The Republic of Dissent

The goodness of blasphemy

Christopher Hitchens in his usual blunt manner defended in Slate the need to offend God-Fearing people especially Muslims (hat tip: Michael C. Moynihan). Hitchens made the point that being afraid to offend the religious is a form of surrender against the irrational and the absurd. Moreover, to Hitchens, the issue is as much about free speech, as about a society not giving in to the extremism of faithful and not establishing special rules for them by shielding them against criticizing, dissent, and yes, even blasphemy. Sugary excerpt:

But the plain fact is that the believable threat of violence undergirds the Muslim demand for "respect."

Before me is a recent report that a student at Pace University in New York City has been arrested for a hate crime in consequence of an alleged dumping of the Quran. Nothing repels me more than the burning or desecration of books, and if, for example, this was a volume from a public or university library, I would hope that its mistreatment would constitute a misdemeanor at the very least. But if I choose to spit on a copy of the writings of Ayn Rand or Karl Marx or James Joyce, that is entirely my business. When I check into a hotel room and send my free and unsolicited copy of the Gideon Bible or the Book of Mormon spinning out of the window, I infringe no law, except perhaps the one concerning litter. Why do we not make this distinction in the case of the Quran? We do so simply out of fear, and because the fanatical believers in that particular holy book have proved time and again that they mean business when it comes to intimidation. Surely that should be to their discredit rather than their credit. Should not the "moderate" imams of On Faith have been asked in direct terms whether they are, or are not, negotiating with a gun on the table?

On principle, I agree with Hitchens, but I think that there is a middle point between surrender and full frontal confrontation. The issue is not simply a religious one, but one of cultural differences and a complex of superiority or of inferiority. I’m trying to say that confrontation is necessary in most cases because it forces a conversation about right and wrong by forcing people to understand that certain things are unacceptable and that they must tolerate accept that they are not the world and religion and culture cannot be used to justify the unjustifiable. However, a confrontation must not be used as an excuse to debase important discussions about what is permissible and inexcusable to a third grade level by limiting them to insults and childish tantrums about who is right, which God is greater, and who has superior morals. Thus, my concern is about more about the tone and style for too often people use a condescending tone and correct statements of facts to reaffirm illogically ideological preferences or simply to resort to insults to avoid debates about culture, religion, and reason.

So is Hitchens right? He is, but useful and needed conversations must not become screaming matches where the goal becomes to offend and to shock rather than to make blunt arguments about wrong, rights, God, culture, and reason. That said the age of blasphemy is over and the most important issue is no longer blasphemy or tolerance, but the willingness to accept that others have the right to offend you  and to disagree bluntly.

Africa and Western medicine

Harriet Washington has an important article in the International Herald Tribune about Africa and the West. She explains why Africans don’t trust Western medicine. She shows that the ordeal of the Bulgarian nurses in Libya is just an example of the distrust that exists between Africans and Western medical workers. Sugary excerpt:

To Westerners, the repatriation of five nurses and a doctor to Bulgaria last week after more than eight years' imprisonment meant the end of an unsettling ordeal. The medical workers, who in May 2004 were sentenced to death on charges of intentionally infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, have been freed, and another international incident is averted.

But to many Africans, the accusations, which have been validated by a guilty verdict and a promise to reimburse the families of the infected children with a $426 million payout, seem perfectly plausible. […] Certainly, the vast majority of beneficent Western medical workers in Africa are to be thanked, not censured. But the canon of "silence equals death" applies here: We are ignoring a responsibility to defend the mass of innocent Western doctors against the belief that they are not treating disease, but intentionally spreading it. We should approach Africans' suspicions with respect, realizing that they are born of the acts of a few monsters and of the deadly constraints on medical care in difficult conditions. By continuing to dismiss their reasonable fears, we raise the risk of even more needless illness and death.

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to this serious problem. I fear that other countries will be tempted to follow the Libyan example by holding Western medical workers in exchange for an expensive payout. However, I think that another important aspect of the problem is the fact that Africans feel that their continent is being used by the West and its pharmaceutical companies to experiment medicines and that they are being used as Guinea pig. The Constant Gardner, the 2005 movie based on John le Carré's famous novel of the same name, illustrated this problem and no matter how paranoid this fear is, it exists and is based on the larger issue that healthcare is inexistent in most of Africa. No Government’s agencies exist in these countries to ensure the local population that their fears are unfounded and more importantly to protect it from the bad guys and from medical errors.

The use of private armies

James Meek has a review of Jeremy Scahill’s The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. The book is about the increasing use of private armies by some governments including in messy conflicts about its implications by focusing on a firm, Blackwater, which provided the US with some private soldiers in Iraq. Meek argues that Scahill’s book is incomplete because it fails to address important questions:

Even within the confines of Scahill’s theme, there are frustrating omissions. He writes about how much higher the daily pay of Blackwater guards in Iraq is than the pay of regular US troops, and the staggering sums Blackwater as a company is paid by the US government. But he fails to analyse the more difficult and more important issue about the money: is the government getting extra soldiers on the cheap, or not? The cost of a long-service professional soldier is reckoned not only in his daily pay but in how much it costs to train him, the cost of lifetime medical care (whether he is injured or not), and the cost of his pension if, as many do, he retires in his forties. Blackwater and other mercenary firms don’t pay to train their recruits: they hire ex-military men, and if there’s extra training, the recruits pay for it themselves; nor do they offer the same health and pension benefits as the military.

The most unfortunate thing about Scahill’s book is the way that, in serving its narrow subject, it manages to make the careless, callous US-British invasion and occupation of Iraq sound like a vicious plan that partly succeeded, rather than a monument to political incompetence such as the world has rarely seen.

America and Westerns

“You can always tell when America is having doubts about itself: it starts producing westerns. […] During the Cold War, John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance showed yet another man, this time played by James Stewart, demonstrating the exact degree to which violence and the rule of law have enjoyed a complicated relationship in the making of America - "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend" - and both Vietnam and the Reagan era gave rise to westerns that asked the age-old questions: what is America and what is it that makes it so alluring and so terrifying? […] We might say that in a lively culture there are no right answers, there are only right questions, and it seems to me that the western film is a great, traditional source of the right questions.

In Unforgiven, when the character played by Clint Eastwood starts shaking and then drops his gun, we feel that a formerly immutable version of American machismo is being questioned.  [...] If we watch the westerns with care, we may come out of the summer having examined something in a new way - not just America and its soaring sense of its allies and its enemies, but perhaps the weapons-crazy outlaws in Manchester and London who have claimed three young lives in the last week alone.” Andrew O’Hagan, “Westerns that shoot from the hip.”

Bergman and Cinema

Ingmar Bergman died on Yesterday. Although I feel the same way about his movies that I feel about Michel Houellebecq’s books or Andy Warhol’s art, that is I understanding the reverence people feel towards them without sharing it, I believe that his death is a great loss for cinema. I feel that way because his work stood apart. Bergman refused sameness and by doing so, showed that it is possible to achieve greatness by refusing to conventions and formatting. Nowadays more than ever, I think that art in general and cinema in particular need difference and people who dare to take the road less traveled because otherwise, watching movies is going to be like sleeping or like eating (for most people), something that we do without having to think and to force our mind to participate in the activity . In this video, Bergman explains how he approaches his work, Saraband in this instance. It is interesting because it shows that great directors are as demanding themselves as they are with themselves.

Nature and writing

“The point is that nature is no longer something to be studied from a position of scientific detachment, but an experience, a relationship in which human beings are as much part of nature as any so called wildlife. […] As globalisation seems to strip out the distinctiveness of place - Starbucks in every high street - we have a renewed fascination in this small set of islands. Just as it is easier than ever to hop on a plane and find yourself anywhere in the world, there's a counter-reaction and a new impetus to search out what's immediately around you. In part, it is perhaps driven by the increasing sense of the fragility of the natural world; we need to know what we are fast losing.

There's also a backlash against a culture that is increasingly virtual; so much experience is mediated by electronic gadgets that entail sensory deprivation - of touch, of smell, of certain sounds. Meanwhile, our obsession with comfort and safety not only deprives our children of the sense of freedom inspired by outdoors, a fact we now frequently lament, but it deprives adults as well: how many of us see stars on a regular basis? Or remember the feeling of getting wet or cold? Or see the thick darkness of a night free of city street lights, or hear the call of an owl at night? ” Madeleine Bunting, “We need an attentiveness to nature to understand our own humanity.”

Duras and the existentialists

Emily Bickerton had an interesting review in Times of London literary supplement of a book on Marguerite Duras, Cahiers de la Guerre et Autres Textes edited by Sophie Bogaert and Olivier Corpet. In her review, Bickerton compares Duras to Existentialist writers such as Camus, Sartre and particularly to Simone de Beauvoir and concludes mistakenly that “Duras doesn’t quite hold her ground convincingly, at least as a writer of ideas.” Sugary excerpt:

In these notebooks one can observe a nascent writer at work, someone compelled to write in order to make sense of her thoughts and experiences; “the words to describe my feelings seem to me non-existent . . . . I would like to take distance from [my memories], push back their absorbing reality”. Duras is most insightful on motherhood, both her own experience of it and her relationship with her mother. Her account of the death of her first child is retold in two forms: it appears as a short story and as a dialogue between herself and one of the (nun) nurses. We see how one literary style can trump another, as the conversation form presents an especially devastating portrait – “Here, we burn the dead babies. Now you know. Sleep” / “Why did you tell me that? You could have lied, you told me because I said earlier that you could stuff your prayers. You should never have told me that”. Written as dialogue, the experience is even more stark; all one reads is the blunt exchange between two people as the world it existed in is kept out, left as a blank to focus our attention on the horror of the experience and Duras’s cold treatment at the hands of the nuns.

[…] These Cahiers de la guerre will be useful to anyone keen to understand Duras’s oeuvre more fully; the discreet, instructive editing is a bonus. But read in the context of her time, Duras doesn’t quite hold her ground convincingly, at least as a writer of ideas. While she evokes a memorable atmosphere, life in her novels is lived “in a desert-like light, raw and as far away from a dream as possible”. The question remains: where do her characters lead readers?

From the beginning of her review, Bickerton isn’t fair to Duras because she is comparing two things, the nouveau roman and existentialism that are incomparable. She is trying to assert that they can be judged by using the same criteria when they are as different as Symbolist poetry and  Naturalist prose and that Duras is as different to the existentialists as Baudelaire is to Zola. Duras saw herself as a writer and not as a philosopher, while to Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and most existentialists, writing was as a tool to expose their philosophical ideas to the world. In short, Duras and the existentialists although they were using the same craft weren’t doing the same métier.

Finally, what bugged me about Bickerton’s review is that at the end she ends up taking the easy path by comparing Duras to de Beauvoir because they have the same gender and by using that fact to create a connection that is inexistent and illegitimate in order to force them within the narrow and limited category of woman fiction:

Comparisons with Beauvoir are striking. Duras’s fictions exist in a world dominated by ennui, a sense of otherness from the world, full of intense emotions, but mostly internal experiences. When events and a historical context are required, there is a blandness to the writing that means one layer separates from the other; reality and how that reality is experienced become two distinct things. In Beauvoir’s work, the two remain soldered together because her literary aim was to present her protagonists as actors in the world, to explore where their moment of self-consciousness took them.

The key difference is that Duras’s characters are primarily characters and that de Beauvoir’s characters are used to make a larger point about existence. Bickerton’s comparison of Duras’s La Vie Tranquille to de Beauvoir’s La Femme Brisée Rompue is misleading. Duras’s Françoise is not half-conscious but simply used by Duras to exemplifies her contention that writing and indeed living isn’t always about action or but about silence, inaction, and this hope that something will happen that will make solitude noisy and  active. De Beauvoir’s Monique is alone and conscious because to her creator and other existentialists, life is about voluntarism, actions and choices. Duras has the more artistic point of view because her view is that sometimes life just happens to us. Duras’s characters are never action heroes because to her living is more often than not about silence, solitude and inaction. Therefore, when Bickerton wonders what Duras’s characters lead her readers, they lead them to that simple realization that as Duras stated Écrire ( et Vivre) c'est aussi ne pas parler. C'est se taire. C'est hurler sans bruit. (To write [and to live] is also not to speak. It is to remain silent. It is to scream without noise).

Messianic politics and failings

Davi Bernstein wrote a post on Nicolas Sarkozy and his deal with Qaddafi on the Contentions blog last Thursday, which reminded me of the dangers of messianic politics. The title of the post was, “Would the Real Sarkozy Stand up?” and it talked about Bernstein’s shocked realization that Sarkozy could be an opportunist and seize the opportunity to free the Bulgarian Nurses while at the same time affording French companies the opportunity to business with Libya by striking a nuclear deal. Sugary excerpt:

The cost, when viewed in the proper context, is very high: others (North Korea, but especially Iran) are surely watching. Even the impression of relenting to blackmail and terrorism is self-defeating. To be sure, this is a very bizarre affair with a long and twisted history, and Qaddafi, though truly a crackpot, did surrender his weapons of mass destruction to the United States. But even a little goodwill in the face of brutality can be perilous.

Sarkozy remains a mystery. He showed independence when he called Hizballah a “terrorist” organization, which of course it is, even though it is not classified as such by the European Union. And whereas Chirac blocked action on Darfur, Sarkozy is eager to stop genocide—in cooperation with the United States. Still, this week’s events suggest that Sarkozy is shirking his generation’s tasks: curbing nuclear proliferation abroad and, at home, overcoming the entrenched enarchs [énarques] and ending their long collaboration with Islamism and terrorism.

If I weren’t familiar with Bernstein’s writings, I would have thought after reading his post that he was incredibly naïve, but I know that his assertions just showed that his lack of knowledge of French politics and French society, and his view of politics and of diplomacy as a war between good and evil . Bernstein’s post on Sarkozy illustrated the dangers of elevating politics to Messianisn by asserting that a few chosen politicians are the only ones that can change the nation because their destiny is to make their country great and to right all the wrongs that exist within their society. Commentary Magazine chose to present Sarkozy to its readers, as the chosen one, the one that was finally going to make France a country they could stop to disparage because he was going to get rid of French nuance by making France a manlier nation. The problem is that messianic politics is only good to win elections, but not to govern and to make changes precisely because Messiahs want to love and venerated for their superhuman powers. On the contrary to Bernstein, Sarkozy’s deal with Qaddafi didn’t surprise me neither did his call for a more pragmatic approach to international relations because he is a politician who wants to last. To be fair, I think that few politicians would have resisted the opportunity to make such a deal with Libya considering the advantages and the fact that the dangers of the deal will appear in the long term.

Sarkozy has refused to be Jesus because he knows that Messiahs always are crucified because the electorate expects miracles and a show. Sarkozy has decided instead to be to appear to be a magnanimous Superman, a superhero that extends a hand to his enemies and adversaries before using his superpowers to crush them. Sarkozy thus is trying to provide the French with a show while at the same time not refusing successes because of foolish pride or an inflexible ideology. The key question is of course what does a superhero does when victory is not spectacular, but when failure. I never expected Sarkozy to be the French Jesus, but I always expected him to try to be all things to all people, to blur legitimate and necessary differences between the left and the right, and never to commit to a point of view and to a course of action that can lead to political defeat. Davi Bernstein wanted the real Sarkozy to stand up, when the real Sarkozy is a chameleon who is prepared to be either a pragmatist or an idealist if it enables him to say to others, “Anything you do , I can do better.” 

Humor caliente

I love John Leguizamo! His humor is very raw, but very real so keep that in mind when watching this video. 

Private lives and political spouses

“I also have a more idealistic objection to the rise of the political wife. I love Gloria Steinem’s assertion that women were becoming the men they had wanted to marry. The idea of women shaping the world directly – rather than doing so by being the great woman behind the great man – seems to me to be the essential, emancipating message of feminism.

Americans aren’t used to looking to Europe – particularly Germany – for political role models, but Steinem’s slogan is the reason why my feminist icon at the moment is Angela Merkel, the quietly confident German chancellor. Her scientist husband so scrupulously avoids the political stage that he has been nicknamed “the phantom of the opera”, as the couple’s annual visit to the Bayreuth opera festival is one of the rare occasions they are seen in public together.” Chrystia Freeland, “White House, Right Spouse.”

Criticizing Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In an interview in Dissent, Yale Professor Seyla Benhabib takes on Ayaan Hirsi Ali for her views of Islam and her contention that Turkey is on the verge of becoming a theocracy. I have to admit that I like the fact that to see someone with the credibility of Benhabib takes on Ali without insulting her. Sugary excerpt:

Miss Ayaan Hirsi Ali has now assumed a public role of exaggerating and driving Islam and everything related to Islam into the corner of fascism or a kind of theocracy. Her statement is simply uninformed. It is not a statement that can be taken seriously by anybody who is a democrat. First of all, there is no danger of Islamic theocracy in Turkey. I can assure you there will be a civil war in Turkey before there will be a theocracy. […] Miss Hirsi Ali’s language is a language of confrontation that basically presents a homogeneous, orthodox Islam as closed to reform and transformation. And it is a language that presents a unified, uncritical and un-reflectively positive view of liberal democracies--as if they didn't have their own problems and reasons to be criticized. Miss Hirsi Ali has taken a decision to work with the American Enterprise Institute and to interfere politically and publicly through the American Enterprise Institute, which is a well-known right-wing think tank based in Washington. I have respect for her sufferings as a woman and as an individual, but I regret that this is the way in which she has chosen to talk about these issues that are very important to all of us. I hope that maybe after a couple of years in the United States she might change her mind.

The invisible fortune of the King of Zaire

Michela Wrong has an article on the New Statesman website on the disappearing fortune of the former president of Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo), Mobutu. She makes the point that although Mobutu had enormous amount of money given both the size of his country and its wealth, there may not be much left given the fact that he had to spend most of it to remain the King of Zaire. Moreover, today’s Congolese officials, Michela Wrong argues don’t care about the disappearing millions of Mobutu because there is enough money left to get enrich themselves just as Mobutu did.

Casting the first stone to avoid looking at the mirror

“While newspapers across the Middle East and South Asia spend much time decrying the imperialism of Western countries’ poor treatment of Muslim minorities, little or no energy is spent discussing the plight of these modern-day slaves, whose masters claim to be the most authentic and representative Muslims. Where indeed are the Islamic values of justice, piety and egalitarianism when it comes to foreign workers imported to be human machines?
Sky-scrapers and fancy malls exist all around the world, but the Gulf States are unique in creating a system of labour exploitation where workers are not only denied citizenship despite years of residence but are treated as mere chattel unworthy of even the barest minimum of respect. Housed in camps, fed like cows and worked like horses they are the most reprehensible example of human subjugation in the world today.” Rafia Zakaria, “The Tower Slaves Built.”

Professeur Stanley Hoffmann and the seductiveness of culture

Craig Lambert has a thorough and great portrait of Stanley Hoffmann in Harvard Magazine. It is the best article I’ve read this week so far because it shows the vast culture and experience of Hoffmann and that it is possible to love both American and France passionately without having to revert to clichés and to superficiality. In the article, Hoffmann makes two statements with which I agree totally. The first is on American’s foreign policy:

[Americans], have to understand the foreignness of foreigners, instead of believing that they are simply misguided Americans or not well-guided Americans. […] This is why we have been so successful in Vietnam and Iraq. The assumption that ‘people everywhere are all alike’ is something you have to get out of your system. In old age, I am more and more convinced that people are intensely different from country to country. Not everyone is motivated by the same things. […] Americans mean well, but they don’t understand that acting with all one’s might to do good can be seen as a form of imperialism. […] Within 10 minutes, these good intentions can turn into a benevolent condescending attitude toward the lesser tribes.

The second statement is on Charles de Gaulle and on leadership today:

There is no exact equivalent for the word ‘leadership’ in French. I recently reread de Gaulle’s speeches and marveled at the eloquence of his style, the pedagogical talent he had—he was the son of a schoolteacher. For the French, leadership means pedagogy: the capacity to explain the world, and to make people feel that the leadership takes them seriously. We haven’t had a real teacher since de Gaulle, and that has produced a funk in France. One component of leadership is making people feel that they are intelligent, that they understand. It’s something that has been missing in both France and America for a long time. People want to be enlightened. If you don’t do that, if it is all electoral tricks, or canned speeches, then there is going to be nothing but contempt and distrust of the people in power.

The future and a metaphor for Western civilization

Emanuel L. Paparella has written a good article in Ovi Magazine. It talks about the self, western philosophy, and the future. It is a fun and instructive read, which has a great conclusion:

Let us conclude with a brief reflection on this powerful metaphor of the whirlpool. Let us imagine it as representing a deterministic, horizontal, immanent future, devoid of any transcendence, the end of history so to speak, swallowing the past and the present. Let us further imagine Western Civilization as a wonderfully comfortable transatlantic ship full of technological gadgets and wonders unknowingly approaching the whirlpool in the middle of the night without a guiding compass or chart. Will it save itself by simply understanding the action of the whirlpool? Can that understanding be achieved via positivistic, rationalistic or real-politick paradigms devoid of the poetical? Is rationalism sufficient light unto itself to discern the danger of the whirlpool ahead?
The metaphor ought to liberate the reader's imagination and suggest many more existentially vital questions. For the preservation of our Western civilization may ultimately be determined not by the glib answers but by the quality of the imaginative questions we are capable of asking ourselves. They are like the indispensable rear-view mirror and sea charts.

Anti-Americanism and hipness

This video is as interesting as it is disturbing because it shows that it has become increasingly acceptable and even hip to bash America and Americans just for the sake of doing so.

Globalization, Miserabilism, and political responsibility

“The concept of globalisation is popular today because it allows the political class to deny having much responsibility in running society. Outgoing UK prime minister Tony Blair once insisted that ‘due to globalisation’, it was ‘impossible’ for the government to improve or shape the economy. Mason’s endorsement of globalisation seems like a way of evading responsibility, too. If nation states are now irrelevant, and the working classes are a ‘transnational force in-waiting’, it follows that challenging difficult domestic issues can be ignored. This is something the radical left already has some experience of. […] It is ahistorical and fantastical to believe that people in one era will mechanistically ‘relive’ the struggles of yesteryear. Yet reconnecting society to Enlightenment ideals – of liberty, equality and prosperity - is crucial if a progressive current is to be established in Britain and elsewhere. The demise of the old left (particularly the dead hand of Stalinism) and the old right should be viewed as an opportunity, not a burden, which we can use to establish a proper humanist politics for the twenty-first century.” Neil Davenport, “The Globalisation of Miserabilism.”

Good girls, bad girls, bla bla

The Globe and Mail is the latest newspaper to inquire in the so-called return of the good girl. The article talks about the increasing number of girls ( of course)who are choosing to remain virgins until marriage. It asserts that it has nothing to do with religion and society’s expectations (you don’t say!). Sugary excerpt:

Ms. Burton is not surprised the good-girl image is gaining traction within these media. She says there is appeal in not buying into the easy sexual culture that has permeated high schools over recent years. "It shows that I have the strength to go against the norms of society and not be influenced by everyone around me," she said.

Girls like her are influenced by a sociopolitical climate, even if they don't realize it, says Hanne Blank, author of Virgin: The Untouched History.

"One of the things at play here, somewhat paradoxically, is feminism," she said. "Women can make whatever choice they want without being taken to task if that choice is unpopular."

In the late 20th century, Ms. Blank said, the most popular rationale for remaining chaste was to avoid being labelled a tramp or a slut. Now, proud autonomy has supplanted the fear of getting a bad reputation.

"This is a way that you can express your independence, your feminism, your intelligence," she said. "And that message is marketed to young people from all sides of the political spectrum."

I feel uneasy the whole dichotomy that is being developed between the good-girl and the bad girl by making the distinction between the two being one of sexual behavior. To be honest, I resent the fact that people can assert that what a virgin is good girl simply because she has made the “choice” to be a virgin until she marries and that those who make a different decision and who decides to have sex are bad girls. This unhealthy and hypothetical focus on chastity bugs me because it is so dark ages because again good and bad women are defined by sexual behavior thus again putting the emphasizing of the fact that they are indeed the second sex. For after, boys don’t seem to have the same problem, wouldn’t most people find laughable the notion that what makes a good boy is his virginity and that bad boys have a problem. The fact that there is a different standard between the sexes shows precisely why this issue is less about modesty, virginity, chastity or whatever else, but about an attempt to tame femininity to make it to quote Wendy Shalit mild because anything wild is just too hot to handle.

Turkey and complexity

The Los Angeles Times has an op-ed by Senay Ozdemir, a self described Turkish Feminist who argues that women rights in Turkey are progressing step by step and that this along with the fact that Turkey is a democracy are the most important things:

While Westerners wring their hands about secularism, they miss the larger point: Turkey is getting more and more democratic. The lively public debate leading up to the election illustrates the progress that was already visible in legislation, media, employment and politics. Fifteen years ago, few people argued politics or took a public stance for one party or another. Now everybody is free to do so.
Yes, a party led by religious conservatives remains in power. But my expectations of progress for Turkish women remain high. The mentality is changing there -- across the secular-religious spectrum. Religious women may not be associated with feminism, but they now use the same laws to gain access to schools, universities and the media. Even if they wear head scarves, shouldn't we encourage them in these pursuits? Aren't religious women allowed to be ambitious? Isn't that pure democracy?

Sign and Sight has an English translation of an article written by Zafer Senocak for the German newspaper Die Welt.  It emphasizes also the complexity of the Turkish situation:

But can you trust the people? This question is all the more crucial when it concerns a Muslim people who have elected a Muslim party. But how Muslim is the Turkish people? Aren't a quarter of all Turks Alevis – a free-thinking variant of Islam that has nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with the Islam of the Sharia? Has not a vast majority of the Turking people made peace with the idea of secular society? Turks have a more pragmatic attitude towards religion than most of their brothers and sisters in the Islamic world. And that is now evident: Mustafa Kemal's reforms were not just the attempt at an Utopia for the elite that went unnoticed by the masses. Civil rights and democracy are no longer foreign concepts requiring translation for the Turks.
Turkey is in the throes of an irresistible process of transformation, one that can't be understood by someone who thinks only in terms of irreconcilable opposites. In Turkey, Europe and Islam, East and West, military and democracy have long been more than simple antipodes. In the same way, the opposition between Istanbul elites and the people from the provinces has also been destabilised.

However, the key question is whether Turkey will ever be able to overcome the suspicion that it is too Muslim to be European and it remains unanswered.

Self-centeredness with results

The Financial Times has an editorial about the Sarkozys’ (both the French President and his wife Cécilia) successful brokerage of a deal with Gadaffi to free the Bulgaria nurses and doctor. The part of the editorial, which caught my attention, is the following:

That said, it comes as no surprise to see Cecilia Sarkozy, wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, appearing in Libya just before the prisoners’ release. Mr Sarkozy himself was due in Tripoli today for talks with Muammer Gadaffi, the quixotic Libyan leader.

While France has, along with the UK and Germany, contributed to the complex deal that secured the Bulgarians’ freedom, it would not be the first time that one EU power has tried to hog the limelight and take the credit for a shared success. This behaviour is self-centred but political ego is one of the many motors driving the EU. Like it or not, it can bring results.

Art as religion

“The desire to relate physically to art in a museum is real enough. I often want to reach out and touch a painting or sculpture. Sometimes - and this is easier at a press view - I stand extremely close, as if to breathe in the varnish. But actually reaching out and touching, even marking, the art is more than a step further than most of us will ever go. Lipstick marks may be a lot nicer than a hole blasted in a masterpiece by a shotgun, but the line has been crossed.

The German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin spoke of the "aura" of the masterpiece. People who 'interact' with static works of art seem troubled by this "aura", at once denying and confirming it. Art has a specialness, a magic, and this is can be unsettling and oppressive. Museums are temples and paintings are relics. This is why the extreme end of art response can be so violent, so destructive: paintings burned with acid, sculptures attacked with hammers. Such iconoclasm is the ultimate proof that art is the religion of the modern world.” Jonathan Jones, “Art is the Religion of the Modern World.”

France and unsavory metaphors

Thomas Sowell wonders in a column whether America today is the France of Yesterday. As you may as guessed , Sowell used France is to symbolize inaction and moral paralysis by confining its history to Vichy and by attributing to it the sole responsibility for failing to stop Hitler and Germany before the second world war. Sugary excerpt:

"Moral paralysis" is a term that has been used to describe the inaction of France, England and other European democracies in the 1930s, as they watched Hitler build up the military forces that he later used to attack them.

It is a term that may be painfully relevant to our own times. […] At one point, Hitler could have been stopped in his tracks "without the firing of a single shot," Churchill said.

That point came in 1936 -- three years before World War II began -- when Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, in violation of two international treaties.

At that point, France alone was so much more powerful than Germany that the German generals had secret orders to retreat immediately at the first sign of French intervention.

As Hitler himself confided, the Germans would have had to retreat "with our tail between our legs," because they did not yet have enough military force to put up even a token resistance.

Why did the French not act and spare themselves and the world the years of horror that Hitler's aggressions would bring? The French had the means but not the will.

"Moral paralysis" came from many things. The death of a million French soldiers in the First World War and disillusionment with the peace that followed cast a pall over a whole generation.

Pacifism became vogue among the intelligentsia and spread into educational institutions. As early as 1932, Winston Churchill said: "France, though armed to the teeth, is pacifist to the core."

It was morally paralyzed.

History may be interesting but it is the present and the future that pose the crucial question: Is America today the France of yesterday?

I’m so astonished by Sowell’s reading of history that I don’t know what to say. I think it is because of people like Sowell that Sarkozy and other proponents of the manliness approach to history have no memory and cannot bear to look at the past. They have accepted the false assertion that action is always better than inaction and that inaction is pacifism and a sign of moral paralysis. I have to say that I find Sowell’s willful ignorance of history or rather his Sarkozyean’s lack of memory creepy.

The second sex and sex

Nona Willis Aronowitz has written a good response to Wendy Shalit’s book Girls Gone Mild. The article is appropriately titled the Feminine Mystique and here is what I believe its most poignant part:

Shalit and other conservative authors, like Laura Sessions Stepp (Unhooked), Dawn Eden (The Thrill of the Chaste) and Lauren Winner (Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity), are completely convinced that sex is never fulfilling unless it is within a loving, supportive marriage. Shalit faults the media and third-wave feminists for leading young women off the track and for presenting promiscuous, scantily clad women as confident and empowered. She claims that it is now the daughters, not the mothers, who are put off by these types of role models.

Shalit's so-called "rebels" amid our "pornified" culture may be technically raging against the mainstream, but they are surely just repackaging age-old ideas as defiance. They appear in the form of 16-year-old rappers preaching abstinence, Orthodox Jewish women getting married before even touching their husbands and a teenager getting her knickers in a twist over reading the word "titties" in her assigned reading. Most retro about the call for modesty is that it once again implies that women's actions are somehow responsible for men's. Since men simply cannot control themselves, poor things, women should shroud their bodies in cloth and desperately guard their virginity so as to quash men's dishonorable intentions. These are the strong, "empowered" women who will quell the supposedly adverse effects of our sex-saturated culture.

You have to be living under a rock not to notice that casual sex, once an expression of a subversive impulse, is now certifiably pop culture. […]

What the hookup culture does reveal is an unconscious impulse to somehow redefine sex for our current cultural climate. To say that the stars of Girls Gone Wild and the fifth graders looking up to Britney Spears are simply victims of media saturation or feminists gone crazy is insulting. Regardless of the (sometimes harmful) results of one-night stands or sex before high school, these women are looking to experiment, to find a contrast to immediate, eternal companionship. Maybe these sexually precocious girls who fervently imitate sexualized twentysomething role models are picking up on the element of fun that sexiness can bring to everyday life.

I’m left wondering why can women just treat sex as sex, but has to make something so meaningful that it was to be the same for all of them and that difference becomes a sign either of frigidity or of wantonness. It is sad to admit but most women use not only sex as a weapon against men, but against other women. Cultures, no matter how modern that they are, haven’t yet accepted that the second sex has the right to love sex, to hate it, or to refuse to be defined by their sexual choices or behaviors. After all it may just be that if we focus on that idea of the divinization of sex when it comes to sex, that the most critical difference between a girl gone wild and a girl gone mild is the power and the lasting effects of the brand. A girl gone wild has branded for life while a girl gone mild when she brands herself as such is a totem in the sense that she becomes the epitome of purity and of the fact that virginity is still important. Why can’t women just be people who have and enjoy sex?

The future is new Europe

“When there is a need for genuine analysis of the facts in place of populist claptrap, legalistic high-mindedness and manipulated political passions. A lot is said nowadays about "old Europe," about traditions, about European culture, and there can be no doubt that the crisis, indeed division, to which we are witness across Europe is, in large part, cultural in nature. When we consider that during the twentieth century Europe was, after all, victorious over the twin totalitarian ideologies of Nazism and communism that threatened the most basic principles of its existence - indeed, it entered the new millennium under the very flag of that victory - we might feel that, all in all, there was cause to be content. On the other hand, it was on European soil that these totalitarian powers came into being; their roots took nurture from the poisoned soil of European culture; and it is highly questionable if European vitality would have been sufficient to vanquish them without assistance from the United States of America.
One might say that this is a political, not a cultural issue. It might be, if it were not evident that Europe is now confronting similar questions of principle to those it faced in 1919 or 1938, and it is struggling with them as indecisively as it did then. How can that be when, during the more than half a century that has passed since the Second World War, we have heard about nothing other than the importance of remembering, the horrors of war, the need to keep constantly before our eyes the lessons that can be drawn from the camps of the Holocaust and the Gulag so that those atrocities should never be repeated?
[…] It will be the very first task of the new Europe to hack out clear paths through the jungle of ideologies and fallacies. It is a typically twentieth-century phenomenon that politics and culture have become not just antagonistic but inimical to one another. In this terrible century of lost values everything that was once of value became ideological. The hour was struck for the political adventurers and leaders of the people who undertake to direct and later exploit the masses with the help of the apparatus of political parties cultivated by devious stratagems.” Imre Kertesz, “Europe's Oppressive Legacy.”

Ramadan, Religious politics, and secularism

Malise Ruthven reviews three books by Tariq Ramadan in the New York Review of Books. The title of his article is The Islamic Optimist and it shows the contradictions of Tariq Ramadan, which some highlight to explain their suspicion that he may be to use a religious metaphor a wolf in sheep clothing. Others argue that Ramadan is a politician and that, as all politicians, he is mindful of his audience and shapes his message according to its sensibilities. As Ruthven points what is worrisome about Ramadan is precisely that given his awareness and knowledge of “Western Culture” he is unable still to accept the notion of secularism and this inability is at the crux of my worries about Tariq Ramadan. Sugary excerpt:

The history of Islamic civilization," Ramadan writes,

confirms that there exists a primal difference between the elements which have given meaning to its internal dynamic and that which, in the West, has produced the phenomenon of secularization, at least since the Renaissance.

In analyzing Western secularization he places the emphasis on classical, Renaissance, and Enlightenment themes that freed the Western spirit from the institutional control of the Church. In Western history, he writes "the sphere of the religious was...founded on authority and dogma." The Church not only had spiritual authority but property and temporal power which it used to oppose science, rationality, and freedom of thought. Secularization was therefore the process by which the people claimed their rights to intellectual freedom after centuries of suppression by the Church.

Islam, he insists, will not be subject to this process of secularization because it was never institutionalized in the form of a church. God is present in Muslim consciousness "by means of a Book and a human example...and not by means of an institution or an incarnation." Under a revitalized Islamic polity—based on the constitutional principles of Medina—Muslims can modernize their societies without succumbing to the dehumanizing forces of secularism.

This is a widely held belief among the Islamists or "Salafist reformers" whom Ramadan is proud to support. There is, however, a profound flaw in his analysis which pervades all of his books under review. It is dangerously utopian and optimistic. In several unguarded passages he gives himself away: unlike Western Christianity the shared faith of Islam—"the brotherhood of Faith—is opposed to any idea of tragic consciousness." This is an astounding statement because it excludes, consciously or otherwise, the whole of the Shia minority tradition, which is suffused with a tragic sense of loss and betrayal.

Secularism is the strongest safeguard, which a society has against religious fundamentalism because it recognizes the idea that religion and politics shouldn’t mix. It is for this reason that I don’t believe that there can be such a thing as a moderate Islamist party and that therefore I’m saddened by the results of the Turkish election. Once placing religion at the center at politics is dangerous because it makes discussion, dialogue impossible for once the political is sacralized it becomes omnipotent for it is guided or at least inspired by God. It for this same reason that I’m suspicious of politicians who tell us that if they get elected, they would ask themselves before making political decisions, what would Jesus do as if that the notion that policies are inspired by Jesus is a irrevocable of their goodness no matter what their consequences are. The point is that Tariq Ramadan is just a reminder that religious leaders should be politicians and that politicians shouldn’t try to become religious leaders. Secularism is about letting God out of Politics and letting fallible humans be in charge of their countries and be accountable for their mistakes without claiming that they were just the vehicle for God’s will and that therefore reality and results don’t matter.

Easy sex and L’amour à la française

Agnès Poirier laments the existence of the website Meetic that originates from France. Emetic enables permits people to find sexual partners without the pretension that the sex will lead to something more. Poirier wonders where the French romanticism has gone. Sugary excerpt:

It's a simple issue of supply and demand: pre-select candidates, test sales pitch, draw a shortlist, have a face-to-face interview, hire on the spot, dismiss without notice, voilà - a case of ultra-liberalism meets romance. And low-cost sex.

But perhaps the most unsettling thing about the whole affair is that Meetic is operating from France, supposedly the country of romance and gallantry. French films of the past century have all conveyed a grand idea of l'amour à la française: the penetrating gaze, the blushing, the first words, the long walks, impassioned silences, a steady crescendo of desire fuelled by months of courtship.

"I have no more time to waste trying to charm girls in cafes ... the process is too long and too arduous," says a 25-year-old Parisian man. "With Meetic ... I often score on the first date. Not long ago, when I was a teenager, girls kept me salivating for weeks. Forget it."

In the age of divorce and of fast love, people don’t want to have to work for a love or a relationship that will not last anyway. Courtship, seduction used to be fun for guys because it was a win and win and could use to a marriage marry to someone that was going to be content with being their Missus and not to ask for more. Women have the same problem except that hard work scares them less even though they are conscious of the fact that they may be getting the short end of the stick for they may find themselves divorced at an age where they will no longer be a catch. In order words, there is a crisis of expectations because men and women no longer trust each other to be nice and fair to each other now that it is less unacceptable for women to behave like men and to be more selfish and less altruistic. Thus, the issue may be that love and romance or rather the image that people have of them hasn’t caught on with the evolution of gender roles and with the ever-increasing crumbling of the traditions, which made marriage a safe institution. The point is that romance isn’t so much dead that it is expensive and arduous because it requires money or creativity, time, effort and especially a belief in love in a time where chaos and strife are the norms. L’amour à la française requires talent and efforts, which few people have to put on something that has been devalued because it is no longer self-sacrificing and everlasting. I am not appalled by the existence of sites such as Meetic because I think that they make the point sex and love are two different things and are in fact trying to answer one of the biggest question of this century can people live on sex alone without romance and yes,without l’amour.

Whatever 'whatever' hides

“Whatever is now used so often, so universally, so indiscriminately, that it appears to be mandatory in some sections of society. I happen to like "whatever", at least when used in ironic counterpoint to a turgid speech or spiralling hyperbole. It captures the weary moral irony of our times. The best headline I saw in London during the week Tony Blair stood down as prime minister was "Blair. Brown. Whatever. Blah, blah, blah". It was a great headline, perfectly summing up the crescendo of media recycling of everything already said about Blair, and could be used for the majority of opinion columns, including this one. "Whatever" has gone into serious cliche orbit, used so often in so many ways that it mocks the vast wealth of the 500,000 living words in the world's richest language. Most people have a working vocabulary of about 2000 words, or less than 1 per cent of potential. Whatever.

The business world, the academy and government bureaucracies have a lot to answer for in deadening the language. Their natural foil, the media, acts as the Medicins Sans Frontieres against the disease, with unseen sub-editors, editors, reporters and producers working every hour of every day to excise jargon and euphemism (but not hyperbole) from public consumption.” Paul Sheehan, “Whatever...blah, blah, blah.”

Summer breeze

The weather this weekend was very enjoyable in DC so much so that it made think of this song. The name of the singer is Nilda Fernandez. He is a Spaniard who sings in French and just for that he has a special place in my heart because French is the toughest of all the Latin languages. The title of the song is Nos fiançailles (our engagement). The video is very nineties, but the song is timeless.

The trouble with Harry

“The Harry-effect bothers me only in that it is very crowded. Alternative worlds traditionally offer a bit of room, but Harry-land belongs to everyone – it is a collective alternative, like Heaven or Hell, without the border controls. I don’t believe that wanting to hang out, collectively, in a book, will mean a teenage/ adult life of internet games and Second Life. The rise and rise of web-based alternative realities is disturbing because they make it easy to opt out of real-life challenges, and their imaginative stimulation is superficial.

[…] The need to feel part of something much larger than you are is human. The need to feel part of a small knowable community is human too, and the modern Western world has damaged both those needs, so that their reappearance as faith wars and cultism, mass-media managed events and internet chat rooms is not surprising.

Loss of straightforward religion, loss of long service in the workplace has cut any sense of a larger purpose for many people, while superstore shopping and anonymous town and city living have destroyed the small-scale feeling of connection with your neighbours.

The Harry Potter phenomenon is new, but it suggests that our children want very similar things to people of all ages and generations: participation in a wider experience that is not your own, and the safety of the known group – Harry and his friends. And that leaves one thing – the individual sense of self.” Jeanette Winterson.

Gender and short fiction

Weston Cutter has a fascinating article on Bookslut in which he makes the argument that American women are better short fiction that American men. I would like to say that I disagree and to be able to prove that Cutter is wrong, but I cannot even though his thesis bugs me. Nevertheless, he makes good points and raises important questions. Sugary excerpt:

And I know: I’m a guy, and I’m a writer, so I’m suspect. Possible axes I could be grinding are that I have two sisters that I adore and I suppose that, since I’m straight, I want to appear suave and winning and liberated to women. Maybe this is some weird male guilt because I’m the dominant paradigm: a straight white guy with a college education. I don’t know of a defense against those charges. Also, all of this lambasting is as directed at me as it is at any other practicing male fiction writer, just in case anyone wants to take too much offense. (My last published story? About a young guy who can’t just get his act together and tell the girl he likes that, in fact, he likes her.) This is motivated by a frustration with men as short story writers, and I feel the same way about this as I do about assholes who yell loudly at bars: I want men to be better.

[…]The default male short story writers’ agenda is to prove something -- about themselves as authors, about the story and what they know of the world. What do I mean by proving things? […] Do female authors do this? Of course they do. None of this is absolute. Writing can be tough, and proving something -- trying to establish a story’s legitimacy, or the author’s legitimacy in telling the story -- is plenty easier than simply sitting back and telling a story, hoping that the narrative itself will let the story rise or fall. Consider this response, uttered by a friend, when I told him about this great new story in which a girl makes out with an iron: why?
[…] In an e-mail, Caren Beilin raised what I think might be the dark heart of this whole argument: “Well, of course, with guys, there can be that whole Raymond Carver effect, which really botches things up on their end.” Carver of course can be replaced with Hemingway, and the question then becomes: is the great majority of male American short story writers doomed because of our heritage? If we’re not mucking up stories by attempting to prove things about ourselves or our knowledge, are we cowed by the tough, athletic prose that’s come to be recognized as the Great White American Male style? What if the spectrum of male American short fiction wasn’t anchored by Hemingway at one end and Faulkner at the other and that, between the two, men had to choose?

The question that I have is whether the issue is really a matter of self-centeredness or egocentrism rather than of gender. I mean by that short stories require writers to get out of themselves and to focus on their characters given the fact length is an issue. It might just be that precisely for the reason that Cutter enumerates in his article American men are unable to write good short stories because it is easier for them to get recognition as writers and therefore to assume that writing is about them. American women in most cases know that they need to expand their horizons in order not to be confined within the limited and limiting boundaries of women fiction so they write stories that show that they are not self-obsessed or that their self-obsession is universal. At the end of it all, my first instinct is to restrict arguments based on gender because I find them incredibly uninspiring and conductive to powerlessness. I remember that in college, there was a course offered in my sophomore years called “Woman fiction.” I resented that. My reason was purely emotional. I felt that something was ripping my gut apart because I thought that it was insulting to put together George Sand, Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Toni Morrison, and Margaret Atwood solely because they shared by some random act of fate the same gender. Then again, I wonder if it is all once again a matter of perspective. What people believe matters. The one question that I have Cutter is why he assumed that the only thing that can explain the fact that women short fiction writers are better than men is their gender. Can’t it be anything else? Isn’t that in a way incredibly condescending and demeaning to bug down the argument to gender and to thus rob great and good women short fiction writers of the fact that they are better at their craft than their male counterpart because they have more talent and because they work harder?  

Becoming a Goddess once more

The Independent has an article about the Nepalese child goddess that was stripped of her divinity last week because she travelled to the United States and just got it back. It is an interesting story, which asks important questions about religion, consistency, and reason. I mean what else, but human frailty and even arrogance can explain that someone is divine one day and the next day isn’t or that something is wrong one day and not the next. And if religions have more of the human in them than of the divine, doesn’t it follow that believers should stop having a complex of superiority or rather assume that they have the truth and that others don’t?

American writers in Paris

“I mean, the whole thing that happened in Paris in the early and mid-20th century, where you had Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Stein all in the same room at once, nothing like that will ever happen again — especially not in Paris. No one from abroad can afford to move there these days unless they have a trust fund or a corporate job. I mean, come on. American writers don’t move overseas now; they go to MFA programs or start blogs or, I don’t know what they do, but they’re not here, and the ones who are aren’t very interesting. I’m not being mean. The fact is, writing is incredibly difficult. Most people aren’t any good at it — that includes a lot of the ones who get published, even the bigger names. Especially some of the bigger names. The vast majority of American expat writers you encounter in Europe are producing either confessional, therapeutic stuff or work that is flagrantly derivative of other writers, most of whom have been dead for forty years or longer. I don’t think this is a recent phenomenon. I’m sure that at the height of the expat literary salons in Paris, besides all the celebrities, there must have been five hundred other American writers living in Paris who never got published, who remain unknown to this day.” Travis Jeppesen.

New France and History

Common Palace has an excellent article about the efforts of some French scholars to make New France new again. What is New France? New France is the name given to the new world or northern American territory, which was colonized by France. The article talked about the fact that although New France was forgotten by French Historical consciousness and ignored by Anglophone historians, but that it is making a comeback in great part due to the efforts of francophone minorities living outside of Québec. The article is definitely worth reading.

Sarkozy, memory, and the manliness approach to History

It took me some time, but I was finally able to digest Bernard-Henri Lévy’s review of Sarkozy’s book Témoignages. It has just been published under the title of Testimony, France in the Twenty-First Century (I wonder what they would have called it if Sarkozy had lost) even though it was published a year ago in France. I have a lot of respect for BHL even though I have, to say things crudely, a hate-love relationship with what his writings because I think that he isn’t always able to get himself out of the picture and to have the distance necessary to see the forest through the trees (I have the same problem). However, I take BHL seriously, because he is not only a serious thinker, but also a serious writer.

Thus, I took the time necessary to read, and reread his review of Sarkozy to see if I could learn anything new.

I liked BHL’s review in this case precisely because he injected himself into it, by explaining why he didn’t vote for a man, who had been a friend of his as he told Haaretz and chose instead to vote for Ségolène Royal, who had been ridiculed for her supposed stupidity and her lack of substance. I like BHL’s explanation because it explains to Americans, why people such as me, who aren’t even socialists or radical leftists, cannot let themselves seduce by Sarkozysm. Sugary excerpt:

I will explain elsewhere, in another way, when it is time. I will say, for example, how such and such a remark on national identity and how it must be preserved pushed me far away from him. Perhaps I will say, more precisely, that to be a Frenchman in the 21st century means to make a choice about certain major and seminal events, like Vichy, colonialism or May 1968. And I will look at the positions he took on these three questions and conclude that when he said that the Vichy government was not an integral participant in genocide, when he thundered that France should not be embarrassed by its "civilizing" work in Algeria, and when he vowed that if elected he would "liquidate the heritage of May 1968," which for 40 years has been a secret wound, a torment, sometimes the nightmare of the most radical reactionary right wing of this country, Nicolas Sarkozy cut himself off from men like me. […] There are the pages on repentance, for example. Or more exactly the pages about his love for France, which should be "proud of its past" and which we must love completely, without nuance, far from the "denigration" that the possible future president saw as a kind of illness. I personally have nothing against a little denigration. Frankly, I am not against the idea of political leaders and citizens speaking about the sadness, the pity, even the horror they feel when examining some of the blackest pages of their national history. In other words, I think that shame is quite useful in politics, and the idea of not feeling, as Emmanuel Levinas said, "accountable for" or even "hostage to" the crimes we did not commit, and even worse, not feeling accountable and responsible for those in which we or ours have had some part — I think this is exactly what Sartre (him again!) called a politics of "bastards." [….] I am only saying that there is in Sarkozy a relationship to memory that troubles and worries me. Men usually have a memory. It can be complex, contradictory, paradoxical, confused. But it is their own. It has a great deal to do with the basis of who they are and the identities they choose for themselves. Sarkozy is an identity pirate, a mercenary of others' memories. He claims all memories, meaning that in the end he just might not have any. He is our first president without a memory. He is the first of our presidents willing to listen to all ideas, because for him they are literally indistinguishable. If there is a man in France today who embodies (or claims to embody) the famous end of all ideologies, which I cannot quite bring myself to believe in, it is indeed Mr. Sarkozy, the sixth president of the Fifth Republic.

BHL states in that last paragraph what is precisely at the center at my strong opposition to Sarkozysm. I have denounced Pascal Bruckner for his tactical use of repentance to argue the unarguable and his advocacy of self-price to rehabilitate the superiority complex of those who believed not only that culture is everything and that there is a ranking of culture. I believe that politics is primarily about memory and History before being about action. They believe the contrary precisely because they believe that to act, one has to forget or to refuse to acknowledge what may cripple or delay action. Sarkozy and Bruckner, to use a term dear to Harvey Mansfield, are strong proponents of manliness when it comes to History. To Sarkozy and Bruckner, what matters is the will to power, strength, and actions. To them, shame, regrets, sadness, and fear are all emotions, which expose weaknesses and lead to paralysis, self-derogation, and self-hatred. In other words, memory is a burden because it leads to self-examination, which may lead to the acknowledgment of events, which are inexcusable and shameful. It is for that reason that so far in Sarkozysm the emphasis is on optimism and on the creation of the French dream to say to the French that as long as they are proud to be French, their actions will be rewarded.

Experience teaches that the past is never dead. one thing that Americans do better than the French is self-examination, They constantly look themselves in the mirror and to wonder whether their past no matter how recent fits with their idealism and this great experiment that is America. In France, the past has always trouble to pass from the frigid pages of history books to the collective memory because of the fear that France’s Gaullean grandeur can be handicapped by a look at a past, which has not reflected always that grandeur. That is the reason why Sarkozy has a no memory because his love for France and for everything else for that matter is conditional on perfectionism in the sense that the only emotion that he can feel over past’s failures and mistakes is shame for he cannot stand dirt and frailty. But I like to say that repentance, shame in front of History are red herrings smartly created by those whose sense of identity is so unmovable and inflexible that they would rather look outward and point fingers to argue that the world cannot ask them to be cleaner than it is.

However, the issue isn’t repentance or shame, but acknowledgment without sentimentalism, grandstanding, and condemnation. There isn’t such a thing as collective guilt and because I don’t believe that people are guilty for the mistakes of their ancestors for what matters is that they acknowledge them without guilt and without shame because acknowledgment, allowing their memory to accept that history can’t be clean because precisely of human frailty and imperfection. Anti-French and anti-American moralizers like to point to the dark spots of their history to argue that France and America are inherently bad countries and that their national identity is corrupted by their past failings. I, on the contrary, like to say precisely that those dark spots show that greatness is possible with imperfections and with failings. At the end, I always come back to the words of the great Jorge Semprún, there is no duty to remember for history is taught mostly those who weren’t even born when key events happened, but there is the duty to know, to acknowledge. Guilt is an inept, religious, and unacceptable concept, which cannot be tied to memory and to History. The primary responsibility of those who come after tragic events is to know, to accept them and to say “Nevermore!” instead of opposing, as Sarkozy and Bruckner do, patriotism and self-love to memory and to self-actualization.

The productizaton of American Culture

“[…] we must remember that the marketplace does only one thing--it puts a price on everything. The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us.[…] In a time of social progress and economic prosperity, why have we experienced this colossal cultural decline? There are several reasons, but I must risk offending many friends and colleagues by saying that surely artists and intellectuals are partly to blame. Most American artists, intellectuals and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture.

This mutual estrangement has had enormous cultural, social and political consequences. America needs its artists and intellectuals, and they need to re-establish their rightful place in the general culture. If we could reopen the conversation between our best minds and the broader public, the results would not only transform society but also artistic and intellectual life.” Dana Gioia, “The Impoverishment of American Culture.”

India's African heritage

Jayanthi Daniel has a fascinating article in the New York Sun about India’s African ancestry. It discusses the fact that Africans played a role in India’s history. The article is based on the book African Elites in India written by Kenneth Robbins and John McLeod. The book’s thesis is that Africans were not only slaves in India, but also able to become in some cases rulers. Daniel’s article is a must-read and it makes me want to read the book. Sugary excerpt:

The words "Habshi Amarat" translate to "Abyssian nobility" — "habshis," up until recently, referred to Indians of African heritage, although in modern times, habshis are considered to have fully integrated among the South Asian population. Those Africans who successfully rose to some amount of power did so among the ranks of regional empires, including various Mughal dynasties. "India is the only place where Africans ruled over non-Africans," Mr. Robbins said in a phone interview yesterday. "Some were slaves, and some were mercenaries. There was a weird phenomenon in Muslim countries where slaves became rulers in ancient times."

Virginity as a totem

Anke Bernau has written an excellent article on virginity. She talks about the fact that virginity is still considered a sign of purity and viewed as a totem in spite of modernity. Sugary excerpt:

Virginity stands at the centre of conflicts between some of our most deeply held beliefs - beliefs to do with individual choice, religion and sexual freedom, and women's rights. Its flexibility allows it to be used in ways that seem antagonistic. Thus, while some may emphasise that virginity allows young people to resist peer pressure and to make informed choices about when and with whom to express their sexuality, others see virginity as non-negotiable for the unmarried. […] Is virginity a concept central only to heterosexual intercourse? Is it just about penetration? Does it apply to men and women equally? Is it a state of mind or body?

While rehymenisation surgery suggests it is the latter, there are also those who prefer to emphasise the former. The religiously inspired "revirginisation" or "secondary virginity" is a concept gaining popularity in the US that allows those who have lost their virginity through intercourse to regain it after a stipulated period of abstinence. Revirginisation, its practitioners claim, enables a profound personal transformation. It is often described as a turning away from a self-destructive lifestyle, while increased confidence and wellbeing are commonly listed as outcomes.

The one thing that bothers me about what I like to call the virginity movement is that it is so public and that people have to claim loud and proudly that they are virgins as if it was an achievement or a proof of their moral superiority. Wearing one’s virginity on one’s sleeves to attract the world’s attention of the world that the fact that one hasn’t had sex for whatever reasons is as arrogant as wearing a t-shirt that says, “I’m better than the rest of you.” I don’t want to know whether someone is a virgin or not because I still believe that people’s sex lives are their own and that it is part of their private lives. Reading Bernau’s article led me to wonder whether privacy is becoming irrelevant and whether morality or rather purity if it exists is only important if it is flaunted. It reminds of a ritual that still exists in certain traditional societies when after their first night together, the families of the newlyweds are required to expose the sheets of the bed on which the couple made love to show that they are soaked in blood and that the bride was indeed a virgin to show that the groom got the right merchandise.

Extremism in Pakistan

“Of course, there is much talk of religious extremism in Pakistan — especially in the English language press. But it is patently unfair and unjust to accuse those who complain of extremism of being “liberal fascists”. Extremism can be socially and politically defined. Socially it applies to those who want a more stringent and intrusive role of the state in the private lives of citizens. This is fine as an idea because opinion is free and the country can contain two opposed ways of looking at things, despite being on two extreme sides of the argument. However, when it comes to action, then extremism is a crime because it violates the Constitution and the Penal Code. It is as simple as that.
It is also not right to define dyed-in-the-wool liberals in civil society as puppets of the state which hunts down the extremists in the name of liberalism or “enlightened moderation”. Liberalism is not a creed; it is an attitude and may be found in all classes of people, including the clergy. In the case of Pakistan’s civil society, it covers those who are against coercive behaviour by other citizens in violation of the law of the land, against a campaign to reshape society with violence outside the ambit of the Constitution. When a person merely complains against this form of extremism he is often accused of being a “liberal fascist” by the real extremists who are inclined to take the law into their hands or condone those who do so like the Lal Masjid extremists.” The Daily Times, “Where are the Liberal Fascists?”

The divinization of female sexuality

This video shows why it is so difficult for traditional (and religious) society to accept the idea that female sexuality has nothing to do with God and explains the double standard  that exists between girls and boys when it comes to sex. It is an instructive video.

Holocaust Denial and Censorship

Deborah Lipstadt makes powerful arguments against censoring Holocaust deniers in an article in Spiked. Lipstadt is a respected Holocaust scholar and her arguments therefore have more weight in my view given her expertise on the subject. She argues that using the law isn’t the best way to protect history, but the facts are and I agree with her wholeheartedly. However, she also writes that she believes that those who incite people to deny the Holocaust should be pursued and that she understands the fact that Germany and Austria given the historical context have laws against Holocaust denial:

[…] I believe quite strongly that those who engage in incitement – which is often the object of denial – and lead others to engage in acts of violence should not be granted a shield of protection by the law. Some people throw stones. Others use words to encourage people to throw stones. Both are equally guilty.

Secondly, I fully understand why countries such as Germany and Austria, the countries which spawned the Holocaust, would have laws against Holocaust denial. The geographic context in which something is said is of crucial importance. The swastika or denial of the Holocaust has a different resonance in Atlanta than it does in Berlin or Vienna.

I’m not sure that I agree with the caveats that Lipstadt adds to her argument against Holocaust denial laws even though they give me pause. My concern here has to do with effectiveness. I doubt that laws can stop Holocaust deniers and those who incite them. In other words, it may make the rest of society feel good about itself especially when it has a tormented history to have laws against Holocaust denial, but the key question, which is almost never addressed, is whether the law is an effective tool in this situation. Laws more than likely would be doing more harm than good by rewarding deniers with public attention and by granting them the “holy” status of victims.

Egalitarianism and Relativism

“THE IMPULSE which leads postmodernists, and others, to valorise epistemological relativism is easy to understand. It is rooted in a commitment to egalitarianism. It is bad enough that Western countries grow fat on the poverty of everyone else; it simply cannot be tolerated that their scientists, philosophers, and centres of learning also determine what methods and tools should be considered the best for finding out about the world. After all, to allow that this was true would be to add epistemic power—the power to determine what counts as knowledge—to the economic, political and military power that Western countries already possess. The solution then is simply to privilege the knowledge claims of people who are in various ways marginalised and oppressed. After all, if nothing else, it is surely obvious that they will know more about their own situation than representatives of the forces that oppress them.

The trouble is, though, that it isn’t obvious. There is no reason to suppose that simply because people are downtrodden they will possess true beliefs about their situation and the world that has conspired to put them in it. Smallpox is a virus: the fact that some people consider it to be associated with a goddess doesn’t make it any less a virus.” Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom, “Intellectual Adolescence.”

Spite and Altruism

The New Scientist has an article on research, which concludes that spite is a uniquely human emotion. Researchers found that chimps were incapable of being spiteful, but have also found that spitefulness comes together with the ability to be altruist. In other words, it is the ability to empathize that leads humans to both feel spiteful and be altruistic. Sugary excerpt:

Spite is a common human reaction, says Jensen. "Imagine you're a kid at a birthday party. The mother gives you cake, then takes it away and gives it to another kid. It's not his fault, but you'll still be annoyed with him because of his good fortune. But chimps don't care who's got the cake, just who took it from them," he explains. In other words, chimps fail to see things from another's point of view.

And if a chimp's lack of empathy leaves it unable to feel spite, it may also fail to behave altruistically, says behavioural ecologist Rufus Johnstone of the University of Cambridge in the UK. "There have been experiments that gave chimps the chance to be nice to another at no cost to themselves, but they weren't interested. They didn't have a human propensity to be nice," he says.

[…] In showing that chimps lack spite, the researchers may actually have shown that a set of connected emotions remains unique to humans. "Many differences obviously remain," says Jensen. "Humans actually care about outcomes affecting others. The good side of that is altruism. Spite is the evil twin that can't be separated from it."

Writing and self-annihilation

“It [Writing] uses you profoundly. There’s simply less of you after you finish a book, which is why writers can be so absolutely enraged at cruel criticisms that they feel are unfair. We feel we have killed ourselves once writing the book, and now they are seeking to kill us again for too little. Gary Gilmore once remarked, “Padre, there’s nothing fair.” And I’ve used that over and over again. Yet if you’re writing a good novel then you’re being an explorer—you’re getting into something where you don’t know the end, where the end is not given. There’s a mixture of dread and excitement that keeps you going. To my mind, it’s not worth writing a novel unless you’re tackling something where your chances of success are open. You can fail. You’re gambling with your psychic reserves. It’s as if you were the general of an army of one, and this general can really drive that army into a cul-de-sac.” Norman Mailer.

Truth, Style, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn

A.N. Wilson writes beautifully about Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Daily Telegraph. He makes the case that Solzhenitsyn was an important writer not so much for the style of his writings, but for their truthfulness, which describes a society and events, which was both unknown by most and unacknowledged by the few who knew:

One Nobel prizewinner who is thoroughly deserving of his laurel crown is Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Last week I was writing about Heinrich Böll, and it was he who welcomed Solzhenitsyn to the West after his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974. It was one of those moments of televised news one never forgets.

Even without knowing very much about Solzhenitsyn, everyone who saw it must have been overpoweringly moved by it. One knew instinctively that this was a great man, a great person. Maybe, by the strictest standards of Russian prose, he isn't a great stylist. "Provincial physics teacher!" sniffed Svetlana, Stalin's daughter, when I met her and tried to get her to talk about Solzhenitsyn. "Provincial physics teacher does not, I think, write good Russian!"

There are times, however, when truthfulness is more important than style. When Solzhenitsyn came out of the USSR to be met by the cameras, the whole ghastly world of the Gulag (now brilliantly chronicled by the historian Anne Applebaum) was largely unknown to the West, save through his patient recollections, in such works as One Day in the Life.

Substance and New Atheism

Peter Berkowitz dismisses the so-called new atheism in an article in the Wall Street Journal. He asserts that it lacks substance and they are just part of a lucrative book business, which aims at selling books. Sugary excerpt:

Profitability is not the only feature distinguishing today's fashionable disbelief from the varieties of atheism that have arisen over the millennia. Unlike the classical atheism of Epicurus and Lucretius, which rejected belief in the gods in the name of pleasure and tranquility, the new new atheism rejects God in the name of natural science, individual freedom and human equality. Unlike the Enlightenment atheism of the 18th century, which arose in a still predominantly religious society and which frequently went to some effort to disguise or mute its disbelief, the new new atheism proclaims its hatred of God and organized religion loudly and proudly from the rooftops. And unlike the anti-modern atheism of Nietzsche and Heidegger, which regarded the death of God as a catastrophe for the human spirit, the new new atheism sees the loss of religious faith in the modern world as an unqualified good, lamenting only the perverse and widespread resistance to shedding once and for all the hopelessly backward belief in a divine presence in history.

So Messrs. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and the rest have some fair claim to novelty. But not where it really counts. They contend that from the vantage point of the 21st century, and thanks to the moral progress of mankind and the achievements of natural science, we can now know, with finality and certainty, that God does not exist and organized religion is a fraud. The disproportion between the bluster and bravado of their rhetoric and the limitations of their major arguments is astonishing.

The case for the new new atheism has been restated most recently and most forcefully and wittily in "God Is Not Great" by my friend Mr. Hitchens. It must be said that Mr. Hitchens is simply incapable of uttering or writing a dull sentence. And it should be added that only a very daring or very foolish person would throw down the gauntlet on an issue so close to Mr. Hitchens's heart.

But his arguments do not come close to disproving God's existence or demonstrating that religion is irredeemably evil. Consider Mr. Hitchens's contention, elaborated at length and with gusto, that religion by its very nature compels people to behave cruelly and violently. According to Mr. Hitchens, religion educates children to hate nonbelievers, encourages grown-ups to engage in slaughter and conquest for God's greater glory, and obliges the "true believer" to restlessly circle the globe subduing peoples and nations until "the whole world bows the knee."

Berkowitz misses the point. It isn’t up to Atheists or rather up to new atheists to prove that religion is bad and that God indeed doesn’t exist, but rather to those who claim the contrary to realize that faith isn’t science. One of the points of atheists and of skeptics is that  because believers cannot prove that God exist they should burden the rest of society with their beliefs by assuming that they have the Truth and that they have God on their side. The best argument that Berkowitz can come up with are one that deals with substance and certainty proves presently the point that Hitchens and others are trying to make that one of the central problems of religion is that it doesn’t tolerate non-believers and always see them as people are not only in the wrong, but who have no value argument. As to Berkowitz’s claim that new atheism is essentially a commercial enterprise, it is so laughable and ridiculous that I’m tempted not to answer, but I’m going to have because I have the sense that he made it in good faith. If the criterion for credibility and for substance is unprofitability then what so can be said about all the religious and spiritual books out there? Religion and spirituality sell far more books that atheism yet profitability isn’t the strongest argument against them.

However Berkowitz’s article even though it is unconvincing, shows how much atheists “bug” some believers, which is interesting given the fact that those same people argue that they have most of the answers and shouldn’t therefore worry about what a group of people think of religion, of faith, and of God. The crux of the issue is precisely that believers have become in most cases so fundamentalist that they are becoming totalitarian in the sense that people who say no to and who challenge them become shallow and greedy people who are inspired by greed, by human frailty, or by the devil. What does it say about believers that in spite of their certainties, they cannot stand the fact that they can be challenged?

The right to be a Social Diva

The Independent has an article on social divas, which talks about the fact that being a social diva has everything to do with self-esteem and with the refusal of submissiveness. I have always wondered why Diva almost always refers to woman and to so-called feminine behavior. Usually a Diva is a woman who has an enlarged sense of self and who is too demanding and too intolerant that she is characterized a spoiled brat. However, when men are called Divas is to be an emphasis on the fact that they are acting like kept and spoiled women and are thus espousing the feminine character traits that are egocentrism and childishness. The real question is however whether women are allowed to be perfectionists and to demand as much of others as they demand of themselves. The answer to that question so far has been a resounding no because female perfection is too many societies is an oxymoron.  Sugary excerpt:

"Social divas are fun gals, out there doing the fun things," stresses Samuel, in her no-nonsense New York-ese. "They work all day, party all night, and shop in between. We wanted to help them make the most of these new lifestyle choices and not only keep them in the know about the best parties, launches, fashion sales, restaurants and clubs, but also how to help them realise their full diva potential."

And while this involves everything from throwing "shoe showers" (a coming-out party for your new Manolos) to taking a "disco nap" ("a slumber - one hour max - to refresh the body and mind for the late night ahead"), Samuel cautions that "this is not about female rivalry. It's about friendship".

"The most important thing to realise about social divadom is that it's about self-esteem. The attitude comes from within." In other words, social divas aren't above "doing" stairs, albeit in their finest Jimmy Choos (a brand that, if frequency of citation is anything to go by, serves as a lodestone in the social diva's world - along with Smythson, Jo Malone and Brad Pitt).

What bugs me about the preceding paragraph is that it seems to imply that only beautiful, sexy, and fashionable women have the right to be Divas. Society is more willing to accept certain types of behavior from women provided that they look like Carrie Bradshaw and behave like Samantha Jones. However, it expects less attractive women to be less demanding, to be nice and sweet, and to be forgiving. One of my favorite movies of all times is Muriel Weeding in which a “plain” woman struggles but is eventually able to realize her dream and to get married. I saw it when I was an adolescent and I kept asking myself whether the reason why she found a husband was that she was so desperate for one that she was willing to be the contrary of a Diva that is to be selfless and to put her man’s dreams and needs above her own.

Feminism, sex, and moi et moi

“I grew up in a male-defined sexual world. Male pleasure was known about. Female pleasure wasn't in the same way. […] It sounds crazy now but there were women examining themselves with speculums, seeing their own cunts in the mirror for the first time! People now might think 'yuk' but it was genuinely thrilling and radical. […] [Feminism] made sex better, made it less of a power struggle, because it gave you back yourself. It made women feel able to say to a man: 'I want this, I don't want that.' If you know about your own sexuality you can have better sex. Young women now take this for granted because they read about sex in magazines the whole time. […]  My sort of feminism was defeated in the Thatcher years, as socialism was. I feel that the feminism that triumphed is the sort I don't like: what I call shoulderpads feminism. It's all about being an individual in a capitalist society. Put on your suit, go to the City, make a lot of money: it's all me, me, me. My sort of feminism is about collectivity. I think this sort of feminism still exists quietly, in women's friendships, for example. When I was young I could see women's friendships weren't valued. It was common that if you were going to see a woman friend and you got a date with a boy you broke the date with the girl. I don't think that would happen now.” Michèle Roberts.

Bastille Day

It's July 14, which means it's Bastille Day. This is a clip of Serge Gainsbourg's reggae version of La Marseillaise, which caused a lot of controversy back when it was first released, but now, it's a classic, which I think shows genius can get away with irreverence, which is a good thing. To come back to France, I think that the difference with United States and France is the one between assertive and complex prose and passionate and defiant poetry, the one between Moby Dick and La Chèvre de Monsieur Seguin (The brave little goat of Monsieur Seguin), and the one between a burger and a croque monsieur. I like to compare America and France to two beautiful women. France is the one who has been beautiful for a long time, who is therefore sure of her beauty and used to be courted. America is a beautiful woman whose beauty is fresh, budding, and adolescent and who has just discovered the powers of beauty and is not shy about using them. Those who understand women can understand the strife that always seems to exist between America and France. For women, for France and America, everything becomes a beauty contest for too often the question is who is more beautiful, more attractive, or more powerful when it isn't a competition for as there is enough place in the world for beautiful and independent women, there is enough place for France and America for after all, it is all about having choices. America represents the idea that the impossible is possible and France the idea that humanity can be divine.

Happy Bastille Day everybody!

Gender and multiplicity

“Since gender interfaces with all other communities to which an individual belongs, how does this argument relate to the perceived male-female division? In the 1970s Sandra Bem came up with another perspective on identity: the ground-breaking concept of psychological androgyny.

According to Bem, masculinity and femininity are not extremes on the same scale, but constitute two independent scales from which both men and women can draw. It is often the case that an individual with strong (positive) "masculine" characteristics also has strong "feminine" characteristics (a man can be assertive and nurturing - and so can a woman) while the inverse is also true with weak (negative) characteristics (a woman can be unassertive but manipulative - and so can a man!).

Bem's analysis, like the community spiral, opens up so many possibilities for recognising and appreciating a more complex individual identity - and for overcoming the perceived barriers between people. In fact, the external "other" rarely constitutes the real threat but it is that aspect of the other - unreconciled within ourselves - which we are afraid of. Being able (or enabled) to recognise the multiplicity of the self, may perhaps make it easier to find new ways of belonging - or new spheres where we feel we belong. […] The real threat of feminism is that it challenges binary logic, which is why it is constantly being undermined itself.” Patricia Daniel, “Multiplicity not Long Division.”

Tsarkozy, style and substance

I almost had a heart attack when I read E.J. Dionne praise Sarkozy for bipartisanship and explain that others, i.e. President Bush could learn from his example:

From France came word that the center-right president was urging the International Monetary Fund to name Dominique Strauss-Kahn as its managing director.

[…] Sarkozy brushed off Strauss-Kahn's political affiliation. "Should I deprive France of his candidacy because he is a Socialist?" he was quoted as saying. "How could I be the president of all the French if I reasoned like that?"

Cynics say that Sarkozy is trying to weaken the opposition by co-opting some of its best leaders. (He appointed a Socialist as foreign minister.) François Hollande, the first secretary of the Socialist Party, said Sunday that Sarkozy is always looking for a new "maneuver" and wondered whether his interest in the Strauss-Kahn appointment was primarily about domestic politics.

Reading those words, I wondered if Dionne was kidding and realized that he was comparing apples and oranges without taking into consideration that Sarkozy has just been elected, that he consolidating his power, that yes, France isn’t America and an elected president always divides whether it be its camp or the other camp in order to consolidate his power. But then I remember that we were in America and that even columnists don’t make a duty to learn about their subject matter when it is the politics of a country, which they understand neither the language nor the political culture. On the other side of the Atlantic, John Lichfield proves that it is possible to write knowledgeably about Sarkozy and French politics without being content with aesthetics. Where Dionne didn’t seem to be interested with substance, Lichfield in his article in the Independent proves that yes, French politics is complicated and even French president can be obsessed with style and tactics, by preferring it to substance. Sugary excerpt:

It is clear that a new era, at least a new style, in French politics has dawned. The President is no longer an avuncular old bloke in the back of a limousine. He is a man who jogs daily in the Bois de Boulogne. He is a man who invites visiting statesmen, and student leaders, to walk down the street to lunch in a trendy restaurant. Hooray for that. Hooray, too, to some parts of the Sarkozy programme of equality and "openness".

Style is important. Part of President Sarkozy's mission is to mess with France's mind as well as reform its economy and institutions. He wants to generate a sense that "everything is possible"; that work and enterprise are no longer unfashionable; that the old, invisible barriers to advancement no longer exist. Hooray to all that (if he means it).

But what of the substance of Sarkozyism? What of his promise of radical change and "rupture" with the past? Only one reform has been agreed, in outline, so far. It is neither radical nor a rupture. It is a feeble and largely cosmetic advance, which could easily have been pushed through by that great radical Jacques Chirac.

It is too early to judge Sarkozysm. I got my own strong opinions against it, but I’m aware that it is a work in progress. Nevertheless, it amazes me when analysts act as it Sarkozy was reinventing the wheel and that Sarkozysm was the best thing since sliced bread even though they have no idea what it is.