The Hijab and the Republic
Can French republicanism be hospitable to ethnic differences?
Immigration, Minorities and Multiculturalism
In Democracies Conference
Ethnicity and Democratic Governance MCRI project
October 25-27, 2007
Montreal, QC, Canada
Sophie Guérard de Latour
Queen's University
1
THE HIJAB AND THE REPUBLIC
CAN FRENCH REPUBLICANISM BE HOSPITABLE TO ETHNIC DIFFERENCES ?
1. INTRODUCTION
The way in which the French republic reacts towards its ethnic minorities partakes both of
a European evolution and of a national exception. Like other European democracies, France
has lately experienced a revival of xenophobia, as shown through the growing success of the
National Front since the 1980s and through the general radicalization of the political class
about the alleged “problem of immigration”. However, what seems original in the French
situation is that the republican ideology has paradoxically supported this evolution to some
extent, instead of fighting against it. It is a paradox since French republicanism was originally
a very progressive political movement. Since 1789, republicans fought actively against the
traditional hierarchies, mostly the social structure named les trois Ordres, that undermined the
citizen’s freedom. During the Third Republic, the republican institutions were durably settled,
having succeeded in integrating the working class into citizenship and in implementing this
status through a bundle of social rights. This historical success has led French republicans to
praise the “republican model of integration” which is said to promote equality between
individuals not by recognizing publicly their group differences but instead by transcending
them into the “community of citizens” (D. Schnapper). However, during the Islamic scarf
affair of 2004, famous republicans1 supported the toughening of the law on laïcité, thus
putting forth the paternalistic and communitarian tone of French republicanism. Following the
publication of the report made by the Commission Stasi, the law banning religious signs from
state schools crystallized very different worries. If the law can be justified as a democratic
reaction against the diffusion of a post-9/11 Islamic fundamentalism in schools, it
nevertheless gave public support to a conservative conception of the “French culture and
identity”. Given the growing influence of the National Front, one must admit that this law was
also interpretated, both by the majority and by the Muslim minority, as an assimilationnist
injunction, stigmatizing the Muslim culture as a regressive one and requiring of its members
to give up some of their cultural practices in order to express their faithful willingness to be
1
R. Debray, Ce que nous voile le voile. La République et le sacré, Gallimard, « Folio », 2006.
2
French. It sadly gave a sort of public caution to the nationalist and often racist feelings shared
by many French citizens.
The conservative turn of French republicanism is quite puzzling for a political philosopher.
Indeed, in political theory, a new interest in the republican tradition has emerged which is at
odds with such an evolution. According to thinkers like Quentin Skinner, Philippe Pettit and
John Maynor, republicanism offers an alternative to political liberalism that offers a more
convincing account of individual freedom than political liberalism. Their perspective
understands freedom as “non-domination” which differs, as Pettit shows, from freedom as
non-interference (Pettit 1997). A person can be dominated even if no actual interference is
threatening her. The fact of being submitted to the power of someone, even if this person
doesn’t use it, is a situation of domination (think of the slave with a benevolent master).
Symmetrically, the state’s interference in someone’s life does not reduce freedom but rather
creates it, in as much as interference is justified by fair laws which track the interests of the
citizens. Neo-republicanism’s main interest is to justify a radical political agenda. As poverty,
sexism or racism are important sources of domination, a republican state should do more than
liberals usually think in order to promote the citizens’ freedom. Especially, neo-republicanism
is said to be able to promote respect for cultural diversity (Pettit, 1997: 143-146; Maynor,
2003: 62-89) and this is where the gap between this new trend of political theory and French
republicanism appears. In this paper, I would like to promote the attempt made by the political
theorist Cécile Laborde to fill this gap. Indeed, she is one of the rare French republicans who
incorporates the normative arguments upheld by Anglophone neo-republicans and who
strives, through them, to rework French republicanism in a more progressive fashion. She
tries to do so by focusing on the Islamic scarf affair.
In this paper, I will first recall her critics against the laïcist position of many French
republicans in order to qualify its communitarian nature. Secondly, I will show that her
criticisms are not made from a liberal perspective, but rather that they lead Laborde to a
critical understanding of republicanism. Eventually, I will try to draw the implications of her
“critical republicanism” on issues of national solidarity in order to suggest the possibility of a
French “multicultural republicanism”.
3
2. FRENCH REPUBLICANISM AND THE COMMUNITARIAN FACE OF LAÏCISME
The principle of laïcité, asserted in the first article of the Constitution of France2, is the
French historical affirmation of secularism which establishes the separation of the State and
the Catholic Church. But the strong interpretation of this political principle that was expressed
during the Islamic scarf affair, has been called laïcisme by some observers, as it seems to
promote of a secular religion rather than defending a principle of religious neutrality. When
Laborde examines the argument given by French laïcists to justify the ban of Islamic
headscarves in state schools, she focuses on its two premises : the perfectionist and the
feminist. The first asserts that the state has a duty to emancipate citizens from the various
forms of dependencies they experience in social life and traditional religious beliefs are
supposed to be one of the most dangerous kind. The second rejects the wearing of
headscarves because it symbolizes the subjection of women and should not be tolerated in a
democratic society, which is based on the equal respect of each individual, whatever his sex,
race and origins are. But she rightly points out the missing links of the argument:
First, if the point of education to autonomy is that Muslim girls voluntary take off their headscarves, why
should they be forced to do in schools? Secondly, from an opposite perspective – if veiling is
incompatible with a life of autonomy, why ban headscarves only in schools? (Laborde 2006:357)
Properly articulated, the laïcist argument should go as follows. A democratic state cannot
be paternalistic, i.e. it cannot praise individual autonomy and, at the same time, make choices
on behalf of its citizens, thus exercising a permanent coercion on them. To this extent, if an
adult woman wishes to wear a headscarf, and if she does so in a way that neither threatens the
public order nor denies someone else’s rights, the state must accept it. But as this alleged
choice may be an “adaptive preference” - i.e. not an open choice but due to a narrow set of
options, imposed by the membership in a traditional group - the state must force the young
girls to reject these traditions at schools and give them the opportunity to experiment with an
alternative mode of socialization, through which a woman can identity with other kinds of
social roles. Therefore, if state paternalism is illegitimate, educational paternalism remains
justified in order to fight against adaptive preferences and to provide an enriched context of
choices.
Here, the laïcist’s argument sounds typically republican since it considers the “formative
project” as crucial in the life of a democracy. According to Michaël Sandel, “the republican
conception of freedom, unlike the liberal conception, requires a formative politics, a politics
2
« La France est une république indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale » (Constitution de 1958)
4
that cultivates in citizens the qualities of character self-government requires” (Sandel, 1996:
6). Indeed, a republican state rejects the classical liberal assumption, notoriously expressed by
Kant, that “the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils, for such
task does not involve the moral improvement of man” (Sandel, 1996: 322). One must
acknowledge that some contemporary liberals also accept this point and have granted more
attention to the formative requirements of democratic politics than the liberal tradition used to
do (Macedo 1990, Galston 1991, Kymlicka 1998). Hence, for both republicans and
“comprehensive liberals”, individual autonomy cannot be considered as a strictly “political”
value3. It should be also be promoted by the state through public education, in order to give to
each citizen the ability to exercise her critical judgement in the social and political life4.
Nevertheless, French republicans understand the formative project in a much stronger way
than comprehensive liberals usually do and in this respect they are closer to Sandel’s
communitarianism. In Sandel’s account, this theoretical position does not mean that “the way
to think about justice or rights is simply to base them on the prevailing values of any given
community, for the obvious reason that those values may be wrong or oppressive” but that
“the principles of justice that define our rights can’t be detached from conceptions of the good
life” (Sandel, 2003: 179-180). In other words, Sandel considers himself as a communitarian
not in virtue of cultural relativism but in virtue of political perfectionism. Assuming like
Aristotle that human beings are political animals whose excellence is to participate in political
life, he rejects the procedural liberalism which pretends to ground justice on neutrality and
asserts that no political debate can avoid any commitment concerning substantive moral
conceptions. Even in modern and pluralist societies, political unity depends on some kind of
agreement about the common good. In Sandel’s opinion, this common good is the source of
the “sense of belonging” without which no political community is able to exist nor achieve
self-government.
French republicanism is very close to the communitarian account given by Sandel, as its
reaction towards the Islamic scarf clearly shows. One could argue indeed that educational
paternalism would be more efficient if the teachers let the Muslims girls wear their
3
The latter are sceptical when considering the shift made by Rawls between A Theory of Justice and Political
Liberalism and, in the latter book, his analysis of rational autonomy, inherited from the Enlightenment project, as
a sectarian moral value whose promotion is inevitably oppressive. As Kymlicka points out “Rawls has not
explained why people who are communitarian in private life should be liberals in political life” (Kymlicka,
1995: 163).
4
Though, there is different understanding of the extent to which such a promotion should go. Whereas some
liberals accepts some state perfectionism, others think liberalism should still avoid it. See Kymlicka: autonomy
should not be promoted per se but will be the indirect result of other educational goals (civility, sense of justice)
5
headscarves at schools and teach them that they live in a society where they are free to take it
off if they wish to do so. But the fact that republicans insist on the ban of this symbol means
that they interpret individual emancipation as a rupture with the cultural community. In their
view, educational paternalism should promote a strong conception of autonomy; it enacts
civic integration by coercively imposing the rejection of traditional practices. It is clear that
republican laicism relies here on a form of cultural assimilation alike to the secular faith
criticized by Rawls, since it assumes that being freed from religious superstitions gives access
to a richer kind of life.
In Laborde’s article, the shortcomings of this communitarian understanding of
republicanism appear through the numerous critics addressed to the ban of Islamic
headscarves. First, she recalls the objections raised by the multiculturalists such as
A. Touraine, M. Wieviorka and F. Khosrokhavar. Their sociological works suggest that the
growing manifestation of cultural differences is by no means expressing a traditionalist
backlash nor automatically witnessing a fundamentalist turn (Touraine 1996, Wieviorka 2001,
Koshkokavar 1997). Indeed, in post-modern societies, individuals are no longer submitted to
the rigid order of ancestral hierarchies nor living within the moral constraints of inherited
norms. Rather, modern lives are “liquid” (Bauman 2005) since professional, social or sexual
frontiers are increasingly blurred, as individuals strive to construct their own identity, by
selecting from the variety of options available
around them. Therefore, educational
paternalism tends to overstate the influences exerted on children both by families, who no
longer have such a coercive power on their members and by the school, which is no more the
main source of information in a society based on mass media communication. In this respect,
communitarian republicanism seems to be outdated and unable to tackle seriously the postmodern condition of the French citizens.
Secondly, Laborde refers to the radical feminists who strongly criticize the universalistic
trend of French feminism, le féminisme à la Beauvoir, and its oversimplified interpretation of
the Islamic scarf as a symbol of sexist oppression that should be legally forbidden (GuénifSouilamas-Macé 2004)). Radical feminists, inspired by Michel Foucault, favour a conception
of “individual agency” that the universalistic faith in autonomy cannot capture. According to
Foucault, power is not a quality possessed by some entities (persons or institutions) but more
essentially as a relation through which processes of subjectivitization are realized. At first, he
insisted on the dominating dimension of such processes, experienced for example by the
persons identified as “mad” or “delinquent” by experts. His studies on asylums and prisons
6
showed how these institutions embodied the dark face of the Enlightenment project and what
normalizing effects the ideal of a rational society had on people. Nevertheless, in his latter
works, Foucault rehabilitated the possibility of individual agency, showing how one could
still be creative within the networks of normalization, by taking benefits of the interstices
between them and by accommodating them through forms of bargaining, negotiation and
other kind of local subversions.
Hence, for radical feminists, educational paternalism that supports the ban of Islamic
headscarves in state schools is wrong because it relies on a misconceived view of freedom. It
suggests that the intellectual formation provided by schools enables individuals to get off
traditional dependencies and that it gives them access to a rational standpoint from which they
become able to take free decisions. Following Foucault, radical feminists think that this state
of freedom is a myth, since no place is power-free and since the process of assimilation
enacted by public schooling is also a form of normalization. This point needs to be made
because such normalization is far from being culturally neutral. On the one hand, its partiality
appeared clearly in the asymmetrical condemnation of sexism upheld by universalistic
feminists, who systematically stigmatized the “barbarian” minorities while being more
benevolent towards the sexist habits and practices of the cultural majority. To fight this biased
understanding of sexual equality, radical feminists showed that the practices of veiling should
also be seen as expressions of women-individual agency, in order to contest either patriarchal
authorities - by asserting that women are faithful to God and not to their father or imam - or
the reification of women bodies by the consumerist and desire-manipulating society. On the
other hand, history reminds us that such an appeal to Reason in order to fight the injustices of
barbarian traditions has already been a powerful weapon in the hands of colonialist states.
For instance, when the war of Algeria started in the former Département des sables, the
colons forced the Algerian women to take off their headscarves to humiliate the colonized and
to weaken the rebels, even if, by doing so, while pretending to emancipate the women and to
civilize the Algerian people.
Drawing on these criticisms, Laborde concludes that the ban of the Islamic scarf in state
school is counter-productive and wrong. It is counter-productive because the coercive and
stigmatizing nature of the law tends to “exacerbate the defensive assertion of patriarchal
norms and practices within sections of the community” (Laborde 2006: 367). It is wrong
because “it fails to respect the agency of those women it claims to emancipate in the name of
a contested conception of secular autonomy” (ibidem)
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3. CRITICAL
REPUBLICANISM
:
WELCOMING CULTURAL DIFFERENCES WITHOUT
ALLOWING DOMINATION
If the laïcist position is so flawed, might it not be logical to also turn away from the
republicanism that underpins it? The critics recorded by Laborde suggest indeed that this
political theory is unable to address properly the issues raised by the cultural heterogeneity of
modern societies. And it is easy to understand why. How could a tradition based on the
principle of self-government - and insisting on the unity of “the people” required to achieve it
- take into account the pluralism that exists in multicultural societies ? Would it not be more
sensible to give up any idea of the common good and to look instead towards contemporary
liberalism where the rights of individuals are primary and the neutrality of justice strongly
asserted? Surprisingly, this is not the path followed by Laborde. On the contrary, her goal is to
rework the French political tradition and to shift from a dogmatic republicanism to a “critical”
one. I will examine her position by explaining the reasons why she still prefers the republican
theory to the liberal one and by specifying how she attemps to make it more suitable to
multicultural societies.
Laborde stays a republican since she is still committed to the importance of the “formative
project” in a stronger sense than liberals are. While she accepts the radical feminists’ account
of individual agency, she also thinks that, combined with “a modestly ‘political’ liberalism
averse to using the state to promote the value of autonomy”, it “potentially legitimizes the
perpetuation of domination and oppression in civil society”. “It makes individual agency
compatible with very constrained life situations, of the kind that laïciste feminists are right to
worry about: situations of seeming consent to relationships of subservience and servility”
(Laborde 2006: 368). In other words, she blames post-modern multiculturalists, and especially
radical feminists, for not addressing seriously the problem of “adaptive preferences”.
This is precisely why Laborde is sceptical of the ability of liberalism to prevent such a risk.
In recent theories, the liberal justification of cultural rights insists on two things: on the one
hand, cultural rights are meant to protect ethnic minorities from the undue pressure to
assimilate and thus are guaranteeing them an equitable treatment in social life; on the other
hand, “external protections” aimed at promoting equality between groups should not allow for
“internal restrictions”, i.e. cultural rights must not justify the denial of any basic rights of the
members of a minority (Kymlicka 1995). According to Laborde, such a juridical approach is
unable to fight properly against “adaptive preferences”. Indeed, it is not enough to forbid
8
internal restrictions, since the violation of basic rights only appear when interferences in
someone’s sphere of action occurs. For instance, liberal multiculturalism can forbid coerced
marriages but not arranged marriages. More generally, it is not enough to ground cultural
rights on the “right to exit” - in order to protect the minority group without denying its
members’ freedom - since the people who have interiorized “relationships of subservience
and servility” are not likely to exercise it.
Hence, Laborde is still a republican because she does not see freedom as mere noninterference and rather thinks of it as non-domination. As Pettit pointed out, non-domination
exists as soon as someone is submitted to the arbitrary power of someone else, even if this
power to inference is not used. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that Laborde goes
beyond this account of domination. In her opinion, Pettit’s definition should be completed
with a sociological perspective. Whereas Pettit insists on the feeling of vulnerability derived
from domination, “he has less to say about situations where domination is consented to in the
stronger sense of the term: in the sense that it is not perceived by its victims” (Laborde 2006:
369). As “adaptive preferences” belong to this category, republicans should be more sensitive
to the process of unperceived domination analysed by thinkers such as Marx, Weber and
Foucauld. The enlarged conception of domination, both normative and sociological, justifies
the crucial role played by education and the strong version of the “formative project”. Indeed,
educational paternalism is required in as much as it is necessary to lower the probability of
adaptive preferences in the individual’s life.
In this respect, the republican “formative project” seems to go further than nonperfectionnist liberals would accept. For instance, Kymlicka agrees that education for
citizenship is necessary to the well-functioning of a liberal democracy and that economic
integration, political participation or civil society are not sufficient conditions to interiorize
liberal virtues (Kymlicka 1998: 300-303). A democratic country must also provide a public
schooling that fosters “public-spiritedness, a sense of justice and civility”, i.e. the capacity of
respecting non intimates in every day life (Ibid. 296). But he does not include autonomy in the
list of the basic liberal virtues, because he doesn’t think that “autonomy, in and of itself, is a
necessary for the practice of democratic citizenship” (308). Autonomy, i.e. “the capacity to
rationally reflect on, and potentially revise, our conceptions of the good life” should not be
promoted per se by state schools, since it implies a rupture with the private sphere and with
traditions that are needed in order to fulfil civic duties. A non-perfectionist state should not
support such a strong formative project and should instead rely on the assumption that “habits
9
of civility and the capacity for public reasonableness […] indirectly promote autonomy”.
Indeed, there are good reasons to think that a person educated to be able to evaluate and
criticize political decisions will also be likely to put into question her traditional way of
living, though she must not be forced to do so.
On the contrary, Laborde still locates autonomy at the core of the formative project.
Drawing on Pettit’s account, she defines it as a “discursive control” which requires that
“republican citizens are entitled and capable to contest (or at least to ask for a justification of)
the power that is exercised over them” (370). She compares this kind of autonomy to a “basic
capability: a skill which, up to a threshold (minimum discursive control), is essential to the
good life, but which, above the threshold, individuals do not have to develop further, let alone
to develop fully” (371). Her strategy here is first to justify educational paternalism while
avoiding the pitfalls of laïcism and second to protect future citizens from
“adaptive
preferences” without forcing them to give up their cultural traditions. In other words, even if
republicans still favour a negative understanding of freedom - since non-domination does not
rely on any conception of the good life - they must promote a more positive sense of liberty at
the educational level:
Note that there is an asymmetry between the fairly comprehensive nature of the autonomy-related skills
taught in schools and the minimalist nature of our basic interest in autonomy as non-domination. […]
My claim is that even a minimalist understanding of autonomy as non-subordination to the will and the
opinions of others requires, to acquire its fair value, that individuals be comprehensively equipped with
autonomy-related skills. The asymmetry between ends and means is a deliberate one. (372)
We should notice though that the comprehensive nature of autonomy-related skills is very
close to the basic liberal virtues mentioned by Kymlicka. While he lists “publicreasonableness, a sense of justice and civility”, Laborde speaks of “practical reason, moral
courage, critical skills, awareness of the ‘burdens of reason’, exposure to a diversity of ways
of life, understanding of one’s rights”. Obviously, a lot of these skills overlap with the liberal
virtues, namely those related to rights, tolerance and public reason. Nevertheless, Laborde
asserts that state schools should promote “critical skills” per se without specifying that they
should apply to the political field only, as Kymlicka does. Moreover, her reference to “moral
courage” is at odds with the liberal perspective, since it is related to the idea of self-mastery, a
minimum of which seems to be required to become a free citizen. This last point suggests that
Laborde’s account of the formative project can be usefully put together with John Maynor’s
“quasi-perfectionism” (Maynor 2003: 80). According to Maynor, neo-republicanism is an
original alternative to liberalism because it does not rely on a purely negative conception of
freedom. It also implies some positive elements because civic education must produce a
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certain level of self-mastery in order to make the future citizens able to cast their ends in a
manner that does not subject others to arbitrary interferences. In this sense, the formative
project requires a minimum level of perfectionism, since it implies to promote autonomy
actively, at least in state schools, not only for instrumental reasons – i.e. to guarantee the
functioning of a liberal society – but also for substantial reasons – because it enriches the
individual’s life. Yet it is a quasi-perfectionism, because this educational paternalism is still
compatible with a wide range of choices and life’s projects, and allows that one chooses to
stay faithful to his traditions and customs.
Thus, critical republicanism insists strongly on the value of autonomy, but asserts at the
same time that perfectionism operates mostly at the educational level. Nevertheless this
position is based on the concept of “adaptive preferences” which is quite problematic. It
assumes that some choices are not real choices, in as much as they are made under too narrow
conditions, especially those created by a traditional ways of life where social roles are rigidly
defined. The assumption of illusory freedom pushes republicans to give up an external point
on view to adopt an inner perspective on people’s behaviours, as Maynor clearly asserts:
This regulation goes beyond how individuals act and instead seeks to affect what they value […] where
state intervention in a system characterized by liberal neutrality stops at regulating how individuals and
groups behave, the republican state continues by challenging how individuals or groups cast their ends.
(Maynor 2003: 76 and 87)
But such a shift form the outside to the inside is dangerous. Since it presupposes that a
person is unable to evaluate her own choices, who is able then to make the distinction
between a free choice and a mere “adaptive preference”? Is it not still dogmatic to assert that
the state can identify what kind of judgement should be inculcated in schools in order to be
free? How is it shown that the educational paternalism does not lead children from some
adaptive behaviours to others ? In other words, what guarantees that the domination of
families will not be replaced by the domination of the state? To answer this question, it is
necessary to insist on another critical dimension of the republicanism that Laborde reworks.
Drawing on Pettit’s neo-roman republicanism, she agrees that the republic must fight every
types of domination, whether they come from dominium or from imperium, i.e. whether they
originate from social relations or from interferences of the state in the individual’s sphere of
action. Hence, if republican autonomy is defined as a “discursive control”, education
paternalism must remain sensitive to the point of view of the children upon whom it is
exerted. This is precisely what lacked in the French laïcism during the Islamic scarf’s affair.
The Commission Stasie, in charge of studying the issue, consulted many experts, political
11
representatives, religious leaders and so on, but refused to take into account the girls’ point of
view. They were seen as persons dominated by others, whether their parents or fundamentalist
leaders, and thus unable to express their own opinion. This is why, far from protecting the
Muslim girls from adaptive preferences, the law on religious signs of 2004, institutionalized a
dogmatic version of educational paternalism. For a critical republican, if education is made to
develop the discursive control that every one should have over his life, it cannot do so by
denying it from the beginning. On the contrary, the education system must put in practice as
much as possible the forums through which children will learn to express themselves. And
there is no reason to be more oppressive with children issued from minority cultures than with
children issued from the majority culture.
4. PERFECTIONISM, NATIONAL COMMUNITY AND THE RESPECT FOR DIFFERENCES
Laborde’s defence of critical republicanism interests us for reasons that go beyond the
problem of autonomy and that are related to national solidarity. Obviously, this second issue
was also raised by the case of Islamic headscarves that frames her reflection here. If this
religious symbol became a national affair in France, it is not only because of its religious
dimension but also, and maybe mostly, for its cultural significance. Indeed, many French
people supported the vote of a tougher law on laïcité, because they considered the will of
Muslim girls to wear headscarves as a symptom of withdrawing into cultural communities and
as a threat on national identity – a position expressed in French debates through the chronic
condemnation of “communautarisme”. It is not surprising that the theme of nationhood was
so salient during the Islamic scarf affair in a country so passionately committed to the
republican ideal. It is in the republican tradition indeed that the “love for country” has been
strongly put forth (Viroli 1995). Drawing on this heritage, Sandel calls for a public
philosophy that gives more recognition to the “sense of belonging” that citizens need in order
to participate in political life and to achieve self-government. However, in contemporary
political theory, the insistence on national solidarity is no longer a unique feature of
republicanism. Liberal theorists have widely acknowledged the fact that democratic societies
are not only based on common principles but also need shared identities (Tamir 1993, Miller
1995). Answering Sandel’s critics against the “procedural republic”, Kymlicka argues that
there is no need to give up political non-perfectionism in order to foster a sense of belonging
between citizens. Just like civic virtue can be promoted for instrumental reasons - i.e. not
because political participation makes someone’s life better but because such virtue makes
12
someone more likely to fulfil her obligations of justice – a sense of national solidarity can
legitimately be inculcated to citizens. Concerning immigrants, this integration should remain
non-assimilationnist and only requires the acquisition of the national language and a
minimum knowledge about political institutions and the national history.
Here, I would like to suggest that the critical republicanism elaborated by Laborde differs
both from the communitarian republicanism it criticizes (1) and from the liberal nationalist’s
account (2). It seems to me that her analysis of autonomy – refusing both the intolerance of
laïcistes and the “politics of exit” of liberals – has interesting consequences about the issue of
national solidarity. Indeed, if her justification of educational paternalism draws the possibility
of a non-laïciste conception of laïcité, could not it do the same for a non-assimilationist or
multicultural patriotism ?
If republicanism is grounded on political perfectionism – i.e. if it depends of the public
promotion of some common good – this might lead to a strong form of assimilationism.
Laborde points out such a risk in another paper dedicated to “the culture(s) of the Republic”.
There, she shows the contradictions into which French republicans as Finkielkraut and
Taguieff fall when they address the issue of multiculturalism and of national identity. On the
one hand, they rejects any kind of politicization of ethnic identities on behalf of civic
universalism. They stick to the classical model according to which the political community is
based on universal principles and that religious beliefs and cultural identities are private
matters. On the other hand, under the pressure of the political construction of Europe, they
started to defend the specificity of the French culture, arguing against constitutional patriotism
that people need more than abstract and juridical principles to feel like European citizens. But
such a nationalist turn changed the meaning of the cultural identity praised by the French
republicans. If Frenchness originally refered to the “haute culture”, i.e. to the universal
dynamism of the human spirit, it became progressively more and more particularistic and
associated with the right of “small nations” to protect their specific identities in spite of
globalization and of its standardizing effects (see Finkielkraut’s appeal: “We are all
Québécois now!”)5. The ambiguous meaning of culture here is problematic since it
undermines the logic of the argument made against multiculturalism. Indeed, if national
5
“Culture is not only intellectual creativity (les oeuvres de l’esprit), it is also a way of life and a civilisation
that must be protected, not crushed by [globalization]”. A. Finkielkraut quoted by C. Laborde in “The Culture(s)
of the Republic. Nationalism and Multiculturalism in French Republican Thought”, Political Theory, Vol. 29
No. 5, October 2001, p. 726-727.
13
identity is no more a universal ideal but a real and particular fact, why should we grant it more
recognition than we do for subnational cultures? As Laborde says :
The conundrum that republicans are confronted by is that they try both to advocate the recognition of
national identity by virtue of the latter being a social fact and to deny the recognition of cultural
differences despite the latter being a fact (that is in the name of neutrality). (Laborde 2001: 728)
Since they do not resolve this contradiction, French republicans cannot help but promote
cultural assimilationnism. For them, if the sense of belonging without which no political
community can exist relies on a shared culture, it is legitimate to promote it actively in the
public sphere. This logic is another reason why they supported the ban of Islamic headscarves
in state schools. The fact that Christian symbols like public holidays still organize the
educational calendar, while non-Christian symbols were coercively wiped out the school’s
environment did not shock them at all. They did not find illegitimate such an asymmetrical
treatment of cultural identities. On the contrary, just as laïcists considers that autonomy
requires to break off with one’s traditions, they think that political integration implies to give
up cultural differences.
(2) If Laborde criticizes the exclusive form of republican nationalism, she doesn’t express
clearly her position towards liberal nationalism. But it seems to me that the argument she
addresses to laïcists about autonomy can be extended here and suggests what a critical
republican could say about the cultural dimension of civic education. Indeed, if republicans
stay committed to a strong conception of the formative project, they may also favour a strong
inculcation of the sense of belonging. It would fit with their insistence on the fact that the
state must teach its citizens how to cast their interests in a non-dominating way. Pettit already
noticed that identification is a “natural phenomenon” which makes individuals go beyond
their narrow interests and which requires “no miracle of self-denial” (Pettit 1997: 260) for
doing so. In other words, just as neo-republicans remain perfectionist while arguing that
autonomy should be valued per se in the educational sphere, they may also do the same with
national identity and promote it per se, as an intrinsic feature of the common good shared by
all citizens. To examine this hypothesis, I will only look at one of the main concerns raised by
the cultural aspects of civic education: the teaching of national history.
Many thinkers acknowledge that civic education aims at creating solidarity between
citizens and that history plays a fundamental part here. Indeed, it helps individuals to see
themselves as members of a collective being, the nation, which has its proper temporality,
which is able to identify with its own past and to decide its own future. But in multicultural
14
societies, the solidarity-creating function of national history is far from being obvious. Since
citizens may be members of nations that have been annexed, colonized or since they may
come from different countries, they can hardly think of themselves as members of the same
community. Moreover, the plurality of origins that history makes visible is linked to the
problems of past injustices. Not only do people come from different cultural backgrounds, but
mostly their cultures or nations used to fight against each other and the winners used to
dominate the losers, often denying the basic rights of people. It is clear in the case of
colonized countries and this problem is now entangled with the issue of immigration, since
many immigrants come from ex-colonies. What should history teach about national identity
then? Some argue that history cannot foster a strong sense of belonging if such injustices are
taught in schools, because they undermine the ability of young children to be proud of their
national identity. It both stimulates the anger of those related to the victims and the shame of
those who identify with the aggressors. Obviously, if official histories are so often partial and
based on public lies about the past, it is precisely because it seems hard to ground the national
solidarity on an public form of repentance (Bruckner 2007). But others object that historical
denials of past injustices are unfair and counterproductive. They may cheat the members of
the cultural majority but will excite the legitimate anger of the members of cultural minorities,
who are affected by these partial accounts of the past (Kymlicka 1998: 315).
It seems logical that critical republicanism would reject the first position, since it is clearly
linked to the assimilationnistic vision of national identity – a solidarity made in spite of
cultural diversity – and would prefer instead the second one. If educational paternalism is
justified in as much as it promotes a “politics of voice”, it will obviously conduce the children
of cultural minorities to demand a national history more sensitive to their specific points of
view. Hence, just as educational paternalism must teach the ability to criticize any form of
power, whether it comes from the state or from the society, it must transform deeply the
national imaginary and link the collective identity with its multicultural components. And it is
not sure that such a transformation will lead to the pénitence of the majority, to the
victimization of the minorities or to the cultural clash between them. Acknowledging past
wrongs in the name of respect for every cultures can be a source of pride, if the children feel
attached to a country which is able to recognize publicly that cultural diversity is part of its
common good. Here, it seems to me that the perfectionism underpinning the republican
perspective makes a difference with the liberal one. For liberals, past wrongs should be
acknowledged, even if shame is the price to pay, because they infringe the principles of
15
justice. Obviously, a consistent civic education cannot develop both the sense of justice and
the sense of national solidarity if the latter contradicts the former. But for republicans, the
question is not only that history should not contradict justice, but also that history should
promote a common conception of the good. Hence, if future citizens are able to look
backwards in a critical way, by condemning today what used to be acceptable yesterday, it is
because state schools are now inculcating them a new sense of national belonging, a one
which is praises the cultural diversity of its members.
To make this point clear, I will refer to Sandel’s analysis of homophobia and
toleration. Studying the cases when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled out state
laws prohibiting homosexuality, he shows that the federal judges did not invoke at first the
freedom of choice and the right to choose one’s sexual preferences. There also prevailed a
more substantive position, justifying homosexuality for moral reasons. Some argued
originally that this kind of life could be fulfilling and could bring some fundamental human
goods necessary for personal flourishing (trust, love, etc.). Liberals generally reject such
justifications, since they depend on conceptions of the good that are not shared by
everyone. They prefer justifications that remain neutral and that are only based on the
freedom of choice, however one might evaluate the choices effectively made. But for
Sandel, the liberal confidence about neutral toleration hides the fact that some moral
agreement has already been reached when some anti-conformist behaviour becomes
socially accepted. Drawing on this analysis, I would suggest that stable multicultural
societies rely on a similar sort of moral agreement about the value of cultural diversity. It
seems necessary that the members of such societies come to acknowledge that life in
different cultures can be as fulfilling as life in their own culture (just as being an
homosexual can be as fulfilling as being an heterosexual) and thus, that a society where
such a cultural diversity is respected offers a richer form of life to its members than a
society that denies it. And this new conception of the common good is precisely what
allows for a critical view of the past: the conviction that our present conception of
collective identity is better than the one shared by our ancestors explains both their past
wrongs – since they derive from a biased view of national identity - and our pride to have
overcome them.
Conclusion
16
If we look at the attitude towards cultural diversity in French history, we can observe
such a moral evolution at works. It is well know that at the beginning of the Republic,
French revolutionaries fought actively against the regionalist cultures. Considered as the
conservative forces of the periphery, they had to be tamed by the progressive forces of the
centre (Michelet 1987). Hence, regional cultures were the first victims of assimilationnism,
as we are reminded by the well-known picture of the French institutor beating the head of a
little Britton in order to make him speak French. The violence of the historical process of
cultural standardization that created modern France sounds very strange when one
compares it to the actual passion of French people for “les terroirs”, i.e. for the ancestral
traditions that characterizes one region (dress, food, celebrations). A cultural diversity that
has been durably considered as a threat for the life of the Republic is now accepted and
even praised as a distinctive feature of the national identity. The historian Gérard Noiriel
has clearly analysed the role played by republican historians and intellectuals to make this
shift possible (Noiriel 2001). By creating the idea of “embeddedment”, they suggested that
French cultural identity was derived from the diversity of its regional cultures since they
were all submitted to the “assimilationnistic power of the French land” (force assimilatrice
de la terre française) (Vidal de la Blache 1908). Even if since then this national myth has
severely compromised the integration of immigrants – because the myth suggests that the
French cultural identity already existed when massive immigration started with the
industrial revolution - one could imagine that the reference to the “cultural roots” could be
enlarged in the French national imaginary. If French identity is inherently diverse, and if
one can be Briton and French, Basque and French, why couldn’t one be Algerian and
French, Senegalese and French ?
In brief, it seems to me that the perfectionism underlying neo-republicanism, which
appears clearly in its defence of autonomy in the educational sphere, has also consequences
on the representation of the national identity. It suggests that we should promote strongly
the sense of solidarity created by the national identity but in a reworked frame that allows
for the recognition of cultural diversity. In this extent, it seems to me that the “politics of
voice” that Laborde elaborates as a third possibility between the liberal “politics of exit”
and the multicultural “politics of recognition”, cannot be separated from the second one, as
soon as you address the cultural dimension of the formative project.
17
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