistant members in the community remain private, and thus the
dialectical process among the community members does not completely
form a new community identity. Some individuals on the perpetrator
Politics and Reconciliation 199
side might minimize the facts of their perpetration or offer one or more
of the following excuses: it was not their original plan; it was due to
a misunderstanding; there was no other option; it was for self-defense.
Hardline conservatives in Japan are reluctant to be remorseful about
Pearl Harbor, since it was, for them, a matter of Japan’s self-defense under
the allied embargo. The moral excuse of patriarchal pride often supports
deniers in the argument that contemporary ethical standards should not
be used to judge past actions, with licensed prostitution being the excuse
for the engagement of comfort women in Japan.
Behind this revisionism lies a sense of ontological insecurity in that the
meaning of one’s existence as set in his/her relation to the surrounding
is threatened.17 An actor experiencing ontological insecurity senses that
the external world does not approve the actor’s narrative about the self,
and thus the actor suffers from humiliation and great loss in the sense of
psychological integrity. The actor comes to treat its identity as an end in
itself, assuming an uncompromising narrative and sticking to its “reali-
ties” without adjusting itself to the external world. There is no space for
self-emancipation. Norihiro Katō, a Japanese literature critic, analyzes
the recurring revisionist remarks in Japan as a phenomenon of resistance
in which those revisionists cannot accept the prevailing narrative in the
world regarding Japan’s culpability and loss in the Asia-Pacific War.18
Ambiguity in the victim–offender dichotomy also causes controversy in
the acknowledgement of the facts of offense. Japan’s strong sense of vic-
timhood due to massive aerial bombings and atomic bombs obscures
Japan’s offenses in China and its attack on Pearl Harbor.
Notions of collective guilt and the generational idea of responsibility
are often ambiguous and complex, thus distracting from political recon-
ciliation. Collective guilt, when attributed to national character, can be
reduced to personal irresponsibility19 or to stereotyping moral degrada-
tion of a group,20 though people on the perpetrator side are politically
guilty as a collective.21 Though younger generations of the perpetrator
side are free from guilt, they are responsible for the acknowledgement of
the past and for not making the same mistakes in the future due to the
fact that they are members of the political entity that committed the his-
torical wrongdoing.22 However, younger generations often confuse guilt
and responsibility.
Ambiguous acknowledgement of guilt and responsibility leads to
reluctance in apologies and thus to a vicious spiral of mutual suspicion
between the perpetrator and the victim. Japan’s official apologies were
often followed by controversial revisionist remarks by nationalistic hard-
liners,23 which deepened international society’s doubts about Japan’s
sincerity.
Furthermore, forgiveness is not so easy for the victims. Naturally vic-
tims, out of moral outrage, desire to accuse the perpetrators. It is not only
indignation in that the victim protests against the violation of the value by
200 Naoko Kumagai
the perpetration, but also resentment in that the victim defiantly reaffirms
his/her rank and value that have been degraded by the perpetration.24
Revisionist remarks by the perpetrator side make forgiveness even more
difficult. Though Crocker interprets reconciliation as “democratic reci-
procity,” a process of deliberation with respect for the autonomy of each
individual concerning the past perpetration and the future relationship,25
it can happen that the victim side neglects the aspect of “democratic reci-
procity,” by exaggerating the facts of the sufferings and even abusing
the moral high ground,26 thus transforming retribution into vengeance,
which is without constraint and is outside of any institutional context.27
Excessive victimhood appears among dogmatized activists supporting
victims and members of the younger generation, full of a sense of justice
while devoid of actual experiences of suffering.
Schaap suggests a political function of forgiveness to facilitate dialogue.
Schaap argues that dialogue often starts from the victim side, when the
victim side, particularly the victim’s family, seeks truth to make sense of
the meaning of what happened to their loved ones.28 The initiative from
the victim side is an attempt to restore the victim’s dignity by remember-
ing the victim in the context of society.29 At this point, as a new view of
the transgressor, forgiveness can come first before apologies, transcend-
ing a resentful view.30 It is an “offer of trust in advance,”31 though it never
means any obligation of the victim side to forgive or any right of the
perpetrator side to seek forgiveness.32 Forgiveness does not condition the
overcoming of resentment.
A voluntary offer of forgiveness creates room for a common sharing
of facts and for dialogue regarding truth. Tendering forgiveness moti-
vates the perpetrator, finding emotional connection with the victim and
thus reducing the caution of the victim, to confess the truth and to bear
political responsibility, as demonstrated by the example of South Africa.33
Forgiving does not mean forgetting past wrongdoing. The victims’ posi-
tion of social inferiority as a result of harm inflicted on them34 does not
last eternally. Forgiving is “anamnesis,” as a step toward common mem-
ory, rather than “amnesia.”35 In reality, it is unrealistic to wait for total
clarification of facts about who did what to whom and where36 before the
beginning of forgiveness. Schaap argues that a common understanding of
and broad agreement on the significance of past wrongs is adequate for
the beginning of reconciliation.37
Schaap sees that, through the process of dialogue once opened, facts
can be jointly interpreted in the context of contemporary society, instead
of being memorized as objective facts. “Knowing forgetting” takes place
in this process.38 Forgiveness provides a possibility of interaction without
the past constantly weighing in.39 This way we avoid the risk of mak-
ing the past determine the possibilities of the present. This also avoids
the humiliation of the perpetrator by the victim. The so-called “worldly
Politics and Reconciliation 201
ethics” tells us that we have to live together on Earth. Therefore, forgiv-
ing serves us by allowing us to create our life in common through assess-
ing the past in its meaning in the present world and through settling the
meaning of past wrongs.40
The initiative to forgive can avoid the risk of total nonacceptance of
responsibility that comes from the perpetrator side’s satisfaction at the
confession of guilt. As Schaap explains, Arendt points out the danger
of a sense of vicarious guilt backed by cynicism, thus leading to a cheap
sentimentality and solidarity only with self-satisfaction.41 The initiative
can also help avoid excessive scrutiny of the apology. Skepticism about
the sincerity of the confession of guilt leads to the scrutiny of apologies
as public professions of guilt, leading in turn to questions of whether the
apology is just “self-enactment,” just a matter of gesture. The focus shifts
to the expression of sincere remorse from discussion of the meaning of
the significance of past events.42 Such distraction hampers the reconcili-
ation process.
Political leadership matters for the maintenance and navigation of
political dialogue, particularly when political dialogue suffers from
radical and objectionable stances from certain participants exhibit-
ing ontological insecurity and cynicism. Political leadership can guide
people in self-reflection, navigate discourses, and affect people’s cog-
nitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions to each other,43 thus pre-
venting the reconciliation process from straying away from the sense
of reciprocity between the actors.44 This process includes relieving the
fear of the victims concerning oblivion and unrestored dignity as well
as the fear on the perpetrator side of eternal stigmatization. Dialogue
would help both sides acquire new identities and coexist in a new
reality.
Political leadership could also avoid the trap of symbolism. Though
symbols work to commemorate and to evoke narratives about the past
to make sense of the present, to validate past trauma, and to heal deep
psychological wounds,45 once symbols are idolized, they deprive people
of self-reflection and lead to dogmatization,46 which may lead to radical-
ized victimhood. Thus, all in all, political leadership functions to avoid
an exchange of unilateral claims devoid of dialectical process with one’s
emancipation of identity and to maintain political prudence for a con-
structive common vision.47
Dialogue as political reconciliation provides a realistic process of
reconciliation in which relevant actors objectify themselves, establishing
and renewing their mutual perceptions through affecting processes of
the acknowledgement of perpetration, forgiveness, and memories. The
following sections introduce the issue of comfort women and examine
the case of South Korea to see how dialectical processes in political
reconciliation have worked.
202 Naoko Kumagai
10.3 The Beginning of the Issue of Comfort Women
The issue of comfort women gained international attention after the first
confession by a former Korean comfort woman, Kim Hak-sun, in August
1991. Though magazine articles and former soldiers’ memoirs published
in the 1970s and 1980s48 indicated the existence of comfort women dur-
ing wartime, at the time they did not stir controversy either in Japanese
or Korean society. It was only with the rise of democratization in South
Korea in the late 1980s and human rights awareness after the end of the
Cold War that the issue was recognized as a social concern.
When the issue emerged, the Japanese government conducted two
investigations and issued the Kōno Statement in 1993, which admitted
the Japanese wartime authority’s involvement in the establishment and
management of the comfort stations and expressed sincere apologies and
remorse to the former comfort women.49 The Japanese government then
established the Asian Women’s Fund (AWF) with moral atonement as the
project’s aim.
The Japanese government, claiming that the 1965 bilateral agreement
on the settlement of claims with South Korea had already resolved the
issue, denied any state compensation. The atonement project included
atonement money that had been privately raised, medical/welfare finan-
cial support, and a letter of apology from the Japanese Prime Minister.
The project was conducted in South Korea, Taiwan, the Netherlands, the
Philippines, and Indonesia, though with some difference in the project
content.50
However, the dilemma of legal and political settlement appeared and
the AWF became the main point of debate. While many survivors sought
state compensation and legal settlement, some accepted moral atone-
ment from the AWF and others did not. Most survivors in Taiwan, the
Netherlands, and the Philippines accepted the AWF, while not many
South Korean survivors did so.51
The following section will discuss the dialectical process of political
reconciliation between Japan and South Korea. The discussion includes
examination of the internal dialectical processes in these two countries,
through considering the formation of each country’s self-identity as
regards this issue.
10.4 South Korea
In Japan’s reconciliation efforts with South Korea, difficulty in factual
acknowledgement of coercive recruitment led to difficulty in dialec-
tic integration within Japanese society and South Korean society and
between Japan and South Korea as political entities. Controversy over
factual acknowledgement led to a fierce and lasting domestic cleavage
between those who were sympathetic to the victims and those who were
Politics and Reconciliation 203
deniers. Japan’s weak domestic dialectical integration as regards the issue
of comfort women enhanced suspicions about the sincerity of Japan’s
remorse in the eyes of both South Korea and international society. In
South Korea, supporter groups’ rather stubborn dogmatic stance, consti-
tuting South Korea’s public stance, failed to provide any offer of forgive-
ness to Japan. Thus, Japan’s reconciliation with South Korea has been
very rocky.
Debate over factual acknowledgement of coercive recruitment was
due to the absence of official documents and the survivors’ statements
that indicate that the recruitment was through coaxing and deception
rather than coercion. Japanese conservatives maintain that the coaxing
and deception were done by illegal brokers, while Koreans argue that
they constitute “coercive” recruitment insofar as this occurred against the
will of the victims. This debate was also due to factual confusion regard-
ing comfort women within the Women’s Volunteer Corps, which was the
wartime mobilization of a volunteer corps of students, both Japanese
and Korean, to work at munitions factories, enhancing a strong impres-
sion of forced recruitment of comfort women. Such confusion persisted
among activists, the media, and the general public through the early
1990s, though scholarly research has clarified that these two categories
were totally separate.52 The name of the main supporter activist group
also contributed to the continued confusion; the Japanese and Korean
name of the main group was literally the Korean Council on Measures to
Address the Volunteer Corps Issue (Korean Council), though its English
name was the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual
Slavery by Japan.
The equivocal expression on the nature of recruitment in the Kōno
Statement, the Japanese chief cabinet minister’s acknowledgement, and
apologies issued in 1993 also intensified the debate. The Kōno Statement
included an assertion that “recruitment, transfer, control, etc., were con-
ducted generally against their will, through coaxing, coercion, etc.,”
in view of comfort women’s testimonies of harsh experiences at com-
fort stations, even though no official document on coercive recruit-
ment was found.53 Japanese hardline conservatives demanded that the
Kōno Statement be retracted,54 while South Korean activists used the
Kōno Statement as a point of reference and expanded discourse regard-
ing Japan’s coercive recruitment in international society, as seen in the
setting up of comfort woman statues and legislative resolutions on the
issue of comfort women being in the U.S. House of Representatives, the
Netherlands, the European Parliament, as will be explained later.
The debate over the nature of recruitment did not create a momentum
for joint investigation or for the Korean side to offer forgiveness in pur-
suit of an investigation of historical truth. The main supporter group in
South Korea declined to cooperate with the Japanese government’s inter-
viewing of Korean victims.55
204 Naoko Kumagai
Hardline Japanese conservatives, protesting governmental approval in
May 1996 of seven junior high school history textbooks describing com-
fort women, went so far as to form the Japan Society for History Textbook
Reform in January 1997, aiming to remove any content regarding the
issue of comfort women from junior high school history textbooks. They
claimed that comfort women were not victims, but rather that they had
earned a large amount of money, often more than Japanese officers.56
Debate over factual acknowledgement has led to another fierce con-
troversy over the nature of Japan’s responsibility, which made the AWF’s
aim of moral atonement very difficult and, as of 2020, increased hostility
between the two countries. While South Koreans argued for legal respon-
sibility and state compensation, the Japanese government maintained
that the 1965 Agreement on the Settlements of Claims and the principle
of diplomatic protection had resolved all legal issues, including that of
comfort women. Castigating the AWF’s moral atonement as a maneu-
ver to escape legal responsibility, the Korean side declined to set up any
counterpart to the AWF which could have worked administratively for
the Korean survivors. The Korean Council, the most adamant claimant
for state compensation, naturally declined the AWF’s request of coopera-
tion. Those who agreed to support the Korean Council set up a group to
terminate the AWF.57
The hardened stance of the Korean Council shifted away from a victim-
centered approach. The Korean Council criticized those who accepted
atonement money since the money was not based on legal responsibil-
ity. Some went so far as to perceive the recipients of the moral atone-
ment money to be prostitutes, because this was “private” money from
Japanese nationals.58 Largely due to strong pressure from the Korean
Council, fewer than one-third of registered former Korean comfort
women accepted it.59
The Korean Council’s criticisms against the AWF assumed a more ritu-
alistic and semantic tone, scrutinizing every move of the AWF in a nega-
tive way. It condemned the AWF’s confidential operation to protect the
privacy of the victims as secretive.60 Additionally, it problematized the
details of the wording in the Japanese Prime Minister’s letter of apolo-
gies. For example, the Korean Council interpreted the expression of
“my feelings” in the letter as the state avoiding any official apologies.61
This episode shows the absence of dialectical integration between Japan
and South Korea in political reconciliation. South Korea’s skepticism of
Japan, nurtured by occasional revisionist remarks from Japanese hardline
conservatives, failed to understand the AWF’s effort to express total sin-
cerity to survivors with the unprecedented style of the personified style of
an official letter from the Prime Minister to each survivor.62
The harsh denial from Japanese hardline conservatives was due to
ontological insecurity and then a sense of national humiliation. They are
uneasy with the American-imposed democratic postwar constitution and
Politics and Reconciliation 205
long for the restoration of the prewar system of statism. Furthermore,
they legitimize the war and feel that the honor of their fathers and broth-
ers who fought for Japan should not be tarnished,63 thus supporting the
Prime Minister’s official visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where Class A war
criminals as well as the war dead are among those enshrined.64
From the Korean point of view, it must be acknowledged that comfort
women served “against their will” and not voluntarily, in order to defend
the women’s honor, innocence, and chastity in Korean society, with its
own strong patriarchal values.65 Accordingly, the clear locus of legal
responsibility was also expected to serve the recovery of the dignity of
the victims. One former comfort woman expressed her wish to prove that
what she testified to as being her experience was not a lie.66 Survivors,
encouraged and supported by activists, sued the Japanese government
for individual compensation. The plaintiffs’ ultimate purpose of seeking
a judicial solution was not money, but official acknowledgement of
responsibility.67 The stance of South Korea, all in all, was led by the
Korean Council. The South Korean government, in the face of the strong
advocacy of the Korean Council, insisted on Japan’s acknowledgment
of coercive recruitment in the drafting stage of the Kōno Statement,
even with no official documents on coercive recruitment being found,68
whereas it had not officially either confirmed or denied the validity of the
1965 agreement as regards the case of comfort women. In March 1993,
South Korean President Kim Young-sam expressed that his government
would not demand financial compensation from Japan, but would still
demand from Japan an investigation into historical truths.69 In the face of
the massive protest of the Korean Council against the AWF’s atonement
project, the South Korean government decided to adopt the Korean
Council’s stance.70 When the AWF provided the letter of apology and
atonement money to seven Korean former comfort women in January
1997, the Korean government commented that it was “extremely
displeased.”71
Japan’s semantic arguments aiming to resolve the misunderstanding
of coercive recruitment were counterproductive to building confidence
in political reconciliation. Japanese Prime Minister Abe’s terminological
explanation in October 2006 and March 2007 that Japan’s recruitment
style was not coercive in the narrow sense of the term72 drew criticism
from Korean activists and even major Western newspapers as lacking
the viewpoints of victims.73 In turn, the international coalition cam-
paign of Korean activists, spreading the discourse of coercive recruit-
ment internationally, led to a full-page advertisement titled “The Truth
about Comfort Women” in the Washington Post on April 26, 2007, at a
time when Prime Minister Abe was visiting Washington, DC. Japanese
hardline conservatives protested with a full-page public statement in
the Washington Post on June 14, 2007, which asserted that comfort
women were voluntary prostitutes who were earning incomes. To many,
206 Naoko Kumagai
however, this sounded like a completely revisionist, denialist argument,
showing disrespect for the feelings of the victims and thus closing off any
chances for dialogue. The Korean Council started a tour with public tes-
timonies from some survivors in the U.S. Congress and in legislatures in
Europe, which led to legislative resolutions in 2007 and 2008—mainly in
the U.S., the Netherlands, and South Korea—demanding apologies from
Japan.74
Behind international criticisms of Japan over coercive recruitment lay
skepticism about Japan’s remorse about the past war itself. Some voiced
concerns over the threat of Japanese rearmament amidst the increas-
ingly conservative tenor in Japanese politics since the early 1990s. They
interpreted Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto’s 1996 visit to
the Yasukuni Shrine, where Class A war criminals are enshrined along-
side other Japanese war dead, as a step toward remilitarization.75 Prime
Minister Koizumi visited Yasukuni for six consecutive years from 2001
to 2006, which also stirred international criticism.
The vicious cycle escalated with the South Korean government’s
tougher stance after the adoption of a new interpretation concluded by
the Roh administration’s investigation in 2005 and a 2011 verdict of
the Constitutional Court of Korea, both of which interpreted the 1965
agreement as inconclusive in resolving the issue of comfort women. The
Korean government, in neglect of the AWF’s efforts, started demanding
Japan’s sincere atonement to the victims. South Korean President Park’s
declaration in 2013 about the eternal victim–perpetrator relationship at
the commemoration ceremony of an annual nationalist demonstration
begun in 1919 demonstrates the failed dialogue for political reconcilia-
tion with Japan.
The Korean Council’s establishment of a statue depicting a comfort
woman in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in December 2011,
for which the Constitutional Court decision served as a momentum, and
which violates the prohibition on the “impairment of the dignity” of dip-
lomatic missions outlined in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic
Relations, hardened the stance of the Japanese government and wider
Japanese public opinion since the statue symbolized the activists’ accusa-
tion against Japan by describing the victims as “sex slaves” rather than
only serving as a memorial of the victims. The Japanese government
called for the statue’s removal. Conservative journals in Japan started
carrying numerous articles disputing the terminology of sex slaves and
insisting that such terminology degrades Japan’s dignity and morality.
Local assemblies from at least six prefectures in Japan issued statements
and resolutions calling upon the Japanese government to issue correc-
tives in international forums about coercive recruitment and to restore
Japan’s dignity. The continuous establishment of comfort woman stat-
ues and memorials not only in South Korea but also abroad, particu-
larly in the United States,76 further deepened Japan’s suspicion of South
Politics and Reconciliation 207
Koreans’ abuse of victimhood for anti-Japanese sentiment at the expense
of reconciliation.
The deepened breach between Japan and South Korea even spread
to other diplomatic issues. South Korea suddenly canceled a military
information security agreement with Japan in June 2012. President Lee
landed on disputed islands, Takeshima (Dokto in Korean), in August
2012, thus provoking Japan. South Korean President Park and Japanese
Prime Minister Abe did not have a summit meeting in 2013 or 2014.
The power shift in the Far East, with the rise of China and the shrink-
age in the power gap between South Korea and Japan, also enhanced
South Korea’s uncompromising stance toward Japan. South Korea, with
its growing political economic interdependence with China, pivoted
there, in keeping with the traditional Korean policy of Jidaiseisaku, the
following of the powerful for its survival as a small peninsular state.77
President Park set up a historical discourse with China on various occa-
sions, including the establishment of the An Jung-geun Memorial Hall at
Harbin Station in China in 2014, named for the man who assassinated
Ito Hirobumi, the first resident-general of Korea, at Harbin Station in
the northeastern part of China in 1909. He is seen as a national hero in
Korea, while the Japanese government considers him to be a terrorist.
There was a brief moment offering forgiveness from some activ-
ists who issued a statement in 2014 that they would no longer seek to
establish Japan’s legal responsibility, but would instead seek recognition
of Japan having been a victimizer, along with apologies based on that
admission and compensation as proof of contrition.78 But it did not cre-
ate a breakthrough.
It was rather the United States’ geopolitical concern about the growing
nuclear and missile crisis of North Korea that pushed Japan and South
Korea toward the 2015 agreement to resolve the issue of comfort women
between the two countries.79 The 2015 agreement80 was a product of
prudent political decisions from both sides to address common threats
from North Korea as well as to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the
normalization of their diplomatic relationship.
Accordingly, the agreement indicated compromise on the part of
both sides, creating a momentum and arena for dialogue and then for
dialectical integration. The Japanese government acknowledged its
responsibility and the Korean government acknowledged Japan’s previous
and current efforts. Through this, both sides could prevent any battle
over terminology. The Korean side acknowledged Japan’s p revious and
current efforts at atonement, thus implicitly downgrading the a ctivists’
anti-Japanese actions, and promised to endeavor to have the statue in
front of the embassy removed, which shows another step forward in
view of the past reluctance on the part of the South Korean government.
The two governments also agreed that the Korean government would set
up a new foundation, the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation, with
208 Naoko Kumagai
funding from the Japanese government, to assuage the wounds of the
victims.81
The 2015 agreement was acclaimed internationally as historic82 and
was expected to serve as an impetus for dialectical process and for mutual
confidence. In practice, more than two-thirds of the survivors accepted
the monetary provision under the foundation’s project.
However, the dialectical process did not last. Instead, a unilateral
exchange of views ensued. The Korean Council, dissatisfied with the
absence of legal responsibility in the 2015 agreement, took regressive
actions against the 2015 agreement, starting with the installation of
new statues next to the Consulate General of Japan in Busan and in
other countries. Castigating the agreement as being made without any
consultation with the survivors, the Korean Council demanded its repeal.
The South Korean government remained disengaged, commenting that
it was the act of a private organization. Eventually, President Moon,
who succeeded President Park, problematized the 2015 agreement by
unilaterally deciding to shut down the foundation in 2019 without
consulting Japan.
The South Korean government avoided any efforts that might have
helped Korean domestic dialectical integration not to succumb to strong
anti-Japanese sentiment within Korean society. The strong voices of the
Korean Council, which often ignore the demands of survivors, have had
a significant influence on the Korean government, as testified to by a for-
mer Korean government officer who engaged in negotiations with Japan
on the issue of comfort women in the early 2010s.83
A former Korean comfort women, Lee Yong Soo, also complained of
the Korean Council’s neglect of the survivor voices. She criticized the
Korean Council’s use of the term, “sex slave,” and its withholding from
survivors of information about a 2015 plan agreed to by the Japanese
and Korean governments.84
Strong manifestations of Korean collective memory of colonialism have
supported, both explicitly and implicitly, the activists’ regressive moves
and abuse of victim status as well as the South Korean government’s pas-
sivity. The issue of comfort women symbolizes the exploitation of Chōson
(Korea) under Japanese colonial rule.85 Also, activist groups strategically
formed a nationalist discourse, instead of a feminist discourse, to draw
the attention of the whole of Korean society, in which male Koreans in
particular were originally reluctant to deal with the sensitive issue of sex.
The collective memory of the issue of comfort women became a dogma-
tized reassertion of South Korea’s stigmatized identity to Japan. With the
negative stereotype of Japan as military ruler and racist, wartime Korean
collaborators of Japan, even those soldiers under the Japanese Imperial
Army, were thus labeled as Shinnichi, pro-Japanese,86 such that any inter-
pretation of comfort women other than the narrative of young Chōson
girls being coercively abducted by Japan was criticized.
Politics and Reconciliation 209
The Japanese government’s rather unilateral stance was not conductive
to a constructive dialogue with South Korea, either. The Japanese gov-
ernment reasoned that it had completed its duty under the 2015 agree-
ment by paying one billion JPY (approx. 10 million USD) to South Korea
and demanded the relocation of the statue. Furthermore, the detached
and impromptu comment by Prime Minister Abe on October 3, 2016 in
response to a question at the Budget Committee of the Lower House of
the Diet that he did not have the slightest intention of writing a letter to
the survivors was a great disappointment to Korean society collectively
and made Korean society doubt Japan’s sincerity.87
Surely, these statements do not constitute a departure from the agree-
ment. Furthermore, there exists a condition of apology exhaustion in
Japanese society since South Korea moved the goalposts regarding issues
of historical understanding every time Japan made any effort.88
Still, the delicate issue of comfort women requires any statement to
be considerate to the victims and not to lose the momentum of dia-
logue opened up in the 2015 agreement particularly in view of nearly
three decades of tension between the two countries. The past cannot
be mastered89 due to the diversity of the victims’ experiences and feel-
ings. Some victims were criticized and abandoned by their families,
being tormented by questions from their children whose fathers were
Japanese soldiers visiting the comfort station. Others remained single
for life, having to forgo marriage due to their traumatic experiences
as comfort women. Accordingly, reconciliation is a sensitive process
of dialogue involving diverse voices. This requires humility, especially
from the perpetrator side.
The political reconciliation process between Japan and South Korea
ended up in the exchange of unilateral claims. Sound and prudent political
leadership to navigate constructive dialogue was missing on both sides.
The Korean activists’ dogmatism utilized victimhood to the extent that
it harmed some survivors whom the activists were supposed to support.
It was desired that Japan understood reconciliation as a long process in
great need of sensitivity to victims. Japanese leadership lacked humility
as a sense of the “unacknowledgeability of suffering.”90 It is tragic that
these two states could neither transcend this tit-for-tat situation nor form
a new vision based on mutual confidence with new mutual perceptions
beyond victim and perpetrator.
10.5 Conclusion
The case of Japan and South Korea has been characterized by difficulty
in sustaining dialogue for political reconciliation. South Korean society,
with strong activist voices being backed by the collective memory of
colonial experiences and patriarchal social background, has maintained
that Japan’s current reckoning with moral responsibility with regard to
210 Naoko Kumagai
comfort women is unacceptable. The South Korean government, being
pragmatic in compromising in the 2015 agreement, but ultimately
passive, failed in leading a domestic dialectical discourse toward a new
domestic integration. The private voices of activists in Korean society
constituted the public voice of South Korea. There was little room for
the Korean side, particularly activists, to overcome resentment, as seen in
the mounting of the statue of the comfort woman which Japan perceived
as a humiliation. Even with the 2015 agreement being brokered with a
push from the United States’ geopolitical concerns, only an exchange of
claims has taken place; there has been little in the way of dialogue, much
less of dialectic interaction. South Korean activists’ radicalized sense
of victimhood, which has often harmed even the survivors, stimulated
already vocal Japanese hardline conservatives, thereby escalating vicious
cycles of mutual doubt.
Meanwhile, Japan’s semantic arguments regarding coercive recruitment
and recurring revisionist remarks show inadequate dialectic integration
within Japan, much as happens within South Korea. Japan thus clearly
has its own difficulties in domestic integration. The goodwill expressed
in the Kōno Statement and the AWF was diminished by occasional
revisionist voices gripped by ontological insecurity. The entanglement of
the public and the private continued in Japan without a solid domestic
consensus being reached. Furthermore, South Korean activists, skeptical
about Japan’s sincerity and grounded in Korean society’s past memories
of colonialism, have remained extremely cautious about governmental
reconciliation efforts. Japan also failed to undertake dialectical discourse
with international society, which has largely perceived Japan’s stance as
an excuse. Throughout the process of political reconciliation, the Japanese
government has focused too much on diplomatic formality, with little
consideration being given to political reconciliation being a long process
that requires the highest sensitivity to the dignity of victims.
Lessons from political reconciliation processes show the twin dangers
of uncompromising activism and revisionist backlash, which together
stifle dialectical process toward integration with self-emancipation. The
nonexistence of dialectical interaction, both in Japan and in South Korea,
and between the two, highlights the importance of political leadership in
breaking through such deadlocks.
Notes
1 After the judicial rejections of the individual compensation lawsuits for
Taiwanese and Korean former soldiers, the Japanese parliament enacted the
Law Concerning Condolence Payments to Survivors of War Dead Who Have
Lost Japanese Nationality Based on the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 2000.
As for the Nanjing Massacre, one of the most significant cases of Japan’s war
crime, the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal sentenced to death four Imperial
Politics and Reconciliation 211
Japanese Army officers. The Chinese government gave up any compensation
in 1972.
2 Cf. Andrew Schaap, Political Reconciliation (London: Routledge, 2005).
3 Cf. Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1968).
4 Carl Schmitt, Definition of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1996); Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 15–23.
5 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 60; Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition,
2nd Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 50–58.
6 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 149.
7 Louis Kriesberg. Constructive Conflicts: From Escalation to Resolution
(Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 352.
8 Tesurō Watsuji, “The Spatiality of a Human Being,” in Watsuji Tetsurō’s
Rinrigaku: Ethics in Japan (Albany: State University of New York, 1996),
155–179.
9 Watsuji, “The Spatiality of a Human Being,” 157.
10 Watsuji, “The Spatiality of a Human Being,” 177.
11 Tesurō Watsuji, “Private and Public Existence,” in Watsuji Tetsurō’s Rinrigaku:
Ethics in Japan (Albany: State University of New York, 1996), 146–153.
12 Cf. Johan Galtung, Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development
and Civilization (London: Sage, 1996).
13 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 107.
14 Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (London, Harper
& Row, 1964), 157–161.
15 Donald W. Shriver Jr., An Ethics for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics (New
York: Oxford University Press USA, 1998), 244.
16 Cf. Diane Enns, The Violence of Victimhood (University Park, PA: the
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012).
17 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late
Modern Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 36–42.
18 Cf. Norihiro Katō, Kanōsei toshiteno Sengoigo (Possibility of a Postwar
Period) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2020).
19 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 121.
20 Cf. Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2001), 32–37.
21 Cf. Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt, 54–56.
22 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 122.
23 Cf. Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1998).
24 Jean Hampton, “Forgiveness, Resentment and Hatred,” in Forgiveness and
Mercy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 56–60.
25 David A. Crocker, “Punishment, Reconciliation, and Democratic
Deliberation,” in Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation
(Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2006), 61–62.
26 Cf. Enns, The Violence of Victimhood, 2012.
27 Cf. Crocker, “Punishment, Reconciliation, and Democratic Deliberation,”
2006.
28 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 109.
29 Bert van Roermund, “Rubbing Off and Rubbing On: The Grammar of
Reconciliation,” in Lethe’s Law: Justice, Law and Ethics in Reconciliation
(Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2001), 177–178.
30 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 104.
31 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 105.
212 Naoko Kumagai
32 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 105; van Roermund, “Rubbing Off and
Rubbing On: The Grammar of Reconciliation,” 179.
33 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 115.
34 Hampton, “Forgiveness, Resentment and Hatred,” 59–60.
35 van Roermund, “Rubbing Off and Rubbing On: The Grammar of
Reconciliation,” 178.
36 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 109.
37 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 109.
38 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 110.
39 Peter Digeser, “Forgiveness and Politics: Dirty Hands and Imperfect
Procedures,” Political Theory 26, no. 5 (1998), 716.
40 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 110.
41 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 125.
42 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 127.
43 Cf. David Bargal and Emmanuel Sivan, “Leadership and Reconciliation,” in
From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2004).
44 Daniel Bar-Tal and Gemma H. Bennink, “The Nature of Reconciliation as an
Outcome and as a Process,” in From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 35.
45 Marc Howard Ross, “Ritual and the Politics of Reconciliation,” in From
Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation (New York: Oxford University Press,
2004), 210.
46 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Free Press, 1965), 153–154.
47 Bar-Tal and Bennink, “The Nature of Reconciliation as an Outcome and as a
Process,” 21.
48 For example, cf. Taijirō Tamura’s Inago (Locusts) published in 1964.
49 Statement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yōhei Kōno on the Result of the
Study on the Issue of “Comfort Women.” August 4, 1993. [https://www.mofa.
go.jp/policy/women/fund/state9308.html]
50 The atonement money was two million Japanese Yen (15,000 Euros) for
each. Medical/welfare financial support of three million Japanese Yen
(22,700 Euros) was funded by the Japanese government. For more details
on the moral project, see the AWF website, “Atonement Project of the Asian
Women’s Fund”: http://www.awf.or.jp/e3/index.html
51 For the explanations about the operation of the AWF and the responses from
the recipients, see the AWF website, “Atonement Project of the Asian Women’s
Fund”: https://www.awf.or.jp/e3/index.html
52 Cf. Sōji Takasaki, “Hantō Joshi Kinrō Teishin-tai nitsuite (On the Peninsular Girl
Workers’ Volunteer Corps), in Ianfu Mondai Chōsa Hōkokusho (Asian Women’s
Fund Committee on Historical Materials Regarding the Comfort Women Issue
1999, Report on the Investigation into the “Comfort Women,” 1999).
53 Nihon no Zento to Rekishi Kyōiku o Kangaeru Wakate Giin no Kai
(Association of Junior Parliamentarians), Rekishi Kyōkasho e no Gimon
(Questions to History Textbooks) (Tendensha: Tokyo, 1997), 420–447.
54 For example, the website of the movement to demand the retraction of the
Kōno Statement. http://kounodanwa.net/
55 Comment of Keiko Usuki in an interview by Shinichiro Akashi on the
Korean Council. Shinichiro Akashi; “Teitaikyo: Kenkan o Tsukutta Soshiki
no Sanjūnen” (The Korean Council: Thirty Years of the Organization that
Produced Anti-Korean Sentiment), Bunshun Online, June 15, 2020 https://
bunshun.jp/articles/-/38366?page=3
56 Cf. Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho o Tsukuru Kai (The Japanese Society for
History Textbook Reform), http://www.tsukurukai.com/index.html
Politics and Reconciliation 213
57 Mizuho Tsuchino, “Ianfu Mondai to Tsugunai no Politikusu (The Issue of
Comfort Women and Politics of Atonement),” Ajia Taiheiyō Rebyū (Asia
Pacific Review) (2012), 81.
58 Cf. Mihyang Yun, “Kankoku Teitaikyō wa Nani o Mezashi, Donoyōni
Tatakatte Kitanoka, (What Has the Korean Council Aimed for and How Has
It Fought?),” Impaction No. 168 (2009); About the situation, see Sarah Soh,
The Comfort Women (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008), 96–97.
59 Out of 207 officially recognized former Korean comfort women, 61 accepted
the AWF atonement money.
60 Chong-ok Yun, Heiwa o Kikyūshite: Ianfu Higaisha no Songen Kaifuku eno
Ayumi (In Pursuit of Peace: Former Comfort Women’s Path toward Dignity)
(Tokyo: Hakutakusha, 2003), 193.
61 Yun, Heiwa o Kikyūshite: Ianfu Higaisha no Songen Kaifuku eno Ayumi (In
Pursuit of Peace: Former Comfort Women’s Path toward Dignity), 188.
62 Yasuaki Ōnuma, Ianfu Mondai towa Nan dattanoka? (What was the Issue of
Comfort Women?) (Tokyo: Chuko Shinsho, 2007), 180–195.
63 Nihon no Zento to Rekishi Kyoiku o Kangaeru Wakate Giin no Kai (Group
of Young Diet Members for Consideration of Japan’s Future and History
Education), Rekishi Kyōkasho e no gimon (Questions to History Textbooks)
(Tendensha: Tokyo, 1997), 46.
64 For details of the discursive development of hardline conservatives, cf.
Kumagai (2015).
65 Cf. Yu-ha Park, Teikoku no Ianfu (Comfort Women of the Empire) (Tokyo:
Asahi Shimbun Shuppansha, 2014).
66 Testimony of Il-Chul Kang at the meeting, “Examination of the Comfort
Women Issue: Public Testimony of a Former Comfort Woman,” organized by
the Center for Contemporary Korean Studies at the University of Tokyo and
City of Goyang, South Korea on March 30, 2015.
67 Cf. Yayo Okano, “Shūfukuteki Seigi: Kokumin Kikin ga Tozashia Mirai,”
(Restorative Justice: The Future Closed by the Asian Women’s Fund) in
Shinpojiumu Kiroku:“Ianfu” Mondai no Kaiketsu ni Mukete—Hirakareta
Giron no Tameni (Symposium Record: Towards the Resolution of the Issue
of Comfort Women-for Open Dialogue) (Tokyo: Hakutakusha, 2012).
68 Study Team on the Details Leading to the Drafting of the Kōno Statement
etc. “Details of Exchanges between Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK)
regarding the Comfort Women Issue: From the Drafting of the Kōno Statement
to the Asian Women’s Fund.” (June 20, 2014).
69 Sei-Young Cho, Nikkan Gaikōshi: Tairitsu to Kyōryoku no 50 nen (Japan-
Korea Diplomatic History: 50 years of competition and cooperation) (Tokyo:
Heibonsha Shinsho, 2015), 139.
70 Cho, Nikkan Gaikōshi: Tairitsu to Kyōryoku no 50 nen, 144.
71 Cho, Nikkan Gaikōshi: Tairitsu to Kyōryoku no 50 nen, 145.
72 For example, see the comment by Prime Minister Abe in the Budget Committee
of the House of Councilors on March 5, 2007.
73 Cf. Jeff Kingston, “Requiem for Reconciliation Japan’s Comfort Women,”
International Herald Tribune, March 23, 2007.
74 H. Res. 121. July 30, 2017. [https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/
house-resolution/121/text]
75 Kim, “Sōsaku to Hihyō shi niokeru Ōfuku Shokan- Wada Haruki, Takasaki
Sōji, Kim Sonje” (Correspondence among Wada Haruki, Takasaki Sōji, and
Kim Sonje in journal Sōsaku and Hihyō), Impaction, no. 107 (1998), 47.
76 The statue was set up in the following cities so far: Glendale (Los Angeles) in
July 2013, Detroit in August 2014, Brookhaven (suburban Atlanta) in June
2017, San Francisco in September 2017, New York in October 2017, and
214 Naoko Kumagai
Annandale (suburban Atlanta) in October 2019. Statues were set up also in
Sydney in August 2016, in Toronto in November 2015, in Wiesent (Germany)
in March 2017, and in Frankfurt in March 2020.
77 Kan Kimura, Chōsen/Kankoku Nashonarizumu to Shōkoku Ishiki (Chōson/
Korean Nationalism and the Identity of “Small State”) (Tokyo: Minerva
Shobō, 2000), 163.
78 Cf. Dai 12 kai Nihongun “Ianfu” Mondai Ajia Rentai Kaigi (12th Asian
Solidarity Conference on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery), “Nihongun
‘Ianfu’ Kaiketsu no tameni (For Resolution of the Japanese Military ‘Comfort
Women’ Issue),” June 2, 2014.
79 Cf. Naoko Kumagai, “The Background to the Japan–Republic of Korea
Agreement: Compromises Concerning the Understanding of the Comfort
Women Issue,” Asia-Pacific Review 23, no. 1 (2016).
80 Cf. Announcement by Foreign Ministers of Japan and the Republic of Korea
at the Joint Press Occasion. December 28, 2015, https://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/
na/kr/page4e_000364.html.
81 Cf. Announcement by Foreign Ministers of Japan and the Republic of Korea
at the Joint Press Occasion. December 28, 2015, https://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/
na/kr/page4e_000364.html.
82 Cf. BBC, “Japan and South Korea agree historic ‘comfort women’ deal.”
December 28, 2015, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03d45c5.
83 Cf. Comment by former Chief Diplomatic Advisor to President Lee Myung-
bak, Chung Yung-woo, Yomiuri Shimbun Newspaper, May 24, 2020.
84 Cf. Susan O’Dwyer, “The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance
has lost its way,” Commentary, The Japan Times, June 1, 2020,
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/06/01/commentary/
korean-council-justice-remembrance-lost-way/.
Woo Jae-yeon, “Former ‘comfort women’ calls for justice for former
civic group head, ‘accurate’ history education for students of S. Korea,
Japan,” Yonhap News Agency, May 25, 2020, https://en.yna.co.kr/view/
AEN20200525006951315.
85 Cf. Kijeong Nam’s comment on the 2015 agreement, Asahi Shimbun
Newspaper, December 29, 2015.
86 President Roh set up the Presidential Committee for the Inspection of
Collaborations for Japanese Imperialism in 2005, which listed up any pro-
Japanese collaborators and compiled their activities.
87 Cf. Comment by South Korea’s former foreign minister Yu Myung-hwan.
Yomiuri Shimbun Newspaper, September 7, 2020.
88 Cf. The Advisory Panel on the History of the 20th Century and on Japan’s
Role and World Order in the 21st Century, “Report of the Advisory Panel on
the History of the 20th Century and on Japan’s Role and the World Order in
the 21st Century,” August 6, 2015.
89 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 147.
90 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 147.
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11 Political Reconciliation in
Liberal States
Henning Hahn
The time has come to think seriously about whether, at some safer,
wiser moment in the future, the United States will need a truth and
reconciliation commission. I know the idea sounds outlandish—truth
and reconciliation commissions are something that happens to other
people in other places, typically countries that have been truly brutal-
ized and can find no other way past their national traumas.1
What political commentator Kevin Baker has proposed in his The New
Republic article is indeed a timely insight. Divides in Western societies—I
will use Germany as an example—require measures of political recon-
ciliation. My underlying thesis is that the paradigm of reconciliation fits
these phenomena of resentment and political alienation that we witness
better than does the paradigm of justice. Whereas justice calls for a fair
background structure or, in its retributive sense, the redress of past wrong-
doings, reconciliation refers to a forward-looking healing process. I will
therefore lay the conceptional ground for a normative shift from justice
to reconciliation and construct principles of reconciliation designed for
liberal societies. For the most part, I will develop a three-dimensional,
agency-based conception of reconciliation. Political reconciliation com-
bines structural, attitudinal, and narrative measures to restore political
agency—that is, the capacity to act in a meaningful, shared endeavor.
I will proceed as follows. First, I will introduce two exemplificatory
cases of social divides in liberal states. Both illustrate particular relational
defects—resentment and political alienation—which are not sufficiently
understood in terms of an injustice (section 11.1). In the second part, I
will therefore argue that political reconciliation opens a fundamental,
comprehensive, and feasible perspective beyond justice. For a start, I will
examine current approaches in the ethics of reconciliation, discuss its
analytical and practical worth and distinguish from it my agency-based
approach (section 11.2). Building on these conceptual grounds, I will
examine what this practically means for liberal societies, proposing six
principles of reconciliation (section 11.3). Finally, I will address some of
the most serious criticisms (section 11.4).
Political Reconciliation in Liberal States 219
11.1 Divides in Liberal Societies
I argue that recent divides in liberal societies require an explanatory and
normative shift from justice to reconciliation. Now, divides in liberal
societies are obviously manifold and have multiple causes. For simplic-
ity’s sake, I work with David Goodhart’s instructive, though at times
tendentious, juxtaposition of two “tribes:” Anywheres and Somewheres.2
Both present segregated lifeforms constituted by unequal cultural capi-
tal. Anywheres have much of it, are academically educated and glob-
ally connected. They frequently move, live in urban spaces, and occupy
positions that are creative, self-entrepreneurial, or related to interpretive
power. Most of them are high-income earners, but some live in precarious
conditions. What they have in common is a cosmopolitan habitus that
allows them to adapt to network-based earning and power positions.
Somewheres, on the other hand, tend to live in rural areas and are less
educated and mobile. Often, they perceive globalization as a threat, wish-
ing to conserve clear orientation frames. In short, Anywheres develop a
lifeform contrary to that of Somewheres; they taste, buy, dress, reside, and
inform themselves differently. Among both tribes, feelings of resentment
and alienation grow. Anywheres look down on the Somewhere’s accent,
look, style, and lack of education. Somewheres, on the other hand, feel
degraded and increasingly react with hostility. To illustrate, I present two
cases of how resentment and alienation grow in liberal settings. Needless
to say, these cases may be interpreted differently and only exemplify a
segment of typical divides.
Both cases are exemplary in that they show the rise of resentment
through alienation. “Hatman” presents a clear case of political alien-
ation; he distrusts democratic institutions and is incapable of taking a
significant role in a meaningful political endeavor—or at least to con-
ceive of himself this way. For him, parliaments are elitist, the media
is conspiring, administrations are corrupt “swamps,” etc. In addition,
“Denglish” illustrates how subtle experiences of alienation breed feel-
ings of anger and resentment.
What both cases suggest is the need for a conceptual shift to the nor-
mative paradigm of reconciliation. In its most general definition, recon-
ciliation has the double meaning of healing relational wounds and of
feeling at home in the world. It goes beyond justice in that it addresses
resentments and political alienation not only as symptoms, but also as
sources of divides in liberal societies.
With regard to dividing resentments, political sentiments are strikingly
undertheorized in current theories of justice. Resentment, anger, fear, but
also sympathy, loyalty or friendship are usually discredited in that they
lead away from strict impartiality. Behind Rawls’ “veil of ignorance,”
to cite the most prominent example, no one is supposed to know “the
special features of his psychology.”3 In real politics, however, emotions
and psychological attitudes play a decisive role. It is fear that dictates
security policies, empathy that motivates social programs, xenophobia
that restricts immigration policies, hope that wins elections, etc. Today’s
growing emotionalization of politics presses the question of what it takes
to temper dividing emotions. This is exactly where the ethics of (political)
reconciliation offers fresh answers.
Theories of reconciliation address not only defects in intergroup
relations, but also experiences of suppression, powerlessness, and dis-
orientation, or, in short, alienation. By political alienation I refer to the
inability of political groups to conceive of themselves as occupying a
significant role in a meaningful political endeavor. Again, powerlessness
and disorientation can be a direct consequence of injustice, marginal-
ization, exclusion, or disfranchisement. But alienation is also rooted in
a defective self-understanding. Politically alienated groups are oriented
toward a narrative that is too simplistic or conservative to adapt to an
Political Reconciliation in Liberal States 221
ever-changing world. Being politically alienated in this sense leads either
to resignation, cynicism, or radicalization. This is what is going on with
“Hatman.” What politically alienated groups lack is not justice alone, but
also what I will call “narrative reconciliation,” an affirmative understand-
ing of political agency through the identification with a meaningful and
feasible political endeavor.
Before I elaborate on the multidimensional nature of political recon-
ciliation, let me take stock. Political reconciliation addresses wounds in
political relations. Such wounds may well concern structural injustices.
In contrast to justice, however, the scope of reconciliatory measures is
broader, digging deeper into attitudinal and narrative divides. In addition
to justice, reconciliation demands measures to overcome resentment and
alienation.
11.2.1 Reconciliation as Peacebuilding
In the aftermath of open conflicts, the first goal of reconciliation is peace
and stabilization.6 Any more ambitious ideals of a reconciled society
tend to ignore how persistent feelings of revenge and resentment are.
Reconciliation as peacebuilding begins with disarmament; it includes
reparations, war crimes trials, and other forms of punishment for past
atrocities. Ultimately, these measures aim at enforcing the rule of law.
Peace processes can lead to the establishment of federal or partially
222 Henning Hahn
autonomous districts (Kosovo) or to the secession of ethnically or cultur-
ally divided areas (Southern Sudan).
The peacebuilding approach to political reconciliation is not mis-
guided, but it does not go far enough. In transitional scenarios, stability
through law and order is surely a necessary first step. But I do agree with
Lu,7 Murphy,8 Philpott,9 and Schaap10 that sustainable peace requires
political reconciliation in a more substantial sense: based on the rebuild-
ing of a shared political identity, trust, and the cultivation of solidarity or
“civic friendship.”11 I therefore propose a three-dimensional conception
in which, in addition to peace and stability, further transformation is
indispensable to rooting out resentment and alienation.
11.2.2 Reconciliation as Forgiveness
A second camp equates reconciliation with forgiveness.12 Measures of
reconciliation respond to interpersonal feelings of anger and resentment.
They should end bitterness or pay past debts. According to what Martha
Nussbaum,13 following Charles Griswold,14 calls the “transactional
model,” asking someone for forgiveness is an interpersonal exchange
in which the perpetrator goes through a process of self-abasement to
compensate for a previous humiliation. This involves the perpetrator
acknowledging her responsibility for the wrong, distancing herself from
it as a mistake, expressing remorse and regret, and offering “a narrative
accounting for how she came to do wrong, how that wrongdoing does
not express the totality of her person, and how she is becoming worthy
of approbation.”15
The philosophical discourse on forgiveness is more detailed and
nuanced than that on reconciliation.16 I will focus on three normatively
relevant differences. First, when one asks for forgiveness in the described
way, the onus falls onto the victim to accept the apology, to overcome
long, past injuries, or even to forget them altogether. Paradoxically, one
seems entitled to blame the victim for remaining unforgiving, bitter, or
revengeful. Those who equate reconciliation and forgiveness meet a simi-
lar criticism. Granting amnesties for truth-telling serves perpetrators by
not only ignoring the victim’s claim to justice, but also imposing an obli-
gation to forgive on those who have reason not to forget, who are trau-
matized, or full of grief. Reconciliation, on the other hand, refers to a
mutual transformation that requires a change of attitudes on all sides.17
It is not about X’s swallowing resentments toward Y, but about the grow-
ing of solidarity or similar pro-attitudes—often in ways that preserve the
wounds from the past. Reconciliation after war, for instance, requires
shared remembrance and partnership based on shared lessons from the
past, separate from how the legal question of guilt may be settled.18
Second, forgiveness is primarily backward-looking. If X forgives Y,
then X and Y are even, though they may never see each other again.
Political Reconciliation in Liberal States 223
Reconciliation, on the other hand, treats the wounds of the past with a
forward-looking intent, in order to (re-)build functioning relationships
and cooperate in the future. It is driven by the will or necessity to restore
joint agency.
Third, political reconciliation is essentially about the transformation
of political (in contrast to interpersonal) attitudes. Official apologies or
public gestures of repentance are symbolic acts that strive for political
renewal and are performed in a political role. As such, asking for politi-
cal reconciliation differs from personal exculpation. It is possible, though
difficult, to feel irreparably injured in relation to an individual person
while welcoming reconciliatory policies.
All of this means that political reconciliation is in line with the ethics
of forgiveness, insofar as both seek to end negative reactive attitudes. But
reconciliation means more—namely, a transformation from resentment
to political pro-attitudes, such as solidarity. It differs from the transac-
tional model of forgiveness in its forward-looking, mutual, and strictly
political orientation.
calm our frustration and rage against our society and its history by
showing us the way in which its institutions, when properly under-
stood from a philosophical point of view, are rational, and developed
over time as they did to attain their present, rational form.37
11.4 Refuting Objections
So far, I have introduced a three-dimensional, agency-based conception
of political reconciliation and translated it into principles of structural,
attitudinal, and narrative reconciliation. A shift from justice to reconcili-
ation opens political philosophy to the politics of emotions and a more
creative role in forming narrative identities. But this opening has met
considerable criticism. In response, I will address particular doubts that
reconciliation: (a) deceives justice; (b) is too harmonious; and (c) con-
fuses the direction of fit between facts and norms. These are certainly not
the only, but they are perhaps the most serious, objections.
11.4.1 Betrayal of Justice
The first objection refers to the worry that reconciliation deceives justice;
most notably, criminal or historical justice, for the sake of future peace
and cooperation. Justice requires equal repayment, while the idea of rec-
onciliation replaces just punishment with forgiveness, amnesties, and/or
mercy. Hence, processes of reconciliation tend to suspend the question
of guilt. Perpetrators are excused, thereby wronging the victims. I should
therefore clarify the connection between justice and reconciliation more
carefully.
As I have previously indicated, these reservations apply mainly to the
peacebuilding phase of reconciliation. In my three-dimensional approach,
instead of treating reconciliation as an antithesis of justice, I regard jus-
tice, including just punishment, as an indispensable means of structural
reconciliation. Reconciliation is the overarching normative perspective;
but it implies justice by specifying which understanding of justice is
appropriate under what non-ideal conditions.
If this order seems unusual, it is because political philosophy has (too)
long been preoccupied with fairly reconciled societies. In successful
Political Reconciliation in Liberal States 231
systems of social cooperation, demands for distributive or political jus-
tice come to the fore. In transitional phases, in postwar scenarios or in
the aftermath of ethnic atrocities, however, it may be warranted to set
liabilities aside. But justice is not simply tantamount to punishment.
Depending on the overriding rationale for reconciliation, demands for
justice may focus on social equality and criminal justice in well-ordered
states, whereas justice assumes the more particular meaning of restor-
ative or transitional justice in post-conflict scenarios.57
As I see it, then, political reconciliation is the normatively prior cat-
egory, whereas justice marks the prime measurement of structural rec-
onciliation. This may not convince many justice theorists. Fortunately, in
view of increasing social divides in liberal societies, I only have to defend
the weaker thesis that reconciliation is more fundamental under excep-
tional circumstances. With regard to such contexts, a shift of the norma-
tive paradigm seems rather uncontroversial. As Susan Dwyer notes: “The
rhetoric of reconciliation is particularly common in situations where tra-
ditional judicial responses to wrongdoing are unavailable.”58 Exceptional
contexts change our view on and beyond justice. Analogous to Hume’s
definition of circumstances of justice, circumstances of reconciliation
occur when political relations become dysfunctional and conditions of
political action erode.59 Hence, the rationale for reconciliation kicks in
when…
11.5 Outlook
For a conclusion, let me come back to Kevin Baker:
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Afterword*
James Garrison
* James Garrison, writing on behalf of the editorial team of himself, Bianca Boteva-
Richter and Sarhan Dhouib ORCiDs—Garrison: 0000-0002-9173-9075, Boteva-
Richter: 0000-0001-9674-9910, Dhouib: 0000-0003-2553-1150.
242 James Garrison
the physical planet that humans (and not just humans) inhabit, i.e., the
globe, far outstrips the world of people’s immediate concern (i.e., “the
known world”). As we examine the “global world” mentioned in our
subtitle, what we are truly dealing with is this new-found circumstance
where the human world, i.e., the world of the typical person, stretches
across the globe. Just as Foucault observed that the industrial age has
expanded individuals temporally and given large numbers of people the
power to commemorate their existence that used to be reserved to roy-
als,2 so too has the physical domain of the individual human expanded
such that it is no longer just Habsburg emperors on whose territory the
sun never sets. A typical person nowadays may not rule the world like an
emperor, but they nonetheless have a world spans the globe, with trade,
environment, data, security, and public health being just five of the most
prominent vectors connecting this now-global world.
As such, it is no longer acceptable to think of political philosophy in
terms of violent encounter, in terms of incommensurability between one-
self and some cultural “Other.” This kind of talk might have made sense
when it was only a few royal, if not entirely regal, individuals exercising
sovereign power over largely isolated citizenries for whom the world sel-
dom extended past the home village.
In the here and now, political philosophy must be rethought as an
enterprise and where the world is concerned it simply is untenable with
citizens whose worldly interest increasingly spans the globe even from
the physical comfort of their homes. The COVID pandemic might mean
that people are increasingly isolated in those homes and away from the
streets and public forums wherein we typically think that our being with
others transpires, but if anything, the way in which we each individually
conceive of our existence involves other people ever more intimately than
before, as the great majority of people are aware that their own sur-
vival now depends on how other people, even halfway around the globe,
inhabit physical space.
With this in mind, even though it was conceived of in the before times,
Political Philosophy from an Intercultural Perspective offers real insight
into the challenges that emerge in the hereafter.
And with this background, Raúl Fornet-Betancourt summarizes the
point of view that underlies our intentions as editors in bringing this
volume together and highlights the merits of shifting perspectives on the
world, an issue made all the more urgent recently, where he writes:
Notes
1 Aristotle, Politics, trans. Ernest Barker (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995), 1253a.
2 Michel Foucault, Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison (Paris: Gallimard,
1975), 194–195.
3 Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, “Intercultural Philosophy as Philosophy for
Better Human Conviviality,” in Political Philosophy from an Intercultural
Perspective: Power Relations in a Global World, eds. Bianca Boteva-Richter,
Sarhan Dhouib and James Garrison (New York: Routledge, 2021).
Bibliography
Aristotle, Politics. Translated by Ernest Barker. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995.
Foucault, Michel. Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison. Paris: Gallimard,
1975.
Index