Is it obvious? (Valenta)

Markha G Valenta sets out, in her arcticle How to Recognize a Muslim When You See One: Western Secularism and the Politics of Conversion, stating something that ought to be fairly obvious, as she critizes the cultural war/clash of civilizations-thesis:

"The West and Islam encompas histories too varied, too porous, too centrifugal to be coherent powers ... That isn't to say that we might not yet create them, or that they might not clash. But for the moment it is precisely the mythic nature of the battle that makes it so appealing to the fantasies of our politicians and lesser commentators, while it is only a minor drama relative to the so much more grand drama of invention that is taking place" (Valenta 2006:444f).

(Her whole introduction is in fact really well written.) What the article is dealing with here is the "clash" that is percieved in what can really more accurately be described as an value-irritation (I've borrowed this from Åke Sander's Swedish phrase värdeirritation which he suggests fits better in most cases, as rather than things being real threats to ones value system, it's more often than not merely an irritation of said system). Valenta goes on to show how the responses to The (muslim women's) Veil (as almost a kind of religio-political dark matter) have much in common with the myth of "the white man's burden", in its charge to enlighten and enrich the lives of the brute natives that me must protect from the dangers outside (in the world) and inside (themselves).

She also points out that this is not a one-project idea: "liberals and revolutionaries as well as expansionists shared the conviction that tribal peoples lacking territorial structures must succumb to modern states ... Something there was that must have loved a wall" (Valenta 2006:447). Valenta then goes on to display how various frontiers are raised and deemed necessary, both those of social status and class, gender, ethnicity, church/state etc. This, she calls the double logic of the modern territoriality: "the simultaneous necessity to saturate and to separate, to centralize and to expand, to fortify against the alien and make coherent the own - nation, home self" (Valenta 2006:447). What happens in territoralization is that the area defined gets all the more interconnected, integrated, and lets various forces and services (labour, transport, information etc) flow, but also included in the territorial package are such feats as police/military (some institution with the possibility of acting out legitimate violence). In order to make such an arrangement work, it has traditionally been argued that unity is called for in order to make such a territory work. But not only that, the territory as such is circled in the first instance by such an idea of (the possibility of) unity.

She also takes up capitalism as an interesting example of a universal dynamic. Capitalism only produces more capitalism (just like territorialization produces more territorialization). Possibly - and possibly sadly - capitalism as a universalizing agent may be more apt to function as it is probably in place, than the ethics proposed by Valenta. This is because Valenta suggests a respons to our mode of being, which makes a break with our colonial burdened past, and aims for something less ethnocentric-made-universalistic. Her suggestion is a mode of being and acting where we are to a larger extent prepared to utilize various forms of self sacrifice. It can be argued, however, that such a principle has a firm basis in a Christian legacy, depending on God's self sacrifice in the form of Jesus. This example may be both interesting and constructive to expand on, but nevertheless it does probably not amount to a less ethnocentric point of view, than the one Valenta has problems with. Possibly if we understand Christianity in a wider ("non-West") perspective, but then we also have the problem of accounting for Liberation Theology for instance, which has brought about decidedly positive and people-empowering change in South America, but at the same time rests upon a refusal of endless self sacrifice, rather than invoking it. In the end, it is probably mainly for the colonial powers that this perspective can be said to be a reasonable invokation - where one of our heritages (colonialism/the white man's burden) is countered by another (self sacrificial Christianity).

best

Jonatan

Quotations from:

Valenta, Markha G. (2006). How to Recognize a Muslim When You See One: Western Secularism and the Politics of Conversion. In: de Vries, Hent & Sullivan, Lawrence, E. Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World. pp: 444-474. New York: Fordham University Press.