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--- 2667:11 [2015/05/19 21:26] – [Readings] Ryan Schram (admin)
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 ~~DECKJS~~
-# Liberal democracies must outlaw blasphemy in order to promote tolerance #
+# Do liberal societies need beliefs? #
-## Liberal democracies must outlaw blasphemy in order to promote tolerance ##
+## Do liberal societies need beliefs? ##
 Ryan Schram
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 ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au
- May 2015
+ May 2017
+Available at http://anthro.rschram.org/2667/11
 ### Readings ###
+Mahmood, Saba. 2013. “Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?” In Is Critique Secular?: Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, edited by Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, and Judith Butler, 64–100. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://criticism.english.illinois.edu/2012%20Spring%20pages/Readings/Mahmood_Is_Critique_Secular%20.pdf.
 Keane, Webb. 2009. “Freedom and Blasphemy: On Indonesian Press Bans and Danish Cartoons.” Public Culture 21 (1): 47–76. doi:10.1215/08992363–2008–021.
-Mahmood, Saba. 2013. “Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?” In Is Critique Secular?: Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, edited by Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, and Judith Butler, 64–100. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://criticism.english.illinois.edu/2012%20Spring%20pages/Readings/Mahmood_Is_Critique_Secular%20.pdf.
+### Other readings ###
+Bellah, Robert N. 1967. “Civil Religion in America.” Daedalus 96 (1): 1–21. http://www.robertbellah.com/articles_5.htm.
+Hirschkind, Charles. 1997. “What Is Political Islam?” Middle East Report. http://www.merip.org/mer/mer205/what-political-islam.
 Weill, Nicolas. 2006. “What’s in a Scarf?: The Debate on Laïcité in France.” French Politics, Culture & Society 24 (1): 59–73.
 ### Other media ###
-Lee, Amos. 2015. "Lee Kuan Yew Is Finally Dead!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jMODDfNE0Y. **WARNING: Contains obscenity and adolescent *lèsé majesté*.**
-Mackey, Robert. 2015. “Teenager Faces Charges After Mocking Singapore’s Founding Father on YouTube.” The New York Times, March 30. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/world/asia/teen-faces-charges-after-mocking-singapores-founding-father-on-youtube.html.
 Ramzy, Austin. 2015. “Singapore Arrests Teenager Over Video Critical of Lee Kuan Yew.” The New York Times, March 30. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/world/asia/singapore-arrests-teenager-over-video-critical-of-lee-kuan-yew.html.
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-## Key ideas for this week ##
+## A critique of liberalism ##
+* Western societies tell a story of themselves in which the present social order represents the emancipation of the individual and a recognition of the individual's natural rights.
+* In this story, history moves from traditional institutions which limit people's freedom to a new, rational order in which people can choose their own destiny.
+* According to Marx, a liberal state governs citizens as individuals, and hence denies that they are also necessarily part of actual communities.
+* This ideology disguises the alienation which makes liberal citizenship possible and thus serves the interests of the bourgeoisie.
+* Marx's critique of liberalism is, in that sense, an extension of our critique of Western secularism from last week.
+## Civil religion
+* The question of this week--//Do liberal societies need beliefs?//--can be read as asking whether a liberal society needs to give citizens a substitute for their communal religious identities.
+* Robert Bellah: "Civil religion"
+## Blasphemy
+* The question of this week can also be read as asking something else: f there is a risk of a liberalism becoming a civil religion, is there a way we can imagine a liberal society which is safe for all kinds of religion?
+* Should liberal societies prohibit blasphemy?
+## Why might blasphemy be threatening to society?
+* "Speech acts" according to J. L. Austin.
+  * constative, performative
+  * locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary
+* Fighting words, hate speech, "trigger warnings."
+## Laws against blasphemy
+  *     Proselytising by all is illegal: Bhutan, Nepal, Greece.
+  *     Proselytising to members of the majority is illegal: Algeria, Morocco, Iraq*
+  *     Proselytising is restricted: Venezuela (indigenous), Oslo (against evangelical Christians).
+  *     Foreign visas denied to missionaries: China, Costa Rica, Kazakhstan, Denmark.
+  *     China only allows proselytising in recognized places of worship.
+  *     Malaysia sets very high restrictions on conversion from Islam.
+(see Fox 2015: 193).
+## Semiotic ideology
+  * Like language ideology, or the indexicality of language, register, ritual, and style.
+  * More generally, an implicit cultural 'theory' of how communication works, and the connection between communicator, code, message and world.
+Communicator--Message--Code--World
+## The Danish cartoon controversy and Terry Jones
+* Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartooons controversy, September 2005 to January 2006 (University Post Newsroom 2015).
+* Terry Jones and threatened Qu'ran burning, July to September 2010 (Derby 2010).
+* What is this conflict really about?
+  * Mahmood: assimilative versus representational ideologies of meaning. Is it that simple?
+  * Another case of iconophilia? The [[http://rschram.org/2014/02/10/haus/|Zurenuoc affair]] in Papua New Guinea.
+## References ##
+Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
+Derby, Kevin. 2010. “World Weighs In to Condemn Terry Jones’ Planned Quran-Burning.” Sunshine State News, September 8. http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/world-weighs-in-condemn-terry-jones-planned-quran-burning.
+Fox, Jonathan. 2015. Political Secularism, Religion, and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-* What does secularism have to do with liberalism?
+University Post newsroom. 2015. “Ten Years of the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis: 2005-2015.” University Post, January 8. http://universitypost.dk/article/ten-years-muhammad-cartoon-crisis-2005-2015.
-* How has discussion of immigration in the West changed in recent years?
-* Do liberal states need to regulate religion? Do they have the right do determine what you, as a religious person, can think? What you can say? What you can do?