Political Philosophy from an

Intercultural Perspective

The objective of the following collected volume is to encourage a criti-

cal reflection on the relationship between “power” and “non-power” in
our contemporary “world” and, proceeding from various philosophical
traditions, to investigate the multifaceted aspects of this relationship.
The authors’ respective investigations proceed from an intercultural per-
spective and fall predominantly in the domain of political theory and
philosophy.
This volume takes an intercultural political perspective, which means,
on the one hand, involving non-European philosophies in a global debate
about power relations and their effects in the world and, on the other
hand, confronting local traditions of thought with a global inquiry in
order to enter into a philosophical-political dialogue with these tradi-
tions. An intercultural approach of this type to political philosophy seeks
not only to join others in reflecting upon global problems, but also to
decenter of our understanding of the world, drawing attention to new
ways of thinking.
Insofar as the authors of the planned volume deal with “concrete”
philosophical-political problems unfolding in various regions of the
­
world, they seek to shed light on burning issues like migration, human
rights violations, dictatorship and language, global poverty, power asym-
metries, experiences of injustice with the further goal of offering a par-
ticularly intercultural analysis of these problems along with approaches
to resolving them. To date, there is no book that collects various essays
from different countries and perspectives and poses political-philosophi-
cal problems from an intercultural point of view.

Bianca Boteva-Richter is Lecturer at the Institute of Philosophy, University

of Vienna (Austria).
Sarhan Dhouib is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Hildesheim (Germany).
James Garrison is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Baldwin Wallace
University (USA).
Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy

Concepts in Thought, Action, and Emotion

New Essays
Edited by Christoph Demmerling and Dirk Schröder
Towards a Philosophical Anthropology of Culture
Naturalism, Reflectivism, and Skepticism
Kevin M. Cahill
Examples and Their Role in Our Thinking
Ondřej Beran
Extimate Technology
Self-Formation in a Technological World
Ciano Aydin
Modes of Truth
The Unified Approach to Truth, Modality, and Paradox
Edited by Carlo Nicolai and Johannes Stern
Practices of Reason
Fusing the Inferentialist and Scientific Image
Ladislav Koreň
Social Trust
Edited by Kevin Vallier and Michael Weber
Green Leviathan or the Poetics of Political Liberty
Navigating Freedom in the Age of Climate Change and Artificial
Intelligence
Mark Coeckelbergh
The Social Institution of Discursive Norms
Historical, Naturalistic, and Pragmatic Perspectives
Edited by Leo Townsend, Preston Stovall, and Hans Bernard Schmid
Epistemic Uses of Imagination
Edited by Christopher Badura and Amy Kind
Political Philosophy from an Intercultural Perspective
Power Relations in a Global World
Edited by Blanca Boteva-Richter, Sarhan Dhouib, and James Garrison

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.rout-

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SE0720
Political Philosophy from an
Intercultural Perspective
Power Relations in a Global World

Edited by Bianca Boteva-Richter,

Sarhan Dhouib and James Garrison
First published 2021
by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Boteva-Richter, Bianca | Dhouib, Sarhan, editor. | Garrison, Jim,
1951- editor.
Title: Political philosophy from an intercultural perspective : power
relations in a global world / edited by Bianca Boteva-Richter, Sarhan
Dhouib, and James Garrison.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge studies in
contemporary philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020058216 (print) | LCCN 2020058217 (ebook) | ISBN
9780367445416 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003014324 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Political sociology. | Political science--Philosophy. |
Political science--Cross-cultural studies. | Power (Social sciences) |
Globalization--Political aspects.
Classification: LCC JA76 .P592825 2021 (print) | LCC JA76 (ebook) | DDC
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Contents

Notes on Contributors vii

Foreword xii
SARHAN DHOUIB

PART I
Interculturality as the Basis for a Philosophy of Coexistence 1

1 Intercultural Philosophy as Philosophy for Better

Human Conviviality 3
RAÚL FORNET-BETANCOURT

2 Responses to Past Injustice in Democratizing

Societies and the Universalization of Human Rights 13
SARHAN DHOUIB

3 Negotiating African Identity in Times of

Globalization: A Comparative Approach to
Afropolitanism and Negritude 33
ALBERT KASANDA

PART II
Human Being in Times of Displacement 59

4 The Value of Home in a Global World: On

Migration and Depopulated Landscapes 61
BIANCA BOTEVA-RICHTER

5 A Genealogy of Displacement in the South African

Land Question 79
CHRISTOPHER ALLSOBROOK
vi Contents
PART III
Being with Others: Applied Dimensions and Real-World
Problems 103

6 The Public Legitimacy of Minority Claims in

Eastern Europe 105
PLAMEN MAKARIEV

7 Cultural Impoverishment: The Hidden Dimension

of Global Injustice 125
MONGI SERBAJI

8 “Detention and Torture Centers” in Latin American

Dictatorships: Places of Subjective and Social
Reconfiguration 149
JOSÉ SANTOS HERCEG

PART IV
Intercultural Approaches to Reconciliation 167

9 Confucian Remonstrance in the Dialectics of Self-

Conscious Identity between the People’s Republic
of China and Hong Kong 169
JAMES GARRISON

10 Politics and Reconciliation: The Issue of Comfort

Women in the Dynamics of Political Reconciliation
between Japan and South Korea 196
NAOKO KUMAGAI

11 Political Reconciliation in Liberal States 218

HENNING HAHN

Afterword 241
JAMES GARRISON

Index 245
Notes on Contributors

Christopher Allsobrook, ORCiD: 0000-0001-7701-0811, PhD, is the

Director of the Centre for Leadership Ethics in Africa (CLEA), at the
University of Fort Hare (UFH). At UFH he leads the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Niche in “Democracy, Heritage and Citizenship.”
He is a founding member of the African Political Theory Association
and an editor for the journal Theoria. Dr Allsobrook’s research focus
is on African Political Theory and Ethics, with a basis in South African
Intellectual and Cultural History. His current research projects include
“Genealogy and Ideology,” “Imperial Trusteeship in the Political
Philosophy of Jan Smuts,” (with Camilla Boisen, NYU Abu Dhabi)
and “Africanist Education in the Late Colonial Eastern Cape.” He has
recently published “Consensual Recognition of Universal Rights in
African Custom,” in Angelaki (2019) and co-edited a collected volume
with Motsamai Molefe, Towards an African Political Philosophy of
Needs (Palgrave 2021).
Bianca Boteva-Richter, ORCiD: 0000-0001-9674-9910, PhD, is lecturer
at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Austria. She is assis-
tant editor in chief of the journal “Polylog – Journal for Intercultural
Philosophizing,” Vienna; member of the editorial board of the jour-
nal Filosofskij Polylog – Journal of the Intern. Center of the State
University of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg; board member of WiGiP
(Viennese Society of Intercultural Philosophy) and member of EIFI
(Escuela International de Filosofía Intercultural), Barcelona. Her cur-
rent publications include several articles on intercultural and modern
Japanese philosophy: “Affectivity and Knowledge. On the Importance
of Affectivity for the Creation and Transmission of Knowledge,” in
Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, Affection and Knowledge. Intercultural
Views for a New Cognitive Culture, 77–97; “Inter as metamorpho-
sis of thinking,” in Filosofskij Polylog, Journal of the State University
of St. Petersburg; as well as the monograph: Der Methodentransfer
nach Watsuji Tetsuro. Ein abendländisch-asiatischer Vorschlag für
das Arbeiten im interkulturellen Bereich [The method transfer after
viii  Notes on Contributors
Watsuji Tetsuro. A Western-Asian proposal for working in the inter-
cultural area]. Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz Verlag 2009. Her pub-
lished biography is to be found In Information Philosophie: http://
www.information-philosophie.de/?a=1&t=576&n=2&y=2&c=8
Sarhan Dhouib, ORCiD: 0000-0003-2553-1150, studied philosophy at
the University of Sfax (Tunisia) and Paris 1 Sorbonne. He holds his
PhD on Schelling’s Philosophy of Identity (Universities of Bremen,
Germany and Tunis, Tunisia). In 2011, he was the recipient of the
Interculture Award in Philosophy of the Goethe Institute. Currently he
is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hildesheim
in Germany, where he specializes in German idealism, philosophy in
the modern Arab world, intercultural philosophy and political phi-
losophy. He recently received the Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship
of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His current publica-
tions include several articles on modern and contemporary Arab phi-
losophers. In: Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (Überweg):
Philosophie in der islamischen Welt, Bd. 4: 19.–20. Jahrhundert,
Ed. von Kügelgen, A. Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2021. Erinnerung an
Unrecht. Interdisziplinäre Zugänge, Ed. Dhouib, S. Weilerswist:
Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2021. Toleranz in transkultureller Perspektive,
Ed. Dhouib, S. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2020. Academia in
Transformation: Scholars Facing the Arab Uprisings, Eds Kohstall, F.
et al. Baden-Baden: Nomos 2018.
Raúl Fornet-Betancourt is considered to be one of the leading figures in
the liberation philosophy of Latin America and intercultural philoso-
phy. He is Professor of philosophy in Bremen and Professor Emeritus
at the University of Aachen. He has been a Guest Professor in Spain,
Brazil, Mexico, El Salvador, and Austria. In 2008 he was awarded the
international Karl-Otto-Apel Prize for Philosophy. His main areas of
research are North–South philosophical dialogue and issues within the
field of interculturality. He is currently Chairman of the Institut zur
interdisziplinären und interkulturellen Erforschung von Phänomenen
sozialer Exklusion e.V. in Eichstätt, Germany; publisher of Concordia:
International Journal of Philosophy; founder of the Escuela
International de Filosofia Intercultural (School of IC Philosophy) in
Barcelona; and coordinator of both the Dialogue Programme North–
South and the International Congresses for Intercultural Philosophy.
He is the author of more than 50 books and 200 scientific articles,
including: Transformación del marxismo: Historia del Marxismo en
América Latina (Madrid: Plaza y Valdés, 2013); Interculturalidad,
crítica y liberación (Aachen; Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Mainz, 2012);
Justicia, restitución, convivencia. Desafíos de la filosofía intercultural
en América Latina (Aachen: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Mainz, 2014);
Interkulturalität und Menschlichkeit (Aachen: Wissenschaftlicher
 Notes on Contributors  ix
Verlag Mainz, 2013); “El humanismo solidario de Sartre como antici-
pación de la Filosofía intercultural” (in Logos. Revista de Filosofía,
vol. 39, 116–117/2011, pp. 65–78) ; “L’humanisme solidari de Sartre
com a anticipció de la filosofia intercultural” (in: Comprendre: revista
catalana de filosofia, vol. 8, 1/2006, pp. 35–44), etc. His published
biography (in German) is to be found at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Ra%C3%BAl_Fornet-Betancourt

James Garrison, ORCiD: 0000-0002-9173-9075 is Assistant Professor of

Philosophy at Baldwin Wallace University. He has previously served
as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Puget Sound,
Consortium for Faculty Diversity fellow at Scripps College, and
Teaching Fellow at the University of Bristol. He obtained his master’s
from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and his doctorate from the
University of Vienna, after having undertaken exchange fellowships
at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and at Peking University. His
work focuses on ethics, aesthetics, social and political philosophy, and
intercultural philosophy, all of which he brings to bear in his book,
Reconsidering the Life of Power (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2021).

Henning Hahn, ORCiD: 0000-0001-7410-787X, studied philosophy at

the universities of Tübingen and Hildesheim (Germany). He holds a
master’s degree from University College London and a PhD degree on
foundations of justice.
His works focus on questions of global justice and global ethics,
from both a Kantian and a critical perspective, broadly understood.
More lately, he started to replace the paradigm of justice with the
rationale of political reconciliation.
Until recently, Henning served as Professor at Freie Universität
Berlin, teaching ethics and political philosophy and was awarded
the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Feodor Lynen Research
Fellowship for a research stay at McGill University. His publica-
tions include: Dimensions of Poverty (co-editor, Springer: 2020)
and “Politischer Kosmopolitismus: Praktikabilität, Verantwortung,
Menschenrechte” (in Political Cosmopolitanism: Practicalities,
Responsibilities, Human Rights DeGruyter, 2017).

Albert Kasanda, ORCiD: 0000-0001-9119-4135, PhD, is currently a

researcher at the Centre of Global Studies of the Institute of Philosophy
of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. He has an expertise in
intercultural and comparative philosophy, as well as Latin American
and African philosophy. His current research focuses on African
youth and civil society as well as on African intercultural philosophy.
His publications include: Contemporary African Social and Political
Philosophy: Trends, Debates and Challenges (Routledge 2018);
x  Notes on Contributors
Dialogue interculturel. Cheminer ensemble vers un autre monde possi-
ble (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2013); John Rawls: Les bases philosophiques
du libéralisme politique (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 2005); Pour une
pensée africaine émancipatrice (Paris: Editions L'Harmattan, 2004).
Naoko Kumagai, ORCiD: 0000-0001-6429-5248, is Professor
of International Relations at the School of Global Studies and
Collaboration at Aoyama Gakuin University. She received her PhD
from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her
main field of study is in ethics and international politics. Her recent
research interests focus on the issue of comfort women and post-
war reconciliation in East Asia. Her recent publications include The
Comfort Women: Historical, Political, Legal, and Moral Perspectives,
Tokyo: I-House Press, 2016; “Chōsenjin ‘Ianfu’ wo meguru
Shihaikenryokukōzō” (The Analysis of the Issue of Comfort Women
with Japan’s Structural Colonial Power), in Toyomi Asano, Kizō
Ogura, Naruhiko Nishi eds., Wakai no Tameni –“Teikoku no Ianfu”
toiu Toi wo Hiraku (For Reconciliation: Exploration of the Comfort
Women of the Empire), Tokyo: Crane, 2017; and “Jinken no Fuhensei
to sono Ranyō no Kikensei” (Geopolitics and Human Rights), in
Shinichi Kitaoka and Yuichi Hosoya eds., Atarashii Chiseigaku (New
Geopolitics), Tokyo: Toyo Keizai, 2020. She received the Nakasone
Yasuhiro Award Incentive Award in July 2016.
Plamen Makariev, ORCiD: 0000-0003-2762-5847, is Doctor Habil.,
Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sofia University. He held teach-
ing courses in Political Philosophy at the BA Program in Philosophy of
Sofia University, as well as at the MA programs “Virtual Culture” and
“Middle Eastern Studies.” From 2002 to 2006 he ran a course on Basic
Categories of Intercultural Communication at the German–Bulgarian
MA Program “Media and Intercultural Communication” for journal-
ists from the Balkan countries. From 2003 to 2006 he offered a course
in Philosophy of Religion at the Higher Islamic Institute in Sofia and
in 2009 he offered one-semester course on Political Communication at
Hacettepe University in Ankara. He is also a member of the Board of
the Center for the Study of Religions at Sofia University; a member of
the Editorial Board of the Balkan Journal of Philosophy; and Chairman
of the Expert Council on Religion at the Ministry of Education and
Science. He is the author of The Public Legitimacy of Minority Claims:
A Central/Eastern European Perspective (London and New York:
Routledge, 2017), three other monographs, and numerous articles in
edited books and in international and Bulgarian journals.
Mongi Serbaji, ORCiD: 0000-0002-6129-6998, PhD, is currently
teaching the philosophy of education at the Higher Institute of
Human Sciences, Gabes University in Tunisia. His researches focus
 Notes on Contributors  xi
on the global justice and the human rights from a cross-cultural
perspective. He was awarded the Arab Prize for Social and Human
Sciences awarded by the Arab Center for research and policy stud-
ies in 2016. His main publications are: “Pour une convivialité heu-
reuse: Miskawayh et la raisonnabilité du vivre ensemble” (Toward
a Happy Conviviality: Miskawayh and the Reasonability of Living
Together), in the Arab Journal for the Humanities, Vol. 38, N. 151,
2020; “Legitimationsprozesse im transnationalen öffentlichen Raum”,
in Sarah Schmidt und Gérard Raulet (eds.), Wissen in Bewegung.
Theoriebildung unter dem Fokus von Entgrenzung und Grenzziehung,
LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2014; “Intoleranz verstehen: Kulturelle Armut als
Exklusion,” in Toleranz in transkultureller Perspektive, Ed. Dhouib, S.
Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2020.
José Santos Herceg, ORCiD: 0000-0001-5425-2340, is Doctor habil.
and Professor, at the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados (IDEA) of the
Universidad de Santiago de Chile. He held teaching courses in: Latin-
American Studies, Latin-American Culture, Pedagogy and Philosophy,
Polit. Philosophy. In 2016 he was guest professor at the University of
Konstanz, Germany. Among his publications are the books Conflicto
de Representaciones. América Latina como lugar para la filosofía,
Santiago de Chile: Fondo de Cultura Económica , 2010; Cartografía
Crítica. El quehacer profesional de la filosofía en Chile, Santiago de
Chile: Libros de la Cañada, 2015; Lugares espectrales. Topología
­testimonial de la prisión política en Chile, Santiago de Chile: Editorial
USACH, Colección Idea, 2019, and Tiranía del paper, De la mercan-
tilización a la normalización de las textualidades, Valdivia: Ediciones
Universidad Austral de Chile, 2020.
Foreword*
Sarhan Dhouib

The aim of this collected volume is to shed light on current issues in

political philosophy from an intercultural perspective. In particular, this
volume focuses on analyzing asymmetrical power relations which mani-
fest themselves at both the local and global levels and which must be
examined against the background of issues such as migration, displace-
ment, human rights violations, and poverty. This shows that the complex-
ity of power relationships ultimately reflects the fact that local and global
dimensions can no longer be separated.
With regard to globalization, the question cannot come down to
becoming an ardent advocate or a radical opponent, because globaliza-
tion cannot be stopped, and it inevitably determines our current condi-
tio humana. Rather, it is advisable to take a critical look at its positive
and negative dimensions. The complexity of local and global entangle-
ments requires increased cooperation in reflection, i.e., merging differ-
ent philosophical traditions and approaches and decentering prevailing
(Eurocentric/Western) ideas.
If one looks at globalization in connection with the digital revolution,
there is undoubtably the groundbreaking possibility of worldwide net-
working, (rapid) information, and communication. It thus represents a
central technical prerequisite for the coming together of different nations
and cultures, and this also applies to scientific transfer. The basically posi-
tive idea of a global communication network is highly dependent on the
controllability of personal data, asymmetrical access to technology, and
economic monopolies; and this is perhaps the area that as of now most
urgently needs legal regulation supported by democratic legitimacy.
If one looks at globalization from the point of view of a promise of
mobility connecting all continents, then it is not only virtual encounters,
but also face-to-face encounters, and thus lively participation in other
ways of life and ideas, that are possible. One might think that, with this

* 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?

The Task of Intercultural Philosophy

Intercultural philosophy can primarily be characterized as an open and
critical approach to philosophy. On the one hand, it clearly distances itself
from closed metaphysical systems of thought and from dogmatic totali-
tarian structures, be they political or religious, on the other. It focuses
on the conditions of the possibility of peaceful coexistence. Persecution,
neocolonialism, and various forms of exclusion are the order of the day.
Intercultural philosophizing questions global and local power structures
and works to bring not just various philosophical traditions, but also
xiv  Sarhan Dhouib
(life) experiences from different regions of the world, into conversation
with one another. It draws its critical potential from precisely this conflu-
ence. Intercultural philosophy clears the way for an epistemic transfor-
mation of philosophy by demanding that we no longer think, speak, and
act about others, but rather with others.
No longer an object of reflection, but an actor, the other should be
discussed in a comprehensive way; i.e., standing up for the concerns
of the “other,” elaborating the “other’s” own approach and the ter-
minology of the “other” up for discussion. This process of getting up
to speed is lengthy and full of obstacles. It presupposes political and
social conditions that permit speaking, but also a willingness to listen
and to receive. It is important to use both the fundamental renewal of
philosophical methodology and the philosophical vocabulary resulting
from this intercultural dialogue in assessing and addressing common
problems.
An example of an approach in intercultural philosophy is the poly-
log model. In order to enable a de-centering of Western philosophy and
encourage multi-centrality in philosophical exchanges, Franz Martin
Wimmer suggests the term “polylog,” based on the concept of dialog. The
philosophical problems in our global world today should be analyzed
by means of interculturally oriented polylogs. Wimmer presents three
conditions for philosophizing in this way: (1) The definition/concept of
culture should make clear which differences are relevant for philosophy;
(2) the rules for interpreting philosophies that differ culturally require
clear definitions; and (3) it must be clear what the criteria are for a philo-
sophical hypothesis that can be rightly deemed to be intercultural and
transcultural.1
The concept of a “double criticism,” for example, which can be traced
back to the Moroccan intellectual Abdelkebir Khatibi, is extremely
promising for intercultural philosophizing. This approach combines a
decolonization of thought in the Maghreb context with a deconstructiv-
ist reading style. In doing so, Khatibi puts closed metaphysical thinking
to the test and attaches great importance to a criticism that is directed
towards both Western, Eurocentric philosophy and the Arab-Islamic
tradition (i.e., his own tradition).2 Double criticism in intercultural phi-
losophizing can be elaborated further, deepening Khatibi’s approach. In
addition to the various facets of criticism that need to be explored in
terms of their complexities and interactions (such as rhetorical, religious,
and social criticism), double criticism can be understood as a condition
for open inter- and transcultural philosophizing. The idea of double criti-
cism demands constant self-criticism of thought, preceding from dialog/
polylog with others, thereby promoting a common search for new forms
of universalization. Additionally, the method of the Japanese philoso-
pher Tetsuro Watsuji, which draws from different traditions, offers useful
tools for working interculturally. Drawing from Western but also from
 Foreword  xv
Buddhist-Confucian traditions, Watsuji not only carried out a cross-cul-
tural analysis and presented a new, intercultural ethic. Going beyond this,
he created new terms, such as the term “ningen [人間],” (human-between)
which he reinterpreted, thus enabling an expansion of the Western sub-
ject. This new extension of the subject offers undreamt-of possibilities for
reflection, because it enables all people to be considered in terms of being-
with (Mitsein) and to use this for philosophical reflection.3
Intercultural philosophy can also be described as a “philosophy of vis-
iting” (une philosophie de la visite), which promises us humans a new
being-with without any exclusive normative content. The Latin verb “vis-
itare” is derived from “visiere” (to visit) and associated is with benevo-
lence and a will to explore.4 The mutual relationship of visited/visitor is
based on an interest in a different philosophical corpus, other intellectual
traditions and languages. However, the will to visit is much more funda-
mental, because, without this will, any intercultural philosophical debate
would be doomed to failure.
Thinking-with is an invitation to all old and new forms of contemporary
humanity’s explicit and implicit “we”—those who style themselves as
speaking on behalf of “the West,” “Islam,” “the African soul,” “Asian
peoples/values,” “the liberation movement of Latin America,” or the “we”
of a coming “de-territorialized” (digital) population—to go beyond their
political and cultural boundaries and seek out other forms of human
becoming or human decline.
Intercultural philosophizing, understood as a philosophy of visiting,
promises a new type of being with/togetherness that is based on an act of
hospitality—or, to use an old German word, sociability (Geselligkeit)—
and cultural openness. The philosopher slips into the role of the host who
brings guests into conversation and lets them share in their intellectual
property. However, this promise of peaceful coexistence, both locally
and internationally, is challenged by many historical, political, cultural,
and economic conflicts that need to be contextualized philosophically
and examined critically. It is not only questions about the conditions for
good coexistence that are important for intercultural philosophizing,
but critical reflection on the obstacles that hinder such coexistence is a
priority as well.

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

Interculturality as the Basis for

a Philosophy of Coexistence
1 Intercultural Philosophy
as Philosophy for Better
Human Conviviality*
Raúl Fornet-Betancourt

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.

1.2 For Better Human Co-Habitation: Considerations from the

Perspective of Intercultural Philosophy
Against the background of the premises mentioned, I will now present a
summary of my considerations with the following points:

When I speak of human cohabitation in this chapter, I do not empha-

size its political or legal dimensions; in other words, attention is
not focused on the formal legal framework that regulates social
cohabitation among groups and communities of different cultural
or religious origins. This is because we want to speak above all
about the relationships between forms of living that are carried by
cultural worlds/traditions in which people try to realize themselves
in the fullness of human being.
Therefore, I further assume that any effort to improve human
cohabitation must deal primarily with the question of the human
quality of the relationships between biographies and cultures
in everyday life. Improving human coexistence does not mean
 Intercultural Philosophy  7
designing better theories or models for it. The real challenge lies
more in trying to improve concrete relationships in direct encoun-
ters “on the street.”
To improve human conviviality, be it on an individual, biographical
level or on a social level as an interaction between cultures (well
understood here as forms of life lived by concrete people in their
everyday life), it is therefore necessary to enter into the lifestyles
and traditions of those who in fact share a living space in which we
try to make this “shared social space” a communal “living world”
(Lebenswelt). The deeper reason for this is if we are not mistaken
in this assessment that human coexistence, be it good or bad, is an
encounter of cultural situations, or, more precisely, a convergence of
contextual ways of life from their cultural differences or memories.
Human life opens up to life in a culturally mediated way and in
this sense life experiences are always inseparable from the experi-
ence of a cultural situation.
The previous note is central in order to grasp the deep meaning that
is hidden in conviviality and also therefore in order to understand
what really fails or breaks down when human coexistence is bad.
This means that human cohabitation, in reality, does not deserve
such a name, if “we are not doing well,” and living together in this
case deserves at most the term “co-existence,” as I asserted in the
introductory remarks. My thinking here is as follows:
The idea of life experience as an experience that is inextricably
linked to a cultural situation leads us to realize that the experience
of life, even if it presents itself as a personal and even individual,
is an experience that nobody can call “their own experience” in an
exclusive sense, since it always goes beyond the limited participa-
tion in life that each individual experiences as their “own life.” In
other words, speaking exclusively in this individual sense is faulty
because life is an experience that indicates conditions that lie “out-
side” of what each of us can call or identify with as “their personal
life.” The experience of life, as José Ortega y Gasset aptly saw on the
basis of the Spanish philosophical tradition, is an experience of par-
ticipation in life; an experience of “being in” or becoming present
in the presence and through the presence of others. In other words,
basically there is no experience of life for people except in the form
of an original con-viviality. Life, therefore, is “living together.”10
Everyone’s life is interwoven from this basic conviviality. And it is
precisely this pre-political basis of conviviality as a condition of the
real possibility of a completely personal life that constitutes its deep
meaning. This deep meaning, which we can call ontological mean-
ing, is also the horizon, in light of which it is understandable that
poor conviviality, or, more precisely, a failure in the order or in the
forms of coexistence is not just a political failure—a situation that
8  Raúl Fornet-Betancourt
only might only reveal deficiencies in civic or politeness, but a situa-
tion that affects life substantially. Bad coexistence leads to a life that
is damaged at its core.
Therefore, this is not just about damage on a social, political, and
cultural level. It is also and fundamentally an anthropological dam-
age to the human existential condition itself.
Therefore, as is already indicated in the first point, actions to improve
human coexistence must be understood as radical actions that go
beyond the required readjustment of the “social contract” in the
multicultural societies of the so-called globalized world. Actions that
agitate for a revolution in our relationship with life are required for
a sense of the common “fabric of life” that establishes us as a “com-
munity of peers” even before we contractually recognize ourselves
as a community of different people. However, it should be clear that
this radical proposal for actions that improve cohabitation does not
seek to underestimate political or social actions. Rather, it should be
pointed out that these actions in favor of a fairer “social contract”
among diverse parties can only achieve its true goal—human and
personal communication among diverse parties—if they are added
to a horizon of action that makes the precedence of the irreplace-
able and inalienable “fabric of life” visible, which, as a tie of a par-
ticipative unit in life, must embrace all politics that really want to
promote a good conviviality.
An immediate consequence of this very idea is the recommendation
for a critical addition to the theories of recognition that contem-
porary political philosophy has developed from different perspec-
tives in order to put conviviality within the cultural and religious
diversity of contemporary societies on a fairer basis.11 Undoubtedly,
these theories of recognizing the other as different make a great
contribution to solving the many problems that plural coexistence
in the world poses today. However, at the same time it must be said
that they are inadequate and need to be transformed interculturally,
especially with regard to the liberal and individualistic anthropo-
logical basis from which they proceed.12
My argument in defense of the need for this critical review would,
putting it briefly, emphasize the following:
If the problem of not recognizing the other basically follows from
the logic of an anthropology that breaks the “vital connection”—
the original “community of life”—then a theory must exist that
seeks to improve human cohabitation from its own roots. This the-
ory would work through the reversal of the logic of individualistic
anthropology, competition, and conflict (an anthropology that we
could collectively call “bourgeois”) in order to think anew about
recognizing the common sense of this “vital connection.” All of this
means precisely reversing the question or transitioning from the
 Intercultural Philosophy  9
model of conflict with demands recognition to a model of grateful
acceptance of the other. Because with this changed logic one regains
the “naturalness” of the feeling that the first thing that one owes to
“the Other” is gratitude, because “the Other” enables human life
with their participation.
In order to deepen this perspective, it should also be pointed out that
the improvement of human coexistence in the world today, as a
direct consequence of the reversal of the logic of individualistic
anthropology, requires that experience of cultures be regained,
which, due to its memory of humanity, still has the recognizes and
conveys the idea that the reaffirmation of differences and the cor-
responding demand for their recognition are secondary moments,
especially since the former is presumed ahead of every social con-
tract, i.e., the accommodating acceptance of “the Other” in the
“connectedness of life.”
In summary, we can assert that even before the contractual rec-
ognition of the rights to their difference and the resulting presence
as a citizen in the public space of the host society, we owe the other
person dedication to their unconditional acceptance as a co-habi-
tator. This means that the legal recognition of the other person is
ultimately a consequence of the original recognition necessary for
life, especially insofar as there is no “encounter” with life without it.
And finally, in order to clear up any misunderstandings beforehand,
it should be pointed out that the term “accommodation” does not
mean politeness in any way, shape, or form. It denotes an attitude of
the human heart, its warmth. In other words, it names the attitude
whereby conviviality loses the ambivalence that shapes it as the
reality of factual coexistence in order to turn it into a quality of life,
or said better, to turn it qualitatively into conviviality,13 i.e., into a
shared celebration of the first common good of the human race: life.
At this level—and we consciously emphasize this—conviviality
is not merely coexisting cohabitation, but rather participative reci-
procity. This means the quality of life that makes unity visible and
perceptible in diversity, because the identities of life - be it personal
or collective—reflect the signature of the community that lives in
it as co-habitating differences. This is also why no difference can
say “I am” without acknowledging in this statement the presence
of “the Other” as those others who always already participating in
one’s own life.

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.
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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.
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Wissenschaftsverlag Mainz, 2011.
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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-
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Fayard, 1997.
2 Responses to Past Injustice
in Democratizing Societies
and the Universalization of
Human Rights
Sarhan Dhouib

The Declaration of 1789 suited me perfectly; she heightened my

revolt by the brilliance of her rhetoric. […] The French Revolution
belonged to us through a transmittance which was not yet clear, but
which stirred the heart of the anti-colonialist. We were late disciples
of our enemies. For how could man speak of human rights, if not of
us, since man, should no longer suffer any attempt aimed at his race,
his nation, his religion? It was our birthright.1
‘Le chemin de la dignité’ (‘The Path to Dignity’) was revealed to us
by the victims of exclusion, female and male, through torture, defam-
atory police propaganda, by marginalized parties, but still standing,
because of the independent figures resisting tyranny.2

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.

2.2 Are Experiences of Injustice Paradigmatic for the Normative

Justification of Human Rights?
Human rights are justifiable claims addressed by people to the public,
political order.5 They are also rights that must be struggled for. They offer
an opportunity to stand against exploitation and oppression as well as
an opportunity to reflect on the experience of being subject to political
crimes committed by the state and of having one’s rights violated. Writing
in this context, Heiner Bielefeldt emphasizes how the experience of injus-
tice is constitutive for the emergence and development of human rights:

Human rights are a response to experienced injustice. In every expe-

rience of injustice there is suffering and the interpretation that people
inflict and allow this suffering. Thus, human rights have a dimension
 Responses to Past Injustice  15
of experience as well as elucidation. A space for articulation must
be created in order to work through these experiences of injustice, a
space which however is not tied to a specific culture. While human
rights were initially developed largely in Europe, they should not be
interpreted in a Eurocentric way. Rather, the articulation of what
human rights means should be a process of bringing different tradi-
tions and patterns of thought into contestation. For me, the experi-
ence of injustice is the elementary form of human rights education.6

Constant, daily violations of human rights in various parts of the world

undercut any claim that humanity is on a linear and ascending path to
the full implementation of human rights. Reflecting on the significance of,
and prospects for, human rights means, above all, taking the fragility of
human existence seriously. The experience of powerlessness profoundly
shapes humans and pushes us to our limits. Can experiences of injustice
form an “epistemic foundation”7 for an understanding of human rights?
To what extent can experiences of injustice be transformed into norma-
tive and at the same time universalistic commitments?8
The backdrop to these questions is not only shaped by the debate about
the “affirmative genealogy”9 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights—as it is laid out, for example, in the US by Johannes Morsink
and in Germany by Hans Joas—but also by contemporary debates about
human rights unfolding in the context of processes of democratization in
Arab countries such as Tunisia. Here, discussions about experiences of
injustice under authoritarian regimes play an increasingly important role,
as, for example, in the current debate about the Tunisian Pact on Rights
and Liberties.
A look at different declarations of human rights can serve at the out-
set as an indicator of how the conceptual and legalistic formulation of
human rights is often spurred by experiences of injustice. This phenom-
enon raises the question as to whether and how experiences of injustice
give rise to conceptions of human rights that criticize existing institutions
and practices. The close-knit relationship between violations of and dec-
larations of human rights seems especially clear in regard to the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the explicit backdrop of which
is the catastrophic experience of Nazi barbarism. The preamble of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes how “disregard and
contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have
outraged the conscience of mankind, […].”10 The massive human rights
violations that occurred during World War II and that are characteristic
of the operation of totalitarian regimes form the background for this
declaration.
Human rights are protected by the “rule of law” so that “man is not
to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against
tyranny and oppression […].”11 The historical experience of “tyranny and
16  Sarhan Dhouib
oppression”12 is the main driver in the emergence and formal recognition
of human rights. Initiated mainly in the aftermath, and under the impres-
sion, of the mass suffering caused by the crimes committed under the aus-
pices of National Socialism, fascism, militarism, and Stalinism, postwar
affirmations of human rights encompassed values such as human dignity,
equality, justice, and freedom of all people.13
In the following, I will take a closer look at a more contemporary
example, the Tunisian Pact on Rights and Liberties, which was estab-
lished as an initiative of the Arab Institute for Human Rights and other
organizations for Tunisian civil society, and which has been recom-
mended for inclusion within the Tunisian constitution. Publicly released
on July 25, 2012 in Tunis, the Tunisian Pact consists of a preamble and
nine articles divided into various subsections.14 The first eight articles
refer to the following rights: Article 1: The right to a dignified life,
Article 2: The right to protection and security, Article 3: The right to
free elections, Article 4: The right to equality and non-discrimination,
Article 5: The right to citizenship and participation, Article 6: The
right to development and progress, Article 7: Intellectual, cultural, and
creative rights, and Article 8: The right to a sustainable, healthy envi-
ronment. The ninth and last article suggests measures to protect the
aforementioned rights.
The Tunisian Pact also highlights the experience of injustice and it is
important to point out that as a major motivation for the document’s
standardization of rights, it recognizes “that the People’s Revolution rose
against a despotic regime that disgraced human dignity, disturbed fair
development, and disrupted the values of equality, justice and freedom.”15
In addition to the reference to the despotic abuse of power, two other
forms of injustice are discussed briefly: slavery and colonialism. The lan-
guage also emphasizes the importance of marking a break with the pain-
ful human rights violations carried out by agents of the authoritarian
regimes:

Dignity, equality, freedom and justice, the principles of the

Revolution are the real foundations that must be laid down through
the process of democratic transition. These are dedicated to citizen-
ship, liberties, pluralism and democratic participation, which must
break with the past heritage of tyranny through the endorsement of
principles of Rule of Law, independence of the judiciary and tran-
sitional justice.16

Paradoxically, however, it appears that the experience of injustice is not

only central in the debate about the universality or universalization of
human rights, but also plays a constitutive and paradigmatic role. The
claim for human rights that arises from a painful experience of human
negation and rights violation has a strong normative impulse. It does
 Responses to Past Injustice  17
not matter whether the violated rights have already been formulated or
ratified; rather, these rights announce themselves in the very infliction of
painful injuries to human life and dignity. The constitutive and paradig-
matic function of the experience of injustice consists in this self-declara-
tion of rights in their violation. The normative power of human rights
emerges from the experience of injustice. Insofar as people are denied
their rights, they become aware of their humanity.
Before 1956, the Tunisian people liberated themselves from the colo-
nial rule of France and aimed to establish a sovereign and republican
state. The independent state (daulat al-istiqlāl ‫)دولة االستقالل‬, which arose dur-
ing the struggle against the injustice of colonial rulers, came quickly to be
dominated by a single party which established a leadership cult around
the president. Expressions of dissent and opposition were stifled immedi-
ately.17 Exemplifying the post-colonial state’s early transformation into an
authoritarian regime was the treatment of people’s right to establish free
associations and to found political parties.18 After the country achieved
political independence, the right freely to organize oneself politically
and culturally represented an important claim of the Tunisian national
movement and was therefore reflected in the constitution of June 1, 1959
(Article 8).19 Promulgated for the sake of organizing the new political sys��-
tem, however, a law passed on November 7, 1959 prevented the imple-
mentation of the constitutional right to free political organization. This
law categorized political parties as associations whose establishment was
subject to the approval of the Interior Minister. As the lawyer and intel-
lectual Mohamed Charfi notes, decisions made by the Interior Minister
cannot be appealed.20 It is also important to note that this law was post-
dated (to November 7, 1959), i.e., two days before the first meeting of
the new Tunisian parliament, and thereby came into force in the interim
phase in which Bourguiba had absolute power. It was not published until
1960 in the Journal officiel de la République tunisienne, when it was
finally made public.21 With this law, which contradicts Article 8 of the
1959 constitution, political opponents in the post-colonial state could
be persecuted and accused of being members of an illegal organization.22
Of particular interest in this context is the clear demand of the Tunisian
Pact to break with past despotism. What does this demand mean in rela-
tion to the human rights debate? Does a break with a despotic (political)
regime or system of injustice mean that all parameters should be set to
zero and that one needs to start over again? Would people really want
to start from scratch (which, from a cultural-historical point of view,
is impossible)? Would we have to go back to that point as part of an
abstract normative requirement? And would that mean that the consti-
tutive experience of suffering would also be lost, an experience, which
could serve as a guide in the process of universalizing human rights? My
argument is that we should not advocate for a radical break from the
past but rather critically examine the power structures of authoritarian
18  Sarhan Dhouib
regimes as drivers in the process of universalizing rights. “‘Universalizing’
means […] a hypothetical procedure for testing moral or juridical norm
proposals to see whether they can apply as meaningful, universally valid
applicable norms—i.e., that they can either be conceptualized or at least
be seriously intended to be conceptualized.”23 What does this mean in
terms of the debate about the transculturality of human rights?

2.3 The Universality and Transculturality of Human Rights

To answer this question, the following section will engage the idea of
the universality of human rights and distinguish between four levels of
universality that are often blurred together.24 The last level, which is
called the transcultural universality of human rights and in which the
critical function of normative claims plays a crucial role, is especially
important.

2.3.1 The Idea of a Human Rights Universalism

The normative claim that human rights have universal validity is inherent
in the very idea of human rights. This essentially means that the univer-
sality of human rights stands for those fundamental rights that people
are entitled to simply because they are human. This universality presup-
poses a normative claim to the validity of the same basic rights for every
human being based on human dignity. In this context, Heiner Bielefeldt
emphasizes: “Within this linguistic usage, universality of human rights
describes the inner quality of a category of fundamental rights which are
given on the basis of human existence and which are therefore equally
due to everyone.”25 The opposite of universality in this context would be
particularity. Human rights differ from certain legal positions, namely
those which are connected to particular characteristics, e.g., acquired
status positions, social roles and functions, memberships in associations
and professional groups, particular nationalities, etc. Therefore, human
rights are not to be seen as the result of achievement or merit; everyone is
entitled to them because everyone is human.

2.3.2 The Global Institutionalization of Human Rights

In this context, universality refers to the project of a global standard-
ization and implementation of fundamental rights at the level of the
United Nations. This second meaning of the universality of human rights
is found primarily in the international literature of human rights law.
Thus, universal human rights are often considered separate from regional
human rights. The opposite of universality here would be regionality.
One example to mention regarding the concept of regional human rights
is the debate about “Asian values” in the 1990s. “Asian values” can be
 Responses to Past Injustice  19
understood to mean concepts of virtue or moral norms which are so
strictly demarcated from “Western values” that they call into question the
idea of the universality of human rights. They offer a so-called “counter-
program” or a declaration of human obligations against the claim of
universal human rights, which have been connected with a “Western way
of life.”26
Other examples come from the various Islamic and Arab regional
declarations on human rights. The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights
in Islam from 1990 and the Arab Charter on Human Rights from 1994
as well as their updated versions from 2004 emphasize the primacy of
Sharia in different ways. They subordinate different human rights content
to the primacy of the Islamic legal tradition without critically examining
the relationship between such content and that tradition.

2.3.3 The Factual Status of Ratification

The universalism of human rights is occasionally measured by the rati-
fication behavior of states vis-à-vis international human rights conven-
tions and the recognition of their transnational validity. Bielefeldt rightly
observes: “From such an exclusively positivistic understanding of human
rights universality, one would have to come to the conclusion that,
strictly speaking, not a single human rights convention is currently really
universal.”27
Those who advocate for such a concept of universality of human
rights make universality dependent on the factual procedure of ratifica-
tion. They therefore miss the normative meaning of universality since
this meaning is made dependent on the consent of authoritarian states
and the economic and political interests of various states including dem-
ocratic ones.

2.3.4 Transcultural Universality of Human Rights

Against the backdrop of the great tension between the universal claims
of human rights and the particular claims of cultural pluralism, the ques-
tion of how the universality of human rights should be understood is
once again raised in the field of intercultural philosophy.28 In view of the
global debate about the universality of human rights and the pluralism of
cultures, at least three methodological approaches regarding justification
claims can be outlined in the intercultural discussion on human rights.29
The main concern of these methodological approaches is to do justice to
the pluralism of cultures without, however, questioning the universality
of human rights. In the following, based on Lohmann’s model of differ-
entiation, neutral, intercultural, and transcultural approaches are briefly
discussed while also touching on the critical role of human rights in those
respective approaches.
20  Sarhan Dhouib
2.3.4.1 Neutral Approaches to Justification
The neutral justification “highlights commonalities that can be found in
all cultures and justifies human rights on this common basis.”30 Hans
Küng’s Global Ethic Project (Weltethos) pursues a similar goal and
tries to work out similarities between cultures descriptively.31 Karl Josef
Kuschel sums up an interim assessment of his extensive Global Ethic
Project as follows:

Even in the future there will be no conflict-free ethics; tensions between

different ethical approaches will continue to determine humanity in
the future. This tension, however, reveals an expression of respect for
cultural plurality and religious diversity in human history. The search
for a minimum of ethical consensus between the various religions, a
core set of different ethical convictions, is by contrast, not u­ nrealistic.
It is highly desirable to look for areas of overlap and intersection,
where ethical convictions of different cultures and religions can meet.32

However, it remains questionable whether the descriptive-ascertainable

similarities are sufficient to justify the universalism of human rights and
whether interreligious dialogues will accept a non-religious justification.33
Another approach is revealed in Otfried Höffe’s undertaking to pro-
mote human rights in a culture-neutral way, i.e., to justify human rights
from an anthropological and transcendental point of view. In his book
Vernunft und Recht: Bausteine zu einem interkulturellen Rechtsdiskurs
[Reason and Law: Steps to an Intercultural Discourse on Law] Höffe
pursues the following goal:

Because it comes down to conditions of possibility, one can use

an expression that has been relevant since Kant and speak of a—
relatively—transcendental interest. Relying on these interests, that is,
through the connection of anthropology and transcendental philoso-
phy, distrust of the moment-of-perpetual-sameness in anthropology
should be dispelled. Aside from that, the legitimation of human rights
is once again given a practical meaning. A vote on the debate about
the project of modernity is added to the function of intercultural
legal discourse.34

Höffe refers to cultural similarities as culturally neutral and as gen-

eral anthropological requirements. According to him, as “transcen-
dental interests,” they precede all concrete cultural forms and should
be able to justify the universality of human rights in terms of a sort
of contract theory in the form of a “transcendental exchange.” In my
opinion, however, this neutral justification strategy only looks for the
 Responses to Past Injustice  21
lowest common denominator between different cultures and offers only
a minimalist understanding or a minimal ethical consensus of human
rights. Against the background of culturally relativistic criticism, this
approach, above all, inquires into the conditions of the possibility of
the universality of human rights. In doing so, the critical role of human
rights regarding one’s own and other cultures is thereby either ignored
or greatly reduced.

2.3.4.2 Different Approaches to Intercultural Justification

According to Lohmann, the intercultural justification approach aims to
“construct something common between the cultures based on the dif-
ferent peculiarities of the different cultures [and] only redeems its justi-
fication claim through dialogue, comparison or mutual agreement, and
in this sense, proceeds interculturally.”35 Intercultural approaches “based
on different cultural premises [search] for a normative, overlapping con-
sensus between cultures. To this end, the fight against western cultural-
imperialist appropriation and paternalism is just as much a fight for an
equal dialogue between different cultures.”36
Heiner Bielefeldt’s approach as outlined in in his book Philosophie der
Menschenrechte. Grundlagen eines weltweiten Freiheitsethos [Philosophy
and Human Rights: Foundations of a Global Ethos of Freedom] 37 is an
example of this position. Building on Kant’s formulation of a “politi-
cal and legal ethos of freedom” of Western modernity, Bielefeldt tries
to establish human rights “as the core of an intercultural ‘overlapping
consensus’” with other cultures. He makes it clear that this discourse,
which is limited to human rights, is not about intercultural acquisition
of a common and comprehensive doctrine of salvation, but rather about
justifiability of an independent, secular legal system. He tries to win an
intercultural consensus, for example, by tying himself to the critical ratio-
nal theological voice within Arab-Islamic culture. However, the intercul-
tural justification approach is only partially critical and applicable only
to a limited extent.38

2.3.4.3 Transcultural Justification Approaches

Transcultural justification “wants to maintain cultural diversity with
regard to justification and thus achieves plural justification for the univer-
sal claim of human rights.”39 This enables a plural justification of human
rights based on the plurality of cultures. In my view, transcultural justi-
fication goes beyond neutral and intercultural modes of justification.40
Transculturality offers individuals or groups the opportunity to deal with
one another critically. It consists of a horizontal movement, which should
lead to a search for common values and norms between cultures, and a
22  Sarhan Dhouib
vertical movement, which aims to develop concepts that go beyond the
empirical diversity of cultures.

‘Transculturality’ […] takes up the critical aspect of all cultures again

in order to determine what can be universalized in a transversal and
transcendent way to construct a critical and constantly renewable
corpus of values, applicable to all of humanity, thereby.41

At this point the critical role of human rights takes on an important

role since the transcultural justification of human rights is based on a
“double criticism.” The term “double criticism” was first developed by
the Moroccan intellectual Abdelkebir Khatibi in a literary and sociologi-
cal context. It primarily refers to the type of criticism that is capable of
transforming our structures of perception and knowledge.42 She critically
examines her own cultural tradition as well as the tradition of others—
here, the colonial history of Europeans.
In the following, this term will be used in a philosophical context
and made fruitful for the critical conception of human rights. In inter-
cultural discourse on human rights, “double criticism” is to be under-
stood in the first place as a self-criticism that deals with one’s own
authoritarian social, political, and cultural structures, and thereby sets
the stage for critique of the authoritarian social, political, and cultural
structures of another. This move enables the “universalizability” of
human rights.43 “Double criticism” is therefore generally located in the
realm of cultural and legal criticism. Criticism of other(s) focuses on
the disregard and instrumentalization of human rights of other states
and organizations, including Western ones. This is where criticism aris-
ing from experience of injustice emerges as particularly important.
Lohmann summarizes this idea as follows: “The goal of the ‘transcul-
tural approach’ is to establish and review the universalism of human
rights from the critical reassurance of one’s own culturally anchored
philosophical tradition via intercultural mediation.”44 And so, by
means of double criticism the following section will illustrate how we
can think of life with dignity.

2.4 The Concept of a Life of Dignity against the Backdrop

of the Experience of Injustice
2.4.1 A Human Rights Approach
Article One of the Tunisian Pact deals with the “right to a dignified life”
or a “life with dignity.”45 Here the concept of dignity is brought into
direct connection with people’s lives. The article emphasizes that this
right is to be determined by a positive “law” and protected institutionally.
The law is no longer defined by transcendent or metaphysical authority
 Responses to Past Injustice  23
but understood as an expression of human will. The conditions and cir-
cumstances of a life with dignity are articulated.
The right to a life with dignity is formulated normatively in Article
One and in this context, it distinguishes, for example, between require-
ments and prohibitions. The normative claims that are made include,
above all, the right to identity, to nationality, and physical integrity,
while torture, slavery, and human trafficking are prohibited because
they make a life with dignity impossible. Concluding the programmatic
claims of the Article One, there is a demand for the abolition of capital
punishment.46
The various imperatives and prohibitions as well as the demand for
the abolition of the death penalty reference various forms of injustice
and degradation. The affirmation of physical integrity, for example, also
rules out any form of sexual abuse. This shows that the conception of
dignity in the Tunisian Pact is based on a dialectic that raises normative
claims of dignity on one side, but, on the other side, makes clear the
constant threats to a life with dignity posed by various forms of degrada-
tion. The threat lies not just in past practices but in the evolution of new
forms of degradation. This permanent sense of threat to human rights
from past and from possible experiences of injustice makes apparent the
struggle for a life with dignity within civil societies. The demand for a “a
life with dignity” in the Tunisian Pact can be characterized as a human
rights approach to dignity that follows the guidelines of the international
human rights declarations and conventions. It ascribes a universal value
to the concept of dignity and is primarily focused on human beings as
individuals.
As to the question of how this universal claim can be implemented or
applied in concrete socio-political contexts, I would like to distinguish
between two philosophical positions: an active-democratic and a
decolonial one. Each position takes a different approach with regard to
experiences of injustice and these differences illuminate the debate about
living with dignity during Tunisia’s process of democratization. While
following these two lines of argument, the transcultural position I arrive
at also goes beyond them.

2.4.2 The Active-Democratic Approach

The active-democratic idea of a life with dignity can be situated in the
context of a philosophy of living together.47 A representative of this posi-
tion is the Tunisian philosopher Fathi Triki. According to Triki, human
dignity has to be fought for continuously within a world that is ruled by
three rationalities: a computational/calculative rationality of economic
exchange; an instrumental rationality of technology; and a violent ratio-
nality of politics.48 Triki indeed sees globalization as an opportunity to
promote democratization through more communication and exchange in
24  Sarhan Dhouib
the form of protests and sit-ins. However, his concept of the three types
of rationality also provides a tool critically to diagnose current situations
in a globalized world.
In addition, Triki also distinguishes between “nominal,” “procedural,”
and “active” democracy. A nominal democracy is a democracy in name
only. A nominal democracy has a democratic constitution, but the appli-
cation of democratic principles is constantly disregarded. In a nominal
democracy the opposition is controlled, and civil society is paralyzed.49
A procedural democracy pays much more, if not an excessive amount
of, attention to procedure and loses sight of democratic substance.
Bureaucratized and formalized procedures can therefore lead to the
derailment of democratic substance in a populism that bases its legiti-
macy in the so-called “will of the people,” media- or resource-manipu-
lated though it may be.50
In an active democracy, however, a life with dignity is continuously
contested through protests and criticism. This contest, this struggle
exhaustively employs all democratic means, from sit-ins to artistically
creative possibilities of protest such as political street art.51 Characteristic
of this type of democracy is a four-dimensional self-correcting dynamic
according to which the effects of political, social, economic, and cultural
activities on human rights are questioned and injustices are exposed. The
first dimension of the self-correcting dynamic is in the area of ethics and
it assesses whether the outcomes of democratic processes are actually
democratic and warns against the abuse of democracy by pseudo-demo-
cratic forces. A second corrective exists on the social level and fights for
the right of individuals to be protected economically from falling below
a minimal level of subsistence. Only the universal guarantee of an eco-
nomic safety net enables every citizen to participate independently and
freely in the democratic process. This second corrective requires more
than state guarantees; it requires, according to Triki, solidarity between
citizens and the personal responsibility of citizens. The third corrective
operates on the political level: It consists in the citizens’ demand that
political processes remain transparent and political decisions be publicly
justified. This means that citizens have the right to be informed about the
motives behind decisions and to engage in public discussion before politi-
cal decisions are made. A fourth dimension of the self-corrective dynamic
is philosophical and is based on developing and maintaining a consensus
about the universal values that guarantee people their humanity. This
consensus must constantly ensure that adequate scope be given to differ-
ence and cultural diversity.52
It is especially so that, in an active democracy, a life with dignity can
take on a special role: “In any case, the philosophy of living together
(which is done) in conviviality (at-taʾānus ‫ )التآنس‬is also a philosophy of
the daily struggle of man to regain his/her dignity, to give life back to the
wretched of the earth.”53
 Responses to Past Injustice  25
2.4.3 The Decolonial Approach
In carrying out a decolonial analysis of the concept of dignity, it is impor-
tant, on the one hand, to criticize Eurocentric terminology and, on the
other, to practice “epistemic disobedience,”54 with the end goal being
the development of an alternative conception of dignity which makes
use of local explanations. One representative of this point of view is the
Tunisian philosopher Salah Mosbah, who takes a decidedly decolonial
position55 and interprets the struggle for a life with dignity from a social-
philosophical perspective.56 Examining various “Western” philosophical
perspectives on the revolution, he develops his analysis of the concept
of dignity (karāma ‫ )كرامة‬against the backdrop of the Tunisian revolu-
tion of 2011. A distinction is made between three positions. The first,
alarmist, position, represented by Slavoj Žižek, among others, saw or
only wanted to see the specter of Islamism in the Tunisian revolution.57
The second position, a critical-theoretical position building on the late
Habermas, attempted to mediate between politics and religion through
forms of public sphere. Seyla Benhabib is an important representative of
this position.58
As Mosbah points out, Benhabib, following Habermas’ theory of the
unfinished project of modernity,59 puts this theory to use as a tool to ana-
lyze the political events in Tunisia, and raises the possibility of a reconcili-
ation between democracy and Islam.60 According to this approach, the
representatives of the Tunisian revolution are defined as “good students”
of European modernity who, while not being of the West, nevertheless
strive for the values of western modernity. Mosbah describes this view as
a “version soft of Eurocentrism”61 in line with the unreservedly support-
ive positions expressed by, among others, Antonio Negri, Alain Badiou,
and Noam Chomsky. While these authors express political solidarity
with the Tunisian Revolution, an analysis of their approaches reveals,
however, significant Eurocentric dimensions. To give an example, Badiou
characterizes what is happening in Tunisia as “émeutes” (unrest) and con-
siders it an illustration of his theory of the event (l’événement). On this
view, these movements of unrest have no political form and are unable
to offer a new political program. Mosbah sees Badiou’s classification as
closely related to the European distinction between “real” and “fake”
revolutions.62
The feeling of unworthiness (indignité), which initially manifests
itself in a passive negative state, evolves into an active negative state,
which, according to Mosbah, takes the form of indignation (indignation).
Mosbah sees revolutionary demonstrators as effecting the transforma-
tion of a passive feeling of unworthiness into active outrage. Following
Spivak, Mosbah understands the revolutionary demonstrators, i.e., the
indignant, as a “subaltern” group in a broader sense. He refers to a
statement made by the first Tunisian president of the post-colonial state
26  Sarhan Dhouib
in which he defines Tunisians as “the dust of individuals” (poussière
d’individus) from whom he would like to create a nation.63
In his reconstruction of the struggle for dignity, Mosbah distinguishes
between two phases: an anti-colonial and a post-colonial phase. Both
Tunisian trade unionists and nationalists in the 1940s understood a life
with dignity predominantly in a collective sense: living with dignity was
linked to the Tunisian people’s collective struggle against French colonial-
ism and for Tunisian independence. In a post-colonial context, dignity takes
on two new dimensions. The first dimension is linked to the process of post-
colonial economic and social development and is particularly prominent
within the post-colonial state. However, this dimension has become radi-
calized by several different oppositional left-wing groups who are attempt-
ing to endow a life with dignity with a political dimension—namely that
of freedom—alongside the economic one. To the extent that the demand
for dignity in the Tunisian revolution was embedded in these social move-
ments, it encompassed both the political and the economic dimension.

2.5 Conclusion: Toward a Transcultural Perspective

Can a transcultural universality of human rights be justified against the
backdrop of experiences of injustice? An affirmative case can be made.
The paradigmatic or epistemic role of the experience of injustice is
closely linked to the universalization of human rights because the his-
torical experience of human rights violations paradoxically contributes
to the reinforcement of normative claims of human rights and triggers a
process of universalization of these rights. During this process, a trans-
cultural perspective comes into play which aspires to mediate cultural
differences in ways that promote universalistic human rights claims.64 By
contrast, approaches of cultural relativism and essentialism are limited to
the extent that they declare cultural differences to be insurmountable or
that they essentialize identities.
The methodology of “double criticism” is well positioned to under-
stand the process of universalizing human rights. Not only does it enable
an intercultural critical discourse, but it also allows a decentralized and
transcultural justification of human rights. In juxtaposing the active-dem-
ocratic and decolonial approaches to theorizing dignity, various aspects
of the “double criticism” method come into view. On the one hand, this
method highlights an intrinsic or culturally immanent critique of the
hegemonic and authoritarian power structures of the post-colonial state
that are linked to global power relations, drawing attention as well to
a profound critique of Islamist views on law and coexistence. On the
other hand, this method reveals an extrinsic criticism of those hegemonic
power structures that go hand in hand with colonial and Eurocentric
forms of thought, of instrumental, and computational reason, and of the
Eurocentric formal notion of democratic coexistence.
 Responses to Past Injustice  27
In utilizing the method of “double criticism,” the approach taken
here remains decentralized and shows to what extent a universalization
of norms is possible. The transcultural perspective makes use of
this form of criticism and adapts active-democratic and decolonial
approaches that take the effects of political and historical processes on
the conceptualization of dignity seriously. However, this transcultural
perspective critically indicates that the active-democratic view would not
be possible without a foundation of human rights, i.e., without the rule
of law/a constitutional state, because this approach neglects the relevance
of the concept of dignity in various declarations of human rights. In
addition, the transcultural perspective emphasizes that the project of
decolonization cannot come together without a minimum of consensus
because it runs the risk of ignoring the universalizing potential of human
rights due to its strong focus on social and historical processes.
These various processes illustrate the emancipatory function of the
struggle for human dignity. It is precisely here that there is a possibility of
universalizing dignity, the claim of which arises within a context shaped
by injustice, but which understands universality as a process with which
one must critically wrestle.

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

In the current era of globalization, identity issues have attracted a great

deal of attention from both individual thinkers and institutions. On the
one hand, most of them have focused on the homogenization of cultures;
on the other hand, they shed light on the revitalization of individual iden-
tities and cultures.1
This chapter aims to explore the extent to which African identity is
negotiated in this context through Afropolitanism and negritude theories.
This chapter seeks to discern the features that characterize African singu-
larity according to relevant theories. Therefore, it relies on a comparative
approach to both theories.
The chapter is divided into four sections. The first section concentrates
on the theoretical framework of Afropolitan discourse, including a cri-
tique of Western universalist claims—the epistemological shift in black
diaspora studies.
The second section examines the idea of Afropolitanism according to
the writings of Taiye Selasi2 and Achille Mbembe.3 The former addresses
Afropolitanism on basis of the experience of newer African emigrants
within G8 countries, while the latter relies on African historical experi-
ence to define Afropolitanism. Both thinkers mentioned here emphasize
multiple affiliations and cultural hybridity.
The third section concentrates on negritude identity discourse as
developed by Senghor. Senghor defines a very controversial approach to
African identity. He perceives African specificity on the basis of antago-
nism between white and black people. For him, white people are marked
by reason and technological aptitude, while black people are character-
ized by emotion and rhythm.
The fourth section concentrates on convergences and divergences
between Afropolitanism and Negritude. It sheds light on their respective
contexts of emergence, epistemological backgrounds, and their philo-
sophical worldviews.
To conclude, this chapter observes that both Afropolitanism and negri-
tude fundamentally struggle for the same purpose—human dignity. They
34  Albert Kasanda
both require a permanent critical renewal to negotiate African identity,
particularly in the current era of globalization.

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 indeed a common attitude of contestation of both the Western

thought and philosophy as a meta-narrative of the origins that brings
together these three philosophers, a contestation or deconstruction
that is carried out… from a purely internal point of view toward
Western thought.8

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

The literature of black African diaspora is recognized as a privileged field

where Afropolitanist thought is expressed.17 It should be noted that the
interest in African literature on identity started even before globaliza-
tion. Creative writers such as Kane,18 and Achebe,19 for example, testify
to this concern. Most of them find it somewhat difficult to live between
two cultures at the same time. So, they engaged in a search for African
authenticity, claiming nostalgia for African (pre-colonial) culture that
they perceive as the symbol of cultural purity. Opposing that, Afropolitan
creative writers focus on cultural pluralism and hybridity. As Pucherová
has observed, the difference between colonial, post-colonial novels, and
Afropolitan ones consists in considering

[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

As I have already mentioned elsewhere,21 globalization affects our eco-

nomic, political, social, and cultural life. It is perceived according to two
opposite perspectives. On the one hand, it is viewed as a threat to cul-
tural diversity. Protagonists of this postulate maintain that globalization
implies homogenization of cultures according to the dominant paradigm.
They regard the cultural model of the USA, for example, as being the
strongest, and subsequently as something that swallows up weaker cul-
tures. On the other hand, various thinkers regard globalization as favor-
able to the emergence of cultural pluralism, with multiple consequences,
including the awakening of a variety of types of nationalism. In sum,
I argue that even though it was only recently established, the concept
of Afropolitanism is not rootless. It relies on a complex set of theories
and debates regarding shifts in cultural theory and regarding African
peculiarity.

3.2 Framing the Concept of Afropolitanism

Authorship of this word is variously attributed to Taiye Selasi22 and
Achille Mbembe.23 The former turns to the newer generation of African
emigrants to sketch her perception of Afropolitanism, while the latter
relies on the moving reality of African continent to do so. This initial
impetus has been enriched by various commentaries, critiques, and new
36  Albert Kasanda
theoretical proposals.24 Without ignoring this set of contributions, I will
concentrate on Selasi’s and Mbembe’s respective proposals, as both of
them are recognized as the founders of this concept.

3.2.1 Selasi and Afropolitanism

Taiye Selasi is a well-known black British writer of Ghanaian-Nigerian-
Scottish descent.25 In 2005 she published an article titled “Bye-bye Babar”
in which she sketched a “border-defying, liminal perception of her gen-
eration,”26 which she described as Afropolitan. She sheds light on a per-
ception of African identity that values both African cultural diversity and
complexity. For her, this perception stands as a critique of paradigms that
simplify African identity. She notes that

What distinguishes this lot and its like… is a willingness to compli-

cate Africa—namely, to engage with, critique, and celebrate the parts
of Africa that means most to them. Perhaps what most typifies the
Afropolitan consciousness is the refusal to oversimplify; the effort
to understand what is ailing in Africa alongside the desire to honor
what is wonderful, unique… We seek to comprehend the cultural
complexity.27

This self-consciousness implies a paradoxical experience that consists

of embracing cultural diversity, and subsequently promoting cultural
hybridity. Through this postulate, Selasi supports the predominance
of the multiple over the one. For her, identity is not reducible to the
convergence of the identical; it is a matter of pluralism and diversity.
Describing her Thursday-night experience at Medicine Bar in London,
she notes:

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

The quote cited here insists on the idea of multiple affiliations.

Afropolitans have several anchors, including nations, races, and cul-
tures. The idea of nation, for Selasi, applies to both the nation-state and
to habitat. For her, home seems disconnected from geography. Without
enjoying an aptitude for ubiquity, Afropolitans nevertheless belong to
several communities at a time—imagined communities and the real
ones—to make use of Anderson’s expression.29 In addition to that, the
 Negotiating African Identity  37
Afropolitan is an active agent making significant choices for his or her
self. Selasi herself observed:

the Afropolitan must form an identity along at least three dimen-

sions—national, racial, cultural—with subtle tensions in between.
While our parents can claim one country as a home, we must define
our relationship to places we live;… Often unconsciously, and over
time, we choose which bits of national identity… we internalize as
central to our personalities.30

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

Culture is also part of Afropolitan consciousness. For Selasi, one must

decide what is meaningful to oneself according to the context in which
one evolves. She seems to take issue with essentialist views of culture
where culture represents a reality that is defined once and forever and
that remains valid regardless of changes of space and time—that is, the
historical experience of human beings. She notes that

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

Finally, who can concretely benefit from such a self-consciousness?

Following Ede,35 I note that Selasi’s approach to Afropolitanism addresses
first and foremost the newer generation of African emigrants, i.e., the
“new African diaspora, that is, the one which possesses a global geo-
spatial and cultural mobility—and black metropolitan agency.”36 On this
basis, Selasi sketches the following identity manifesto, writing:

[W]e are Afropolitans—the newest generation of African emigrants…

You’ll know us by our funny blend of London fashion, New York
jargon, African ethics, and academic successes. Some of us are ethnic
mixes,… others merely cultural mutts: American accent, European
affect, African ethos. Most of us are multilingual: in addition to
English and a Romantic or two, we understand some indigenous
tongue and speak a few urban vernaculars… We are Afropolitans:
not citizens, but Africans of the world.37

This view led to various critiques regarding neglected areas within

Selasi’s approach. Works by creative writers such as Adichie,38 Atta,39
Eze,40 Santana,41 to mention but a few, can be viewed as illustrative
in this respect. They denounce consumerism, the elitist propensity of
Afropolitan protagonists, and their neglect of social justice.42 I personally
support the constructive aspect of these critiques; they help in setting up
a realistic African self-perception that responds to the current challenges
facing Africa. I think that the ideas of cultural diversity and mixture are
important features to be considered, because neither people nor cultures
live in a vacuum. We are all interconnected and our lives depend both on
exchanges and on mutual recognition.

3.2.2 Mbembe and Afropolitanism

Mbembe used the concept of Afropolitanism for the first time as the title
of a column published simultaneously in a local Cameroonian magazine
named Le Messager (Douala) and the Senegalese journal Sud Quotidien
(Dakar) in December of 2000.43 This piece was taken up and disseminated
on a large scale by the magazine Africultures shortly thereafter.44 The suc-
cess of this paper relies less on the neologism of its title than on its innovative
content concerning African self-perception in a globalized and multipolar
world. However, it should be kept in mind that this paper does not emerge
ex nihilo. It takes up a range of premises already analyzed by Mbembe in
 Negotiating African Identity  39
some of his previous publications, including his programmatic paper “The
African Modes of Self-writing”45 and his book On the Postcolony,46 to
mention but a few. He defines Afropolitanism as an African way of being
and inhabiting the world. This mode of being is characterized by a range of
traits, including a lack of borders, cultural interconnection, cultural inter-
mixture, and an embrace of the foreign, to mention but a few. For him, this
spirit always characterized Africa. In this respect, he notes that

[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

This quote informs about the starting point of Mbembe’s analysis.

Mbembe relies on the history of Africa as a whole. For him, this history
is hardly understandable without taking into consideration dynamics
such as people’s mobility and multiplicities of affiliations. Those factors
shaped African pre-colonial communities over time. Mbembe subsumes
this experience through the expression of “worlds in movement” (la cir-
culation des mondes). Standing on this premise, Mbembe regards African
pre-colonial communities as being nomadic and unhindered by borders
or other man-made obstacles. This state of things allowed different actors
to play multiple roles and to move according to their own needs and
professional interests. In this context, identities and cultures are not static
realities48; on the contrary, these results are shaped by mutual collision,
concatenation, and superposition. As Mbembe himself notes

In fact, African pre-colonial history was, most of the time, a pro-

cess of people constantly moving across the continent. It is a process
of cultures in collision, locked into the maelstrom of wars, inva-
sions, migrations, mixed marriages, diverse religions that one makes
their own, techniques that are exchanged, and goods that are being
distributed. The cultural history of the continent is hardly under-
standable outside of the paradigm of homelessness, mobility, and
displacement.49

The notion of “worlds in movement” develops according to two opposite

trends, namely those of dispersion and of immersion. The former applies
to the mobility of African people inside the continent as well as to their
exportation out of Africa. Mbembe thinks that this movement did not end
up with the abolition of slavery and the triangular trade. Rather, for him,
it continues up to our modern day through large-scale migration due to
a variety of social, political, and economic circumstances. The latter, in
40  Albert Kasanda
contrast, refers to the fact that various minorities from different parts of the
world took up residence in Africa. Examples include Afrikaners, and people
from India, Syria, and Lebanon who, after having settled in Africa for a
long time, can also claim their own African-ness. Mbembe observes that

[The] immersion constitutes the other aspect of this circulation of

worlds. It applies, at varying degrees, to minorities who came from
afar and have settled in the continent.50

The effect of this “worlds in movement” theory consists of a double

statement. On the one hand, Mbembe stands out from the logic defin-
ing African identity exclusively by the color of skin; and on the other
hand, he maintains that an idea of hybridity is formative of identities at
global level. In doing so, Mbembe denounces the attitude establishing an
equivalence between Africa as a geographical entity and black people.
For him, if the majority of Africans are black, that implies neither that
all black people are African nor that all African people are black. There
are black African, but also white African people. Skin color is one matter
and another is one’s self-perception. For Mbembe, the terms “Africa” and
“black” are not synonymous with each other. It would be a reductionist
and truncated attitude to make them coincide. I share this way of quali-
fying things. I think that the idea of Africa applies geographically to a
continent whose history is full of twists and turns,51 while the concept
of black evokes a different narrative, particularly the tragedy of racial
discrimination and exploitation.52
Secondly, Mbembe regards cultural collision and imbrication as shap-
ing the Afropolitan approach to the world. He argues for the predomi-
nance of cultural hybridity.53 This statement makes clear that, for him,
African identity is far from being a homogenous reality, or a kind of
“unique and unifying metaphysical substance”54 that is supposed to be
the same all over the continent despite the individual trajectories of every
African person and institution. As has already been observed concern-
ing Selasi’s approach to African identity, I can note that Mbembe also
asserts the triumph of the multiple over one, the rule of change over
permanence. My view is that it would be erroneous to perceive African
identity in terms of the principle of cultural purity and the duplication of
the same. To think in this way would imply supporting fundamentalist
theories including, for example, xenophobia, supremacism, and nativism,
to mention but a few.

3.2.3 African Aesthetics and Sensibilities

For Mbembe, the term Afropolitanism refers to the way in which Africa
inhabits the world, communicating and negotiating with it. This pro-
cess relies on a double consciousness, which is embodied in the already
 Negotiating African Identity  41
mentioned principle of “worlds in movement” and the notion of hybrid-
ity. On this basis, I can point out that Mbembe is fully aware that
Africa is neither an autarkic entity nor a microcosm called to live in
isolation. He views Africa as part of a wider world made up of vari-
ous cultures and people. This world is present in Africa through vari-
ous historical processes including, for example, colonization, political
domination, and economic exploitation. In turn, Africa is in the world
thanks to processes such as migratory flux as well as economic and
cultural exchanges, to mention but a few. This double movement brings
to mind the two kinds of movement characterizing the principle of
“worlds in movement”—the dynamics of dispersion and of immersion.
These dynamics better express this peculiarity while recognizing what
is foreign (alterity), assuming its presence and accepting its contribution
to new entanglements and ways of imagining African identity. In this
respect, Mbembe observes that

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

3.2.4 Afropolitanism as the Expression of African Modernity

As already mentioned, for Mbembe, people’s mobility and cultural diver-
sity are part of the pre-colonial African mindset. This mentality survived
Africa’s division between colonial powers and the subsequent establish-
ment of national borders. It is still active today and catalyzes the econo-
mies of African cities such as Dakar, Nairobi, and Johannesburg. For
Mbembe, those cities are spaces that are emblematic of the circulation of
people and cultures. More than that, they are spheres where alternative
African self-perception is continuously being negotiated. They somehow
are spaces where African modernity is being created. Mbembe formulates
this idea as follows:

A limited number of [African] metropolises can be viewed as

“Afropolitan.” In West Africa, Dakar and Abidjan played this role
during the second half of the twentieth century… In Eastern Africa,
Nairobi was the business centre and the regional headquarters
of several international institutions. But the center of excellence
of Afropolitanism is, today, Johannesburg, South Africa. In this
42  Albert Kasanda
metropolis, forged through the iron of a brutal history, an unpub-
lished type of African modernity is developing.56

This quote draws attention to Mbembe’s perception of African moder-

nity and its relationship with Afropolitanism. It would be worth examin-
ing the peculiarity of this concept of modernity in comparison to Western
approaches. In other words, the question at stake is to determine pre-
cisely whether there is any added value in speaking of African moder-
nity. In case the answer is “yes,” what would such a statement imply? At
first, it is worth keeping in mind that Mbembe’s approach counts among
Africa’s more rigorous critiques of modernity.57 He regards (Western)
modernity as the expression of a project of unlimited Western expansion
that is based on both the discrimination and the exclusion of non-West-
ern people. Standing on categories such as reason and race, this proj-
ect denied the status of being human to African and other non-Western
people. Mbembe observes that

Modernity is… just another name for the European project of

unlimited expansion undertaken in the final years of the eighteenth
century… Given the technical development, military conquests,
commerce, and propagation of Christianity that marked the period,
Europe exercised a properly despotic power that one can exercise
only outside of one’s own borders and over people with whom one
assumes one has nothing in common.58

Following Lynn Thomas,59 I note that the concept of (Western) moder-

nity ushered in dark times for both black people and the African conti-
nent. It can be viewed as the starting point as regards the legitimization
of the suffering, hatred, want of recognition, and the subsequent denial of
the humanity of black people. Thomas recapitulates the main features of
this concept as follows:

Africa has long been foundational to discussions of the modern. For

many Enlightenment thinkers, “Negroes” embodied the antithesis of
modern reason. In the nineteenth century, Georg Hegel posited Africa
as outside of “universal history.” Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud iron-
ically deployed “fetish,” a term developed by European travellers and
traders to gloss West Africans’ seemingly irrational beliefs, to diag-
nose the ills of modern life. In a somewhat more positive vein, Pablo
Picasso, at the height of Europe’s imperial conquest of the continent,
found inspiration for his modern art in “primitive” African sculp-
ture… Throughout, popular discourses generated by imperial and
international reformers, politicians, and journalists tended to figure
Africa as the inverse of all things modern: a bastion of backwardness,
or at best, tradition.60
 Negotiating African Identity  43
Mbembe proposes an alternative paradigm of modernity that matches
African aesthetics and sensitivity while also appearing able to face chal-
lenges of globalization. He notes that

This modernity has very little to do with what is known up to now. It

is anchored in multiple racial heritages, a vibrant economy, a liberal
democracy, and a consumerist culture that participates directly in
globalization. An ethic of tolerance able is able to revive African aes-
thetic and creativity unlike Harlem and New Orleans in the United
States.61

The debate on modernity is so broad and complex that it cannot be

exhausted within the framework of this analysis. To be brief, I person-
ally share Mbembe’s concern for an alternative concept of modernity
that should be shaped by principles of inclusion and tolerance and be
founded on a shared struggle for everyone’s excellence. I argue that
Afropolitanism is still in process as a theory of African identity. As such,
it can be viewed as a perfectible paradigm that has to learn from the
errors of previous theories regarding African identity and self-determina-
tion, e.g., pan-Africanism, negritude, authenticity, African Renaissance,
to name but a few.

3.3 Negritude as a Discourse of African Identity

The founding fathers of negritude perceived it as being concerned with
the rehabilitation of black people’s cultural values, with identity, and
with emancipation.62 For Senghor, for example, negritude expresses con-
sciousness of being oneself/being authentic. This awareness arose in the
situation of despair, contempt, and powerlessness in which the founding
fathers of this line of thought were restricted and without any alternative
than to free themselves from loaned articles of assimilation and to assert
their own being. This consciousness brings to the fore the question as to
what precisely makes up the peculiarity of black people. Subsequently,
it calls attention to how this singularity negotiates its relationship to the
world. Concretely, for Senghor, the issue at stake is consciousness of being
black along with acceptance and being proud of this fact. His purpose
consists in emancipating black people from assimilation and all kinds of
alienation. Sartre counts among thinkers who better grasped Senghor’s
intuition,63 as he observes:

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 the oppression is based on the race, it is important to be aware of

one’s race… This anti-racist racism is the only path that can lead to
the abolition of racial differences.65

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

For who else would teach rhythm to the dead world

of machines and canons?…
They call us cotton heads, and coffee men, and oily men…
We [Africans] are dancing people whose feet gain
power when they beat the hard soil.67

Senghor expresses even more clearly his perception of black people’s

peculiarity through his famous aphorism according to which “emotion
is to Negro as reason is to Hellenic.”68 This statement provoked a gen-
eral outcry among African intelligentsia. Scholars such as Adotevi, for
example, holds that

By regarding black people as mystic and emotional beings, Senghor’s

biologically based perception of black people… impedes all possibil-
ity of competition between black people and white people about sci-
ence and reason… Insofar as black people are like that, they cannot
 Negotiating African Identity  45
be considered equal to white people in a world which is regulated
according to reason and scientific criteria.69

Senghor replies to this set of critiques as follows:

Some… negro intellectuals… have reproached me for having reduced

the knowledge of the African negro to pure emotion, and for having
denied that the African negro is endowed with reason and techni-
cal knowledge. They have read me absent-mindedly… Reason has
always existed… The reason of classical Europe is analytic through
civilization, the reason of the African negro, intuitive through
participation.70

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 the oppression is based on the race, it is important to be aware of

one’s race… This anti-racist racism is the only path that can lead to
the abolition of racial differences.72

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

It should be noted that Senghor’s attitude appears ambivalent regard-

ing Sartre’s statement. With a little hindsight, a double objective leading
Senghor’s attitude can be seen. This objective consists of accepting the
idea of race while rejecting racist feeling. Senghor first calls for the recog-
nition of racial diversity and required tolerance. Secondly, he denounces
hatred and rejection of other people because of their skin color. Senghor
46  Albert Kasanda
makes a distinction between race as a fundamental mode of being human
and racism as a discriminatory attitude. In doing so, he stands out from
the racist discourse of his time.
Paradoxically, on the basis of his passion for authenticity’s black people,
Senghor made such extensive use of the concept of race that he created an
inextricable mess. Through his poetry and theoretical work, he used this
concept to refer to a variety of targets including, for example, physical
qualities, moral virtues, aesthetic traits, ethnic groups, literature, social
class, and biological mixture, to mention but a few. Ouattara notes that

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

Concern for identity and cultural intersections remains at the heart of

Senghor’s thought. He articulates this worry through his famous expres-
sions of “cultural interbreeding” and “civilization of the universal.”
Senghor relies on a double postulate to address the issue. On the one hand,
he supports the idea of complementarity between Europeans and negros—
African civilizations. On the other hand, he sets forth the principle of non-
assimilation. For him, Africa and Europe are linked by an umbilical cord
fating them to promote a world without racism. Both civilizations are
called upon to contribute to establish a cultural symbiosis of humanity,
each according to its own skills. This symbiosis does not imply the anni-
hilation of stakeholders. On the contrary, it is an invitation for each civi-
lization to highlight its originality in overcoming the imperfection of the
current world. Senghor describes the duty of every civilization as follows:

Now while the Africa of empires is dying…

Just like Europe to whom we are connected through the
Sea…
We may be present at the rebirth of the world
Like the leaven that the white flour needs.
Who else would teach rhythm to the dead world of machines and
canons?…
Who else could give back to desperate people the memory of life?75

Relying on this part of Senghor’s poem, my view is that Senghor’s con-

cept of interbreeding by no means addresses the interweaving of cultures
and civilizations. Rather, he affirms the persistence of singular cultural
roots and their participation in a common duty to set up a new (cultural)
 Negotiating African Identity  47
world in which everyone remains as the same as before the encounter.
That means no assimilation, no change at all. Senghor’s approach reveals
two things. First, I note a kind of static and almost purist concept of
the negro, of African culture. Second, I observe here the persistence of
antagonism between cultures and civilizations.
I argue that this way of thinking can be viewed as being unable to
process to new emerging social, political, and cultural configurations. It
can be seen as insensitive to the challenges currently facing Africa. My
argument is that criticisms raised by supporters of Afropolitanism about
the relevance of negritude for our time can be explained on this basis. The
following section of the chapter analyzes convergences and divergencies
between Afropolitanism and negritude in their respective approaches to
African identity.

3.4 Convergencies and Divergencies

3.4.1 A Mutual Concern
From the outset, it is worth keeping in mind that Afropolitanism and
negritude’s protagonists have the same concern: Africa. The two
approaches struggle for its proper perception, identity, and balanced rela-
tionship with the world. What does the idea of Africa refer to for each
one of them? To support a comparative exploration, I turn to Mbembe’s
definition of Africa according to which

The term “Africa” generally points to a physical and geographic

fact—a continent. But the geographic fact of Africa in turn signifies
not only a state of things but a collection of attributes and proper-
ties—and a racial condition.76

As has already been mentioned, negritude first appeared in the 1930s,

in the context of colonial exploitation and cultural domination of black
people. Following Senghor’s version of this movement, I have pointed
out that this theory insists on awareness of being black, acceptance of
this fact, and struggle for the rehabilitation of the values and cultures of
black people. In other words, the quest for negro-African authenticity
constitutes its basic concern.
Following Boele van Hensbroek,77 I note that the negritude supports
both the beauty and unity of the African mode as being in opposition to
the Western mode. Negritude is concerned with defining and enhancing
blackness from a very essentialist perspective.78 Most of Senghor’s poetry
and his theoretical works concentrate on this purpose. Mabana attests
the following about Senghor’s poetry:

In his poetry, Senghor proclaims with intense emotion the idyl-

lic Africa, the black beauty, the harmony of the African universe,
48  Albert Kasanda
the invisible bonds common to all peoples sharing the same black
sensibility.79

The idea of Afropolitanism appeared early at the beginning of the 21st

century. This era has been marked by the electronic revolution which has
enabled people’s mobility as well as quicker and more intense commu-
nication between cultures. The process of globalization is credited with
two opposing trends of thought—the homogenization of cultures and the
exacerbation of cultural pluralism. This context allows the emergence
of new configurations calling for new approaches to African self-per-
ception. Like defenders of negritude, protagonists of Afropolitanism are
concerned with defining the essence of African people amidst the pres-
ent era of globalization. Works by Selasi and Mbembe that have already
been mentioned here shed light on the complexity of African identity.
They subsume this consciousness through the concept of hybridity. Selasi
dissects it on basis of the experience of younger African emigrants in the
West, while Mbembe explores it on basis of his “worlds in circulation”
principle.
In sum, I argue that both the negritude and Afropolitanism are con-
cerned with the quest for African peculiarity. Even if both trends have
concentrated on different modes of self-affirmation—searching for
African authenticity and for hybrid identity respectively—I think that
they are still perfectible insofar as identity is far from being a static real-
ity, but is rather an endless process. The era of globalization calls for new
configurations and challenges.80

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

The conditions of emergence of interbreeding would prevent his

recognition because he is marred by both imperialist and colonial
stigma. The Western world is used to this kind of good conscience.85

Protagonists of Afropolitanism support the idea of a changing and

nomadic world. They describe the world as a borderless space, open to
the mobility of people and cultures. More than a geographical space,
it is a tenacious state of mind that has survived the binds of coloniza-
tion, including the imposition of national borders through the Berlin
Conference (1884–1885). This nomadic world develops according to
two principles: exodus and immersion. The nomadic spirit is open to the
principle of multiple belongings. It allows what I might call “uprooted
identities.”86 These are identities that do not proceed from any kind of
Kantian decision, i.e., a metaphysical principle stated outside of time and
space, once and forever. They emerge from multiple existential experi-
ences including, for example, exodus, exile, post-exile, and diaspora
experiences, to name but a few. Both Mbembe and Selasi’s narratives can
be considered as illustrative in this respect.
In short, I argue that Senghor supports a holistic and essentialist world-
view. For him, the (Western) world is initially an imperfect reality that
is marked by racial discrimination and antagonism. For him, every race
50  Albert Kasanda
should contribute to changing this world through cultural symbiosis—
white people doing this through reason, and black people by means of
rhythm and emotion. The notion of culture is central to Senghor’s pos-
tulate. It includes many things, but it also pays very little attention to
African cultural diversity. As such, Senghor’s approach is far from an idea
of culture being a compound of multiple factors, a hybrid and changing
construct.

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:

The cause of freedom is not a cause of a race or a sect, a party or a

class—it is the cause of humankind, the very birth right of humanity.89

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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Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy, 447–459. Edited by A. Afolayan
and T. Falola. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Laye, Camara. L’enfant noir. Paris: Pocket, 2007.
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Diogene, 3–4, no. 235–236 (2011): 3–13. Accessed November 4, 2020. www.
cairn.info/revue-diogene-2011-3page-3.htm.
Masolo, Dismas A. African Philosophy in Search of Identity. Bloomington and
Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994.
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Découverte, 2003.
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Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2017.
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l’Afrique contemporaine. Paris: Karthala, 2000.
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Order of Knowledge. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
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Ouattara, Bourahima. “Senghor, lecteur de Barrès.” Études de lettres 2 (2017):
111–132. Accessed April 8, 2020. http://journals.openedition.org/edl/1062.
Pucherová, Dobrota. “Afropolitan Narratives and Empathy: Migrants identities in
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Sefi Atta’s a Bit of Difference.”
Human Affairs 28 (2018): 406–416.
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Part II

Human Being in Times

of Displacement
4 The Value of Home in a
Global World
On Migration and
Depopulated Landscapes
Bianca Boteva-Richter

4.1 Introduction or the Question of the Meaning of Home

“Home,” (Heimat) “homelessness,” “love for home,” or “homesickness”
are terms that on the one hand move us deeply and on the other seem to
be accessible to us in our everyday life. Are we not all surrounded daily
with cultural artefacts that suggest to us (beyond geographical markings)
belonging or being excluded from a group, a people or a nation?
“Home” is, for philosophy, initially not viewed as an own category due
to its factuality, and it is mainly perceived and used as a social-cultural
phenomenon, a political problem, a literary tableau.
But even if it does not seem to represent a philosophical category, well-
known philosophers, such as the Germans Heidegger2 and Gadamer,3
have themselves dealt with it and struggled to clarify the concept of
home. They considered “home” in its various aspects—as place and as
language, as process and as emotion—and tried to give the phenomenon
an own and unmistakable shape. However, they failed to come up with a
clear definition, and the impossibility here of working out the sharp edges
of the term and of positioning it clearly is partly due to the concept of
“home” not being an easily accessible and certainly not an unambiguous
term. Therefore, contrary to the initially superficial general accessibility
and comprehensibility of “home,” this term has a dimension of depth that
can only be revealed to the viewer in stages.
Yet the multiple spectra of “home” not only causes terminological dif-
ficulties; it also brings about another dangerous, even insidious, aspect,
which enables political ostentation and is well suited for appropriation.
This capability is located therein that “home” is not a neutral or purely
theoretical term—the concept possesses a psychological component that
touches people deep inside and lets emotions arise, which are intense
and sometimes in fact resemble an intimate “amorous and even sexual
relationship.”4 Similar to the psychological-emotional relationship to
one’s own mother, “home” transcends the theoretical level of a purely
philosophical category, harbors explosive potential, and enables political
parties on the left as well as on the right both to mobilize the term and to
62  Bianca Boteva-Richter
instrumentalize it for a reflective interpretation of existence. According to
this, “home” is suitable both for an emotional intersubjective localization
and an ascription of human belonging.
Yet it is precisely this already mentioned, manifold dimension, oscil-
lating between an interpretation of existence to cultural localization and
all the way to a political demonstration of power, which complicates a
clear and contoured conceptual grasp. As a result, it can be assumed
that “home” is not a purely geopolitical place, and not just a place of
birth. According to my thesis, it is a relational location of existence that
is occupied by intersubjective relations and thus can only be experi-
enced and explained through this relationality. The complexity, quality,
and intensity of intersubjective connections determine how home can be
evaluated as a place or at the same time how it can constitute different
types of homes; On the one hand, this is a beloved, poetic landscape
that gives people safety and security. On the other hand, it resembles
a minefield of denunciation, terror, hunger, and persecution. Home can
therefore have different aspects and manifest itself as a place or as an
un-place.
In this chapter I try to redefine “home” as a relational location based
on the phenomenon of migration, showing the respective situation asso-
ciated with it, and changes in the intersubjective existence of migrants.5
This reinterpretation assigns an active role to the term, which can be
made visible through the acts constituting interpersonal relations, and
conversely, such a relational interpretation of “home” can in turn provide
conclusions about the living conditions and the possibilities for localiza-
tion of migrants.
The questions that arise are, among others: What does “home” mean
in the course of life and in intersubjective connections, especially for
those who think that they have a home, and in turn for others who
mourn its loss? To prevent loss of home, are people able to transport
home with them during migration? Does the term have a passive dimen-
sion, or is it active, as constituted by human acts? What is meant by
being at “home” and what significance does it have amidst turbulent
times globally?6

4.2 What is Home (Heimat)?

4.2.1 Conceptual Approximation via Loss or Evaluating Home
via De-localization
Jean Améry, a philosopher and writer, aptly noted that when home is des-
perately needed it is then needed more the less one has of it.7 The entry
point in this chapter is therefore via migration because migration has and
leads to loss of modes of existence, of belonging, of people, and of places
that had to be loved and left behind. Migration shows how urgently a
 The Value of Home  63
home is needed as it leads to dislocation in the sense that, through it,
the obviousness of existence within everyday life as previously known,
as intimate semiotics disappear and new questions, new semiotic battle-
fields, new situations of self and foreign experience emerge.
During migration, most people go through various stages of localiza-
tion, whereby evaluation of the migrant’s home becomes more and more
important in the course of global migration.
However, this question given above as to when home is needed is not
posed to everyone; it is mainly asked by those people who have in reality
already lost their own home:

How much home do people need?… Because I am asking the ques-

tion from the very specific situation [of the people] of the exile from
the Third Reich, who… went abroad because [they] had to. [They]
lost everything, but [not only the landscape, they] also [lost] the peo-
ple: classmates from school, neighbors, the teacher… And [they] lost
the language.8

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:

In our home we have mastered the dialectic of knowing-recognizing,

trust-confidence… To live at home means that what we already know
[what] happens again and again in minor variations.15

“Home” is therefore a kind of recurring event that is initiated and kept

alive by the intersubjective relations. This event is based on the dialectic
of knowing and trusting, which people have trained and passed on to
one another. Without human connections, without relations, there is no
knowledge, there is no recognition or trust. Desubjectivized places can-
not be felt as familiar, intimate, beloved, known or safe places, so they
cannot be recognized as home at all.
However, through emigration, a disconnection from the familiar
takes place, which leads to a loss of our hermeneutical orientation
together with the people with whom we have built our most intimate
world. It means that we leave our intersubjective safety net and leave
familiar landscapes behind us, geographically and hermeneutically.
Trust based on our knowledge-experience becomes fragmented and
then becomes (initially) lost. The value of home is called into ques-
tion by being uncoupled or inflated by the loss of something beloved.
Through losing the value of home, realistic relation is withdrawn, in
that the old, lost home is depicted through the filter of longing and
memory as a measuring stick. And this lasts until a new relation is
reached or established.
But for those who are on the way and have not yet arrived, there are
other aspects that, in addition to intersubjective connections lived in
everyday life, form a “mobile” home or replace these connections tem-
porarily. This can be language or religion; it can also be narratives that
take memories with them or keep them alive on the way. These aspects
are important pillars of intersubjective connections and they are builders
or destroyers of present and future belonging and home.

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,

language as our strong connection to our home or as a witness of our

belonging is stolen and hindered: the language speaks no longer. [die
Sprache spricht nicht mehr]
In the loss of language, [however] loss of home manifests itself as…
definitive dislocation, be it temporary or forever.22

The loss of language reveals the loss of home in the clearest possible way,
because in

The world hour of our age… the ancestral, traditional relation-

ships between language, mother tongue, dialect, and home [are slip-
ping out of hand]. The human being seems to lose the language
that has been skillfully assigned to him and to become speechless
in this sense… [With that loss t]he human being seems to become
homeless.23

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.

A person speaks. We speak while awake and in dreams. We always

talk; even if we don’t let a word go… We keep talking in some way.
We speak because speaking is natural to us.25

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

4.2.1.2 Spirituality as a Home in Motion

But it is not only language that can create a home and enable a feeling
of belonging. The strong longing for a real home is sometimes satisfied
by mobile constructs that are filled with supposed and genuine cultural
artefacts and practices and inhabited in a real or sometimes exaggerated
way. They consist in, among other things, a lived spirituality that offers
a kind of substitute for home; just like the Jewish religion, which by
repeating the Easter greeting “Next year in Jerusalem” speaks a common
“formula and [knows] that it [is] connected in the magical home of the
tribal god Jahve.”27 This common formula, along with how spirituality
is lived out, offers home in a special form, satisfying longings for the
woods and the valleys, for the songs of the nurses, for the prayers mut-
tered in church. Home can be experienced in the smell of incense from
Orthodox liturgy or in the touch of knees on the carpet in prayer. The
transcendental experience sensualizes the search, makes desires subjec-
tive, and builds invisible bridges beyond time and space. In living out this
spirituality, in prayer in the church or in the mosque, in the synagogue
or at home, migrants can address their worries and fears, their longing
and loneliness, their despair, but also hope directed to a higher place and
placed there with confidence. In almost all destination countries there
are now spiritual places or houses of worship with different religious
 The Value of Home  67
features. Already-established migrants often finance, build, and establish
these spiritual places, because these places offer

Psychological-emotional support, help, and consolation as well as a

feeling of familiarity and home. The exercise of religious functions
maintains [and supports] a connection to the home that was left
behind.28

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.

4.2.1.3 Endangering the Home in Exile and in Return

But when language, spirituality, or narrative fail to build a new home, a
feeling of exile soon becomes noticeable and affiliation initially degen-
erates into an exhausting, unnatural state. In this case, home in exile
becomes an intellectual act which takes place again and again, and which
must be mastered through an everyday effort. The new home then opens
up only in stages, as people slowly learn to decipher semantics and to
interpret the new everyday life. It takes time to get used to it until people
gradually settle in again and no longer perceive exile so strongly as a kind
of “incurable disease.”30 Surviving in exile definitely requires a double
effort in many respects. For survivors this means:

[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

[came] to Germany as a different person. [But a]nother person does

not come back, he goes ahead, and he moves forward and has to see
that he is accepted.35

Here, too, the individual-social structure of existence becomes appar-

ent,36 because in addition to changes in personality, there are changes
in old and new intersubjective connections, in the old and new social
 The Value of Home  69
environment. This double helix of homecoming, which turns a return
situation into supposed acquaintance’s new entry, requires greater effort:

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

“Home” is, according to the previous reflections, an intersubjective

place, which is able to elude a person which becomes particularly clear
here when one steps into the new-old home. Geographical location is
transcended as a new situation with the power of memory, but in the
meantime not only have forests grown or died, houses have become
dilapidated or demolished and the semantics of the streets partially or
completely changed. In return, streets, buildings, churches, and forests
are pulled through the filter of memory upon return and unwillingly eval-
uated. Above all, however, it is the people who were close in the past and
who have now aged, died, become embittered, or who have moved, who,
with their historiography, restructure prior connections or interrupt them
entirely. The intersubjective home is also an interweaving of biographies
and sociography and a place that repeatedly withdraws or, in happier
cases, a place of renewal.
In any case, home is to a certain extent fateful and this fatefulness38 and
tragedy is revealed in returning, because there is “nothing more desolate
than reliving the past.”39
But desolation is only given if the new-old home has to be relived anew
and without helpful translation by means of intersubjective connections.
Because in order to gain a foothold in the new-old home, a hermeneu-
tic mediation of time will be necessary, which helps in construing inter-
subjective past and present as well as a possible (intersubjective) future.
Only through such an interpretation of the events that took place in the
absence of those who have migrated can the changes be understood and
thus, fully or partially, be accepted again. Through open, positive, and
fair mediation, the former home can be made habitable again and turned
into a new, recurring event.
Yet regardless of the previous considerations, can home really be
as placeless as was shown in previous investigations? Why are we so
attached to it and why can it be so strongly instrumentalized in socio-
political life? And above all: when is home a place and when does it
become an un-place?

4.2.2 Home (as Place and Un-Place)

In order to explain home as a place or an un-place, one soon comes up
against clear limits, because the concept of place is very similar to that of
70  Bianca Boteva-Richter
“home” and turns out to be an extremely problematic, elusive concept.
As soon as one tries to approach it

it quickly becomes clear that a “pure” and “universal‘” concept of

place and a “pure” and “universal” concept of thinking cannot be
definitely determined […] The place remains, so to speak, non-local-
izable and is always alien to itself, to its inner elements.40

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.

4.2.2.3 Home as a New Place

But in the end, everything is not to be understood or reflected upon only
negatively. For the question of whether “home” is or becomes a place or
an un-place depends on, as already shown, individual-social intersubjec-
tive connections. These connections, which are constituted by people, by
residential and non-residential subjects and by the respective societies. As
 The Value of Home  73
self-acting and self-determining persons, within the range of their possi-
bilities, people can work out or fight for within the framework of prevail-
ing conditions.
As part of this activity or as self-acting individuals who correspond
with a respective society, not only can they lose their home, but they
can also create a new home for themselves and for others. By entering
or immigrating to a new country, they are able to subjectify and enliven
places in new and different ways. By bringing new values, cultural arte-
facts, and narratives with them, they can, when their new home welcomes
them, bring these assets to their new society in a way that enriches. In a
new intersubjective togetherness, new places are then enlivened intercul-
turally and raised up into becoming a new home as a place and a new
center of life.
Here, not only cultural artifacts and practices, but also language can
be used to good effect and the place in question can finally be inhabited.
Language can help as

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.

Part One: The Displacement Mechanism of Ideology and

Its Critique
Before we try to conceive of land discourse as ideology, it is necessary to
be clear about the meaning of the operative term. By “ideology” I intend
a pejorative conception, based on that of Geuss in The Idea of a Critical
Theory,1 which suggests two related problems, namely, deception, or false
beliefs, and a functional component, which involves irrational domina-
tion. To give a working definition, ideology is a set of interrelated ideas,
values, norms, beliefs, desires, or other such propositional attitudes,
shared by a group of people, which misleads them with respect to the
social and historical conditions of social practices in which they engage,
such that, by colluding in these practices, they mistakenly participate in
their domination, such that they fail to act in accordance with their real
interests, that is, interests they would pursue were they not misled by the
relevant ideology.2
For Marx, at least in The German Ideology,3 ideology is explained
as a mode of conceptual fetishism or reification of abstract ideas, or
­theoretical beliefs about the world, wherein we neglect to account for the
historical, material, social determination of these ideas. We take c­ oncepts
of political economy, such as the market, and related principles, as given,
if they are natural facts. Race, money, gender, property, states, and state
borders are socially constructed normative concepts whose significance,
we forget, depends on public engagement and acceptance. We ­perpetuate
our exploitation under the spell of ideology when we lose track of the
material production that determines the significance of the normative
concepts we use, to make immediate sense of our historically determined
environment.4 Adorno, and later Althusser, Foucault, Butler and others,
all draw attention to a common feature of late capitalist ideology, that it
functions, less by unrealistic categorical idea(l)s, imposed on social ­reality,
than by “post-ideological” resignation or adaptation. Under few illusions
that climate change is just natural we still believe it to be inevitable. This
 A Genealogy of Displacement  81
makes immanent critique difficult for an ideology critic who relies on
gaps between ideas and social reality.
Ideology is typically deceptive not in contradicting facts but in the
­spinning of stories that underplay significant effective factors of agency
in social practices, such that agents who accept the story see it as in their
interests to participate in these. Classic Marxian ­ideology ­functions for
irrational domination to the extent that agents, who p ­ articipate in these
practices, since they accept the interpretation, ­ undermine their own
­interests, to the benefit of elites. One may mistakenly a­ ttribute a c­ ommon
good to social activities which serve partial interests. Scientology is a
classic example of ideology, albeit unusually intentionally contrived
­
as such. Ideology does not typically depend on direct d ­eception or
­repression. Women may undoubtedly reinforce sexist practices if they
accept sexist beliefs; equally, however, they may reinforce such ­practices
with ­recognition that the situation is what it is. Trump, when asked
about a daily Covid-19 death toll of 1,000, said, “It is what it is.”5
Against this context of late capitalist ideology, the chapter focuses on
the ­governmentality of apartheid, which is sustained indirectly in South
African land discourse as an effect of displacement by subjugated African
agency (as opposed to direct repression, which subsided with the end of
formal apartheid).
To give a brief historical overview of the general problem, white settlers
conquered and took ownership of much of the productive, strategic, and
resource-rich land in what is now the territory of South Africa. After the
British defeated the Boers in 1900 and annexed the few remaining inde-
pendent eastern Nguni territories, the colony gained independence, with
Act of Union, in 1910, under exclusively white control. With the 1913
Natives Land Act and subsequent racial legislation, a relatively small por-
tion of South Africa was set aside for semi-autonomous territories, where
blacks could settle and own property, and a few locations outside white
urban areas were set aside, where black laborers were permitted to reside
on a temporary basis.6 The plan of apartheid was to formalize the native
homelands into sovereign national states, to keep the best part of the
land for whites. Since the apartheid regime collapsed in the early 1990s,
the state has engaged in a largely unsuccessful program of restitution of
land removed from black owners/dwellers for white owners after 1913,
of land redistribution, and of tenure upgrading. The pace of reform has
fallen far behind schedule and below expectations. Thus, the ANC-led
government, faced with widespread frustration, high unemployment and
waning support, has pushed to amend the constitution to allow the state
to expropriate land without compensation for redistribution to black
owners or state tenants.7
The chapter looks further than the literal displacement of African
people from their land to cities and farms as laborers, and back again
to semi-autonomous “homelands,” to the displacement of African social
82  Christopher Allsobrook
tenures (regulated by communally negotiated governance, m ­ anagement
protocols and levels of access) by a Western model of property ­ownership,
which gives exclusive control over surveyed turf to the bearer of its title
deed, which is recognized and secured by the state and its laws. The South
African state does not secure, and local registered credit providers do not
recognize, other types of land tenure.8 Noting that most viable a­ gricultural
land with good rainfall lies in the eastern half of the country, the former
African bantustans take up a large part of it. Access to this land and much
of the sprawling informal urban townships is ­communally ­negotiated
or traditionally regulated according to levels of social tenure which are
not registered, secured, or taxed as private assets, like title deeds, by the
state.9 The popular ideology of the “land question” c­ alling for a transfer
of title deeds from white to black hands sustains this ­erasure of insecure
African social tenures and reproduces colonial property regimes.
The focus of the chapter is on land ideology and its critique; that is, on
land discourse that functions as ideology, in the pejorative sense. By this
I mean, first, to argue that it is misleading to bundle issues such as racial
inequality, dispossession, unemployment, and poverty into a framework
of land-based restitution and reform, as if such groundwork could
solve related relational social problems which call for distinct solutions.
Second, more importantly, I argue that packaging such displaced concerns
into a story about land dispossession misleads those, who buy into it,
to participate irrationally and unwittingly in self-defeating practices
that shore up their own domination. I do not mean to claim or to imply
that all land discourse is ideology in this pejorative sense. But it is quite
possible that some land discourse is ideology. And, if so, there is a role
for ideology critique.
What does it mean to say that land ideology misleads people to act
against their real interests? What does it mean to interpret, and to
critique, land discourse as ideology? The key is in the mechanism, by
which land ideology misleads its adherents to engage in self-defeating
practices. For instance, a simple example of land ideology may be found
in the conceptual apparatus of post-colonial territorial sovereignty. Pan-
African solidarity has been thwarted by borders inherited from Europe.
In the aftermath of decolonization in Africa, despite promotion Pan-
African solidarity by nationalist leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah and
Julius Nyerere in the 1950s, each politically independent jurisdiction vies
for sovereign authority, at the expense of intracontinental integration.
In Africa Must Unite, written in the early 1960s, Nkrumah urges,

If we are to remain free, if we are to enjoy the full benefits of Africa’s

rich resources, we must unite to plan for our total defence and the
full exploitation of our material and human means, in the full inter-
ests of all our peoples. “To go it alone” will limit our horizons, curtail
our expectations, and threaten our liberty.10
 A Genealogy of Displacement  83
The illusion of territorial sovereignty, bestowed by former empires, under
economically interdependent global market conditions, also masks direct
outsourcing of colonial exploitation to captured, debt-indentured client
regimes. The illusion that Africans won back their land masks the radically
restructured economic relations that now determine its function. Africans
are sourced in as guardians of states that administer extraction of raw
materials for others.
Marxian immanent critique of ideology does not dismiss or contradict
illusions; rather, it typically presents a bigger picture that reveals the
distorting influence of a partial perspective on a set of social facts.
Ideology involves a surface appearance or partial perspective on a set
of social facts, whose seemingly self-determined character disguises its
socially constructed origins or conditions. The ideology critic does not
demonstrate that ideological beliefs are false but explains underlying
economic conditions which determine the appearance of phenomena in
question. The critic explains how these conditions convey a misleading
appearance. Ideology functions better with true beliefs than false beliefs.
The key to ideology critique is to identity the mechanism of disguise by
which background apparatus is obscured, like the blood, sweat, and tears
behind a seemingly effortless performance or like the collective credit
we pay to ingenuity, self-restraint, discipline, charisma, and hard work
of powerful individuals, who control and profit from the exploitation
of natural, social, and common resources. This chapter identifies
displacement as a significant key to land ideology.
The first black South African to join my traditional, well-to-do public
boys’ school in Port Elizabeth arrived on a rugby scholarship the year
before I left. The captain of the Springbok team that won the 2019 Rugby
World Cup, Siya Kolisi, attended some years later. In my primary school
years, however, we were joined by several white Africans from across the
border, first from Mozambique, then from Zimbabwe. From then on, the
refrain “or we will end up like Zimbabwe” became an unofficial verse of
our national anthem. Oh, South Africa, our land. One cannot discuss the
ideology of land in South Africa without mentioning Robert Mugabe.
Even the Economic Freedom Fighters limited their foundational claim for
expropriation without compensation to “unproductive land” (ironically
repeating colonial settlers’ original claims for unworked land as terra
nullius). Look at Zimbabwe. Mugabe fought for territorial sovereignty
for his people, but, a decade on into independence, the country still
functioned as a client state for British capital. So, when Britain reneged
on reparation commitments and fingers began to point at his complicity,
he seized white land and abruptly collapsed the economy. For both sides,
the spectre of land dispossession stood in for a host of related political
and economic factors. But to many investors, this scapegoating of white
settlers’ farms looked like a black hand waving a red flag at a golden
goose.
84  Christopher Allsobrook
Faced with a backlash against the capture of the state by three broth-
ers, the Guptas, from Uttar Pradesh, their ally, South African President
Jacob Zuma, and son, turned to the propaganda ministry of British Tory
capitalism, Bell Pottinger, to craft the cover story of a Manichaean battle
between Radical Economic Transformers and deep state agents of White
Monopoly Capital. While their rivals fought a campaign against “state
capture,” the political faction of the Zuma Dynasty stood for expropria-
tion of land.11
The land shall belong to all who live in it, administered under the
trusteeship of a patronage network of tenders, commanders, controllers,
brokers, dealers, branch managers, enforcers, and gatekeepers. It is too
late now to point out Zuma’s position on land expropriation was a foil
for self-enrichment. Universalist discourse has long been discredited as
a ruse in South Africa, since the imposition of an illegitimate system of
universal laws to defend apartheid. Whites are only interested in good
governance now that the tables have turned. This is how the game was
always played. There is no point in criticizing how the game is being
played if we already know the drill. We need no ideology critic to decode
the underlying rationale. Everything is all too transparent. Every hashtag
spins defetishizing critique. Everyone knows and is in on it: official norms
and rules are for private benefit.
In a notorious instance of state capture orchestrated by the Gupta
brothers (who decided South African cabinet appointments for a period,
courtesy of then-President Jacob Zuma), a functional dairy was pur-
chased as a public–private partnership and land reform empowerment
scheme to uplift 100 black emerging farmers, under the direction of then
Free State province Premier Ace Magashule, now Secretary General of
the ANC, and leader of the “Radical Economic Transformation” faction
of the ruling party formed in opposition to the reformers led by President
Cyril Ramaphosa. Instead, the project is currently under investigation
for 220 million South African Rand (approx. 13.5 million USD) report-
edly, “siphoned off to various Gupta-linked individuals and government
officials.”12 The Free State Department of Agriculture illegally contracted
businesswoman Lena Mohapi to implement all projects for the depart-
ment for two years, paying 756 million Rand (~46.5 million USD). In
return she paid “huge sums of money” to the department’s CFO.13 With
land reform fronting for elite enrichment, the dairy was expected to func-
tion as a cash cow.
Classic Marxian ideology critique interprets ideology in terms of a
mechanism of repression, that is, of normative social relations which
shore up underlying economic conditions for the elite. But, as Theodor
Adorno observed, under late capitalism, these hypocritical bourgeois
­ideals are no longer defended by the elite and, so, immanent ideology
critique of such ideals no longer works. Defetishizing critique of liberal
hypocrisy loses to the bullshit and the fake news of neoliberal modernity.
 A Genealogy of Displacement  85
Adorno writes, “In their attempt to resolve a conflict between ­collective
and ­individual interests, these hopeless rationalisations contained a ring of
truth which today we too cheerfully deny.”14 Accountability suffers from
our haste to decode universal principles into economic causes. Attacks
on the hypocrisy of liberals’ universal ideals of equal ­opportunity hit
the bull’s eye in the miraculous tale of Desmond Tutu’s Rainbow Nation
Circle of Ubuntu. But this leads to lawless impatience with the niceties
of liberal democracy. What is it, then, to reveal the economic interests of
the Zuma–Gupta nexus? The emails are there for all who care to read
them; the testimony heard at the Zondo Commission. There is no secret
­mechanism for the ideology critic to explain. In any case, a materialist
critique of land returns us to square one, missing the meaning of land as
ideology.
Immanent, defetishizing, Marxian ideology critique misunderstands
neoliberal ideology, which does not pretend to be universal but just points
to how it is, as if it is what it is. The mechanism of ideology normalization
is not directly repressive or deceptive, such as with a false, hypocritical
presentation of high universal moral ideals. A better explanation, which
I advocate here, for how land discourse functions as ideology is not just
by way of active repression or direct deception, but also as an indirect
effect of structural ideological or cultural displacement. Ideas formed
in one context are displaced into or by a different context, such that
the absent operative conditions, by which they are formed, including
contested evaluative relations of power, are disguised. We reinforce these
attendant social relations through our agency and our actions, without
seeing how we thereby perpetuate the same circumstances by which we
are dominated, disempowered and exploited. Think, for example, of
white South African colonial education, displaced from its European
origins and imposed by displaced Europeans, who have lost sense of
its social and cultural significance, forgetting the imperialistic relations
of exploitation that influenced its historical development. Conversely,
useful knowledge that whites picked up from around the world may be
mistakenly dismissed by decolonizing black South Africans as opinions
made up for white interests.
Displacement, suggests Peter Sloterdijk, substitutes the repressive
hypothesis of the unconscious, as an explanation for psychological
­delusion, for a theory of displacement, as a censoring mechanism which
mediates the conscious and unconscious. In Freud’s last major published
work, Moses and Monotheism, written in exile, on the brink of war, on
the verge of death, as Nazis overran Europe and cancer overran the jaw of
the doctor, who invented the “talking cure,” Sloterdijk claims the c­ oncept
of the unconscious is then rendered superfluous by the ­introduction of the
concept of distortion/displacement.15 In this last work, Freud i­nterprets
Moses as an Egyptian follower of the solar monotheistic Aten religion,
who realizes rival gods like Amun cannot be eliminated at home, amidst
86  Christopher Allsobrook
emplaced associated rituals. So, he infiltrates captive Jews, to lead them
off to another place, “to resume the monotheistic experiment in a new
location with other people.”16 There he taught them Egyptian customs
like circumcision and codes of religious arrogance, strict self-discipline,
and the taboo on idolatry, which monotheism demands of followers.
Moses’ followers leave emplaced African pantheism for displaced mono-
theistic exodus and diaspora taking with them immutable normative
texts, immune to compromise, forgetfulness and death.
I present this not as historical fact but as a fruitful allegory, which
Sloterdijk employs, to explain displacement as a mechanism of ideology,
which does not depend on repression or deception, but works from a
structural dislocation that conceals drivers of our ideas. The relevance of
the allegory bears uncannily on a significant disjuncture between orally,
communally negotiated processes securing African social tenures and
the imposition by Roman-Dutch law of title deeds, secured by a state.
Freud observes that the German Entstellung doubles for both distortion
and displacement. The displacement on this biblical re-interpretation,
therefore, does not only concern the recasting of roles, in the person of
Moses, leader and liberator of the Jews, who gives them their laws, as an
Egyptian, explains Sloterdijk, “but equally the redaction of accounts of
this, which are always subject to the tendentious requirement of making
what happened as unidentifiable as possible.”17
The epistemicide that erases customary norms of African social ten-
ure takes place by displacement. Displacement of indigenous knowledge
systems sustains neo-colonial governmentality even in land. The function
of such displacement, as dislocation, is to hide, disguise, mystify, or cam-
ouflage the operative, generative conditions of a phenomenon, such that
a social effect appears to sustain itself, as if by fate. Faith best forgets its
effective agency in the suspension of disbelief. Freud compares the dis-
tortion of a text to a murder: “The difficulty lies not in carrying out the
deed, but rather in removing its traces.” From then on, “the true Egyptian
drama… takes place in a different location… in the religious experiment
of Judaism as conceived by the man Moses.”18 Via Sinai, immobile monu-
mental, anthropomorphic, pyramidic, pictographic place gods of ancient
imperial Egypt are recoded, in abstract syncretic motifs, from “stone to
scroll”19into the universal laws of one God, written in alphabetic text,
transported in exodus and in diaspora; in the process of a metaphysical
theodicy forever chronically haunted, “with the problem of its uncertain
territorialisation.”20
In a key passage, Sloterdijk argues:

One can view Moses and Monotheism to an extent as the self-cor-

rection of psychoanalysis at the last minute. The message of Freud’s
late works would then be: ultimately it is not the unconscious that
decides the fate of humans; what truly counts is the incognito that
 A Genealogy of Displacement  87
conceals the origin of the dominant ideas. Because distortion goes
far beyond active concealment, it protects the Egyptian incognito in
a way that is much more secure than the directorate of a conspiracy
could ever achieve… Projects become more important than origins…
consideration for descent takes a back seat to the prospect of the
Promised Land.21

The hegemonic ideologies, the dreams of the Pharaohs, the neurotic

principles of political economy, which the psychoanalyst or ideology
critic decodes, are not misleading phenomenal psychic effects of actively
repressed, sublimated, hidden, unconscious desires, drives or social rela-
tions. Rather, underlying conditions of illusory phenomena, that is, the
sensible grounds of their emplacement, are mysterious just because their
location has shifted or repositioned in geographical and political space.
Thus, Freud reforms his explanatory framework for delusion, with a
more satisfactory model of displacement than the ad hoc anomaly of a
mysterious agent of (self-)deception, or a regressive series of intermediar-
ies in the mind, which Sartre ridicules in Being and Nothingness as the
deceptive homunculus, buried in one’s psychic apparatus, to ward off the
truth of lies the subject tells herself,22 and which Foucault identifies in
The History of Sexuality: Volume I as the fictive sovereign subject of the
repression hypothesis. Sloterdijk suggests, Freud abandons this hypoth-
esis for displacement, or substitution, as a mechanism to explain the dis-
location of perceived agency from its causal factors.
With this theory in mind, one may suggest that African social ten-
ure, like the unconscious, is likewise covered by displacement in a pro-
cess Mogobe Ramose identifies as epistemicide, when he observes that
African “customary law,” otherwise known as the law of the peoples of
the land, is subordinated to the constitution. The dominance of this para-
digm, exemplified by the total exclusion of ubuntu from the constitution,
“speaks to continuing epistemicide feeding on delusory racial superior-
ity”23 (I return to Ramose’s critique of the constitution toward the end
of the chapter). In this context it may be argued that displacement, more
so than repression, ensures the colonizer’s epistemic paradigm remains
dominant. With the balance of forces, which keep contested concepts in
check at home, dislocated abroad, measures of accountability are lost
in translation. Moreover, a disjuncture between cultural norms and the
official system erodes the formal legal infrastructure.
Abraham Olivier interprets Ramose’s term to mean “­ prevailing
­subjugation to the colonizer’s epistemological paradigm and ­concomitant
displacement of African thought.”24 Olivier responds to Malpas’s
account of displacement as “superposition,” or, “the disappearance of
one ­experience so that the appearance of another experience can take
place” in a flux that makes possible perception of unity in experience.25
Displacement is a condition of our experience of unity in experience
88  Christopher Allsobrook
and of selfhood in experience.26 This may involve the literal enforced
removal of people from their homes, as with apartheid’s “enforced home-
lessness.”27 But also, Olivier writes, “one’s home can be taken from one,
while still remaining in the same location… for instance, in the form
of discriminatory social exclusion.”28 In this context, he cites Mbembe’s
account, in On the Post-colony, of the forced homelessness many post-
colonial inhabitants of African countries experience in their own places
of living, where due to unbearable circumstances they can barely sur-
vive.29 The function of active repression in colonization, for imperialistic
domination and exploitation, is automated by epistemicide, under the
governmentality of decolonization, since, “the very predominance of the
colonizer’s epistemic paradigm arises through the displacement of the
subjects that it colonizes.”30

Part Two: English Settlers Lose the Plot

In 1983, when I was seven years old, my family moved out of town to
“the farm.” This nice enough but strange plot of land, in Rocklands,
outside Uitenhage, sat at the foot of a mountain, a pinched toe of the
Lady’s Slipper, on the road to a high security prison. It was big enough
for a small farm but there was no farming on it. We rented for a year to
see how we would like it, living out there. I had imagined the land all
green and soft, without so many thorns and itchy insects. There were: a
house, a couple of fields, two servants’ huts, uphill, an empty reservoir
where I played cricket with my sisters and the gardener, Henry. I liked
exploring but none of my friends visited since it was half an hour’s drive
from town. Henry became my best friend. We’d hang out in his home
up the hill. He taught me some math and how to bake bread on the
fire. I remember we once ate snake together. He told me when President
Vorster was killed. His spoke his name like a swear word. Vorster was
from Uitenhage too. My mom hated Uitenhage, an industrial dorpie in
a dirty valley, dominated by Volkswagen and its suppliers. Our German
family friends ran the game farm next door Wide Horizon.
Every sunset you heard lions roar at feeding time. The air was clean.
My younger sister wanted a donkey for her birthday. She never touched
it once she got it. The abject reality of the dismal beast freaked her out.
My mom, a dramatic drama teacher at the local convent, grew ill and
went mad. I’m not sure which came first. She was in bed a lot, with
bowel obstructions, playing loud classical music, and in hospital for
much of the year, between operations. There was a flood, which warped
our ­photographs, books, and vinyl. My dad started an affair with his
secretary. At some point Henry disappeared, or so I was told. Years later
I learned my dad and elder sister found him hanging in his hut. We left
the land at the end of that year to escape, to Port Elizabeth, to the city,
like most white South Africans. The trauma, displaced by the idea of our
 A Genealogy of Displacement  89
farm in Africa, was exacerbated in its manifestation on the land, which
could scarcely sustain the burden of speculation. Eyes are bigger than the
stomach, we say, when we experience the horror of indigestion.
I mention this personal account of land ideology to take stock of the
relatively privileged position that informs these views, given the hazards
of displaced omniscient critique, as a white man raised to rule the land
over races still considered subordinate through the final two decades of
apartheid. My family was publicly critical of the system, but our enjoy-
ment of its benefits at home warps our perspectives like water dam-
age. I do so also to reflect on representative ideology of land, for many
white South Africans, which arises in displacement. By the time white
South Africans consolidated control of the land, that is, by around the
1930s, most of us had also, perversely, lost interest in occupying much
of it. The vast, majestic, wild South African landscape makes for a great
city break. We fetishize the landscape of a peri-urban plot. But most of
the land is hard and lonely, with few opportunities. Farming is tough.
Apartheid was less the forced removal of Blacks from land (which hap-
pened earlier) than from their homes, around the cities, where most
whites already lived.
Black urbanization accelerated rapidly with the fall of apartheid. We
all want land. We love the land. But most of us sleep in the city and many
more are moving in. Despite the political centrality of the land question,
most of us do not want much of it nor know what to do with it. I’ve never
owned much land. Since I left school, the year before our first democratic
elections, I rented small homes, to stay flexible, despite my father urging
me to dig my roots into a miserable London apartment at the turn of the
century. It is not unusual for the French or the German bourgeoisie, or
the residents of Singapore, New York, or Hong Kong, to rent a room. A
lack of land has never undermined my own sense of freedom, self-posses-
sion, or entitlement. My dad was right. I may have made a tidy sum. But I
would not be where I am trying to justify by displacement my possession
of 900 m2 of African land.

Part Three: Restoration of Title to Territory, Absolute

Sovereignty, and Reparations

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

Part Four: Invisible Land

To the Justice of whom does Ramose appeal? From the universalist
multi-racial grounding of the African National Congress Freedom
Charter (bound in our 1996 constitution), to the fateful injustice of
territorial compromise, of the principle, that, “South Africa belongs to
all who live in it,” in whose register ought we to read or listen to the
response of the Pan-Africanist leader, Robert Sobukwe, Izwe Lethu?
No! To liberal or communist backpedalling, this is our land! The land
belongs to the conquered black Africans. Ramose interprets this to
mean: “Justice demands the restoration of title to territory to the indig-
enous conquered peoples as well as restitution to them.”56 He bases his
appeal, addressed in English, on the displaced, universalizing, global-
ist discourse of natural law, or in common humanity. But what if we
read Izwe Lethu not in these displaced terms of natural law, sover-
eignty, humanity, equity, or territorial title, but through African norms
of social tenure?
Colonialism and apartheid displaced Africans from land by territorial
acquisition and forced removal. The less visible epistemic consequence
of this literal displacement is that, by this process, African land rights,
established by emplaced, living, evolving, negotiated customary norms of
social tenure and pastural migrancy, were also displaced by a universal
framework of Western title deeds, which fixes enclosed space to legal
persons on a surveyed cadastre as registered private property; through
a system recognized and enforced by the courts of a nation-state with a
monopoly on violence. Once colonialism achieves this secondary ideolog-
ical displacement, the primary displacement of territorial acquisition is
redundant. Decolonization requires neither repression nor occupation of
the land. The hegemonic ideology automates exploitation, once finance
on private property is secured in place.
Although I focus here on legal foundations of land expropriation
and displacement, it is important to acknowledge that relationships
94  Christopher Allsobrook
with the land in African customary traditions are not just abstract
or theoretical but also often deeply cultural and also spiritual.57
Displacement of African social tenure by Western title deeds functions
more effectively at the level of ideology than by direct repression,
which requires ongoing maintenance by an external agent. Through
displacement, conquered subjects come to believe they lost what the
conqueror gained. They fight for it. Even in resistance, therefore, the
struggle for liberation entrenches the alien property rights. Instead
of seeking recognition, restoration and security of social tenure, the
conquered buy into the private property market, to gain the security
and prestige of a title deed to commodified land. This displacement by
title deed shifts the place of liberation from our land to my land, the
Promised Land, eroding the negotiated, historical identity of people on
land, until social tenures are invisible.
From this radical and revolutionary perspective in late 1970s Black
Consciousness, Ramose speaks to the epistemic function of displace-
ment more than the primary displacement of forced removal. In this
last section, it is worth raising a third sense of displacement that applies
to the land question. This third, most general, least specific sense, of
displacement, or meta-displacement, is predicated in the essential
structural function of displacement itself, which is, to abstract the
sense of embodied particulars (the trace of which is represented in
hieroglyphs) into a universal code made of portable alphabetic text;
such as from Ra, the embodied sun god, or idol, to the conceptual sun
disk, Aten.
This third level of displacement may be distinguished in Sloterdijk’s
account of Freud’s Moses, in his Festschrift to Derrida and his Egyptian
construction, the indestructible deconstruction machine. It is not just
the roles of Moses and the Jews, their place and their religion that are
displaced, but also the prior emplacement of ideas, i.e., the emplaced
sense of ideas, to which ideas belong; the structural relationship of
connection to place, which is expected of ideas, is itself displaced, by
Platonic faith in underlying abstract universal categories, whose inner
lives are more enduring than their physical and phenomenal manifes-
tation. Ancestors are no longer buried at home. With our spirits dis-
placed by the restless movement of capital, we are incinerated. And so,
it is interesting that Ramose should return home from exile to speak of
essential, eternal, and universal African ethical precepts, such as human
rights, sovereignty, Ubuntu, justice as equity and equilibrium, and even
prescription of extinctive prescription in the principle of molato ga
o bole.58 In practice, normative customary relations of African social
tenure are typically defined across a range of socially negotiated lev-
els of access which are established by historical precedence, present
occupation, kinship relations, need, status, chiefly authority, negotiated
access, etc. A common general feature of the various ethical principles
 A Genealogy of Displacement  95
that align these practices across Africa is this: they all agree that the
legitimacy of social tenure gains sense on the ground and not from
abstract, universal principles or title deeds. There is a bias against dis-
placement, as such, in traditional conceptions of social tenure, toward
emplacement.
In Cambridge Cemetery, down the road from my home, a scam was
recently revealed, whereby middle-class bodies are exhumed and re-bur-
ied in a mass pauper’s cemetery to be replaced by those with relatives
prepared to pay less for the wrong headstone.59 Residents of informal
settlements and squatters occupy vacant land regardless of title deeds.
In terms of homegrown credentials, they also know who lives where on
what land. Not anything goes. Ramose advocates the principle of consti-
tutional sovereignty in favor of parliamentary sovereignty, and he remains
committed to the universal ethics of Ubuntu, with African humanness (if
not humanism). But he also observes that, even as the political leader-
ship of the black nationalist Azanian People’s Organisation and the Pan
Africanist Congress “continues to pursue the resolution of this conflict
within the narrow and untenable epistemological paradigm of the con-
queror, their peoples chartered their own route through the matyotyombe
phenomenon…” This is “a complex combination of conditions unfit for
human habitation human beings nonetheless find themselves in, leaving
the only option but to radically question, the juridical epistemology of
the conqueror.”60
The occupation of the matoytyombe is, “a rejection of a situation of
basic injustice protected by a constitution without homegrown creden-
tials.”61 The matyotyombe (in isiXhosa, or baipei in Sotho) “assert their
right to a place,” “which has historical meaning, where some things have
happened which are now remembered and which provide continuity…
in which important words have been spoken and which have established
identity…”62 So, where Ramose argues, “the natural right to housing has
priority,” one may point out, rights are social. And when he argues for
sovereign African title to territory, one wonders where this title deed is
filed. The great injustice in South Africa’s transition of the unresolved
land question turns on displacement of the sovereignty of parliament,
representing the people, with a code of constitutional sovereignty; and
with a constitution, which barely recognizes local African customary
norms, which most of our citizens cannot read. It is fine to argue in the
conqueror’s terms, but our fear is that the immanent constitutional cri-
tique no longer works, for a confluence of capitalism, decolonization and
epistemicide.
To be clear, my argument is not intended to deny functional r­ estitution
cases for land, but to argue for the better alignment of (a) formal,
registered, private land deeds, with (b) off-register, social tenures, so
­
the latter gain an equal footing with the former, in official recognition,
protection, and enforcement. As Kepe and Hall see it,63 by exclusively
96  Christopher Allsobrook
securing title deeds under the official state apparatus, to the neglect of all
other social tenures, land reform, “perpetuates the colonial present.” The
state reproduces colonial segregation of individualized title deeds and
communal social tenures, failing to reconceptualize and integrate these
in a coherent, coordinated system which could better secure the latter.
Ironically, this divide is maintained in land reform programs. That is to
say, ideological displacement of social tenure leads the conquered to vol-
untary servitude.
I suggest that displacement is the mechanism by which land discourse
is ideological. The state and all financial institutions recognize, credit,
and secure registered title deeds. They cannot see African land rights.
The dominant formal theoretical framework of norms, standards, and
regulations for land administration must therefore be revised to accom-
modate a wider array of tenure options.64 Whereas the current system of
land administration privileges formally registered title deeds over alterna-
tive social tenure arrangements, this conception of tenure rights is inad-
equate to deal with social tenures. These so-called “informal rights” are
seldom disorganized and usually regulated and organized through local
social and political processes.65 Hornby et al. argue that the conception
of tenure rights must be expanded through land reform in South Africa
to include recognition of these alternative normative patterns of tenure
which are currently neglected by a cadastral system based exclusively on
surveyed freehold title deeds.66
Through displacement we are alienated from and dominated by social
creations that seem beyond our input and control. In a window of free-
dom in the late 1970s, before the rise of the Iron Lady and the fall of
the Iron Curtain, when it seemed authoritarians were on the back foot
and people power was up for grabs, the South African black conscious-
ness leader Steve Biko and the poststructuralist Michel Foucault realized,
independently, that governmentality is deep inside and not on top. Biko
renounces violence not for the sake of morality but because he does not
imagine such a large black majority in an African country needs vio-
lence to take over their land. The greater obstacle to black empowerment
he identifies is the struggle for black pride, against white normativity.67
President Zuma treated his constitution as an imposition, just as he
avoided the pitfalls of colonial education. Our students often treat read-
ing material, assignments, and lecture attendance as an imposition, as
if compelled by an external force, neglecting to take ownership of their
epistemic role in learning and in development of knowledge. We treat
the law of the land as if it belongs to others, not to all who live in it but
to white monopoly capital or blacks. Coercion and inequality lead us
to disown collective institutions and public space so that we dispossess
ourselves.
If I may have displaced the land question in digressing to a discussion
of ideology, make no mistake, urgent economic intervention is needed
 A Genealogy of Displacement  97
to address land dispossession. But many complex social problems are
bundled into the land question, which we still need to unpack. We have
reason to suspect that land discourse at times functions as ideology in this
antagonistic, divided society. We know the land question is susceptible to
ideological manipulation. I argue further that land ideology is not just
repressive. It is less of an external force than it is a restructuring of desires
and agency by displacement.
Domination, more than an effect of repressive norms, is what we allow
when we do what we want. By virtue of displacement, our agency is com-
plicit. South Africa is full of displaced people and institutions which have
lost touch with their ancestry. We have neglected, forgotten, or denied the
conflicted historical and cultural normative roots of our legal and admin-
istrative infrastructure. Failing to understand the historical sense of our
everyday institutional and customary practices, we reproduce exploit-
ative relations of power without realizing why we do so. Where land ide-
ology benefits elites, this may be straightforwardly repressive, in the style
of white elite entitlement to conquered territory and literal coercive dis-
placement. More insidiously, it may function by structural displacement,
where we lose touch with the history and meaning of what we do. Izwe
Lethu calls for recognition of African land rights, as practiced by African
people on the ground, first, foremost; long before the matyotyombe can
get it together to take on the universal discourse of a formal shack dwell-
ers’ movement, such as Abahlali baseMjondolo. Decolonization is more
than the forced removal of white settlers from the Promised Land. It
requires coherent integration and realignment of the law of the state with
the genealogies and purposes of citizens’ everyday customary practices.

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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Allsobrook, Christopher. “Universal Human Rights from an African Social
Contract.” In Perspectives in Social Contract Theory, 275–318. Edited by Edwin
Etieyibo. Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy,
2018.
Beinart, William, and Peter Delius. “The Historical Context and Legacy of the
Natives Land Act of 1913.” Journal of Southern African Studies 40, No. 4,
667–688. 2014.
Bennett, Thomas William. “Ubuntu: an African Equity.” Potchefstroomse
Elektroniese Regsblad, 14, No. 4, 30–61. 2011.
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Part III

Being with Others

Applied Dimensions and Real-
World Problems
6 The Public Legitimacy of
Minority Claims in Eastern
Europe
Plamen Makariev

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.

A person has been manipulated by a communication when she has

been exposed to a message intended to change her views in a way she
would not accept if she were to think about it on the basis of good
conditions.13

So, how could public communication be protected from manipulations?

Can certain criteria be formulated, such that if a public debate meets
them, it would be “immune” to faking the authorship of the debates’ out-
comes. In other words, how can each of the participants be provided the
opportunity to determine her position in regard of the debates’ subject
matter herself. Of course, this position might be, under circumstances,
wrong, counterproductive, etc. due to the participant’s incompetence, or,
more generally, to human imperfection. However, it is not without impor-
tance, whether, or not, this would be truly the participant’s own position,
i.e., it would not be pre-decided by someone else.
110  Plamen Makariev
The theory of public deliberation is addressing precisely this issue.
Authors who work within this paradigm are discussing various criteria
which could protect a debate from manipulations. One of the most com-
prehensive proposals has been made by Joshua Cohen. He prescribes the
following parameters for a publicly deliberative discussion: (a) rationality
(“argumentative form”); (b) inclusivity and publicness (all who are pos-
sibly affected should have an equal chance to take part); (c) freedom from
external coercion; (d) freedom from internal coercion (equality among
the participants—their positions in the debate should yield only to “the
unforced force of the better argument”); (e) revisability of the decisions
made; (f) inclusivity concerning the subject matter of the deliberation (any
issue that can be regulated in the equal interest of all can be discussed);
and (g) inclusivity regarding interpretations of needs and wants.14
Criteria of this sort, which single out public deliberation from all kinds
of public communication, are a matter of numerous discussions. For lack
of space I shall not try to present them here. I will focus rather on the cri-
teria, which in my opinion would guarantee the autonomy of the partici-
pants in the debates. In this respect, I think, three of Cohen’s parameters
are most relevant.
One of them is “freedom from external coercion.” It is obvious that if
someone has been made to do something against her will, the “author-
ship” of such a deed is not hers. Another relevant procedural require-
ment is “inclusivity and publicness” of the communication. If someone’s
access to information is regulated by someone else, then that person’s
positions concerning the debate’s subject matter would be determined
not by her, but by the one who controls the information. Of course, even
if the debate is fully inclusive and public, this does not mean that each
of the participants would have at her disposal all relevant information,
and that it would be entirely true and precise. In reality, public debates
do not take place under perfect conditions. However, what matters in this
respect is, whether, or not, each of the participants in the debate takes her
decisions in an agent-like manner.
The third criterion in this order is, in my opinion, “rationality.” A
discussion on the legitimacy of some norm or policy can proceed as an
exchange of arguments, but also, conversely, as a clash of narratives, pas-
sionate appeals, insults, etc. In which of these two cases would it be more
likely, that each of the participants will have the opportunity to decide
for herself which one of the proposed versions of the norm (or policy)
to support? Will this be so, if she makes her decision by comparing the
options discussed with her beliefs and awareness of her interests, and
rationally choosing the one that is most consistent with them? Or, if she
yields to emotions, or to the charisma of a talented orator, or to the
authority of a great scholar? The proponents of public deliberation, such
as Jürgen Habermas, rely in this respect on the “unforced force of the
better argument.”15
 The Public Legitimacy  111
However, what about a situation—and such cases are not at all rare—
when the better argument is not in our favor? For example, what if from
a just solution of a social problem would follow that we will have to
lose some privileges of ours? Yes, such a solution would be in the equal
interest of all whom it concerns, and if we happen to be normally moral
people, it will be consistent with our conscience, i.e., it will be legitimate
from our viewpoint. But still—what if our selfishness prevails over our
conscience and we do not have the motivation to admit publicly that this
is the right solution, and we are prepared to accept it?
In such cases people usually try to evade recognizing the superiority
of the “better argument.” This can be done in many ways, especially by
challenging it—by insisting that it is in some sense wrong, although they
know for themselves that this is not true. How can public deliberation
“work” also in such situations?
It would work, if the debate is public in the proper way, i.e., if it
takes place before a competent “audience,” which can tell the difference
between cogent and not cogent arguments. Actually, it is the public’s
task to assess the quality of “competing” argumentations—which one
has “the unforced force” that Habermas writes about. If someone knows
for sure that she participates in a debate in front of watchful eyes, and
that any attempt to play “dirty tricks” would be easily “deciphered,” she
would think twice before daring to do something of this sort, provided,
of course, that the legitimacy of her own behavior matters for her, and
provided that she does not want to compromise herself in public. In this
respect Jon Elster has introduced a telling idiom: “the civilizing force of
hypocrisy.”16 Yes, I might hate to admit that my opponent is right, but if
her argument is publicly recognized as better than mine, I will have to do
so in order not to lose the trust of the public.
This means that the public-deliberation paradigm is culturally and
historically relative. Public deliberation can be practiced only in mod-
ern (some authors prefer the term “late modern” in this respect, e.g.,
Habermas 1997) cultural environment, where agency and rationality
matter. Besides, it needs a public which is communicatively competent.
Such competence is a historical achievement; it is developed in the course
of democratic practices in civil society.
The situation is, however, more complex when minority issues are
at stake. In such cases, the general public itself might be interested in
denying the superiority of “the better argument.” The public opinion in
a country is actually the opinion which prevails among the racial, ethnic,
religious majority. Let us imagine the following situation. An argument
is presented in public space, e.g., in the social media, which supports
claims for, e.g., reforms in education that would be favorable for minor-
ity identities. Let us presume that it is a perfectly cogent one. However,
usually such innovations are not welcomed by the majority. They might
complicate social life, raise new problems, the integrity of society might
112  Plamen Makariev
be jeopardized, resources might have to be relocated, etc. All of this could
make the general public reluctant to recognize the validity of arguments
which substantiate the necessity to carry out reforms in minorities’ inter-
est, however convincing they may be. In such situations, the role of the
public as an arbiter regarding the “unforced force of the better argu-
ment” is in question.
In reality, such things do happen. When minority issues come up, the
public at large tends to neglect these people’s interests. How can in such
situations public deliberation be applied as a means of assessing the legit-
imacy of minority claims? More particularly, how can the public be moti-
vated to assess the cogency of the arguments, which substantiate such
claims, in a fair way?
In my opinion, so far only general prescriptive considerations can be
discussed in this regard. I see a potential motive of such nature in the
interest of a public in a “well ordered society” (in John Rawls’ terms)17
to maintain and enhance the self-consistency of its liberal self-awareness.
When the latter is burdened by discriminatory attitudes, this endangers
its integrity. And the integrity, the self-respect of a liberal public as such,
is a good that is quite real for a more or less liberal society, it is not a
matter of wishful thinking. Compromises in this respect, bad precedents
can sooner or later lead to an all-around degradation of political culture
in such societies.

6.3 Minority Claims and Cultural Differences

The cultural differences between ethnic and religious minority commu-
nities, on the one hand, and the general public, on the other, seem to be
the greatest challenge to the application of public deliberation for legiti-
mizing minority claims. I have presented here the argumentative type of
communication as aiming to convince the interlocutor by demonstrating
to her the consistency between the thesis that is being substantiated and
her own knowledge, beliefs, and awareness of her interests, i.e., I keep
to an anthropological interpretation of argumentative communication
which does not involve referring to undeniably existing states of affairs.18
However, from this perspective such communication can be practiced
only among people who share the same “epistemic background.”19 This
means that no public deliberation can be performed between representa-
tives of minority communities and of the public at large if the cultural
differences between them are too substantial.
In more general terms, from the same perspective quite a few authors
claim that actually no unitary public sphere exists at all. In Elizabeth
Butler Breese’s words

Twenty years after the translation of The Structural Transformation,

nearly all scholars of the public sphere agree that our social world is
 The Public Legitimacy  113
composed of multiple, overlapping, and unequal publics. It is more
accurate to talk of (and research) publics and public spheres than to
refer to the public sphere.20

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

So, if argumentative communication between representatives of differ-

ent publics is difficult, if not even impossible, how can we rely on public
deliberation as means of legitimizing minority claims before the public
opinion in the respective society? As I have tried to show, this kind of
communication is designed so, as to be “immune” to manipulations,
and this makes it the best possible “candidate” to be the “language” of
mutual understanding between minority communities and the public at
large. In what follows I shall present some ideas, which have appeared in
recent publications, about the prospects of performing public delibera-
tion across the “barrier” of cultural differences. I will start with the “pes-
simistic” accounts, which point out the difficulties in this regard, and I’ll
continue with some solutions proposed.
One type of such “barriers” is the social distance between privileged
and marginalized groups. Melissa S. Williams argues that they attach
alternative social meanings to one and the same practice. Consequently,
“the reasons that undergird marginalized groups’ critique of the practice
do not function as reasons for members of privileged groups, because
114  Plamen Makariev
the social meaning of the practice for the marginalized group is (at least
initially) inaccessible to them.”26
Williams refers to a debate which took place in the United States
Senate in 1993 on the design of the insignia of an NGO called the United
Daughters of the Confederacy. It included an image of the Confederate
flag and this provoked an African-American senator, Carol Moseley-
Braun, to object against the approval of the emblem. She claimed that
this flag symbolizes slavery. Some white colleagues of hers from Southern
states argued in turn, that, on the contrary, the flag’s image referred to
sacrifices made for the homeland. Neither of the two sides showed the
slightest readiness to accept as valid the argumentation of the other.
Who was right, and who was wrong in this controversy? Obviously,
this was not a epistemological discussion, but a clash of incompatible
deep convictions. However, the case may have been even more difficult.
In Williams’ opinion there was a reasonable doubt, whether Moseley-
Braun’s interpretation was really “a valid representation of the distinctive
experience of African Americans or an attempt to score political points
by choosing to take offence at an innocuous piece of legislation.”27 In
other words, cultural “intransparency” can be an even greater obstacle to
communication, if it is made use of for manipulative purposes. So, how
could public deliberation be applied as a mode of discussing such issues?
Another obstacle to argumentative communication are religious differ-
ences. If your interlocutor claims that her religion demands from her that
she does this, or that, how can you know whether this is really the case?
Provided that you do not share that person’s religious experience…
A typical example in this respect is the notorious “headscarf issue,”
which has recently evolved into the niqab/burka one. Seyla Benhabib
asks, regarding a case with Muslim schoolgirls who were not admitted to
class because they were wearing their headscarves:

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

Benhabib recommends that in such instances the people involved should

be given the opportunity to speak for themselves, i.e., to declare what has
really driven them to do this or that. In my opinion this would not solve
the problem. How can we be sure that they would honestly present their
motives. If the girls, for example, have acted out of fear, they might also
try to conceal that on the same ground. Or if narcissism was involved,
they might be ashamed to confess that, etc.
The situation becomes even more complex, if we take into account, that
some of the actors involved might be motivated by false consciousness.
In this respect, Ranjoo Seodu Herr presents some interesting examples
 The Public Legitimacy  115
in her article “Cultural Claims and the Limits of Liberal Democracy.”29
She describes cases in which minority women support practices of a dis-
criminatory nature as valuable for their communities. How can some-
one know, from an external perspective, whether this is a manifestation
of false consciousness, or an expression of deep cultural commitment?
Maybe these women’s identity has been constructed in the “wrong way,”
but maybe they derive their self-respect and an awareness of their own
worth as human beings from their sacrifices for the community’s good. As
Andrea Baumeister states, “Although established cultural and religious
practices are frequently at odds with a liberal conception of gender equal-
ity, many women strongly identify with the traditional way of life of their
community.”30
The chances for minority claims to obtain public recognition are mini-
mized further if social and political interests are involved. Usually such
claims are made on behalf of the respective community by persons who
play the role of its representatives—leaders of ethnic parties, religious
leaders, intellectuals. But how can the general public be sure that these
people adequately formulate and present the claims in question, refer-
ring to the interests and cultural needs of their community? Maybe these
demands express the will or interests of only some part of the minority
group? Or maybe they are meant to serve the self-interest of the represen-
tatives themselves, and the alleged community needs are just a pretext to
achieve some privileges and other benefits for minority leaders?
For example, representatives of ethnic parties, such as the ones of
Albanians in North Macedonia, Hungarians in Romania, Turks in
Bulgaria,31 usually get seats in the Parliament, often—ministerial posi-
tions, mayoral positions in local governments, etc. More particularly
in Bulgaria, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms is such a desirable
partner in building government coalitions and parliamentary majorities,
that the authorities have always turned a blind eye to the participation
of this party’s elite in all kinds of corruption practices. In the opinion of
a number of authors, minority claims often “are strategic or political in
character, reflecting interests and power relations both within the com-
munity and between the community and the wider society.”32
How can all these obstacles to the argumentative communication
between minority groups and the public at large be overcome? I shall
present several proposals in this respect that have been made by authors
who work in the paradigm of public deliberation. A “minimalist” solution
has been suggested by James Bohman in his book Public Deliberation. He
is not trying to find a way in which interlocutors who are divided by deep
cultural differences can achieve mutual understanding by an exchange of
arguments. He seeks a solution in another dimension. He writes, “What
is reasonable is not the shared content of political values but the mutual
recognition of the deliberative liberties of others, the requirements of dia-
logue, and the openness of one’s own beliefs to revision.”33 He argues
116  Plamen Makariev
that an agreement may be accepted as legitimate by all parties insofar
as it fosters mutual respect among the participants, and not because it is
based on arguments that they all accept as convincing. Each of the parties
would “transform her preferences” (if we use the classic “idiom” of the
public-deliberation paradigm) not because she has been argumentatively
convinced by the other one that she ought to do so, but for the sake of
establishing a positive relationship between them.
Another author who is dealing with the same issue is Jorge Valadez.
In his book Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy, and Self-
Determination in Multicultural Societies he comments on, however,
another challenge to the application of public deliberation in this field.
He points out that argumentative communication can be impeded not
only by cultural incommensurabilities, but also by “significant and persis-
tent cultural group differences in socioeconomic and political power.”34
Concerning the cultural “barrier” Valadez keeps to the same “minimal-
ist” approach as Bohman. He proposes that in a multicultural environ-
ment public deliberation should not necessarily be expected to lead to
consensus: “in the more difficult cases of intercultural disagreement, it
will suffice that participants believe they have equitably influenced the
deliberative process and agree to continue to cooperate in good faith in
future deliberations.”35
Concerning the power inequalities, which more often than not are
an element of minority issues, Valadez develops a methodology, which
he calls “epistemological egalitarianism.” It is meant to compensate for
the inequalities in communicative capacities stemming from inequalities
in socioeconomic and political status, more specifically being meant to
ensure equal access to the epistemological resources that are indispens-
able for effective participation in public deliberation. This can be done
by providing

equal access to information and information technologies, equal edu-

cational opportunities to develop the critical thinking abilities for
analyzing and evaluating that information, and equal access to the
social and material means necessary for the intracultural and inter-
cultural exchange of information.36

My third author in this sequence is Michael Rabinder James, who intro-

duces the concept of “plural polity” in his book Deliberative Democracy
and the Plural Polity. He presents it as a means for reconceptualizing
the deliberative decision-making method, so that it be applicable to a
multicultural environment. James keeps to a constructionist approach
to cultural identity, and that is why the terms “plural deliberation” and
“complex legitimacy” play a great role in his theory. In a plural polity
only complex legitimacy is possible and it can be achieved by plural delib-
eration. Whether or not a deliberation is plural should be determined on
 The Public Legitimacy  117
a case-by-case basis, according to four criteria: “the scope of deliberation,
the relationship between understanding and criticism, the link between
deliberation and decision-making, and conditions governing the delibera-
tive and aggregative fairness of institutions and processes.”37
Monique Deveaux proposes another solution to the same problem, i.e.,
how public deliberation can be used for legitimizing minority claims. Her
conception (from Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States) is
quite complex, but in my opinion the most important idea is the follow-
ing. From her perspective the greatest challenge to performing manip-
ulation-proof communication between minority communities and the
public at large (i.e., communication in the form of public deliberation)
is that claims which allegedly concern the satisfaction of legitimate cul-
tural needs of minority groups may in fact be driven by selfish interests
of some of their members. The public-deliberative criteria which protect
communication from manipulation (openness, freedom from coercion
and rationality) cannot “do the job,” if the proclaimed cultural needs of
the minority community are not that real or have been interpreted in a
manipulative way. Due to cultural “intransparency,” the general public
cannot know, whether the said cultural needs are real, and whether they
have been presented correctly.
Deveaux argues that this obstacle can be overcome if the participants
in such debates are selected so as to represent all relevant interests—
namely, community leaders, representatives of women from the commu-
nities involved, experts and government policy-makers. This would make
it difficult to camouflage claims driven by some leaders’ self-interest as
ones which concern genuine cultural needs of the community. Such a
debate would enable critical reflection upon the interests of the partici-
pants, therefore “those who simply seek to maintain control over vulner-
able members of their community… will be hard pressed to disguise their
motive or find a legitimate justification for it that cannot be revealed as
cynical window-dressing.”38
In my opinion this proposal is a step in the right direction. As I shall try
to show in the next section, the involvement of the “rank and file” mem-
bers of minority communities in public deliberations concerning their
communities’ claims would have a positive effect on the credibility of
the latter. However, I do not think that the representation of all relevant
interests in the deliberations would be enough to solve the problem of
“cultural intransparency.”
Let us presume that the claims of some representatives of a cultural
community (e.g., ones who belong to its “elite”) are confronted by objec-
tions of other members of the same community, who argue that the cul-
tural needs to which these claims refer are non-existent or are of very
different nature. So, whom should the general public believe? Provided
that the non-members do not share the community’s lifeworld and have
no means to find out who is telling the truth. By the way, situations of
118  Plamen Makariev
this sort really occur, when minority claims, such as ones concerning the
importance of the mother tongue, or of the names of rivers and moun-
tains, or of the chador are discussed. Some members of the respective
community support certain claims, others argue against. How can the
public opinion in the country judge who is right?

6.4 Minority Groups as Publics

The solution to the “cultural intransparency” problem that I propose is
based on the public sphere model of Jürgen Habermas. Briefly this model
can be described in the following way. The communicative power of the
citizens is exercised in the form of legitimizing (or delegitimizing) cer-
tain policies by public opinion, so that the governmental institutions are
motivated to implement (or discard) them in order not to jeopardize the
chances of the ruling political parties to win the next elections (let us
remember here Elster’s “civilizing force of hypocrisy”). If, however, pub-
lic opinion on a certain issue is formed as a result of manipulated public
communication, the “legitimization” of policies will be a false one and
the communicative power of the citizens will work wrongly.
So, how can the various interests, causes, ideals, etc. of the citizens
be represented in a fair way in the processes of shaping public opinion
on particular issues? Habermas’ answer is that this would be the case
if the debates which transmit the messages from the lifeworlds of the
ordinary people to public opinion formation are performed according to
the procedural criteria of public deliberation. These debates are of two
very different natures. Habermas calls them ethical-political and moral
discourses. The former are of an intra-group nature, and they are aimed
at articulating the self-understanding of the respective group and defin-
ing the common good of its members.39 Argumentation proceeds here
primarily on a substantive basis, that is, the reasons refer to interests and
beliefs that are shared by the group’s members.
Moral discourses, in contrast, are universalistic. They aim at legitimiz-
ing norms and practices as being in the equal interest of all individuals
and groups that are affected by them, whatever their interests and beliefs
may be. The argumentation characteristic of this type of communica-
tion refers not to what is substantively common for the participants but,
rather, to justice. As Habermas remarks, “For moral discourse allows all
those concerned and affected an equal say and expects each participant
to adopt the perspectives of the others when deliberating what is in the
equal interest of all.”40
If we regard minority communities as publics—in the spirit of the plu-
ralistic approach to the public sphere—and as “arenas” of ethical-political
discourses, which produce the minority claims that need public legitimi-
zation, the issue which this article is dealing with, would have to be refor-
mulated. In the frame of reference of Habermas’s model of the public
 The Public Legitimacy  119
sphere it would have the form of the problem “how can minority claims
be substantiated within a universalistic moral discourse?” Justification by
referring to the cultural needs of particular communities would obviously
not work in a universalistic discourse. Actually, this is the same challenge
of cultural “intransparency,” which has been extensively discussed above,
but now presented in Habermasian language.
Situating this problem in the new frame of reference opens a new
perspective, which seems worth exploring. What if the ethical-political
discourses within minority communities are performed according to
the criteria of public deliberation? Let us imagine the following situa-
tion. A claim is being discussed within the community, concerning its
cultural needs. It is meant to be advanced further into a moral dis-
course with the aim of legitimizing it in the eyes of the public opinion.
A member of the community (or a group of members) puts forward an
argument which exposes this claim—in a way that is convincing for the
other members—as presenting these cultural needs in a distorted fash-
ion. If this ethical-political debate proceeds according to the criteria of
public deliberation, each one of the other participants in it will face the
following dilemma: either agree with the critical argument or expose
herself in the eyes of the other members as a not trustworthy member
of the community.
If ethical-political discourses produce in this way claims to be legiti-
mized on a universalistic moral level, the difficulty of overcoming the
“barriers” of cultural difference would be done with. The general public
would be able to assess the credibility of minority claims not by mak-
ing guesses about the “true nature” of the cultural needs of communities
of this kind. It would be enough to assess the procedural quality of the
ethical-political discourses that produce these claims. More particularly,
it would be enough to make sure that no coercion is being exercised on
the participants in the discourse, that no one is prevented from making
relevant contributions to the discourse (the relevance of the interventions
can be assessed by the other participants), and that the better argument
always prevails.
The application of the last criterion is most problematic, because the
arguments in such debates are culture-specific and their cogency cannot
be assessed from without. However, the quality of an argument of this
sort is manifested in the debate itself—if no one of the participants can
object against it without exposing herself in the eyes of the other com-
munity members as being incompetent, or dishonest, then this argument
should be recognized as valid from any perspective.
All of these procedural parameters of intra-group debates are univer-
sally accessible. They are not culturally specific. Besides, public delibera-
tion , because of its self-reflective nature, also provides opportunities for
dealing with false consciousness—a notorious obstacle to finding “a com-
mon language” between minority communities and the public at large.
120  Plamen Makariev
What conclusions in terms of minority policies can be made from all
these considerations? A communicative empowerment of national, eth-
nic, and religious minorities would be possible if a culture of public com-
munication is promoted within minority communities, ideally if public
deliberation were to become the prevailing pattern of intra-group debates
concerning the ways in which such groups’ claims for fair minority poli-
cies might be legitimized. All of this means that the role of minority lead-
ers and of charismatic figures who speak on these communities’ behalf
should be minimized, and the importance of rational egalitarian debates
within the communities should be brought to the fore.
Communicative empowerment of such nature can be realized, as was
already stated above, only if the proper conditions are present. Namely, a
(late) modern communicative environment, where agency and rationality
do matter. In my opinion this is the case with non-immigrant minorities
in Central and East European countries. Further, regarding the prospects
for realizing communicative empowerment in political practice, a viable
option seems to be offered by the Internet. Quite a few recent publica-
tions are dealing with the prospects of public deliberation in the virtual
“public sphere.”41 Communication in the Internet is especially egalitar-
ian, open and difficult to control by coercive means. What is missing at
present is the priority here of argumentative means of “winning hearts
and minds.” However, this can be changed through competent and per-
sistent work, showing to the public the advantages of manipulation-proof
communication.
And last, but not least, social media platforms have already demon-
strated how effectively distinct publics can function. I can easily imagine
a minority community as a public of this sort, where ethical-political
discourses are performed concerning the community’s cultural needs, i.e.,
the conditions which are necessary for the reproduction over time of its
collective identity. If these discourses are immune to manipulations, i.e.,
if they are performed according to the rules of public deliberation, the
claims that they produce should be credible from the general public’s
perspective.

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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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.

7.2 What is Cultural Impoverishment?

Defined in a broad sense, the term culture may refer to “the whole com-
plex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features
that characterizes a society or a social group.”8 This contains arts and let-
ters, moral and legal systems, scientific and technical productions, value,
traditions, and beliefs. Accordingly, all human activities can be regarded
as cultural activities, including socio-economic interactions such as labor,
material goods exchange, financial activities, and wealth production. In
this respect, linking impoverishment with culture can lead to multiple
confusions. Firstly, because it implies that even material poverty shall
be considered as a product of culture. Secondly, because it may hint that
 Cultural Impoverishment  127
there are “poor” and “rich” cultures. Thus, there is a misunderstanding
which should be keenly avoided from the outset.
On the one hand, and in order to highlight the existence of non-­
material forms of deprivation that can lead to social inequities and to
identity ­marginalization, it would be more relevant to use the notion
of culture in a more restrictive meaning as referring foremost to the
domain of symbolic production, including mainly sciences, artistic
­activities, information, and education. On the other hand, associating
­poverty with culture does not mean that a specific culture is poor or
trivial. Indeed, ­cultural impoverishment does not suppose any normative
value ­judgment. Material ­impoverishment is always less related to a lack
of material resources than to the politics leading to the production and
­distribution of wealth. Similarly, cultural impoverishment is less a matter
of resources than of capabilities and politics allowing an accommodate
exploitation of these resources.
Henceforth, material impoverishment as related to the reality of
distributive injustice can be legitimately distinguished from cultural
­
impoverishment which is related to the reality of epistemic-cognitive
injustice. However, it is worth noticing that this distinction does not
mean that we have to deal with two separate types of impoverishment.
It rather confirms the multidimensional aspect of this phenomenon. In
fact, although they are often interconnected, these two types of impov-
erishment do not apply to the same scope and they are not necessarily
reciprocal. As we will argue, there are societies which are rich in terms
of individual income but which should be classified as poor in terms of
cultural rights and quality of education.
The definition of poverty as adopted by a cohort of i­nternational
organization reports seems to be deeply concerned with this
­
­multidimensional aspect. In the World Bank texts, for example, “poverty
is pronounced deprivation in well-being.”9 In this respect, the material-
financial dimension of poverty is generally differentiated from—but also
associated with—educational and health dimensions.10 Whereas many
reports recognize the difficulties of grasping poverty quantitatively,11 they
endeavor to establish indexes that can measure poverty globally or locally.
Income, life costs, and consumption are the principal criteria for measur-
ing the material financial dimension of poverty, while school enrolment
and infantile mortality are, among others, criteria for m ­ easuring the edu-
cational and health dimension. The data, rates, and statistics are, rightly,
considered to be a compulsory entry point to schematizing and, then,
targeting the figures of deprivation. Nevertheless, the educational dimen-
sion cannot exhaust the meaning of cultural impoverishment as we are
describing it. It is still necessary to pay attention to the quality of educa-
tion, to the knowledge produced by laboratories, its relevance to local
contexts, and its ability to enhance diversity and to promote local cul-
ture as a sphere of meaning production. Indeed, culture has to deal with
128  Mongi Serbaji
a manner of being rather than with possession. It is the domain in which
the person becomes aware of oneself and builds a network of relation-
ships with others and with the world. Hence, cultural impoverishment
cannot refer systematically to material indexes and cannot be calculated
on the basis of a kind of phenomenological observation.
In this context, cultural impoverishment defines—specifically—a lack
of the fundamental capabilities required to develop cognitive and cre-
ative faculties, to be able to diversify resources for theoretical as well as
practical knowledge, and to participate in the processes of public dis-
course as a real partner. Being necessary to communicate with others
and to create intelligible meanings, these capabilities are unavoidable
competences allowing persons to achieve all human interactions. On the
contrary, the denial of these capabilities leads to a disadvantaged and
iniquitous situation. In this respect, it is rather the idea of deprivation and
lack which allows the metaphorical connection between poverty and cul-
ture. Nevertheless, it is not merely a lack of resources. It is further a lack
of abilities and means to effectively benefit from the existing resources.
Precisely, it is a lack of capabilities.
In this regard, the concept of “capabilities” is very interesting. It
was initially introduced and elaborated by Amartya Sen in a critique.12
Indeed, Sen intended to call into question the postulate of poverty line.
Nonetheless, this concept can be legitimately extrapolated to the field of
cultural poverty. Apprehending cultural impoverishment by relying on a
capability approach means that we have to consider not only the lack of
the symbolic resources, but also the lack of the necessary abilities to have
effective access to these resources or to use them adequately. The neces-
sary capabilities can be acquired mainly through adequate education, a
free and diversified media and information resources, and free cultural
activities/institutions. It is only by the means of these capabilities that the
agent can develop a critical attitude regarding the practices and knowl-
edge established by her own culture or by other cultures. Deficiency of
these capabilities, which might be due to socio-economic causes, would
result in cultural closure, in intolerance, or in the dogma of the complete-
ness of a specific culture.
From this perspective, the violation of cultural rights and the lack—or
even the failure—of the politics of difference can be considered as causes
that deepen cultural impoverishment. At a global level, the cultural and
epistemic hegemony allied with the Western globalization contributes
continuously to the elimination of cultural diversity and, then, to the
impoverishment of humanity’s cultural heritage.
Consequently, the notion of cultural impoverishment can be grasped
on two superimposed levels—descriptive and normative-critical. The
descriptive level brings to the light some aspects of cultural and epistemic
deprivation. However, although descriptive statistics demonstrate existing
injustices concerning access to education, information, and media, they
 Cultural Impoverishment  129
remain insufficient, as will be shown in the following section. We need,
in fact, to pay attention to the politics and actors who are responsible
for the present reality described statistically and for its historical origins.
The normative-critical level brings about universal moral claims such
as justice, recognition, human rights, and warns about tolerant politics
regarding exclusion, disrespect, and social contempt.
These twofold levels can explain why we resort to the term “impover-
ishment” and not to the term “poverty.” Using the term “poverty” would
neglect the normative implication. Poverty evokes a fact. But here, we
do not only have to deal with a fact. The point is to take into consid-
eration eventual politics and strategies producing recognition or exclu-
sion, justice or harms. In this respect, cultural impoverishment might be
a result of factual dynamics characterizing the political, the social, and
the cultural spheres at a national limited level as well as at a global level.
We use the notion “dynamic” in the sense that situations of injustice
are not isolated from each other. On the contrary, these situations are
often mutually reinforced and systematically reproduced. Therefore, in
order to explore these dynamics, designating the victims and the parties
responsible for this kind of impoverishment will be indispensable. This
finding may raise the question of whether this impoverishment and the
situation of the injustices it feeds are a mere epiphenomenon of socio-
economic domination or whether they have their own logic? How is one
to understand, in sum, the relationship, if any, between the several forms
of injustice, intolerance and other injuries inflicted on human beings, and
cultural impoverishment?
In the next section, I depart from the descriptive level in order to
preview some forms of cultural impoverishment (7.3.1). I argue that
this kind of impoverishment must not be approached independently of
the processes of global cultural hegemony. Pointing out the normative-
critical level, I will show that cultural impoverishment is at the core of the
dynamics of injustice, especially on a global scale (7.3.2).

7.3 Cultural Impoverishment: A Hidden Dynamic of Injustice

According to the statistics of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS),
there is a noticeable progress especially in children and youth schooling
and in other educational indexes in the decades after 2000. However, the
challenges are formidable and have not yet been met. Rates and statistics
show that this progress has stalled during the recent years, at many levels
and in many regions.13 The gap between developed countries and under-
developed nations persists, if it is not increasing.14
In 2018, there were still 258 million children, adolescents, and youth
who were out-of-school. They are almost 20% of the world population
between 6 and 17 years old. This proportion reaches 31.2% in Sub-
Saharan Africa. The rates are far higher among youth of upper secondary
130  Mongi Serbaji
school age and reach 57.5% in this same region.15 Taking into account
the low level of mean years of schooling in 2017 in many underdeveloped
states, with Pakistan and Mali coming in at just 1.87 years,16 a sizeable
portion of the schooled population of these states is under threat of fall-
ing back into illiteracy. This portion of the population may be added
to 750 million of illiterate people existing over the world.17 Illiteracy is
the most expressive form of deprivation from the symbolic capital that
allows people to participate in the processes of communication and to
live their otherness in a fitting manner.
However, as alarming as they are, these figures are not the worst.
Evolving the capabilities of a person is not only a matter of level of
education. It is also conditioned by the quality of education to which a
person has right. Following a UNESCO paper, 617 million children and
adolescents are not achieving minimum proficiency levels in reading and
mathematics despite two thirds of this group going to school.

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

In the realm of knowledge, appropriation ranges from the use of

locals as guides and the use of local myths and ceremonies as instru-
ments of conversion, to the pillage of the indigenous knowledge of
biodiversity, while violence ranges from the prohibition of the use
 Cultural Impoverishment  135
of the native languages in public spaces and the forcible adoption of
Christian names, to conversion and the destruction of ceremonial sites
and symbols, and to all forms of racial and cultural discrimination.38

As a consequence, modern science has been universally imposed as the

unique legitimate epistemology. Its hegemony is the equivalent of a radical
negation of the epistemologies of the South, i.e., of colonized societies.
Epistemic hegemony, the emblematic expression of epistemic injustice, is
nothing but epistemicide. Supported and sustained by technical progress
and mass media, cultural hegemony contributes to a radical shaping of
the social structures of colonized societies. Furthermore, this entails a
situation of double epistemic alienation: on the one hand, this regards
their own cultural and cognitive heritage, which can no longer be
productive of meaning since their form of life was significantly destroyed;
and, on the other hand, this regards Western knowledge associated with
the image of colonizer.
Cultural hegemony properly means that those who produce legitimate
and valid knowledge are also those who monopolize the production of
meaning and the efficiency means to spread it worldwide. Language pro-
ficiency, intellectual propriety, and systems of indexation are the rules of
the game of inclusion-exclusion from the realm of the valid knowledge.
They are the soft tools of neo-colonial cultural domination. The over-
possessing of meaning and truth on one side would necessarily lead to
the dispossession on the other side. It is this dispossession that can be
designated, in this context, as cultural impoverishment. The supremacy of
the dominant epistemology and its methods is implicitly recognized and
accepted in the educational systems of Southern societies. In social sci-
ence as well as in all other sciences, local scholars are constrained in hav-
ing to subscribe to the modern, Western criteria of the scientific method
and to seek recognition in the Western academic milieu. Any product of
Western societies would be modern and universally valid, while what
is produced in other societies conforming to their traditions would be
traditional, autochthonous, and local. It would be invisible.39 Hence, two
aspects characterize the situation of the culturally impoverished: margin-
alization and extraversion.
The first aspect consists precisely in the marginalization of the
­symbolic and epistemic production of non-Western societies. As S­ antos
argues, mono-cultural rationality and mono-epistemology dogmas
­create a zone of non-existence around modern, Western culture. People
in this zone are stigmatized as ignorant, inferior, backward, retrograde,
and ­unproductive.40 Historical colonial injustice and the monopole of
­information make this dogma, produced in the zone of the truth and
­sciences, a self-evident truism even for the victims of the stigmatization.
This self-stigmatization accumulates, over time, as a generalized loss of
the feeling of self-esteem. It shows how frail the relationship of these
136  Mongi Serbaji
people to themselves, let alone to others, is. Cultural impoverishment
implies, also, impoverishment of identity. This does not mean that peo-
ple have to gave up to their traditions or heritage completely, but that
the problems related to educational systems, historical colonization, the
imperatives of economic development often planned by global financial
institutions, the one-way flow of information and cultural contents, etc.
create a situation in which belonging to a local tradition is, thereafter,
challenged by the ideologies of development and modernization. Hence,
beyond quantitative statistics about education, researches or cultural
production, the real problem is to know whether these sectors allow
local elites as well as young beneficiaries to give culturally adequate
responses to modern problems and the challenges facing their societies.
The weakness of the educational and research structures is a main factor
behind cultural impoverishment. Total subordination of educational and
research systems to Western norms and strategies would not eradicate
impoverishment; it may eradicate culture though.
The second aspect consists in epistemic—and cultural—extraversion.
Hountondji notes that the researchers in Africa are extraverted. They
are externally oriented. In spite of being inwardly focused in response to
the questions of African societies, they are organized and subordinated
to the necessities of other societies.41 Borrowing the term “extraversion”
from the economic field, Hountondji asserts that an analogy is possible
between the economic and the epistemological dependency of the Tier-
World on the Metropolis, i.e., on Western societies.42 Despite the rich
natural and cultural heritage that yields European and North American
scholars a colossal dividend of knowledge,43 Southern elites can, only
with great difficulty, defend the validity of the local or traditional knowl-
edge. Being dependents on Western laboratories institutions of knowl-
edge, methods of research, and construction of models, the local elites,
including those who want to resist against extraversion, realize that their
self-awareness is mediated by the “other.” But the “other” they have to
deal with is a dominant “other.” African Studies or Asian Studies are, in
this perspective, examples of disciplines that are produced in Western
universities and that deeply shaped the local research about Africa and
Asian civilizations.
Marginalization and extraversion are actually aspects that describe
the situation of the poor at a socio-economic level. The poor person
is socially excluded and economically dependent. At a cultural level
also, marginalization is the euphemism for exclusion. Extraversion
is a euphemism for dependency. Both can produce several forms of
distortion as regards the relation of a person or group to themselves/
itself—to their own traditions, knowledge, etc.—as well as to other
people or groups. Intolerance, fanaticism, identitarian closure are
extreme attitudes which must be dealt with in addressing cultural
impoverishment.
 Cultural Impoverishment  137
7.4 Cultural Impoverishment and Democratic Transition
in Tunisia
Tunisia, a North African country belonging at the same time to the African
continent, Mediterranean basin, and to the Arab-Muslim world, was col-
onized by France from 1881 to 1956. If we believe the Tunisian philoso-
pher Albert Memmi,44 the colonization had deeply impacted the world of
the colonized, including in terms of psychology and self-conscience. He
shows how colonization invested in the impoverishment of the symbolic
universe of the autochthonous people. This can be explained, on the one
hand, by the oppression of collective memory to the point of produc-
ing a collective amnesia. The colonized would be, according to Memmi,
deprived of history as well as of territory. On the other hand, the impov-
erishment of the symbolic universe is illustrated by “linguistic drama:”45
the drama of the “colonial bilingualism” that the colonized writer must
confront. It is a drama because the colonized writer is condemned to a
tragic choice. He would opt for the language of institutions and knowl-
edge, but this is the language of the oppressor; it cannot convey its own
history. He would attempt to write in his mother tongue as a form of
self-possession; but this tongue is neither written nor read; it permits only
uncertain and poor oral development.46
Bilingualism or, more precisely, diglossia, reflects a relation of unjust
domination. The supposed supremacy of the language of the colonizer is
just one of multiple forms of the symbolic domination that supports the
appropriation of territory. In colonized Tunisia, the spread of French as
the language of the administration, modern knowledge, education, and
court systems generated, systematically, the decline and the impoverish-
ment of the mother tongue of the colonized. Considered to be an “idiom
of conversation,”47 Arabic is more and more reduced to conversational
usage. Compared to French, the language of the colonized is connected
with “archaic forms of economic and social organization.”48 Linguistic
domination during the colonial period can be regarded as an efficient
mechanism of the politics of the cultural impoverishment and socio-cul-
tural exclusion. But there is no room to expect that the impacts of these
policies will cease once the colonial situation is, legally, brought to an
end.
Effectively, “linguistic ambiguity” has persisted even after the
­independence in 1956. Although the Tunisian Constitution of 1959 states
that the Arabic language is the official language of the republic, it was
only with the end of the 1970s that the school curricula was, gradually
and partially, taught in the mother tongue. Designed as the enterprise
­language of sciences and technologies, the French language c­ontinues
to be considered a sign of social advancement.49 In universities, the
­predominance of the French language still remains. This predominance
can in no way be dissociated from a belief that the mother tongue is so
138  Mongi Serbaji
“poor” that it cannot convey modern science and technology. This can
lead to a position of collective loss of self-worth that can be illustrated by
using the term “Arab” in a tone of disdain. In the Tunisian local dialect,
“Arab” work means that it is bad, and an “Arab” rendezvous signals a
lack of respect for an appointment, etc. As Memmi notes, this use would
be an adoption of the colonizer’s lexicon.50 It is also an admission of the
colonizer’s pretended cultural supremacy. The debate has never come to
an end between those who consider this dominance to be a condition of
modernization and cultural openness and those who see it as a simple
form of alienation and impoverishment of the tradition. Everything that
is related to the local culture falls under the categories of tradition and
heritage. On the contrary, everything related to the West would be mod-
ern and its modernity is its very value.
However, there is a near-consensus that the emergent state has
undertaken considerable efforts in order to make education compulsory,
free, and modern. These efforts were supported, on the level of legislation
and culture, by a plan of social modernization. The women’s status code
and the policies aiming to limit tribalism and to promote citizenship
integration have contributed to manifest change of the Tunisian form
of life, especially in urban settings. The governments of the young
independent state made remarkable investments in education, media, and
literature publication, in addition to supporting movies and other cultural
productions. However, neither the education politics nor modernization
processes have definitively sheltered the Tunisian society from cultural
impoverishment.

7.4.1 As Regards Education

Illiteracy rates in Tunisia are still high, with almost 20% of the popula-
tion being affected. Furthermore, the geographical distribution of this
population shows a noticeable regional inequality. While in the greater
Tunis district the rate of illiteracy is steady under 11.3%, it exceeds in
many districts in central and northwestern parts of the country 32%.51
Until 2014, only 36.6 % of the population over 10 years in age had com-
pleted a cycle of secondary education. In this same pattern of population,
there are only 12% who have successfully completed a short cycle of ter-
tiary education.52 Mean years of schooling do not exceed, in this context,
7.22 years, which, in 2017, compares to Germany with more than 14
years and more than 13 years in the UK . These figures show how weak
the politics of education are in Tunisia. Matters are made worse regard-
ing the quality of education. According to the evaluations of the Program
for International Students Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International
Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the OECD, Tunisia was
consistently low ranked with very modest results.53
 Cultural Impoverishment  139
After several decades of independence, these statistics are a sign of a
real crisis not only in the educational system but also in education poli-
cies and strategies. In similar conditions it would be difficult to diversify
and enrich the cultural production, to involve creativity, critical thinking,
etc. This crisis is going to get worse given the situation of the cultural and
academic production, mainly including books, press, and citable docu-
ments. In 2018, for example, only 2,135 books were published.54 The
volume of academic publication remains quite limited.55 From 2015 to
2017, Tunisia imported books to the amount of $14 million every year.
Belgium, having an equal number of inhabitants, imports books in excess
of $579 million each year. In many regions of the country, only 7% of
the population over 10 years of age has a tertiary-level of education.56
Furthermore, Tunisian universities seem to be confined to the transfer of
knowledge instead of also engaging in its production. These universities
are increasingly isolated from society.57 According to Scimago Journal &
Country Rank statistics, from 1996 to 2019 Tunisia published almost
90,000 citable documents,58 which is approximately the same quan-
tity of citable documents published in Switzerland in 2018 and 2019!
Accordingly, the means which were supposed to spread the modern val-
ues and knowledge, namely education and scientific research, have failed
to reach this aim.

7.4.2 As Regards the Process of Modernization

The process of modernization in independent Tunisia has been grounded
on a history of political and social reform. Kheireddine Pasha59 and Tahar
Haddad60 are, in this context, the emblematic figures of an enlightened
elite. In the political field, this process has contributed to a modern orga-
nization of political and administrative institutions. As regards the cul-
tural field, it has enabled the emergence of a literate elite educated within
Tunisia and outside of the country, mainly in France. However, it was
rather a paternalist modernization, which, on response to the challenges
of development and the need for the stability of the post-colonial state,
has oppressed claims for democracy, justice and political and cultural
liberties. Cultural policy after independence was quite centralized and
totally controlled by the regime.61 It was serving the regime’s ideology and
its propensity to dominate the social production of culture. State financial
support for culture went hand in hand with administrative censorship of
intellectual and creative production. Consequently, this modernization
was permanently questioned: it was questioned by the elites for whom it
was incomplete and cover the authoritarian aspect of the regime, by the
different social classes who lost confidence in the state because of the eco-
nomic crisis at the end of the 1970s, and by the traditionalists for whom
modernization was just a disguised westernization.
140  Mongi Serbaji
Whatever might stand as the critique addressing the process of mod-
ernization, two main theses can be admitted:

− 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.

In short, there was an evident advancement, in independent Tunisia, within

the fields of education and state modernization. But this advancement
did not totally eradicate cultural impoverishment as a deprivation of the
adequate and diversified resources required to develop creative potential,
foster theoretical and practical knowledge, and participate in the process
of public discourse. In addition to limited cultural and academic pro-
duction, the Tunisian experience of modernization was challenged by a
separation between the processes of modernization and secularization on
the one hand and those of political democratization on the other hand.
Secularism, unification of the legal system, modernization of education,
and eradication of tribalism were accompanied by a continued restric-
tion on information, artistic creation, and even academic freedoms. The
violation of these cultural rights hinders the rise of a sphere of intellectual
debates and exchanges about issues like religion, identity, human rights,
etc. Under the condition of a “unique” and “official” understanding of
religious scripture there is, for example, no tradition of tolerant and open
discussion between secularists and religious that could arise.
 Cultural Impoverishment  141
Even if it is not totally accurate to establish a causal link between the
modes of education and fanaticism, or between the process of modern-
ization/secularization and the orthodox reaction, it would not be pru-
dent to totally deny a link between a lack of a critical thinking—or state
domination of the cultural field—and the spread of dogmatic, mono-
dimensional lectures of the religious texts. In similar conditions, forms
of indoctrination prevail over the possibilities of a hermeneutic and criti-
cal investigation of one’s identity. This indoctrination would conceal the
constitutive diversity of one’s culture and, hence, deprive the person of
its richness. Moreover, the process of modernization does not immunize
society against the return of the radical and violent forms of religiosity.
On the contrary, the excess of modernization imposed from on high may
have contributed to this return and to the rise of Islamism and Salafism
in general.66 Relying on a face-to-face survey with some members of the
Salafist movement, Hadj Salem concluded in his investigation that most
of them were not in school and that they studied scientific and techni-
cal areas. He noted that just a minority among them had a tertiary-level
education; they had enrolled mostly in disciplines other than the arts and
humanities.67
The post-revolution process initiated in 2011 shows to what extent an
orthodox traditional conception of religion is still dominant throughout
the different social classes. The debate about the identity of the state
and the universalism of human rights shows that Tunisian society is
still unable to respond to the fundamental question “who are we?” The
report of the Commission of Individual Liberties and Equality (CILE)
gave place to rare debates as well as to a lot of dogmatic reactions and
violent insults. The prevalence of dogmatism over understanding and
reasonable argumentation may be the consequence of many factors that
are related to cultural impoverishment such as cultural totalitarianism
that closes up any path to the diversity and to the freedom of thought,
to restricted access to cultural and academic resources (films, books,
reviews, museums, etc.), or to a lack of a culture of media literacy. Here,
cultural impoverishment as a limitation of the sources of knowledge has
weakened the possibilities for an intra-culture debate about tradition. In
general, it prevents the rise of public space as a space of communication,
i.e., of a pluralism of interpretations and understanding. The lack of a
democratic culture and the impoverishment of the public sphere weigh
heavily on the process of democratic transition.

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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148  Mongi Serbaji
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8 “Detention and Torture Centers”
in Latin American Dictatorships
Places of Subjective and Social
Reconfiguration*
José Santos Herceg

As is well known, a cycle of civil–military dictatorships took place during

the second half of the twentieth century in the Southern Cone of Latin
America—in Brazil (1964–1985), Uruguay (1973–1985), Chile (1973–
1990), and Argentina (1976–1983). This social-political context had an
undeniable impact on the field of philosophy. The effect, first of all, has
been concrete: many philosophers have been expelled from universities,
persecuted, imprisoned, murdered, and exiled; philosophy programs have
been closed, or heavily interfered with, and specific topics and authors
have been censored and prohibited. The impact of dictatorships on the
field of philosophy is also theoretical, since it provides themes, issues, and
research topics, especially in the field of political philosophy.
The relationship of Latin American political philosophy with these
dictatorships began during the dictatorships. Some of these reflections
sought to direct and express criticism toward them. It is what Luis Scherz
has called “informal intelligentsia” or “counterintelligentsia,” which is
characterized by its criticism of the official regime and its eagerness to
replace it.1 Another portion of philosophers, on the other hand, dedi-
cated their thinking to supporting and substantiating these dictatorial
regimes. These were part of what José Jara has called “word allies,” that
is, those who “through various means and occasions publicly enunciate
[their word], or in some cases, behind the scenes of the established mili-
tary power, to give a theoretical justification.”2 Latin American political
philosophy has maintained a thematic relationship with dictatorships
even after they have ended. There have been multiple issues that have
interested philosophers during this time. Among them, one that stands
out is the thematic area related to political prisons. Political imprison-
ment during the dictatorships was a massive phenomenon. Thousands
of people were incarcerated during the years of the dictatorships, most
of these people being tortured. Hundreds of places were established for
this purpose. As recognized in the “Valech Report”3 during the Chilean

* 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

provides the executioner the subtle enjoyment of having the victim

at his mercy, of exercising absolute control over their body, intimacy,
dignity, if not over their convictions. Torture awakens a fantasy of
elementary omnipotence in its manifestations since it is an immediate
way to reach the other person in depth.36

This enjoyment of omnipotence is something that usually emerges in the

testimonies of tortured Latin Americans when they describe the reactions
of their executioners.
The strategic objective of torture, on the other hand, does not have
to do with the torturer’s individual motivations, but with purposes that
affect the victim. The strategic objective of torture is the complete destruc-
tion of the tortured subject. As Le Breton has written, torture “some-
times translates a pure will to annihilate the other, martyring, staining
and reducing them to an object. The imposition of pain and humiliation
pursues a logic of invalidation of the victim.”37 Marrades warns that “[it]
matters … to specify the conceptual sense of that destruction or annihila-
tion of the other carried out by torture.”38 He immediately clarifies that,
even if it could happen, “it is not about killing.”39 The objective of torture
in dictatorship was never concrete annihilation; according to the author,
it was about the “destruction of the personal world.”40 In Vidal’s terms,
“the main objective in inflicting torture is to disintegrate the identity of
the victim, both personally and in relation to society.”41 Bulo states that
in torture, the subject is transformed “into a clean slate, an actual blank
page on which the design can be written from scratch, and a perfect sys-
tem can be implemented.”42 The objective would be, according to the
author, to “empty the other, to neutralize it, to leave it without relief,
without texture, without text.”43 This is achieved by transforming the
tortured into what has been called the absolute victim.
 Detention and Torture Centers  155
Adriana Cavarero has coined the term “horrorism” to designate that
extreme violence characterized by being indiscriminate and aimed to the
unarmed, that is to say, to “those who are in a condition of passivity and
suffer violence that they cannot escape or respond to.”44 Torture is, as the
author maintains, a paradigmatic case of this “horrorism;” therefore, its
victims have precisely these two characteristics: their passivity and their
total exposure and vulnerability. This is what makes the victim of Latin
American torture a victim of horrific, horrifying, and disgusting violence
into an “absolute victim.”
The victim of torture, like any other victim, is, by definition, a passive
person on whom the harm is exerted. The passivity of the victim can be
understood in different ways. On the one hand, torture is something that
always happens to someone against their will, without wanting or seek-
ing it: there is no consent. The imposing and violent nature of torture
implies that it is always exercised against the will of the tortured one.
The victim’s passivity, however, does not only refer to a lack of will, but
also to a complete absence of action. When the torment is being executed,
the subject is always immobilized or is moved by another person. Body
displacements in torture are never intended or provoked by the victim.
If there is any action on the part of the tortured, it would simply be the
act of receiving the punishment. This is clearly not a proper action, but
the fact of being available to the executioner, without any possibility of
opposing, of protecting themselves: they simply cannot do anything but
observe the action upon them. Their body and mind are violated without
limit, not being able to do anything to avoid it. The victim of torture is
completely subjugated. The torturer holds the action, and the victim is
reduced to a secondary place, deprived of any agency and subjected to the
will, designs, and even the whims of their executioner.
Therefore, the victim is an exposed subject reaching the limit of the
most absolute vulnerability. The subject is open, defenseless, literally and
metaphorically naked, in extreme exposure. The feeling of helplessness is
repeated in all the testimonies of those who have been tortured.

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,

The search for making suffer implies a sophistication of the methods

used to generate the greatest amount of pain in the most effective
way possible. This economy of the painful puts science and tech-
nology to operate at the service of the mechanisms to exert torture.
Anatomy and technology provide where and how to use the devices
to torture.73

Natalie Pérez speaks of an “economy of the painful” that is embodied in

the preparation of a technique. The list of torture techniques used dur-
ing dictatorships is huge74 and has been described multiple times. These
include Latin American tortures like “pau de Arara,” the dove,75 the tele-
phone,76 “la parrilla,” the submarine,77 etc. Others were part of the initial
training.
Through well-trained torturers acting in coordination within an insti-
tutional framework, torture in the CCDyT achieves its political goals. The
required information is obtained so that more subjects can be tortured. A
great mass is reached, which is what happened during these dictatorships:
everyone who was imprisoned was tortured. Through massiveness, fear
is spread throughout the population. The educational function of torture
is implemented in this way. Finally, the social fabric is dismantled as mis-
trust, betrayal, and suspicion take over the people. A new mode of rela-
tionships is installed among the subjects, to the point that we can speak
of a new model of society. The achievement of this objective was one of
the main objectives of the CCDyT of the Latin American dictatorships.
They were places that had the specific purpose of destroying and recon-
figuring subjects as well as social structures. As I have said before, the
CCDyT were the place from which reconfiguration of the entire societies
was projected. Torture is not just another phenomenon that took place
during imprisonment but is a central element in understanding the func-
tioning and importance of these places. That is why one of the generic
names used for them is “Detention and Torture Centers,” including this
phenomenon in the name itself.

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:

The Unhappy Consciousness, on the other hand, is, conversely, the

tragic fate of the certainty of self that aims to be absolute. It is the
consciousness of the loss of all essential being in this certainty of
itself, and of the loss even of this knowledge about itself-the loss of
substance as well as of the Self.33

Unhappy Consciousness is thus formed upon what might be called

“the loss of loss,” for what has been repudiated/disavowed/lost cannot
be recognized as having anything to do with constituting one’s sense of
self—loss itself is lost. As such, Stoic Unhappy Consciousness is always
haunted by a self-repudiation that creates the specter of “the Other”
within itself,34 now recapitulating the unhappiness of the conflict driving
the Master–Slave Dialectic within self-consciousness.
For Hegel, the Stoic spirit of Unhappy Consciousness thus has a mir-
ror in a Skeptical spirit that is always waiting to undermine.35 On this
point Hegel writes, “[i]t is clear that just as Stoicism corresponds to the
Notion of the independent consciousness which appeared as the lord and
 Confucian Remonstrance  177
bondsman relationship, so [Skepticism] corresponds to its realization as a
negative attitude towards otherness, to desire and work.”36 The existence
of an “Other” within itself means that there is a skeptical force always
undercutting the integrity of the self-conscious identity that might have
tried to retreat in a Stoic-like manner into the principle of self-certain
existence such that “consciousness truly experiences itself as internally
contradictory.”37 Here the Stoic, self-serious part stands as “the simple
Unchangeable” sternly monitors what Hegel likens to “the squabbling of
self-willed children”—“the protean Changeable” which is the Skeptical
part of Unhappy Consciousness.38 Self-consciousness thus finds no solace
after the external conflict with “the Other” and the restaged version of
it that gave rise to a new internal bifurcation. Here self-consciousness
shows itself to be “absolute dialectical unrest”39 where “[t]his unhappy,
inwardly disrupted consciousness, since it’s essentially contradictory
nature is for it a single consciousness, must for ever have present in the
one consciousness the other also.”40
…
And so getting back to the matter at hand, after conflict with the
“Other” and becoming Slave to what turns out to be a dependent Master,
the question turns to how self-conscious identity that inherits the contra-
dictions arising from external conflict might unfold when it is constituted
by an internal split leading to profound existential unhappiness. On the
one hand, this is the theoretical question that Hegel’s Master–Slave and
Unhappy Consciousness collectively pose. On the other, it is also, sadly,
a question that is very much practical in the run-up to 2047 and the cur-
rent unhappy reckoning with the meaning of having Hong Kong as an
“Other” which the PRC depends upon for global trade and which simul-
taneously threatens the principles of “Harmonious Society” and “The
Chinese Dream” upon which the PRC stakes its continued existence.

Conflict, the Other, and Self-Conscious Identity: Considering

the PRC and Hong Kong
So, for the time being, the resonances with Hegel’s accounts of the Master–
Slave Dialectic and the ensuing development of Unhappy Consciousness
call for analysis, with two questions coming to the fore. First, there are
apparent similarities between this theoretical approach and the real-world
situation in Hong Kong, but to what degree? Second, once the similarities
and dissimilarities are established, can Hegel’s dialectical thinking be of
use in figuring out how things might play out in Hong Kong and/or in
China more broadly? Now, Hegel’s byzantine theoretical commitments
preclude wholesale adoption of his framework to process events unfold-
ing in Hong Kong in relation to the Mainland PRC, and so it may be best
to stop the wholesale adoption of Hegel’s framework at this point. Why?
178  James Garrison
Before even thinking about proceeding, if there is merit in turning to
Hegelian thought to help in understanding historical and recent events in
China (certainly not a trifling “if”), it must be conceded that constitutive
encounters with the “Other” have taken place on multiple, sometimes
overlapping levels, all of which would confound any attempt to render
a linear narrative. There seem to be at least two levels, and if there were
further valences, that would only highlight the difficulty in anticipating
that narrative’s future trajectory all the more.
First, the foregoing exposition would seem to indicate that a series of
conflicts in the Opium Wars made China see itself through the eyes of the
“Other” in colonial masters, recover some dignity as the dependence of
those old colonial masters on material goods became increasingly clear,
and enter into to an uneasy, unhappy détente whereby the PRC now
stakes its existence on certain principles, namely “Socialism with Chinese
characteristics” as defined over and against a creeping bourgeois, global
materialism growing from within. This seems to fit the Hegelian template
for self-consciousness, broadly speaking.
However, there is also the second dynamic where Hong Kong has
increasingly come into its own and developed a sense of self through
conflict with the PRC serving as the dominant “Other” which comes to
depend on its inferior (here in terms of Hong Kong’s infrastructure for
facilitating exchange of capital and goods in global markets for the PRC)
and likewise enter into a fractious, unhappy state of affairs, where, as
a matter of principle, the PRC simultaneously repudiates and depends
upon what Hong Kong represents. Hong Kong’s way of being is thus cast
as “Other,” monitored, and, when necessary, disciplined. This too seems
to correspond to major features in Hegel’s account.
Understanding this second dynamic of Hong Kong’s self-conscious iden-
tity emerging through conflict does not even begin to address the complex-
ities of the situation though. The Hegelian approach developed here does
not reckon with Japan’s historical role as a colonizing “Other” throughout
the region, including Hong Kong, nor does it deal with the way in which
Hong Kong’s quasi-democratic existence is interwoven into the PRC’s
claim over Taiwan, nor is attention given to what are China’s own argu-
ably neo-colonial ambitions in its periphery and in Africa. It is at this point
that the analogy drawn between the situation in Hong Kong and Hegel’s
dialectic is exposed as precisely that—an analogy and not an equation.
But even granting that such breakdowns in correspondence inevitably
arise with this type of analogical reasoning, there is still a major problem
remaining. Even if Hegel could be used in any way to anticipate how
events in the region might unfold on a conceptual level, the multiple and
interwoven iterations of Hegelian dialectic at play here seem to preclude
any attempt at prognostication. How so?
Hegel’s own account would suggest that a mediator might intercede to
counsel from outside and serve as an external moderator for the internal
 Confucian Remonstrance  179
conflict between the two extreme poles of Stoicism and Skepticism.41
However, the parties that might counsel the PRC and Hong Kong—either
the United States or global institutions led by the United States and its
allies—cannot. This is because, in a cruel twist of historical irony, the so-
called “Western powers” cannot act as even vaguely neutral mediators
because they are too busy acting as the “Other” in what is here identified
as a prior and primary conflict with the PRC in its ongoing work to define
itself (with some right) over and against the patently unjust humiliation
it suffered at the hands of those same powers in earlier conflicts with the
“Other” in the Opium Wars. Hence, the resolution of the dilemma of
Unhappy Consciousness through external mediation is one area where
Hegel’s singular, linear dialectic breaks down in real-world application.
Additionally, the clock ticking down to the end of the PRC’s commit-
ments to retain Hong Kong’s Basic Law that comes in 2047 has no cor-
respondent element whatsoever in Hegel’s rather theoretical account.
This is another such area of breakdown. Therefore, Hegel can be of help
primarily in giving vocabulary and concepts with which to begin to come
to grips with the situation in Hong Kong, but going further and applying
this for the purpose of forecasting future developments is problematic.
So, can any practical lesson be drawn by mapping Hegel’s concep-
tual dynamic on to the events unfolding in and around Hong Kong?
The historical and material factors are so great that it must be con-
ceded that the foregoing analysis is in no way predictive of how things
might unfold nor does it give any material tools for working through the
issues at hand. Nonetheless, this decidedly conceptual (and not mate-
rially historical) analysis can yield commensurately conceptual insight
and resources. So without commenting on real-world persons, economic
data, military strengths, or any other material factors, what emerges
from this analysis is a contest over Chinese identity as a concept, as
a principle. Thus, examining these political issues through the vantage
of philosophy has merit on yet another level, since China’s leading
local philosophical tradition—Confucianism—provides the principles,
the “Chinese characteristics” that, one way or another, are likely to be
­crucial points of contention.
A proper analysis of Confucianism and Chinese identity in the con-
text of events in Hong Kong would be a book-length project unto itself.
However, it is possible in light of the foregoing analysis to set forth some
initial directions for investigation, using Hegel’s thinking to hone the dis-
cussion. The idea here is that Confucianism, with its well-developed local
tradition of insights into society and governance, can also extend the
Hegelian account, which is overly burdened by Hegel’s dualistic com-
mitment to parity and symmetry, by looking at political protest in terms
of constitutive power disparities that unfold asymmetrically, particularly
in terms of authoritative rulers/parents and remonstrative ministers/
children.
180  James Garrison
This is not about an “Other” and its equally other “Other” fighting with
equal strength to dominate the abstract center of capital-B Being. Rather
this is about materially unequal parties—the PRC and Hong Kong—
struggling to determine their continued existence on real-world terrain.
And so, if the parts of Chinese identity that grow from the insights of
Kong Zi [Confucius] are likely to be matters of contention, then the ques-
tion becomes: How might such a struggle play out in Confucian terms
while Hong Kong’s protest spirit undermines the principle of the PRC’s
stable, integrated existence?

Political Unrest in Confucianism

In my 2015 essay “Confucianism’s Role-Based Political Ethic: Free
Speech, Remonstrative Speech, and Political Change in East Asia” I
delineate major differences between respective protest cultures and the
nature of political change in Euro-American and in East Asian contexts.
On the one hand, there is what Michel Foucault identifies as a funda-
mentally Socratic approach of an individual combatively speaking truth
to power (parhessia παρρησία) and engaging in martyrdom in defense
of eternal truths to effect major, A->B political change.42 On the other
hand, there is what Virginia Suddath points to as the restorative, gradual,
A->A′, ritual-based approach of Confucianism and its promotion of criti-
cism as remonstrance.43 Hong Kong, while greatly influenced by Western
ideas of confrontational, pseudo-Socratic political engagement during its
time as a British colony ending in 1997, should also be considered along
Confucian lines, even if such sentiments are not readily apparent amid
the very public forms of activism that have been capturing headlines in
Hong Kong for years.
Of course, it should be said that Hong Kong identity cannot be reduced
down to Chinese identity as such. A main reason why this is so has to
do with the sense of Hong Kong civic identity has developed through
conflict with the “Other” over and against the ethno-national claim of
Chinese identity advanced by the PRC. Nor can Chinese identity be
reduced down to Confucianism, for China’s sense of self is not just a
matter of this dominant philosophical local tradition, and the complexity
of local traditions in China has developed more recently through con-
flict with the “Other” over and against a liberal, capitalist, Western-led
global order. Nevertheless, the meaning of what it means to be Chinese
is most certainly being contested right now between activists in Hong
Kong and government officials in the PRC and, as such, the meaning of
Confucianism’s moral and political insights are also in play. How so?
With regard to the PRC, on the level of ideas what is most at stake
in Hong Kong are notions of “Harmonious Society” (hexie shehui 和
谐社会) and “The Chinese Dream” (zhongguo meng 中国梦). Now, at
first glance, these terms might seem to be not much more than generally
 Confucian Remonstrance  181
optimistic political rhetorical turns. However, “Harmonious Society”
and “Chinese Dream,” as applied to discussions within the context of
Chinese culture, are in fact technical concepts and should be regarded
as points of terminology. These phrases represent extended philosophies
of governance advanced respectively by former CPC General Secretary
Hu Jintao 胡锦涛 and the leader of the PRC-led pressure in Hong Kong
since 2012, CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping 習近平. While, yes, these
terms can be regarded as political slogans, as indeed, these somewhat
vague phrases are prominent in public spaces in the PRC, they none-
theless also figure substantively into its policy and actions. And so, the
notion of “Harmonious Society” is, given the earlier rejection of all things
Confucian under Mao Zedong 毛澤東,44 rather bold in its adoption of
Confucian language.45 This ultimately counts as something of an offi-
cial endorsement of Confucianism’s promotion of social order occurring
through a musically inspired ritual choreography that establishes stable
patterns of superiority and deference in everyday interaction. Meanwhile,
the more recent notion of “The Chinese Dream” advanced by General
Secretary Xi is less forthrightly Confucian, though it is clearly positioned
in official CPC party literature as extending the idea first advanced by
his predecessor Deng Xiaoping 鄧小平 during the PRC’s “opening up
and reform” in the 1980s of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,”46
which would fuse together presumably Confucian cultural resources
with socialist views and aspirations for rising material affluence amid the
PRC’s integration post-Mao into global trade and finance systems.
These ideas of the “Harmonious Society” and “Chinese Dream” are
very much at work in the rhetoric around events unfolding in Hong
Kong.47 And it is in this regard that it makes sense to examine what
has been happening in Hong Kong in light of Confucianism, which, in
turn, can enable a deeper and more locally attuned appreciation of the
Hegelian dynamics at play.
So what is the Confucian notion of social harmony and how does it
manifest in relations between Hong Kong and the PRC? The crucial con-
cept is the so-called “Rectification of Names,” which Kong Zi is recorded
as clearly setting out as the first task of governance and required above
all else to keep social disorder at bay.48 In an earlier work of mine,
“Confucianism’s Role-Based Political Ethic: Free Speech, Remonstrative
Speech, and Political Change in East Asia,” I make an admittedly out-of-
place and anachronistic reference to more recent Irish poet W.B. Yeats in
order to draw out key features of this classically Confucian idea, writing:

Key here is the definitive statement on the rectification of names from

the Analects – unless titles are fulfilled in action, unless ‘the ruler
rules, and the ministers minister, fathers father, and sons act as sons’,
the social structure is for naught… Though a bit incongruous and
anachronistic, this recalls William Butler Yeats’ ‘Second Coming’:
182  James Garrison
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
Conversely, things hold together when reciprocal relationships
obtain such that the falcon can hear the falconer, which is to say
when rulers rule, fathers father, and so on.49

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?

Authoritarianism and Remonstrance in Confucianism

Even though it is more than a bit reductive, it seems here useful to begin
responding to these questions by juxtaposing two interrelated quotes
from the Confucian canon, which each correspond to two possible poles
within contemporary discourse. First, comes a famous and contentious
quote from Confucianism’s main text, The Analects:

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

the controversy over the value of Confucianism in the construction

of a new China—does it serve as an authoritative or an authoritar-
ian normative force?—still divides our best interpreters of Chinese
culture in our own historical moment.52

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:

Thus, if confronted by reprehensible behavior on his father’s part,

a son has no choice but to remonstrate with his father, and if con-
fronted by reprehensible behavior on his ruler’s part, a minister has
no choice but to remonstrate with his ruler. Hence, remonstrance is
the only response to immorality. How could simply obeying the com-
mands of one’s father be deemed filial?58

And so, working with this understanding of criticism in the context of

family loyalty and filial conduct, in an earlier article I thus sum up the
complex picture that Confucianism presents when it comes to remon-
strance and its significance for political culture in China moving forward,
where I write:

To weave a few disparate threads together, this means fulfilling the

Confucian demand to rectify names in practice and pointing out
when leaders are kept from leading, when advisors and experts are
unable to give expert advice, and when “the centre cannot hold” in
the Middle Kingdom, lest “things fall apart.”59

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:

Lead the people with administrative injunctions (zheng 政) and keep

them orderly with penal law (xing 刑), and they will avoid punish-
ments but will be without a sense of shame. Lead them with excellence
(de 德) and keep them orderly through observing ritual propriety (li
禮) and they will develop a sense of shame, and moreover, will order
themselves.60

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.

Conclusion: Authoritarianism and Remonstrance in Hong Kong

With the PRC’s imposition of new authoritarian laws greatly limiting
public dissent in Hong Kong in 2020, there is a great deal of fear as
to how the latter’s robust protest culture will survive. This is not just
due to COVID-19, as the PRC has sent clear signals that an authoritar-
ian approach to dissent in Hong Kong is likely, including the appoint-
ment hard-liner Zheng Yanxiong 郑雁雄 to lead the new Hong Kong
Committee for Safeguarding National Security in the aftermath of his
famous crackdown on land disputes in Wukan.61 Indeed, the end of 2020
saw Hong Kong’s resistance movements suffering extensive losses as
institutional groups like Demosisto were forced to wind down, as youth
activists were charged and in some cases sentenced to multi-month prison
terms, and as pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai 黎智英 was charged
with foreign collusion.62 All of these high-profile occurrences have likely
had a major effect on everyday people, with the broader activist-aligned
“yellow” economy having well receded from public view,63 as strong gov-
ernment reprisal has become increasingly the norm.
186  James Garrison
Additionally, the combination of the decision to bar opposition can-
didates from taking part in 2020’s Legislative Council elections and the
decision by PRC-leaning Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng
Yuet-ngor 林鄭月娥 to delay that election due to COVID-19 has created
what pan-democratic lawmakers see as a constitutional crisis, which has
heightened with moves made in early 2021 to overhaul elections and fur-
ther entrench the domination of the process by PRC loyalists.64 This is all
indeed cause for great concern, and no attempt is made within this essay
to reckon with the gravity of that situation or with possibilities for future
open conflict. However, the suggestion being made here for observers on
all sides is that if such open conflict in Hong Kong can be avoided (a big
“if”), one possible and plausible route might be to resituate conflict away
from overt resistance in the streets by way of remonstrance.
This is so because the precise meaning of any possible “Chinese Dream”
of a “Harmonious Society” (with all of its Confucian inflections) is still up
for grabs, and Hongkongers are uniquely poised to pose the remonstrative
question of whether these are genuinely being enacted and if the actions
of those in power do in fact live up to the best expression of the role of
leader. How? Well, put simply, what happens in Hong Kong will one way
or another decisively show what the Confucian rhetoric of harmony really
means in contemporary geopolitical practice. The ability to heed remon-
strative challenges to dominant opinion is, in the Confucian view, what
creates genuine harmony over and above sameness. The PRC’s rhetoric
of harmony will eventually be shown to serve one option over the other.
If all parties truly seek genuine, pluralistic harmony, then remon-
strance—by definition the mode of protest that seeks to preserve har-
mony amid disparate viewpoints and that works to enable superior and
inferior parties to remain and thrive in their respective roles—must be
kept as an option on the table. Otherwise, without something like remon-
strance as the ground of the “Harmonious Society,” the options are either
open resistance or sameness crushing that open resistance under the false
guise of “harmony,” neither of which sounds like a particularly good
“Chinese Dream.” However, with public conflict ratcheting up and dis-
senting voices being forcibly removed from the conversation, remonstra-
tive appeals may become difficult, if not impossible.
There is, of course, a certain sad irony as regards the prospects for
remonstration today, as both Hong Kong and the PRC have come into
their own until fairly recently through repudiating the imperial roots of
Confucianism’s political culture. With the former there is a de-institu-
tionalized “New Confucianism” that has often been at odds with and
critical of the liberal, democratic rights-based conception of governance
in Hong Kong.65 With the latter there was the ardent rejection during
Mao’s time of what it deemed to be the Confucian tradition’s inherent
backwards feudalism and parochialism.66 As a result, despite being a
major bulwark of traditional culture and also despite providing what
 Confucian Remonstrance  187
Tu Wei-Ming 杜維明 calls “an ethic for the man on the street” in Hong
Kong,67 Confucianism has been—both there and in the PRC—displaced.
And so to sum up, it seems that, after existential conflict leading to a
sense of self that is defined by the “Other” and the resulting unhappiness
of two sides contesting one identity, part of what is being contested is
social harmony as a principle. Moreover, it appears on the basis of this
argument that the effect could be to bring Confucian ideals like remon-
strance back into political discourse more explicitly. However, it remains
unclear whether Confucianism, having been repudiated and displaced
within its own traditional home as political philosophy and relegated to
cultural background, is still able to provide technical resources for cen-
tering debate and reconciling the two systems operating within the one
Middle Kingdom.
For the time being though, the Hegelian logic of the scene indicates
that the PRC’s commitments to social harmony ought to allow at least a
conceptual space for an alternative to potentially destabilizing authori-
tarian rhetoric, if it is taken as a base premise that civil war would spell
the end of self-conscious identity defined around any principle of social
harmony. The major point here is that, absent a decision by the PRC to
quit dealing with Hong Kong as a political question and instead to resort
to overwhelming force, the conceptual space afforded by remonstrance
accordingly stands as an alternative and is worth exploring as a locally
developed conceptual resource.
This is not to deny that material concerns may well overwhelm the
conceptual dynamics laid out in this piece. There is always the possi-
bility of the wrong person with the wrong real-world biography being
exposed, criticized, injured, or even killed, where any of these prospects
would likely provoke the other side in question to answer with force.
There is always the prospect of the wrong activist or the wrong police
officer being photographed in just the “right” unflattering way, which
would almost certainly lead inevitable consequences playing out on the
world stage. There is always the possibility of a particular call to arms on
social media trending and creating widespread street action, which tends
to lead the powers that be to crack down. And all of these possibilities
can very easily lead to the kind of overwhelming public chaos that may
make it impossible to hear the subtle language of private remonstrance.
Additionally, whether or not impending waves of migration out of Hong
Kong occur with an explicit basis in the Confucian insistence that one
should “not enter a state in crisis… [or] tarry in one that is in revolt”68
where the Way [dao 道] does not prevail, this mass migration will likely
reduce the number of people who might, even just on the level of implicit
cultural background, be inclined to think and act along the lines sug-
gested by this account of remonstrance. Put simply, for both the PRC and
parties in Hong Kong, the material logic of proportional response might
very easily endanger the conceptual possibility presented by the necessary
188  James Garrison
limits of authoritarian Confucian appeals here—i.e., the possibility of
remonstrance.
Remonstrance and Confucian political culture more generally are, with
China’s increasing economic, strategic, and cultural influence around the
world, potentially poised to become more prominent in geopolitical dis-
course. In his article in this volume, Henning Hahn writes:

Perhaps we must look out for non-Western sources such as Zhao

Tingyang’s (2009) reactualization of the Confucian idea of “all under
heaven” (tian xia). In it, he outlines the narrative of a global order in
which not only persons or nations, but the world as a whole obtains
political agency. In any case, a first step towards global political rec-
onciliation would be to include marginalized voices, inside and out-
side liberal societies.69

It remains to be seen whether or not any kind Confucian-influenced

model for governing “all under heaven” with the tradition’s goal of rich,
pluralistic harmony that would reconcile critical voices through ritual-
and role-based remonstrance can succeed on the world stage. However,
the rise of the PRC is almost certain to bring Chinese, and indeed long-
standing Confucian norms, to greater prominence in global politics.
These developments should be understood, appreciated, and critically
analyzed within the context established by Confucian thinkers and by
East Asian cultures more generally (and then, where warranted, subse-
quently joining other voices in mutually reciprocating, non-“Othering”
discussion—what Franz Martin Wimmer calls “polylog”).70
As regards the main inquiry here though, the question regarding the
effectiveness of remonstrative appeals more locally in contemporary
Hong Kong still remains. And so, the call here is for all sides, despite the
material force of events and the “logic” of proportional (or often dis-
proportional) response, to preserve remonstrance as conceptual resource
in the political culture of the region. Confucianism and Chinese history
each show in varying ways the dangers of roles breaking down and what
happens when remonstrance in response to such social instability then
goes unheeded. Moving from social harmony to anti-social chaos should
be worrisome to all parties to the extent that an overt military response
from the PRC would most probably leave Hong Kong in ruins—certainly
a loss for Hong Kong, but also likely a bitter, pyrrhic non-victory for the
PRC. And so, absent a clearly preferable alternative path out of the dilem-
mas posed by the situation in Hong Kong, there is merit in renewing and
applying conceptual resources like Confucian remonstrance. It certainly
does not present a comprehensive solution, but the Confucian approach
to remonstrance can perhaps help Hong Kong to move beyond the vicis-
situdes of a local version of Unhappy Consciousness someday and in
making it possible to find and hold the center in the Middle Kingdom.
 Confucian Remonstrance  189
Notes
1 Cf. Tom Rockmore, “Hegel and Chinese Marxism,” Asian Studies 7, no.
1 (2019): 55–73; John Fitzgerald, “China and the Quest for Dignity,” The
National Interest, no. 55 (1999): p. 57.
2 Cf. Zhuang Guotu, “Tea, Silver, Opium and War: From Commercial
Expansion to Military Invasion,” Itinerario, 17, no 2 (1993): 10–36.
3 Carl A. Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of
the Asian Opium Trade, 1750–1950 (London: Routledge, 1999), 163; Hunt
Janin, The India-China Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Jefferson,
NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1999), 34.
4 Weimin Zhong, “The Roles of Tea and Opium in Early Economic
Globalization: A Perspective on China’s Crisis in the 19th Century,” Frontiers
of History in China 5, no. 1 (2010): 87–96.
5 Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in
Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2014), 47–49.
6 Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation, 60–61; Chiang Kai-shek, China’s
Destiny and Chinese Economic Theory (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 44–75.
7 Stephen Seawright, “Hard-fought Sino-British negotiations over Hong Kong
revealed in declassified files,” The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong),
August 18, 2013.
8 Harminder Singh. “Everything you need to know about Hong Kong’s return to
Chinese sovereignty,” The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), July 1, 2016.
9 Cf. 邓小平 [Deng Xiaoping]. “高举毛泽东思想旗帜，坚持实事求是的原则
[Hold High the Banner of Mao Zedong Thought, Uphold the Principle of
Seeking Truth from Fact],” in 邓小平文选, 1975–1982: 第一卷 [Selected
Works of Deng Xiaoping, 1975–1982: First Volume] (Beijing: Renmin
University of China Press, 1993), 126.
10 Leo F. Goodstadt, Uneasy Partners: The Conflict Between Public Interest
and Private Profit in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press,
2005), 1–18.
11 Antony Dapiran, “The Anxious 1980s and Remembering Tiananmen,” City
of Protest: A Recent History of Dissent in Hong Kong (New York: Penguin
Books), 2017.
12 “Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam announces formal withdrawal of the extradi-
tion bill and sets up a platform to look into key causes of protest crisis,” The
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), September 4, 2019.
13 Hannah Beech, “Hong Kong Businesses Taking Stands on Either Side of the
Beijing Rift,” The New York Times, January 20, 2020.
14 Chris Lau, “Boy, 16, is first to be convicted of possessing laser pointer at Hong
Kong protests,” The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), November 7,
2019; Chris Lau, Jasmine Siu and Alvin Lum. “Hong Kong mask ban legal
when aimed at unauthorised protests, Court of Appeal rules in partially over-
turning lower court verdict,” The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong),
April 7, 2020.
15 Tony Cheung. “Beijing expands proposed national security law for Hong
Kong to prohibit ‘activities’ that would ‘seriously endanger national secu-
rity,’” The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), May 26, 2020; Cissy
Zhou. “Hong Kong security law: any US attempt to destroy city’s financial
hub status would be a challenge, analysts say,” The South China Morning
Post (Hong Kong), June 5, 2020.
16 Edward, Wong, “U.S. Is Preparing To Punish China Over Hong Kong,” The
New York Times, May 28, 2020.
190  James Garrison
17 Boris Johnson, “For Hongkongers fearing for their way of life, Britain will
provide an alternative,” The South China Morning Post, June 3, 2020.
18 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V.N.
Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), §178; cf. Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, in Vol. 3 of Werke, eds. Eva
Moldenhauer & Karl Markus Michel. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1970).
19 Ibid., §184.
20 Ibid., §179–181.
21 Ibid., §186–188.
22 Ibid., §185.
23 Ibid., §189.
24 Ibid., §192.
25 Ibid., §191.
26 Ibid., §195.
27 Ibid., §194–197.
28 Ibid., §193.
29 Ibid., §113.
30 Ibid., §199.
31 Ibid., §201.
32 Ibid., §198.
33 Ibid., §752.
34 Ibid., §200.
35 Ibid., §202.
36 Ibid., §202.
37 Ibid., §206.
38 Ibid., §205, §207–208.
39 Ibid., §205.
40 Ibid., §207.
41 Ibid., §226–230.
42 Cf. Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, ed. Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles:
Semiotext(e), 2001).
43 Virginia Suddath, “Ought We Throw the Confucian Baby Out with the
Authoritarian Bathwater? A Critical Inquiry into Lu Xun’s Anti-Confucian
Identity,” Confucian Cultures of Authority, eds. Peter D. Hershock and
Roger T. Ames (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006),
221–222.
44 毛泽东 [Mao Zedong], “‘批林批孔’运动 [‘Criticize Lin, Criticize Kong’
Movement],” 中国共产党新闻 [Communist Party of China News] (Beijing),
July 4, 1973; “Carry the Struggle to Criticize Lin Piao and Confucius Through
to the End,” Peking Review 17, no. 8. (1974), 5–6.
45 Daniel A. Bell, “China’s leaders rediscover Confucianism,” International
Herald Tribune (New York), September 14, 2006.
46 “中国梦为中国特色社会主义注入新能量 [The Chinese Dream Infuses
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics with New Energy],” 求是 [Seeking
Truth], May 1, 2013; cf. 邓小平 [Deng Xiaoping], “高举毛泽东思想旗帜，坚
持实事求是的原则 [Hold High the Banner of Mao Zedong Thought, Uphold
the Principle of Seeking Truth from Fact].”
47 Bernard E.S. Lee, “We need to share our economy's success for a harmonious
society,” Letter to the Editor, The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong),
December 22, 2013; Christine Loh, “Hong Kong has a role to play in creat-
ing the ‘Chinese dream’—if it can tread the middle ground,” The South China
Morning Post (Hong Kong), April 8, 2018.
 Confucian Remonstrance  191
48 The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, trans. Roger T. Ames
and Henry Rosemont, Jr. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), §13.3.
49 James Garrison, “Confucianism’s Role-Based Political Ethic: Free Speech,
Remonstrative Speech, and Political Change in East Asia,” in Non-
Western Encounters with Democratization: Imagining Democracy after the
Arab Spring, eds. Christopher K. Lamont, Jan van der Harst, and Frank
Gaenssmantel (Surrey, UK: Ashgate 2015), pp. 34; Analects, §12.11; cf.
William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming,” in The Collected Works of
W.B. Yeats. Vol. 1: The Poems. 2nd ed., ed. Richard J. Finneran (New York:
Scribner, 1997), 189.
50 Analects, §13.18.
51 Ibid., §2.16.
52 Peter D. Hershock and Roger T. Ames, Confucian Cultures of Authority
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), xv.
53 Cf. Tan Sor-hoon. “Democracy in Confucianism.” Philosophy Compass 7, no.
5 (2012), 293–294; cf. Tan Sor-hoon. “Authoritative Master Kong (Confucius)
in An Authoritarian Age,” Dao 9, no. 2 (2010), 137–149.
54 Analects. §4.18.
55 Ibid., §14.22; §19.10.
56 Ibid., §13.23.
57 Cf. Wenshan Jia, “The Wei (Positioning)–Ming (Naming)–Lianmian
(Face)–Guanxi (Relationship)–Renqing (Humanized Feelings) Complex in
Contemporary Chinese Culture,” Confucian Cultures of Authority, eds. Peter
D. Hershock and Roger T. Ames (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2006), 49–64.
58 “The Classic of Family Reverence (Xiaojing).” The Chinese Classic of Family
Reverence: A Philosophical Translation, ed. and trans. by Henry Rosemont,
Jr, and Roger T. Ames (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), §15.
59 Garrison, “Confucianism’s Role-Based Political Ethic,” 45; cf. Analects,
§12.11; Yeats, “The Second Coming,” 189.
60 Analects, §2.3.
61 Tony Cheung, “National security law: Beijing appoints tough-talking party
official Zheng Yanxiong to lead powerful new agency in Hong Kong,” The
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), July 3, 2020.
62 Tony Cheung, “Hong Kong opposition trio Joshua Wong, Ivan Lam, and
Agnes Chow face jail after pleading guilty to charges over police headquarters
siege,” The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), November 23, 2020;
Clifford Lo and Jeffie Lam, “National security law: Hong Kong media mogul
Jimmy Lai charged with foreign collusion,” The South China Morning Post
(Hong Kong), December 11, 2020.
63 Cannix Yau and Denise Tsang, “‘Yellow economic circle’ takes a hit as pro-
test-friendly shops in Hong Kong back off amid uncertainty over national
security law,” The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), June 30, 2020.
64 Phila Siu and Christy Leung, “Hong Kong leader delays legislative elections,
asks Beijing to resolve legal questions, citing coronavirus pandemic dan-
gers,” The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), July 31, 2020; Jeffie
Lam and Lilian Cheng. “How Beijing is now taking the lead in overhaul of
Hong Kong’s election systems,” The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong),
March 5, 2021.
65 Tu Wei-Ming, “Hong Kong, Singapore, and Overseas Chinese Communities,”
in Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity: Moral Education and
Economic Culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons, ed. Tu Wei-Ming
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 259–261; cf. Ambrose
192  James Garrison
King, “The Transformation of Confucianism in the Post-Confucian Era:
The Emergence of Rationalistic Traditionalism in Hong Kong,” Confucian
Traditions in East Asian Modernity: Moral Education and Economic Culture
in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons, ed. Tu Wei-Ming (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard, 1996).
66 Cf. 毛泽东 [Mao Zedong], “‘批林批孔’运动 [‘Criticize Lin, Criticize Kong’
Movement];” “Carry the Struggle to Criticize Lin Piao and Confucius
Through to the End.”
67 Tu Wei-Ming, Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity, 261.
68 Analects, §8.13; cf. Analects, §15.7; §18.4.
69 Henning Hahn, “Political Reconciliation in Liberal States,” in Political
Philosophy from an Intercultural Perspective: Power Relations in a Global
World, ed. Edited by James Garrison, Bianca Boteva-Richter and Sarhan
Dhouib (New York: Routledge, 2021), 234; cf. Zhao Yingtang, “A Political
World Philosophy in terms of All-under-heaven (Tian-xia),” Diogenes 221
(2009), 5–18.
70 Cf. Franz Martin Wimmer, “Thesen, Bedingungen und Aufgaben interkul-
turell orientierter Philosophie,” polylog 1 (1998); Franz Martin Wimmer,
Interkulturelle Philosophie: Eine Einführung (Vienna: WUV, 2004).

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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.

a) Hatman: In 2018, during a demonstration by Pegida—the right-

wing, anti-Islamic movement in Germany—a memorable incident
occurred. One demonstrator stood in front of a camera team, told
them they were the lying press (Lügenpresse) and called for an end to
reporting. Afterwards it turned out that he was in fact an employee of
the regional criminal investigation department (Landeskriminalamt).
This was particularly worrying, as the demonstration was clearly
racially motivated and the man was openly opposing freedom of the
press. Of particular interest here, however, is how many Anywheres
reacted to the angry man. He was overweight, wearing a flat hat, an
insipid shirt and absurd sunglasses. In short, he was dressed taste-
lessly—the way many people in my home village dress. Their critique
of him was a mixture of political disagreement and aesthetic offense.
As a “Hutbürger” (“hat man;” instead of “Wutbürger,” angry citi-
zen), he was treated as a joke. Justified criticism of his political view
was overshadowed by ridicule of his person—and his lifeform in
general.
b) Denglish: In German intercity trains, announcements are now made in
German and English, a task that ordinary conductors repeatedly fail
220  Henning Hahn
to accomplish. Announcements are read in a clumsy German accent
(“Denglish” for Deutsch-English). Regular commuters can hardly
resist a grin; there is eye contact between cosmopolitan Anywheres,
who speak fluent English (or pretend to), while the few Somewheres
in the compartment feel uneasy. Through simple gestures Anywheres
mark the space as theirs. Similar things happen on scheduled flights
when Somewheres applaud a successful landing, while Anywheres
nonchalantly continue working. Little postures mark a fine, but dis-
tinctive line between the habitual haves and have-nots.

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 The Agency-based Approach to Political Reconciliation

Originally, the task of political reconciliation arose during the transition
from post-colonial or post-communist regimes to democracies. Its theo-
retical understanding is still shaped by the paradigmatic case of ending
apartheid in South Africa and, in particular, by the work of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the 1990s.4 For a generation now,
practices and normative theories of political reconciliation have been fur-
ther enriched in the aftermath of domestic and international conflicts.
From today’s perspective, some of these processes are perceived rather
critically. Political reconciliation, it is argued, has often contributed to
the restoration of power structures. Amnesties and forgiveness excuse
perpetrators, betray victims, and fail their transitional purpose: to build
a nation and robust democracy.5
If we avoid these pitfalls, however, the ethics and practice of politi-
cal reconciliation offer us helpful instruments. In this section, I lay the
conceptual foundations for their application to liberal societies. To this
end, I review the most salient positions and show where and why my
agency-based approach differs from them—as well as where I borrow. I
will also clarify the three dimensions in which reconciliatory measures
operate.

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.

11.2.3 Reconciliation as Political Inclusion

This approach makes better sense of “the political” in political reconcili-
ation. Reconciliatory measures are seen as a response to growing experi-
ences of political exclusion, marginalization, or discrimination. In this
regard, it is important to note that political inclusion is advocated to
varying degrees. For Darrel Moellendorf,19 a political liberal, political
reconciliation aims to ensure that “former strangers learn to view and
treat each other as equal citizens.” The inclusive function of reconcili-
ation here operates through the political virtue of being committed to
the moral equality of the other, to include the other in political relation-
ships that express equal respect and concern beyond equal citizenship.
For Andrew Schaap, an agonistic (Arendtian) thinker, the “ideal of rec-
onciliation is to open up a space for politics between former enemies.”20
Reconciliation as inclusion hence refers to more basic forms of politi-
cization. Both agree, however, that a reconciled state of affairs is one
in which previously hostile groups recognize each other as members of
a shared political endeavor. Relevant measures include naturalization, a
democratic constitution including universal suffrage and the guarantee of
equal political rights, and the reform of structures that hinder the enjoy-
ment of them.
My takeaway from this account is the importance of political inclusion,
involving equal rights and status, as an indispensable measure of struc-
tural reconciliation. But again, the paradigm of reconciliation reveals an
even wider range of necessary measures. Political inclusion is key, but so
is the transformation of attitudes and the making of a common political
identity through measures of narrative reconciliation.
224  Henning Hahn
11.2.4 Narrative Reconciliation
By this, I mean approaches which emphasize the reconciliatory impor-
tance of unifying political stories, meaningful self-interpretations, and
identity politics. They give a direct response to the experience of politi-
cal alienation. Above, I have introduced political alienation as a defec-
tive relationship to the political world, which has not only structural but
partly conceptual causes. One fails to conceive of oneself as a political
agent who plays a significant role in a meaningful political endeavor.
Catherine Lu,21 who is mainly concerned with post-colonial injustices,
develops an alienation-based conception of political reconciliation. She
speaks of “existential alienation”22 to describe the cultural disconnec-
tion of first nations from their traditional social and spiritual world. For
her, existential alienation points to “a form of inauthentic or alienated
agency, a condition precipitated by the disruption and collapse of social
and moral frames.”23 Narrative identities lose their guiding function and
need to be readapted. For Lu, political reconciliation therefore requires
structural as well as narrative measures. At the structural level, she calls
for global historical justice; in particular, reparations for displacements.
But she also makes use of the idea of narrative reconciliation, when
she considers a “creative reinterpretation”24 of traditional identities.
Narrative adaptation here makes a constitutive dimension of political
reconciliation.
Literally, the idea of a narrative reconciliation is advocated by Susan
Dwyer.25 She explains that not only are human lives “led narratively”26—
because they are constituted by identity-shaping personal stories—but
that “nations have autobiographies, too.”27 And just as our personal self-
understanding can be disturbed, “larger-scale narratives suffer disrup-
tions as well.”28 This, according to Dwyer, happened in the case of South
Africa. The primary concern there was to replace the narrative of apart-
heid with “post-apartheid stories of nonracialism and social equality.”29
Reconciliation thus means “narrative incorporation,”30 the joint endorse-
ment of a political narrative which ascribes a meaningful and respected
position to everyone. Corresponding measures include the construction
of a “narrative equilibrium”31 among incompatible historiographies, the
rewriting of textbooks, reinterpretation of constitutional texts, and so
forth.32
According to the idea of narrative healing, the rewriting of the liberal
script would provide an antidote to political alienation. Interestingly,
this also concerns the role of political philosophy itself as an inter-
preter of its time, a Hegel-inspired idea that also found its way into
John Rawls’ later writings.33 Rawls’ interest in political reconciliation
goes back to unpublished lectures on Hegel from the 1960s and his
Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy34 in particular.35 Later, this
reconciliatory role increasingly defines Rawls’ own method. When he
 Political Reconciliation in Liberal States  225
explains the “four roles of political philosophy” in Justice as Fairness,36
the third role is supposed to

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

I will return to Rawls’ interesting notion of reconciliation later. At this

point it should only have become clear that the narrative dimension of
reconciliation is a constitutive element within a comprehensive theory
of political reconciliation. In the following, “narrative reconciliation”
means a reconstruction (or re-narration) of the political world through
which it becomes understandable as a place of meaningful engagement—
as an arena for joint political agency.

11.2.5 The Agency-Based Account of Reconciliation

I take political agency to be the ultimate value of political reconcilia-
tion—and of political ethics in general. Similarly, Colleen Murphy38
has defined the normative core of political reconciliation as “reciprocal
agency” insofar as

Civil conflict and repressive rule systematically undermine the con-

ditions in which political relationships can express reciprocity and
respect for moral agency, or reciprocal agency. At its most general
level, the goal of processes of political reconciliation is to cultivate
political relationships premised on these values.39

In other words, the aim of political reconciliation is to institute conditions

for exercising personal freedom of action. Respective measures entail the
“rule of law, political trust, and support of individual capabilities.”40
Later, in The Conceptional Foundations of Transitional Justice,41 Murphy
still bases her theory on the value of “moral agency.”42 Transitional pro-
cesses are to provide a “transformation of relationships among citizens
into relationships premised on reciprocal respect for agency.”43 This again
requires a robust rule of law, trust-building, and opportunities,44 all of
which necessitates, for Murphy, a transition to democracy and opportu-
nities for local participation.45
Regarding the normative foundations of political reconciliation, I have
a similar take. There is a crucial difference, however, in speaking of politi-
cal rather than moral agency, mainly because the envisioned reconciliation
is more strictly tailored to the restoration of genuine political relations.
Political agency means the capacity to shape public affairs together with
others or, following Hannah Arendt, simply to initiate an act, freely and
226  Henning Hahn
publicly.46 This implies the mutual recognition as fellow citizens, co-
nationals, or likewise as members of a shared and meaningful political
endeavor. I agree with Murphy that agency relies on rule of law, trust,
and opportunities, all of which are measures of what I call “structural
reconciliation.” But robust conditions of political agency require more:
a cultivation of civil solidarity—that is the dimension of “attitudinal
re­conciliation”—as well as the formation of a political identity that gives
individuals good reason to understand themselves as members of a mean-
ingful political endeavor—that is the dimension of “narrative reconcili-
ation.” Taking all these elements together, I defend a three-dimensional,
agency-based account of political reconciliation. Political reconciliation
is an umbrella term for structural, attitudinal, and narrative measures
that are co-constitutive for the restoration and maintenance of the condi-
tions of political agency.

11.3 Principles of Political Reconciliation

“Hatman” and “Denglish” pointed to typical relational wounds in lib-
eral societies: resentments caused by political alienation and the erosion
of solidarity due to a segregation of ways of life. The divide between
Anywheres and Somewheres threatens the very conditions of political
agency in liberal societies, the capacity to act as one people, nation, or
other kind of political body. In this section, I spell out what this means for
liberal societies. I will establish principles of structural, attitudinal, and
narrative reconciliation, which, comparable with principles of justice, do
not prescribe specific policies, but should guide policymaking in line with
the aim of restoring conditions of political agency.
To avoid misunderstandings, I add two caveats. First, reconciliation is
not to be understood as perfect harmony. But even political conflict and
diversity presuppose a degree of civil respect, trust in institutions, and
a shared political identity. I shall deal with this particular objection in
detail below. Second, conditions for political agency are a gradual mat-
ter. The point is to preserve a “good level;” yet what that means is to
be specified within the respective contexts. The proposed principles for
liberal societies thus remain vague—after all, they set a first step into an
undertheorized field.

a) Structural reconciliation: The goal of reconciliatory measures is not

justice itself, but the renewal of flourishing political relationships.
For this, however, justice provides an indispensable means. The
dimension of structural reconciliation implies justice. In it, demands
for justice are assessed according to how they serve the conditions
for political agency on an institutional level (broadly understood).
Following the rationale of structural reconciliation, we select from a
list of established principles of justice those that qualify as correctives
 Political Reconciliation in Liberal States  227
to liberalism. Two of these suggest themselves to be particularly rel-
evant, as they radically address causes of contemporary divides: the
principle of participatory parity and the community principle.
i. The principle of participatory parity, to take a formula from
Nancy Fraser,47 demands political equality beyond equal suf-
frage. It calls for a deeper democratization, including the estab-
lishment of institutional arrangements necessary to ensure equal
status, as well as material redistribution to guarantee the fair
value of political rights.48 Democratization is “deep” when it
enables profound forms of civic participation, thereby expand-
ing the range and authority of political agency.49 If Hatman’s
anger has a legitimate core at all, it lies in the experience of being
politically excluded, meaning that he is not taken seriously as a
peer and he is not in a social position to exercise political power
himself. Somewheres lack access to interpretative power, are less
visible in the media, and are under-represented in parliaments, all
of which amounts to fertile ground for conspiracy theories about
being controlled by a distanced elite. Commensurate measures of
participatory parity would entail arrangements of civil respect
and material distribution; most importantly, a deepening of
political opportunities through subsidiarity, town hall formats,
or direct democracy.
ii. The community principle, introduced by G.A. Cohen,50 stipu-
lates that economic and social disparities are only allowed to the
extent that different groups continue to share an intersecting life-
world. To put it bluntly, however, Somewheres and Anywheres
tend to occupy different reservations. “Denglish” and “Hatman”
illustrate the lack of a shared political agora in modern democra-
cies, a place where people meet as political equals. This prevents
the two tribes from developing feelings of solidarity and a shared
political identity. Agora-building measures would include limit-
ing material inequality and, centrally, reclaiming public spaces
(starting with public schools, universities, and areas of urban or
natural recreation) in which different groups care for commons
and act together.
) Attitudinal reconciliation: The strongest case for a shift from jus-
b
tice to reconciliation is the role it attributes to political emotions.
As “Hatman” and “Denglish” demonstrate, the divide between
Anywheres and Somewheres is largely based on hostile and alienated
feelings. Somewheres feel ridiculed, ignored, and patronized, reacting
with hate and resentment. An important dimension of political rec-
onciliation is therefore to transform negative reactive attitudes into
civil pro-attitudes.51 “Civic friendship” may sound exaggerated in
this context, but political agency requires political solidarity, i.e., an
attitude of basic respect and caring for members of a shared political
228  Henning Hahn
endeavor. In the ethics of reconciliation, this corresponds with prin-
ciples of civility and acknowledgment.
i. The principle of civility calls for mindfulness in political dis-
course. It should neither prohibit nor deny an emotionalization
of politics in general, but rather give it a civil, i.e., respectful,
form. Civility means showing respect for the other as a political
partner with whom we will continue to act together. “Hatman,”
for one, revealed a destructive moralization in politics, leading
on the one side to hate speech and on the other side to ridicule
or demonization. In liberal societies, then, measures of attitu-
dinal reconciliation aim at the moderation and de-moralization
of political discourse, beginning with the prohibition of hate
speech, a stricter control of social media, as well as a general
civilization of the political tone, distinguished from mere politi-
cal correctness.
ii. The principle of acknowledgment demands that the person and
cause behind a resentful reactive attitude are taken seriously.
Going back to Bishop Butler,52 settled resentment is to be seen
as an indicator of a moral injury. Anger is the raw material for
building a sense of justice. In the face of widespread resent-
ment, the principle of acknowledgement calls on us to presume
a respectable cause even when, or precisely because, this resent-
ment is unjustifiably articulated in a hateful, racist, or conspira-
torial manner. When “Hatman” attacks democratic institutions,
the media, or immigrants, acknowledgment does not require us
to accept the content of these statements, but to respect the latent
feelings of fear and alienation. Reconciliation here means listen-
ing, taking seriously the underlying experiences—albeit not their
particular form of articulation—giving them a public forum and
channeling them into modes of political confrontation, through
talks, demonstrations, parties, and so forth. The most important
reconciliatory measure, however, will be narrative: it consists
in productively re-articulating the original anger in the form of
legitimate claims for recognition, participation, or distribution.
This brings us to the principles of narrative reconciliation.
c) Narrative reconciliation aims to overcome political alienation in
providing meaningful political perspectives. Defective relationships
to the political world are caused by the inability to identify with,
and play a significant role within, a meaningful political endeavor.
For “Hatman,” the liberal script has lost its persuasive power. It
does not tell a convincing story about why this freedom and demo­
cracy are valuable to him and how he can comprehend himself as a
powerful member. The point is that relational defects are not only
structural, but also conceptual. “Hatman” lacks a narrative that
connects him with reasonable ways of political agency. Overcoming
 Political Reconciliation in Liberal States  229
political alienation therefore require measures of narrative reconcili-
ation. This task falls to those who hold interpretative power—not
least to political philosophy itself. As we have seen, Rawls’ political
constructivism intents to reconcile a liberal people with the possibil-
ity and rationality of a realistic utopia. With distrust for the liberal
project growing, however, narrative reconciliation can no longer be
content with reconstructing an overlapping consensus, certainly not
between liberal and illiberal positions. Rather, the role of political
philosophy must be seen more creatively: in the rewriting of political
identities. This process is guided by the principles of truth-telling and
thick identification.
i. The principle of truth-telling commits us to basing narratives
on facts. On the one hand, this applies to verifiable truths, such
as data about climate change. Telling the truth in these mat-
ters is simply a requirement for trustworthy political coopera-
tion and a gesture of respect for the rational nature of the other.
Things become more complicated, however, when it comes to
truths that leave room for interpretation, such as truths about
historical guilt or national fates. In such contexts, the notion
of “restorative truth”53 has been introduced to denote the rea-
soned belief in a unifying narrative. Drawing on the precedent
of South Africa, Leigh Johnson distinguishes different concep-
tions of truth used by the TRC. This includes “restorative” or
“healing” truth in the “construction of an official, public and
shared narrative,”54 on which South Africa’s national identity
and unity rests.55 The (restorative) truth of political narratives is
based not only on its coherent assemblage of facts, but also on its
resonance for the personal stories of all members of the political
endeavor. It resembles a pragmatist conception of truth in that its
“truth” has “to be measured by what it could do, in this case, by
how well it could contribute to the ethical and political work of
national reconciliation.”56 For our case of re-narrating the liberal
script, this means telling the truth about liberalism’s own history
of exclusion, domination, and colonialization—and finding the
true core of a new liberal narrative precisely here, in its ongoing
history of unfreedoms.
ii. The principle of thick identification requires a reinterpretation
of political liberalism in ways that speaks to Anywheres and
Somewheres alike. Contractualists can merely explicate the
interest a rational person would take in principles of liberty or
equality. Yet thick identification means that such presentations
are to be imbedded within a narrative that makes liberalism
(or its alternatives) comprehensible as a meaningful endeavor.
Persuasive narratives usually evoke a history of emancipatory
struggles, in which democracy and freedoms were won against
230  Henning Hahn
shared experiences of oppression. One reconciliatory task of
political philosophy would be to continuously integrate new
phenomena of domination into the liberal script; that is, to
speak the restorative truth about the diminishing value of once
hard-won freedoms. Another way to create thick identification
is to describe liberalism, in line with political republicanism or
perfectionist liberalism, as the precondition of a valuable way
of life. Only when they live in societies based on freedom and
democracy, will people be able to realize themselves as political
beings and agents. Thick identification thus requires that we not
only recognize a possible political order as rational but that we
value it as practically and ethically desirable.

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…

i) we are confronted with large-scale injustices, irresolvable con-

flicts, or joint threats that ultimately undermine political agency
(severity-condition).
ii) political relationships are destabilized by distrust, de-solidarization,
or enmity (hostility-condition).
iii) political narratives vary widely among relevant ethnic or national
groups or have generally lost their meaning-giving and identity-shap-
ing force (political-alienation-condition).
iv) the parties are connected through a shared political endeavor which
makes it practically necessary and/or ethically desirable to restore
beyond a mere modus vivendi (community-of-fate-condition).

In short, it is not the gravity of conflicts alone that triggers reconciliation

measures, but the general state of political relationships. Circumstances
of political reconciliation arise whenever large-scale distortions under-
mine conditions of political agency. The point is that this could apply
not only to civil wars or post-colonial conflicts, but also to a broader
range of cases, including divides in liberal states. For the liberal case, it is
important to understand political reconciliation as an ongoing struggle
to develop, defend, and improve conditions of political agency; a struggle
that has, pace Fukuyama, no historical cut-off point.
232  Henning Hahn
11.4.2 False Harmonism
A second worry concerns alleged illiberal consequences of my approach.
At first glance, reconciliation means closing conflicts and striving for a
communitarian kind of homogeneity. What any shift to reconciliation
apparently ignores is that political arguments and diverse lifeforms are
constitutive for pluralist societies. This charge can take three forms. It
points to a general problem with my consensus-oriented understanding
of politics, and especially criticizes its ignorance of reasonable and deep
disagreements.
This criticism, however, mainly refers to what has been called the
“social-unity-conception” of reconciliation,60 while leaving my political
conception of reconciliation unaffected. The difference is that political
reconciliation does not presuppose ethical reconciliation, i.e., no confor-
mity of personal feelings or individual lifeforms. That is why political
reconciliation is certainly compatible with an agonistic understanding of
politics, as Chantal Mouffe,61 for example, advocates. Let me explain.
The agonistic view understands “the political” as an arena of radical,
but productive struggles. Under this criticism, measures of reconciliation
aim to silence conflicts and hence close “the political.” But even the ago-
nistic model requires the maintenance of political spaces in which radi-
cal democracy takes place—which again requires political reconciliation.
Political struggle presupposes a basic level of political solidarity, trust in
institutions, and political identity, i.e., general concern for the other as an
opponent within the same political project. The political conception of
reconciliation therefore does not exclude political struggles or demand
the uniformity of political opinions, but instead requires the recognition
of common political foundations.
The same argument applies to the second, more specific objection that
reconciliation tends to level reasonable disagreements. Such disagree-
ments can only grow in a pluralistic structure, compliance with which
depends on political reconciliation. In addition, there must already be in
place a criterion for distinguishing between reasonable and unreasonable
beliefs, where common acceptance of such a criterion again presupposes
a sufficient degree of narrative reconciliation.
Only when, thirdly, deep disagreements are involved, is further differ-
entiation necessary. By definition, deep disagreements are constituted by
irreconcilable opinions—for example, in our case of liberal and illiberal
mindsets. Of course, I am not suggesting finding a consensus between,
say, racism and liberalism. Just as there are moral limits to tolerance,
there are moral limits to reconciliation, too, defined by the equality and
freedom of the person. This moral standpoint holds independently, but
it also follows from the agency-based approach. Mutual recognition as
free and equal members is a necessary condition for the maintenance
of political agency. On the other hand, although reconciliation excludes
 Political Reconciliation in Liberal States  233
the toleration of illiberal positions, it does not treat its proponents as
enemies. This is another contrast to the justice perspective. Reconciliation
begins with the attempt to change irreconcilable views, i.e., to acknowl-
edge their underlying experiences, detaching them from their resentful,
structural, emotional, and narrative anchoring and transforming them
into reasonable opinions. Where this transformative work fails, zero rec-
onciliation remains the ultima ratio.

11.4.3 Perverted Direction of Fit

Apparently, reconciliation requires us to adapt our understanding of the
world as it should be to the world as it is. In particular, the idea of nar-
rative reconciliation expects us to come to terms with reality. But this
reverses the direction of fit between facts and norms. Theories of jus-
tice first clarify what is ideally warranted and then, in a second step,
examine how we can approach this ideal under non-ideal conditions. The
approach of reconciliation, in contrast, appears to be conservative and
uncritical. This problem reaches back to Hegel who conceived of political
philosophy as reconciliatory self-therapy, as an adaptation of our con-
ceptional schemes to reality. It is found in Rawls when he ascribes to
political philosophy the role of reconciling us with the reasonableness
of our political possibilities, and it apparently persists in my proposal to
reform political narratives so that they correspond to actual conditions
of political agency.
However, Rawls himself departs from Hegel and paves the way for a
tenable answer. As he makes clear at the end of his The Law of Peoples,
the reconstruction of a realistic utopia serves to overcome what can well
be called political alienation—misconceptions that disturb our ability to
relate to the political world in meaningful ways. To this end, a liberal
people will be reconciled with its political possibilities in ways that moti-
vate political agency:

While realization is, of course, not unimportant, I believe that the

very possibility of such a social order can itself reconcile us to the
social world… For so long as we believe for good reasons that a
self-sustaining and reasonably just political and social order both
at home and abroad is possible, we can reasonably hope that we
or others will someday, somewhere, achieve it; and we can then do
something toward this achievement. This alone, quite apart from our
success or failure, suffices to banish the dangers of resignation and
cynicism.62

Rawls’ concern is to overcome experiences of alienation (resignation

and cynicism) by reconciling our ideal (a reasonably just order) with
our political agency (we can do something toward its achievement).
234  Henning Hahn
Narrative reconciliation does just that. It tells stories of a possible world,
for which it is worth making an effort. Eventually, however, my pro-
posal goes beyond Rawls’ in that its full-fledged approach to narrative
reconciliation not only demonstrates the rationality and reasonableness
of a potentially just world; narrative reconciliation also means telling
the story in ways that promote thick (emotional) identification, even if
this departs from contractualist modes of presentation. So, my answer
to the problem reads: yes, narrative reconciliation wants us to come to
terms with given possibilities, but the reason for this remains norma-
tive—namely, the liberating of political agency as the basic value of polit-
ical ethics; and second, this is to be seen as a progressive enterprise, since
we should not reconcile with the world as it is, but with the world as it
(realistically) could be.

11.5 Outlook
For a conclusion, let me come back to Kevin Baker:

The Trump movement… responds to an increasing sense of isola-

tion and alienation caused by the weakening of these lower-order
communities in American society… [I]ts quality as a mass political
movement actually represents a further working out of this isolation
and alienation in American life. In short, while the Trump movement
did not cause the erosion of communities—it rather is caused by that
erosion—neither is it a remedy for that erosion.63

Baker explains the rise of right-wing movements as symptoms of struc-

tural divides and political alienation in liberal countries. This double
pathology requires a threefold reconciliation process: structurally, via
just institutions; attitudinally, via the cultivation of civil respect and
solidarity; and narratively, through the identification with a shared and
meaningful political endeavor. My argument comes down to the conclu-
sion that the task to reconcile liberal societies leads us beyond justice.
However, the revival of nationalism does not offer a convincing narrative
alternative, since the causes of social divides and alienation have long
crossed borders. The same holds for more promising narratives such as
the social imaginaries of Europe or the tale of the end of history due to
a final triumph of liberalism. Perhaps we must look out for non-Western
sources such as Zhao Tingyang’s64 reactualization of the Confucian idea
of all-under-heaven (tian-xia). In it, he outlines the narrative of a global
order in which not only persons or nations, but the world as a whole
obtains political agency. In any case, a first step toward global political
reconciliation would be to include marginalized voices, inside and out-
side of liberal societies.
 Political Reconciliation in Liberal States  235
Notes
1 Kevin Baker, “Nothing in all creation is hidden: Why America needs truth and
reconciliation commission after Trump,” The New Republic, May 17, 2018.
2 Cf. David Goodhart, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the
Future of Politics (London: C. Hurst & Co, 2017).
3 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979),
118.
4 For a philosophical analysis of the work of the TRC, cf. David Dyzenhaus,
“Survey Article: The South African TRC,” Journal of Political Philosophy 8,
No. 4 (2000); Leigh M. Johnson, “Transitional Truth and Historical Justice:
Philosophical Foundations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,”
International Studies in Philosophy 38, No. 2; Amy Gutmann and Dennis
Thompson, “The Moral Foundations of Truth Commissions,” in Truth
vs. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2000) and others in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth
Commissions. Edited by Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000).
5 An overview of the most important objections can be found in Catherine
Lu, “The Case against Reconciliation,” in Justice and Reconciliation in
World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 185–188;
Colleen Murphy, A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation, 8–25 (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Colleen Murphy and Linda
Radzik, “Reconciliation,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford:
Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University,
2015). Mostly, however, criticisms are directed against either an interper-
sonal forgiveness-conception of reconciliation (instead of a political one) or
some overdemanding social-unity-conception, cf. Catherine Lu, Justice and
Reconciliation in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2017), 186.
6 Cf. Paul M. Hughes, “Moral Atrocity and Political Reconciliation: A
Preliminary Analysis,” International Journal of Applied Philosophy, No. 15
(2001) and Rajeev Bhargava, “The Difficulty of Reconciliation,” Philosophy
and Social Criticism, No. 38 (2012).
7 Cf. Catherine Lu, “Reconciliation and Reparations,” in The Oxford
Handbook of Ethics of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, online 2015).
8 Cf. Murphy, A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation, 2010.
9 Cf. David Philpott, Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
10 Cf. Andrew Schaap, Political Reconciliation (New York: Routledge, 2005).
11 Cf. Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 69; cf. From Conflict Resolution to
Reconciliation, ed. Yaacov Bar-Simon-Tov (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004).
12 Rajeev Bhargava et al., Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions.
Edited by Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis F. Thompson (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2000) and Murphy, A Moral Theory of Political
Reconciliation, 9–13.
13 Cf. Martha Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness. Resentment, Generosity,
Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
14 Cf. Charles Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2007).
15 Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness. Resentment, Generosity, Justice, 57.
16 Cf. Christel Fricke 8ed.), The Ethics of Forgiveness: A Collection of Essays
(New York: Routledge, 2011); Paul M. Hughes, “What Is Involved in
236  Henning Hahn
Forgiving?” Philosophia, No. 25 (1997) and Norman Richards, “Forgiveness,”
Ethics, No. 99/1 (1988).
17 Accordingly, Barrett Emerick, “Forgiveness and Reconciliation,” in The Moral
Psychology of Forgiveness (London, UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 117,
states that “reconciliation is fundamentally bilateral (whereas forgiveness is
fundamentally unilateral),” cf. also Jeremy Watkins, “Unilateral Forgiveness
and the Task of Reconciliation,” in Res Publica 21/1 (2015).
18 In his defense of necessary trade-offs, Desmond Tutu (1999) seems to suggest
that reconciliation requires an understanding of structural tragedy. From this
perspective, even the torturers of the secret police were ultimately victims of
a dehumanizing apartheid system.
19 Darrel Moellendorf, “Reconciliation as a Political Value,” Journal of Social
Philosophy 38, No. 2 (2007), 206.
20 Andrew Schaap, Political Reconciliation (New York: Routledge, 2005), 20.
21 Cf. Catherine Lu, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017).
22 Lu, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics, 183–184.
23 Lu, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics, 184.
24 Lu, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics, 209.
25 Susan Dwyer, “Reconciliation for Realists,” Ethics and International Affairs
13 (1999).
26 Dwyer, “Reconciliation for Realists,” 86.
27 Dwyer, “Reconciliation for Realists,” 87.
28 Dwyer, “Reconciliation for Realists,” 88.
29 Dwyer, “Reconciliation for Realists,” 88.
30 Dwyer, “Reconciliation for Realists,” 89.
31 Dwyer, “Reconciliation for Realists,” 89.
32 In a similar vein, Andrew Schaap, Political Reconciliation, stresses “the
redemptive power of narrative.” For him, “story-telling reconciles us to the
irrevocable consequences of action by revealing our isolated doings and suf-
ferings as part of a coherent whole” (Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 124).
33 The best interpretation of Rawls’ Hegelian turn to the philosophy of rec-
onciliation comes from Jörg Schaub, an English translation of this is long
due. See Jörg Schaub, Gerechtigkeit als Versöhnung. John Rawls’ politischer
Liberalismus (Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2009).
34 Cf. John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge,
US: Harvard University Press, 2000).
35 Here, he reads Hegel’s ethics as a program to reconcile freedom with real-
ity: “Hegel thinks that the most appropriate scheme of institutions for the
expression of freedom already exists. It stands before our eyes. The task of
philosophy, especially political philosophy, is to comprehend this scheme in
thought. And once we do this, Hegel thinks, we will become reconciled to our
social world” (Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, 331).
36 John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2002), § 1.
37 Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, 3.
38 Murphy, A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation, 2010.
39 Murphy, A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation, 28.
40 Murphy, A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation, 28.
41 Cf. Colleen Murphy, The Conceptional Foundations of Transitional Justice
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
42 Murphy, The Conceptional Foundations of Transitional Justice, 35.
43 Murphy, The Conceptional Foundations of Transitional Justice, 34.
 Political Reconciliation in Liberal States  237
4 Murphy, The Conceptional Foundations of Transitional Justice, 34.
4
45 Murphy, The Conceptional Foundations of Transitional Justice, 35.
46 Political agency, thus understood, resembles Axel Honneth’s notion of social
freedom (2015), the freedom of democratic minds that have learnt to form
mutually reinforcing intentions. cf. Axel Honneth, Freedom’s Right. The
Social Foundations of Democratic Life (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2015).
47 Cf. Nancy Fraser, “Recognition without ethics,” Theory, Culture, Society 18
(2001).
48 “According to this norm, justice requires social arrangements that permit
all (adult) members of society to interact with one another as peers. For
participatory parity to be possible, I claim, at least two conditions must be
satisfied. First, the distribution of material resources […] Precluded, there-
fore, are social arrangements that institutionalize deprivation, exploitation,
and gross disparities in wealth, income, and leisure time, thereby denying
some people the means and opportunities to interact with others as peers.
In contrast, the second condition requires that institutionalized patterns of
cultural value express equal respect for all participants and ensure equal
opportunity for achieving social esteem.” Fraser, “Recognition without eth-
ics,” 93–94.
49 The formula of “deep democratization” has also been introduced elsewhere
(Johnston, 2014), though I do not follow Johnston’s definition.
50 Gerald A. Cohen, Why Not Socialism? (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2009).
51 Cf. Daniel Bar-Tal and Gemma H Bennink, “The Nature of Reconciliation as
an Outcome and a Process,” in From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
52 Cf. Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel… To which
are added Six Sermons, Preached on Publick Occasions, London: J. and
P. Knapton, 4th edition, in The Works of Bishop Butler (Rochester, NY:
University of Rochester Press, 2006).
53 Cf. Leigh M. Johnson, “Transitional Truth and Historical Justice: Philosophical
Foundations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” International
Studies in Philosophy 38, No. 2 (2006).
54 Johnson, “Transitional Truth and Historical Justice: Philosophical
Foundations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” 86.
55 From this, Johnson himself distinguishes what he calls narrative truth: the
authentic experiences of the victims, which, when recorded by the Commission,
become official truths (Johnson, “Transitional Truth and Historical Justice:
Philosophical Foundations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,”
86).
56 Johnson, “Transitional Truth and Historical Justice: Philosophical
Foundations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” 87.
57 As Desmond Tutu has put it: “I contend that there is another kind of jus-
tice—restorative justice which was characteristic of traditional African juris-
prudence. Here the central concern is not retribution or punishment, but - in
the spirit of Ubuntu—the healing of breaches.” Desmond Tutu, No Future
without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 51.
58 Dwyer, “Reconciliation for Realists,” 82.
59 In a similar vein, Colleen Murphy distinguishes “four circumstances of tran-
sitional justice. These are widely recognized as characteristic of paradigm
transitional societies: pervasive structural inequality, normalized collective
and political wrongdoing, serious existential uncertainty, and fundamental
238  Henning Hahn
uncertainty about authority.” Murphy, The Conceptional Foundations of
Transitional Justice, 41.
60 Lu, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics, 186.
61 Cf. Chantal Mouffe, Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically (London:
Verso, 2013).
62 John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1999), 128.
63 Kevin Baker, “Nothing in all creation is hidden. Why America needs truth and
reconciliation commission after Trump,” in The New Republic (New York:
Kerrie Gillis, 2018).
64 Cf. Tingyang Zhao, “A political world philosophy in terms of All-under-
Heaven (tian-xia),” Diogenes 56 (2009).

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Afterword*
James Garrison

When this project was first conceptualized, no thought was given to

anything other than shedding light on the political world from the per-
spective of intercultural philosophy. Why should political philosophers
think of things other than political philosophy? (That is a pretty big
topic after all.)
Like so many others, we erred. Our error was incredibly human and
indeed underscores the sad irony of how people read Aristotle’s dictum
that humans are the “political animal.”1 We humans emphasize the first
term, but not the second. We editors (again, like so many others) over-
looked the animal, which is to say the biological. And, 2020 has, if noth-
ing else, shown the depth of the error.
2020… what is one to say in reaction to this? Well, this project was
conceived of well before this year that will live in infamy, and the content
was largely finished when lockdowns, hand sanitizer, masks, isolation
protocols, death rates, and the daily loss of many valuable dollars and
of many much, much more valuable persons all became part of our col-
lective everyday reality. And so, this project bears naturally marks of the
“before time.” Despite this, the volume’s contribution still speak to the
new, post-pandemic reality by using an intercultural perspective on polit-
ical philosophy to anticipate the contours and fissures of globalization as
a process, as the unfolding of “being with.” The circumstances of how we
exist with each other may have radically changed, but this rupture has
brought new-found attention to what it means to be with others, and in
this regard, the ground is well prepared, at quite some price, for precisely
this kind of intercultural philosophy.
However, prior to our current moment, a great deal of the plural histo-
ries of philosophy has conceived of politics within limited horizons where

* 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:

All of this means precisely reversing the question or transitioning

from the model of conflict with demands recognition to a model of
grateful acceptance of the other. Because with this changed logic one
regains the “naturalness” of the feeling that the first thing that one
owes to “the Other” is gratitude, because “the Other” enables human
life with their participation.3
 Afterword  243
It may not be a comprehensive solution, but a shift in perceiving the
task of political philosophy such that the enterprise becomes intercul-
tural because of its affirmation of “the Other” stands a good chance of
addressing long-standing problems from around the world.
Now it must be recognized that the pandemic has not just shed new
light on the political dimensions of the philosophical issue of being
with others, it has perhaps shocked and overwhelmed our collective
vision, if at least temporarily. Reading this volume in light of these
events, these pieces together now cannot help but present the idea that
the world, for all of its power and frailty, never was a thing, even
less a thing that might have ever been ready at hand. Instead, process
characterizes the world as such. The globe may be a given (though, as
we have found recently, the globe vis-à-vis nature perhaps should not
be thought of as given to us without a big, wild panoply of other fac-
tors being at play). The globe may be, but the world is always in the
making.
Insofar as we might (errantly) think of the world as a thing: Yes, the
world stopped. Yes, it is true that there was an ontological shift between
old world and new world (this is why talk of “the beforetime” requires
little explanation). Yes, to a certain extent the political world that we
address does not exist anymore. However, did it every really exist in the
first place?
The answer is “no,” the world did not and has not existed. Why?
Simply put, the world is not a being; it is a becoming. The world has been
and continues to be always in the making, unfolding through existence
together with others. This was so in the before times and our efforts here,
in their various ways, draw attention to the way in which the world not
only is or has been constructed (which might imply that this construction
occurred in the past), but the way in which the world is and forever will
be under construction.
How will this proceed? Building the always new world, with its never
final order, and doing this with others and affirming being with others
is not easy. The existential and the psychological are in conflict. Being
with others may be unavoidable, but eons of sedimented psychology that
narrow the individual world down to one’s self, one’s family, one’s clan,
one’s tribe, one’s group, one’s nation, one’s culture likewise cannot be set
aside. The existential and the psychological are each natural, resulting in
the classic conflict between unstoppable force and immovable object (or
in Chinese a “zi xiang maodun 自相矛盾,” a conflict between the world’s
strongest spear and the world’s strongest shield).
As the editorial team commits changes to manuscripts and reflects on
this volume, we do so in the shadow of deadly terror attacks in Vienna
that occurred immediately before the imposition of another phase of
pandemic-related lockdown. The majority of the editorial team have
spent significant parts of their respective lives in the city and are acutely
244  James Garrison
aware that the world, for bad and for good, is inevitably being made and
remade in each and every moment that we exist with each other.
How this is to unfold amidst humanity’s existential and psychological
contradictions is anyone’s guess. Perhaps the psychology that metasta-
sizes in terror as well as in more commonplace expressions of narrow
self-interest will win out. However, it will run into the existential truth
that being with others is unavoidable and thus into a contradiction. Now,
elementary logic holds that anything follows from a contradiction, which
is to say that anything is possible for us as ridiculously contradictory
humans.
So, since “anything is possible,” then let us affirm what it means to be
with others. Let us see then how good of a world we can establish upon
the boundless and truly awesome field of human potential.

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
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Foucault, Michel. Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison. Paris: Gallimard,
1975.
Index

Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes numbers

Abe, Shinzō 205, 207, 209 Antelme, Robert 151

Achebe, Chinua 35 apartheid 81, 89, 93, 221;
active democracy, and dignity 23–24 governmentality of 81; and
Adachi, Nobuko 70 narrative reconciliation 224
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi 38 Arab Charter on Human Rights
Adorno, Theodor W. 76n33, 80, (1994) 19
84–85 Arendt, Hannah 63, 151, 153, 197,
Adotevi, Stanislas Spero 44–45 201, 225
affective change, challenge of 9–10 Aristotle 241
affiliation 63, 67; emotional 73; Authoritarianism: and Confucianism
multiple 33, 34, 36, 39, 51; political 182–185; in Hong Kong 185–188
150 Avila, Mariela 150, 151
Africa: definition 47; see also idea of Awondo, Patrick 34–35
Africa
African identity: and Afropolitanism Badiou, Alain 25
51–52; and globalization 33–57; Baker, Kevin 218, 234
and negritude 51–52 Baumeister, Andrea 115
African National Congress Freedom Bell Pottinger 84
Charter 93 Benhabib, Seyla 25, 114
Afropolitanism 33; and African Benjamin, Walter 151
identity 51–52; and dignity 33–34; Bennett, Thomas William 93
as expression of African modernity Bhabha, Homi K. 34
41–43; framing concept of 35–43; Bielefeldt, Heiner 14–15, 18, 19, 21
and idea of Africa 47–48; Biko, Steven Bantu 96
theoretical background 34–35 black diaspora studies,
Agamben, Giorgio 151 epistemological shift in 33, 34
alienation 79, 219–220; epistemic Boele van Hensbroek, Pieter 47
135; existential 224; political 218, Bohman, James 115–116
220–221, 224, 226, 228–229, 231, Boteva-­Richter, Bianca 61–78
233–234 Bourdieu, Pierre 133
Allsobrook, Christopher 79–101 Bourguiba, Habib 17
Althusser, Louis 80 Breese, Elizabeth Butler 112–113
Améry, Jean 62–64, 71, 74n9 Briceño, Lesley 153–154
Ames, Roger T. 182 Bulo, Valentina 154
Amselle, Jean-­Lou 34 Butler, Joseph 228
Anderson, Benedict 36 Butler, Judith 80
246 Index
Cairo Declaration on Human Rights cultural poverty 125, 128
in Islam (1990) 19 cultural studies, epistemological turn
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, “great in 34
world theatre” 5, 11n6 cultures: dialogue between 21; expert
Calveiro, Pilar 157, 160n31 125; homogenization of 33, 48;
capabilities, concept of 128 hybrid 34–35; interaction between
capital: cultural 219; symbolic 130, 7, 51; local 133, 142; pluralism of
133, 134 19; protest 180
Cavarero, Adriana 155
change: affective see affective change decolonial approach, and dignity
Charfi, Mohamed 17 25–26
China and Hong Kong 177–180; decolonization 27, 90, 93, 97;
historical overview 170–173 aftermath in Africa 82;
Chomsky, Noam 25 governmentality of 88
coexistence 3–4; bad 5, 8; improving Deleuze, Gilles 34
6–7 deliberation: public see public
cohabitation, human 3–9 deliberation
Cohen, Gerald A. 227 democracy: see also active democracy;
Cohen, Joshua 110 nominal 24; procedural 24
colonialism, and ideological democratization 23–24; deep 227;
displacement 93–94 process in Tunisia 15, 140; rise in
colonization 137; cultural context of South Korea 202
90 Deng Xiaoping 171, 181
comfort women 197; beginning of Derrida, Jacques 34
issue of 202; South Korea and Deveaux, Monique 117
Japan 202–209 Dhouib, Sarhan 13–32
communication 8; argumentative Diagne, Souleymane Bachir 48, 50
112–116; manipulative 109, 117, Dictatorships: and imprisonment 151;
118; public 106–110, 120; rational and political philosophy 149;
107; theory of 125 Southern Cone 149–165
concentration camps 150–152 differences: cultural see cultural
Confucianism 170; and differences
authoritarianism 182–185; and diglossia 137
political unrest 180–182; and dignity 52; and active democracy
remonstrance 182–185 23–24; and Afropolitanism 33–34;
Confucius 180, 181, 183 concept of 22–26; and decolonial
conviviality 3–4, 24; as participative approach 25–26; and human rights
reciprocity 9 22–23; and negritude 33–34
Cooper, Anna Julia 52 displacement 79–101; ideological see
Corbi, Josep E. 156 ideological displacement; of
COVID-­19, 173, 185–186, 242–243 indigenous knowledge systems 86
criticism: double see double criticism diversity 37, 134, 141, 226; cultural
Crocker, David A. 200 21, 24, 35, 36, 38, 41, 50, 105; of
cultural differences, and minority opinion 183; racial 45; religious 20;
claims 112–118 unity in 9
cultural impoverishment 125–148; domination 97; cultural 47, 135, 141;
definition 126–129; and democratic imperial 48, 88, 90; irrational
transition 137–142; and education 80–82; and liberalism 229–230;
138–139; and injustice 129–136; linguistic 137; social 133–134;
and process of modernization socio-­economic 129; total 153;
139–141 Western extraterritorial 172
cultural pluralism: and Afropolitan double criticism, methodology of 22,
creative writers 35; and universality 26–27
of human rights 19 Dwyer, Susan 224, 231
 Index  247
education: colonial 85, 96; and Hahn, Henning 188, 218–240
cultural impoverishment 127, 133, Hall, Ruth 95–96
138–140; and minority groups 105, Hall, Stuart 35
111; performance gaps 132; quality Hamidou Kane, Cheik 35
of 130–131 harmony: social see social harmony
Ellacuria, Ignacio 4 Hashimoto, Ryutaro 206
Elster, Jon 118 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 5–6,
Empowerment: communicative 105, 11n14, 42, 169, 174–179, 224, 233,
107, 108, 120; minority 105 236n35
epistemicide 86–88, 135 Hegemony: cultural 79, 128, 129,
Eurocentrism 25 134, 135; epistemic 128, 135
Europe, provincialization of 34 Heidegger, Martin 34, 61, 76n42
exclusion: cultural 133–134, 137; Heimat 61–73
social 133 Herr, Ranjoo Seodu 114–115
experience of injustice, paradigmatic Hershock, Peter D. 182
role of 13–32 Höffe, Otfried 20–21
extraversion 142; cultural 136; Hölderlin, Friedrich 5
epistemic 136 Home: in exile and return 67–69;
intersubjective 73; and language
Figueroa Ibarra, Carlos 160n31 64–66, 73; meaning of 61–73; and
Fishkin, James S. 109 migration 62–64, 74n5; as new
forgiveness 92, 196, 198–201, 207, place 72–73; as place 69–71; and
221; and reconciliation 222–223, spirituality 66–67; as un-­place
230 71–72; value in global world 61–78
Fornet-­Betancourt, Raúl 3–12, 242 Hong Kong and China 177–180;
Foucault, Michel 34, 80, 87, 96, 151, historical overview 170–173
180, 242 Honneth, Axel 11n11, 11n14, 133
Frankl, Viktor 151 Hook, Derek 92
Fraser, Nancy 113, 227 Hornby, Donna 96
Freud, Sigmund 42, 85–87, 89–90 Hountondji, Paulin 136
Fricker, Miranda 125–126 Hu Jintao 181
human rights: declarations of 15–16,
Gadamer, Hans-­Georg 61 19; definition 13, 14; and dignity
Garrison, James 169–195, 241–244 22–23; global institutionalization of
Geuss, Raymond 80 18–19; intercultural justification of
Gilroy, Paul 35 21; neutral justification of 20–21;
globalization 23, 35, 48, 241–242; normative power of 17; ratification
and African identity 33–57; of 19; regional 18–19;
perceived as threat 219; Western transculturality of 14; transcultural
128, 142 justification of 21–22; transcultural
Goodhart, David 219 universality of 19–22, 26–27;
governmentality 96; of apartheid 81; of universality of 13–14, 18–22;
decolonization 88; neo-­colonial 86 universalization of 13–32
Griswold, Charles 222 Hume, David 231
guilt: collective 199; historical 229; hybridity 48, 50; and Afropolitan
legal question of 222, 230; creative writers 35; cultural 33, 36,
perpetrator’s acknowledgement of 40
198; and responsibility 199, 201 hybridization 49

Habermas, Jürgen 11n11, 25, 105, idea of Africa: and Afropolitanism

108, 110, 111, 118–119, 125–126, 47–48; and negritude 47–48
134 identity: African see African identity;
Haddad, Tahar 139, 145n60 African literature on 35; self-­
Hadj Salem, Mohammed 141 conscious see self-­conscious identity
248 Index
ideological displacement, and Le Breton, David 154, 156
colonialism 93–94 Lee Bo 172
ideology: critique of 83–85; definition liberalism 234; and thick
80; displacement mechanism of identification 229–230
80–88; late capitalist 80–81 liberal societies, divides in 219–221
impoverishment: cultural see cultural liberal states, and political
impoverishment; hermeneutical reconciliation 218–240
125–126 life experience 7
imprisonment: political see political Lohmann, Georg 19, 21, 22
imprisonment López, Loreto 151
indignation 25 López, Maria José 152
injustice: cognitive 134; and cultural López Perez, Ricardo 157
impoverishment 129–136; Lu, Catherine 222, 224
experience of see experience of
injustice; global 125–148; past see Mabana, Kahiudi Claver 47–48
past injustice Magashule, Ace 84
interculturality 6 Makariev, Plamen 105–124
intercultural philosophy, for better Mallol Comandari, Cristián 157
human conviviality 3–12 Malpas, Jeff 87
intersubjectivity 63–64, 69 Mao Zedong 181, 186
marginalization 126, 135, 136, 142,
James, Michael Rabinder 116–117 220, 223; identity 127
Jara, José 149 Marrades, Julina 154, 157
Joas, Hans 15 Martí, José 11n9
Johnson, Boris 173 Marx, Karl 42, 80
Johnson, Leigh M. 229 Master-­Slave Dialectic, Hegelian
justice 129; as equity and equilibrium 169–170, 175, 177
94; paradigm of 218; and Mayer, Hans see Améry, Jean
reconciliation 221, 224, 226–231, Mbembe, Achille 33–36, 38–43,
234; restorative 237n57; theories of 47–49, 51, 88
126, 220, 233; transitional 237n59; meaning, ontological 7–8
universal 90–91 Memmi, Albert 137
mestizo, the 49
Kant, Immanuel 21 Meyer-­Bisch, Patrice 125–126
Kasanda, Albert 33–57 migration, and home 62–64, 74n5
Katō, Norihiro 199 minority claims, and cultural
Kepe, Thembeka 95–96 differences 112–118
Khatibi, Abdelkebir 22 minority groups, as publics 118–120
Kim Young-­sam 205 modernity 25; Afropolitanism as
Kong Zi see Confucius expression of 41–43
König, René 68, 76n33 modernization, process of, and
Kumagai, Naoko 196–217 cultural impoverishment 139–141
Küng, Hans 20 Moellendorf, Darrel 223
Kuschel, Karl Josef 20 Montealegre, Jorge 152
Morsink, Johannes 15, 27n7
Lai, Jimmy 185 Mosbah, Salah 25–26
Lam Cheng Yuet-­ngor, Carrie 186 Moseley-­Braun, Carol 114
Lam Wing-­kee 172 Mouffe, Chantal 232
land, question of 79–101 Moulián, Tomás 156
land discourse, as ideology 79–80, 82, Moya, Laura C.V. 157
85, 96–97 Mudimbe, Valentin-­Yves 34
language, as home 64–66 Mugabe, Robert 83
leadership, political 201 Murphy, Colleen 222, 225–226,
Lebenswelt 7 237n59
 Index  249
nationalism 35, 105, 197, 234 race 37, 42, 44–46, 52, 80
Negri, Antonio 25 racism 44–46, 79, 232
negritude 33; and African Raffin, Marcelo 151
identity 51–52; and dignity Ramaphosa, Cyril 84
33–34; as discourse of African Ramose, Mogobe 87, 90–95
identity 43–47; and idea of Africa Rawls, John 112, 113, 220, 224–225,
47–48 229, 233–234
Nkrumah, Kwame 82 Reconciliation: agency-­based account
Nouss, Alexis 49 of 225–226; attitudinal 227–228; as
Nozick, Robert 91 forgiveness 222–223; in
Nussbaum, Martha 222 international politics 196; narrative
Nyerere, Julius 82 224–225, 228–230; objections to
230–234; as peacebuilding 221–
Oliveira, Luciano 160n31 222; political 197–201, 218–240; as
Olivier, Abraham 87–88 political inclusion 223; political,
Ortega y Gasset, José 7 principles of 226–230; and politics
Otero, Edison 157 196–217; and postwar individual
“Other, the” 170, 242; compensation 196–197; structural
accommodating acceptance of 226–227; theories of 220–221
9–10; gratitude towards 9, religiosity 141
242–243; and self-­conscious remonstrance: and Confucianism
identity 174–180 182–185, 188; in Hong Kong
Ouattara, Bourahima 46 185–188
responsibility: acknowledgement by
Park Geun-­hye 207 perpetrator 222; ethic of 198; and
Pasha, Kheireddin 139, 145n59 guilt 199, 201; legal 197, 204–205,
Passeron, Jean-­Claude 133 207–208; moral and criminal 157;
past injustice, responses to 13–32 personal 24; political 200
Paz, Octavio 5 Ricœur, Paul 11n11
Paz, Olga Alicia 160n31 rights: human see human rights
Pérez Vilar, Natalia 158 Rojas, Baeza Paz 156
philosophers, obligation of 5
philosophy: definition 4–5; Said, Edward 34
intercultural see intercultural Santana, Stephanie Bosch 38
philosophy; need for 6; sensibility Santos, Boaventura de Sousa 134–135
for 5 Santos Herceg, José 149–165
Philpott, David 222 Sartre, Jean-­Paul 43–45, 87
Picasso, Pablo 42 Schaap, Andrew 197, 200–201, 222,
pluralism: cultural see cultural 223
pluralism Schaub, Jörg 236n33
political imprisonment, Latin Schelsky, Helmut 76n33
American 149–165 Scherz, Luis 149
political unrest, and Confucianism Schmidt, Carl 197
180–182 secularism 140
poverty: cultural see cultural poverty; Selasi, Taiye 33, 35–38, 48, 49, 51
definition 127–128 self-­conscious identity, and “the
powerlessness 43, 220; experience of Other” 174–180
15 Sen, Amartya 128
PRC see China Senghor, Léopold Sédar 33, 43–52
public deliberation, theory and Serbaji, Mongi 125–148
practice of 106–107, 109–112, slavery 16, 23, 44, 114; abolition of
115–118 39; compensation 90; sexual 203;
public sphere model 118–120 see also Master-­Slave Dialectic
Pucherová, Dobrota 35 Sloterdijk, Peter 85–87, 94
250 Index
Sobukwe, Robert 93 universality of human rights: and
social harmony, Confucian notion of cultural pluralism 19; see also
181–186 human rights: universality of
societies: liberal see liberal societies universality, transcultural 14
spirituality, as home in motion 66–67 unworthiness, feeling of 25
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 25 Uribe Botero, Ángela 156
states: liberal see liberal states
Suddath, Virginia 180 Valadez, Jorge 116
Valech Report 149–150
Taylor, Charles 11n11 Victimhood: excessive 200; Japan’s
theories of recognition, inadequacies sense of 199; radicalized 201; use
of 8–9 by Korean activists 209–210
Thomas, Lynn 42 Vidal, Hernán 154
torture 162n74, 162n75, 163n76, Vorster, John 88
163n77; experience of victims of
155–157; during Southern Cone Watsuji, Tetsurō 63, 74n10, 198
dictatorships 153–158 Weber, Max 198
Touraine, Alain 3 Western universalism, critiques of
transculturality, of human rights 14, 34
18–22 Williams, Melissa S. 113–114
Triki, Fathi 23–24 Wimmer, Franz Martin 188
Tunisian Pact on Rights and Liberties wisdom, love of 4–5
(2012) 14–17, 22–23 World Bank 127, 131
Tutu, Desmond 85, 236n18, 237n57
Tu Wei-­Ming 187 Xi Jinping 172, 181

ubuntu 87, 92–95 Yeats, William Butler 181

UNESCO 129, 130
Universal Declaration of Human Zhao, Tingyang 234
Rights (1948) 14, 15, 27n7 Zheng Yanxiong 185
Universalism: Western see Western Žižek, Slavoj 25
universalism Zuma, Jacob 84, 96