IWM Newsletter 63

November 1998 – January 1999
Newsletter 63
Institut für die
Wissenschaften
vom Menschen
Institute for
Human Sciences
Contents:
Wiesenthal Conference
On the Sources of Hate
SOCO-Workshop
Gender and Social Policy in
East-Central Europe
Book Presentation
Peter Demetz: Prague in
Black and Gold
Junior Fellows Conference
Paradigms and Contentions
IWM Field of Research
Gender Studies
IWM-Working Report
Paul Gillespie: Ireland and
the European Integration
Call for Applications
Paul Celan Translation
Program
Summerschool
A-1090 Wien
Spittelauer Lände 3
Tel. (+431) 31358-0
Fax (+431) 31358-30
e-mail:
[email protected]
World Wide Web:
www.univie.ac.at/iwm/
Wiesenthal Conference
On the Sources of Hate
Leading scholars and politicians met on
December 17 -19 in the Vienna Hofburg to
discuss the causes and sources of hatred as
a social problem. Not the anthropological or
psychological approach was at issue, but
rather the role that values and conceptual
systems play to generate hate or to help
reduce it. We bring Jürgen Kaube’s commentary which appeared on December 23 in
the »Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung«.
Sic flamma assurgit totam furibunda per urbem — “Thus
the fire raged through the entire town.” This late medieval
inscription on the house known as “Zum Großen Jordan”
is difficult to decipher in the dim December light. The
inscription has been there since 1491, high above the
Judenplatz, the place of commemoration of the victims of
National Socialist terror. The religious zeal of the persecu-
In Addition
Guests
Publications
Tuesday Lectures
Travels and Talks
Varia
Guest Contribution
Charles Taylor: Faith and
Identity
Robert Spaemann, Reinhart Koselleck, Bernard Lewis, Aleksander Smolar
tors is reminiscent of the blind rage against the “Hebrew
dogs”, which was rampant during the “Geserah”, the
Vienna pogrom of 1421. In the course of the pogrom, 200
Jews were delivered up to a “baptism of fire”.
Efforts to “cleanse” society of ethnic, religious or
political minorities continue. What may have ceased is the
delusion that these measures would promote the salvation
of the victims’ souls. It is not simply that “Sonderbehandlung” (special treatment) and “ethnic cleansing” are part
of our century’s vocabulary. Aside from the increase in the
means of annihilation applied in conflicts of interest, the
emotional repertoire of modernity also includes enthusiasm for the persecution of minorities and foreigners and a
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
profound pleasure in aversion. Yet it is precisely the
blindness of a rage that can be contained by neither fear
nor self interest which constitutes a problem for the
present’s sense of itself. Insofar as modernity is presented
as a project of moralization and rationalization, the unleashing of hatred is often regarded as a relapse into an
current hatred draws its semantics from tradition but not
its emotion.
Taylor suspected that one condition for modern hate
lay in the idea of national sovereignty. It is only when the
concept of the nation becomes politicized that the question of belonging or exclusion becomes urgent. If all are to
have a voice, it becomes necessary to define “all” as a
subcategory of mankind. And only when this definition
has been established, does the position of minorities
become critical. Once neighbours turn into Jews or Hutus,
personal experience is transformed into an awareness of
the statistical composition of the population. The modern
state and the categories it creates favour the abstraction,
which is prerequisite for every form of hatred. The opportunistic treatment of minorities as practised by premodern
rulers with its alternation of protection and oppression
according to practical considerations, becomes a thing of
the past. The relationship to the “others” becomes a
matter of principle. A readiness to turn to violence is
guided by questions of political equality and not of religious orthodoxy. The key issue is no longer what one
believes but who one is and who is included in a given
polity. This description only concerned patterns of persecution and massacre.
Robert Spaemann’s attempt to explain the energies
manifest in collective rage drew on a secularised version
of the doctrine of mortal sin. He interpreted hatred as
rooted in prepolitical resentment. Hatred as a feeling of
unreleased aggression arises among the powerless, the
poor, the humiliated. Reading Hitler’s rabble-rousing prose
written before he seized power, one inevitably asks
oneself, what supposed injustice an individual must have
suffered to develop such maniacal hatred. Hence, for
Spaemann, hatred is not the same thing as enmity. It does
not aim to seize possessions or to enforce certain actions,
but wants to deny others the right to exist. The others are
not to be converted, they are to disappear. “Beat him to
death! On Judgment Day/ No one will ask you for your
reasons”, writes Kleist, probably because national hatred
cannot provide any other than “existential” reasons.
Consequently, Spaemann questioned efforts to eliminate
prejudice through enlightenment and education. He then
moved from the origins of hatred to the hatred of origins.
Even Sarastro, the Enlightenment inspired roi soleil of
Mozart’s “Magic Flute”, hates the world of darkness out of
a feeling of helplessness. The universalism which exercises the judgment of reason over every exception experiences its own limits when confronted with defendants
who refuse to confess and pupils who refuse to learn. Its
rage — like the colère publique of the French Revolution
— is the rage of someone whose argument falls on deaf
ears.
Its weakness lies in its inability to pervade everything
and gain universal acceptance. Hence it is not surprising,
as Bernard Lewis suggested, that enlightened periods in
particular bring forth enormous violence. New reasons are
found to intensify and increase the violence which should
not exist, but does. When, in the course of the nineteenth
century, theological arguments for aversions crumbled,
people looked to science for new ones. Biology and
zoology took the place of religious hostility. Antijudaism
became antisemitism, colonial arrogance racism.
Londa Schiebinger, Ira Katznelson, Glenn C. Loury, Steven A. Shapin
earlier stage of civilization. Those who hate according to
collective stereotypes must have got their emotions mixed
up with the wrong epoch. Social rage appears as a
regression to premodern behaviour: hatred of
“subhumans” and asylum seekers, between Hindus and
Muslims, Croats and Serbs. The sources of such violence
are presumed to lie in the depths of collective memory,
religious tradition and archaic emotion. Wherever a
collective desire to kill becomes manifest, it seems like an
anachronism.
But what would an anachronistic emotion be? In his
speech to the United Nations in 1995 Simon Wiesenthal
initiated the idea of a conference on the “sources of hate”.
The IWM organized this conference in his honour at the
Vienna Hofburg. The remarkable array of participants both
on the platform and in the audience notwithstanding,
almost all questions remained open. The extent to which
the majority of the talks avoided the topic of hatred
seemed at first surprising, then odd and eventually inappropriate. Were the researchers’ nerves too sensitive to
confront reality? There were lectures on human rights,
democracy and the exclusion of women from research,
about prejudices in scholarship, the “Bell Curve” and the
multiple meanings of monotheism. All this bore a vague,
largely distant and at best historical relation to the question of hate, which was usually only mentioned in the
introductory sentences.
It was left to the contributions by Charles Taylor,
Robert Spaemann and Bernard Lewis to present at least
some initial conceptual proposals. All three shared a
refusal to interpret collective rage as a relapse into patterns believed to be a thing of the past. Taylor conceded
that the language of ancient religious differences was also
a potential source of violence in modernity. The “others”
remain the non-believers. Hence their expulsion or killing
for ultimate (religious) reasons also remains commendable. But fundamentalist Christians and Jews, Hindus and
Buddhists have long since focused on objectives beyond
orthodoxy. The fanaticism of polytheistic and therefore
pluralistically inclined religions provides ample proof of
this. And even in Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia, for
example, where older religious conflicts are at the heart of
contemporary problems, they have long since turned into
a hostility which is no longer related to religion. The
Page 2
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Spaemann contrasted the inability to confront hatred
in terms of the spirit of science with motifs drawn from
religion. The doctrine of divine grace allows for the
existence of different beliefs. The doctrine of redemption
ennobles weakness and is thus the only doctrine capable
of overcoming resentment. Hatred is not susceptible to
argument or compulsion, it can only be pacified. Violence
cannot crush a sentiment that is fed by the feeling of
helplessness.
Program
At the Vienna conference, interpretations of this kind were
few and far between. The rather conceptual approaches
were not supported by empirical findings. Hatred appeared as a disembodied ghost, a product of the mind.
Bernard Lewis even felt the need to apologize for the fact
that he was neither a sociologist nor a psychologist and
could only make contributions from a historian’s point of
view. There were in any case no analysts of current issues.
Walking home through Berggasse in the evening, one
inevitably felt perplexed that, in the city of Sigmund Freud,
a debate about hate managed to bypass any mention of
the idiosyncratic and somatic motives of this phenomenon. There are certainly sources in the present but rarely
in a civilized environment. To find them, one has to go
upstream. In the Hofburg, participants tended to go
downstream, to the point where the river flows into the
sea of tolerance. Perhaps this tendency was due to the
difficulty of avoiding the easy consensus, that the participants, at least, in such a discussion know themselves to
be free of any hint of hatred. Bernard Lewis remarked that
in a gathering of post-Islamic, post-Jewish and postChristian agnostics it was not difficult to agree on tolerance. This remark was not so much a contribution to the
debate in Vienna as a comment on it. One could interpret
his words like this: To approach the sources of hate, one
should risk more than a chat among therapists.
Introduction:
Franz Cardinal König
Translated from German by Esther Kinsky
Page 3
Thursday, 17 December
Welcome: Krzysztof Michalski, Director, Institute for Human
Sciences
Opening Remarks:
Minister for Education and Cultural Affairs Elisabeth Gehrer
Federal President of Austria Thomas Klestil
Keynote Address:
Simon Wiesenthal
Hate – the Overlooked Component of War and Violence
(read by Rosa-Maria Austraat, Documentation Center)
Friday, 18 December
The Ambivalence of Religion and Humanism
When, under which circumstances, does religion become a
source of hatred — and when does it serve to dissolve hatred?
Comparison of the development of various religions — above all,
Christianity, Judaism
and Islam — will be
undertaken in this
respect. However, the
process of
secularization and the
parallel of
secularization,
“humanistic” outlooks
on life within Europe
and beyond, should
W. Schüssel, Ch. Herzog, R. Herzog
also be discussed in
this context: does this process lead to a diminishing of social and
cultural differences — or does it bring about new reasons for
motivating human groups to hate one another?
Panel I
Chair: Leszek Kolakowski, All Souls College, Oxford
Speakers:
Shlomo Avinieri, Professor of Political Science and Director,
Institute for European Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
The Janus-like Nature of Religion: Between Emancipatory
Potential and Repressive Threat
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Professor of Law, University of
Freiburg; former Judge of the Constitutional Court, Karlsruhe
Tolerance: A Persistent Problem for Christian Churches
Charles Taylor, Professor of Philosophy and Political Science,
McGill University, Montreal
Faith and Identity: Religion and Violence in the Modern World
(for an excerpt of this please see the Guest Contrbution on p. 28)
Panel II
Chair: Reinhart Koselleck, Professor Emeritus of History,
Bielefeld
Franz Cardinal König, Hella Pick, Ihsan Dogramaci
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Speakers:
Bernard Lewis, Professor Em. of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University
A Taxonomy of Group Hatred
Evening
Award Ceremony
European Prizes PRO HUMANITATE for Peace, Justice and
Tolerance
Robert Spaemann, Professor Em. of Philosophy, University of
Munich
Sarastro’s Hate: Humans and Sub-humans
Awarded by the Kultur-Fördergemeinschaft der Europäischen
Wirtschaft, under the patronage of the Presidents of the Assembly of the European Council and the European Parliament
Aleksander Smolar, President of the Batory Foundation,
Warsaw; Maitre de Recherche, CNRS, Paris
After Communism: Conflicting Memories and Prospects of
Reconciliation
Laudatio for Prizewinners: Lord Weidenfeld
Saturday, 19 December
The Ambivalence of the Sciences
On one hand the sciences have contributed to the explanation
and overcoming of traditional hate-generating prejudices, which
are in many cases grounded in religion, folk-beliefs, or superstition (heathens, witches, heretics). On the other hand, the sciences often provide grounds for social hatred (for e. g., biology
in the Third Reich). The sciences are not socially value-laden in
themselves but can nevertheless transport social value-concepts
which contain or bring about hatred (as for e. g., hatred against
“the coloured” or against women). Can this ambivalence be
adequately explained by the difference between “good” and
“bad” science?
Panel I
Chair: Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science,
Columbia University, New York
Speakers:
Steven A. Shapin, Professor of Sociology and Science Studies,
University of California, San Diego
Science and Prejudice: Modern and Pre-Modern Visions
Londa Schiebinger, Professor of the History of Science and
Woman’s Studies, Pennsylvania State University
Women and Science in Modernity
Glenn C. Loury, University Professor and Professor of Economics, Director of the Institute on Race and Social Division, Boston
University
Scientific Argument and Racial Hatred
Panel II
Chair: Cornelia Klinger, Permanent Fellow of the IWM; and
Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Tübingen
Speakers:
Hans-Ludwig Schreiber, Professor of Law and President,
University of Göttingen; Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees, the
Volkswagen Foundation
Purported Scientific Grounds for the Persecution of Witches and
for Xenophobia Today
Anton Pelinka, Professor of Political Science, University of
Innsbruck
Democratic Theory and Human Rights: An Ambivalent Relationship
Page 4
Award presentation by Sénateur Louis Jung, Honorary President
of the Assembly of the European Council
Ihsan Dogramaci — in recognition of his efforts on behalf of
tolerance
Franz Cardinal König — in recognition of his efforts on behalf
of peace
Simon Wiesenthal — in recognition of his efforts on behalf of
justice
Acceptance Speech for Prize Recipients: Simon Wiesenthal
(read by Hella Pick, Biographer of Simon Wiesenthal)
Introduction: Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister of Austria
Wolfgang Schüssel
Keynote Address: Roman Herzog, Federal President of Germany
Science as Political Argument: Opportunity and Risk, Overestimation and Seduction
The conference was supported by: Bundesministerium für
Auswärtige Angelegenheiten, Bundeskanzleramt, Bundesministerium für Unterricht und Kunst, Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und Verkehr, Bundesministerium für Inneres, Bundesministerium für Justiz, Stadtplanung Wien, Wien Kultur.
Participants
Samuel Abraham, Director, Society for Higher Learning, Bratislava;
Editor, KRITIKA & KONTEXT - Journal of Critical Thinking; Michaela
Adelberger, Public Relations, IWM Associate; Ömer Akbel, Turkish
Ambassador to Austria; Erna Appelt, Institute of Political Science,
University of Innsbruck; Shlomo Avineri, Professor of Political
Science and Director, Institute for European Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Jan Barcz, Polish Ambassador to Austria; ErnstWolfgang Böckenförde, Professor of Law, University of Freiburg;
former Judge of the German Constitutional Court; Chairman, IWM
Academic Advisory Board; Gottfried Boehm, Professor of Modern
Art History, University of Basel; Non-resident Permanent Fellow of
IWM; Maarten C. Brands, Professor of History, Amsterdam University; Director, Germany Institute, Amsterdam; Member of the IWM
Academic Advisory Board; Piotr Bratkowski, Gazeta Wyborcza,
Warsaw; Jack Burgers, Professor of Sociology, Erasmus University
Rotterdam; IWM Visiting Fellow; Erhard Busek, Director, Institute for
the Danube Region and Central Europe (IDM), Vienna; former
Austrian Vice Chancellor; Franz Cede, Head of Legal Department,
Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs; Amy Colin, Professor of
German Languages and Literature, University of Pittsburgh; Michael
Desser, Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Ihsan Dogramaci,
Chairman of the Board of Trustees and President of Bilkent University, Ankara; J.T.H.C. van Ebbenhorst Tengbergen, Ambassador of
the Netherlands to Austria ; Alfred Ebenbauer, Professor of German
Language and Literature; Vice Rector, University of Vienna; Gideon
Eckhaus, Council of Jews from Austria in Israel, Tel Aviv; ErnstLudwig Ehrlich, Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History and
Religion, University of Bern; Paul Chaim Eisenberg, Chief Rabbi of
Vienna; Benita Ferrero-Waldner, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs,
Vienna; Sir Anthony Figgis, British Ambassador to Austria; Heinz
Fischer, President of the Austrian National Council; Roman
Frydman, Professor of Economics, New York University; Director,
Project Syndicate, New York; Winfried Garscha, Archive of the
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 5
Austrian Resistance, Vienna; Elisabeth Gehrer, Austrian Minister of
of Philosophy, Boston University; Ariel Muzicant, President of the
Education and Cultural Affairs; Hermann Germ, Austrian Ministry
Jewish Community, Vienna; Klaus Nellen, IWM Permanent Fellow;
for Justice; Paul Gillespie, Foreign Editor, The Irish Times, Dublin;
Wolfgang Neugebauer, Director, Archive of the Austrian Resistance,
IWM Visiting Fellow; Bernhard Görg, Vice Mayor and Executive
Vienna; Helga Nowotny, Professor of Epistemology and Scientific
Counsellor for Planning and Future Development, Vienna; Sandra
Research, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich; Member,
Grillitsch, Office of the Austrian Federal Chancellor; Paul Grosz,
IWM Academic Advisory Board; Alan M. Olson, Professor of
Honorary President of the Jewish Community, Vienna; Jiri Grusa,
Philosophy and Religion, Boston University; Executive Editor, The
Czech Ambassador to Austria; Pierre Guimond, Counsellor,
Paideia Project; Janusz Ostrowski, Publicist, Zycie, Warsaw;
Canadian Embassy, Vienna; Christian Hainzl, Ludwig Boltzmann
Sandor Peisch, Hungarian Ambasssdor to Austria; Anton Pelinka,
Institute of Human Rights, Vienna;
Professor of Political Science, University
Kathryn Walt Hall, Ambassador of the
of Innsbruck; Member of the IWM AcaUnited States to Austria; Marta s.
demic Advisory Board; Bernhard
Halpert, Director, Anti-Defamation
Perchinig, Vienna Integration Fund; Hella
League, Vienna; Elemer Hankiss,
Pick, Journalist (biographer of Simon
Professor of Sociology and Director,
Wiesenthal), London; Richard Potz,
Institute of Sociology, Hungarian
Professor of Canon Law, University of
Academy of Sciences, Budapest; Philipp
Vienna; Gerald Rainer, Representative,
Harnoncourt, Director, Institute for
Bank Julius Bär, Vienna; Gerhard Rainer,
Liturgical Studies, Christian Arts and
Deputy Director for Foreign Cultural
Hymnology, University of Graz; Thomas
Policy, Austrian Ministry of Foreign
Henschel, Head of the Research Group
Affairs; Hans Rauscher, Journalist, Der
Youth and Europe, Center for Applied
Standard, FORMAT, Vienna; Jürgen
Policy Research, Munich; Roman
Christian Regge, Fritz Thyssen FoundaHerzog, Federal President of Germany;
tion, Köln; Albert Reiterer, Social
Lilian Hofmeister, Commercial Court,
Scientist (DATINFORM), Vienna; Aaron
Vienna; Moshe Jahoda, Committee for
Rhodes , Executive Director, International
Jewish Claims on Austria (Claims
Helsinki Federation for Human Rights,
Conference), New York; Louis Jung,
Vienna; Joachim Riedl, Editor-in-chief,
Honorary President of the Assembly of
FORMAT, Vienna; Albert Rohan, Austrian
the European Council, Strasbourg;
Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Andreas
Elzbieta Kaczynska, Professor of Social
Rudas, General Secretary of the Social
Sciences, Warsaw University; IWM
Democratic Party, Vienna; Dirk Rumberg,
Visiting Fellow; Monika Kalista, Director
Director for International Cooperation,
General for Foreign Cultural Policy,
Bertelsmann Foundation, Gütersloh;
Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Ira
Hermann-Josef Sausen, Cultural Attaché
Katznelson, Professor of Political
of the German Embassy, Vienna; Londa
Science, Columbia University, New York;
Schiebinger, Professor of the History of
Member of the IWM Academic Advisory
Science and Woman’s Studies, PennsylvaBoard; Jürgen Kaube, Frankfurter
nia State University; Heide Schmidt,
Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurt; Volker
Spokeswoman of the Liberal Forum,
Dinner at the Kunsthistorisches Museum
Kier, Member of Parliament, Liberal
Vienna; Eckehard Schober, Minister
Forum, Vienna; Michael Kimmel, Department of Anthropology,
Counsellor, German Embassy, Vienna; Hans-Ludwig Schreiber,
University of Vienna; Gabor Klaniczay, Rector, Collegium Budapest;
Professor of Law, University of Göttingen; Vice-Chair of Board of
Thomas Klestil, Federal President of Austria; Cornelia Klinger ,
Trustees, Volkswagen Foundation; Wolfgang Schüssel, Austrian
IWM Permanent Fellow, and Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Vice-Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs; Ernst Seidel ,
University of Tübingen; Raoul Kneucker, General Director, Austrian
President, Foundation of European Cultural Prizes, Freiburg; Adam
Ministry of Science and Transport; L. W. Koengeter, Public Affairs
B. Seligman, Associate Professor, Department of Religion, Institute
Counselor, United States Information Service, Vienna; Christine von
for the Study of Economic Culture, Boston University; Steven
Kohl, Kulturni Centar, Vienna; Leszek Kolakowski, Professor of
Shapin, Professor of Sociology and Science Studies, University of
Philosophy, Oxford University; Vice- Chair of the IWM Academic
California, San Diego; Aleksander Smolar, President, Stefan Batory
Advisory Board; Franz Cardinal König, Vienna; Ilse König, Head of
Foundation, Warsaw; Maître de recherche, CNRS, Paris; Robert
Unit III/A/3, Austrian Ministry of Science and Transport; Reinhart
Spaemann, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Munich;
Koselleck, Professor Emeritus of History, Bielefeld; Member of the
Member, IWM Academic Advisory Board; Gerfried Sperl, Editor-inIWM Academic Advisory Board; Vera Koubova, Translator and
Chief, Der Standard, Vienna; Michael Stanzer-Kotnik, ELTEinterpreter, Prague; IWM Visiting Fellow; János M. Kovács, IWM
UNESCO Institute for the Studies of Minorities; Cultural Editor, Neuer
Permanent Fellow; Professor of Economics, University of Budapest;
Pest Lloyd, Budapest; Rüdiger Stephan, Secretary General, EuroMarcin Król, Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Warsaw;
pean Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam; Fritz Stern, University
Editor-in-Chief, Res Publica Nova; Franz Küberl, President of
Professor and Professor of History, Columbia University, New York;
»Caritas« Austria, Graz; Elmar Kuhn, Director, Liberales BildungsfoVice-Chair of the IWM Academic Advisory Board; Terezija Stoisits,
rum, Vienna; Nikolaus Kunrath, Board member of »SOS MitMember of Parliament, The Green Party, Vienna; Jaroslav Stritecky,
mensch«, Vienna; Ira Langhofer, Institute for History, University of
Masaryk University, Brno; Ernst Christoph Suttner, Director,
Salzburg; Ronald S. Lauder, Former Ambassador of the United
Institute of Patrology and Eastern Churches-Studies, University of
States to Austria; Paul Lendvai, International Commentator and
Vienna; Jerzy Szacki, Professor of Philosophy, University of
Consultant, ORF; Editor-in-Chief, Europäische Rundschau, Vienna;
Warsaw; Member of the IWM Academic Advisory Board; Charles
Georg Lennkh, Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Bernard Lewis,
Taylor, Professor of Philosophy and Political Science, McGill
Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University;
University, Montreal; Vice-Chair of the IWM Academic Advisory
Member of the IWM Academic Advisory Board; Robert Liska, Vice
Board; Francois Thual, Professor of History, Sorbonne University;
President of the Jewish Community, Vienna; Glenn C. Loury,
Heinz Tichy, Austrian Ministry of Science and Transport; Hannes
Professor of Economics and University Professor, Boston University;
Tretter, Director, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights,
Director, Institute on Race and Social Division, Boston University;
Vienna; Lord Weidenfeld, London; Erika Weinzierl, Professor of
Christina Lutter, Department of Social Sciences, Austrian Ministry
Contemporary History, University of Vienna; Elisabeth Welzig,
of Science and Transport; Peter Marboe, Executive Counsellor for
Kleine Zeitung, Graz; Werner Welzig, President, Austrian Academy
Cultural Affairs, City of Vienna; Nikolaus Marschik, Ludwig
of Sciences; Silke Wenk, Professor of Art History, Carl von Ossietzky
Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights, Vienna; Elisabeth MenasseUniversity, Oldenburg; Uwe-Justus Wenzel, Neue Zürcher Zeitung;
Wiesbauer, Austrian Ministry of Science and Transport; Nathan
Simon Wiesenthal, Director, Austrian Documentation Centre,
Meron, Ambassador of Israel to Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia and
Vienna; Beate Winkler, Director of the European Monitoring Centre
Croatia; Pavol Mestan, Director, Jewish Museum, Bratislava;
on Racism and Xenophobia, Vienna; Mitja Zagar, Director, Institute
Nikolaus Michalek, Austrian Minister of Justice; Krzysztof
for Ethnic Studies, Ljubljana; Paul Zulehner, Institute for Evangelical
Michalski , Director, Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna; Professor
Theology and Kerygmatics, University of Vienna.
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 6
SOCO-Workshop
Gender and Social Policy in East-Central Europe
It is becoming increasingly clear that one cannot neglect gender as a variable for analysis of
the transformation process in Central and Eastern Europe. In the relatively small amount of
research that has been done, some groups of women are revealed as being among the most
socially vulnerable groups. The signs of deterioration are numerous: diminished labor market access; decrease of family-oriented social welfare benefits and programs; side-lining into
low-paying professions, starting most probably at the point of higher education; gender bias
in hiring and firing; and nonexistence of legal protections against sexual harassment in the
workplace. At the same time, according to other misery indicators, such as mortality and
health difficulties, some groups of men are particularly hard hit. What is certain is that in
Eastern Europe the transition affects men and women in very different ways.
The discussion at the workshop on November 13 in the IWM Library was centered on
these gender-specific trends of losing or winning during the post-communist transformation
in terms of employment, health and social insurance. Five experts from the Czech Republic,
Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia gave presentations on these issues. The analysis of
the Czech situation by Hana Havelkova is presented here.
Social Policy and Gender Patterns in Post-Communist Czech Society
The following considerations are addressed to the question raised by this IWM workshop: whether and how social
reform after 1989 has affected gender differences in the
society. Given the situation in the Czech Republic, however, none of the three basic claims I will suggest here
present social policy itself as the center of the main
problems. My first claim points to the process of differentiation within the female population as a dynamic factor
affecting the assessment of social policy as gendered. The
second claim points at the problem of the balance between the social and the economic policy by the state and
at the absurdity of the current Czech situation connected
to this. The third claim points at the way the gender
patterns that can be called a silent gender contract,
inherited from the communist time, still tends to conceal
the focus of potential social problems as gendered.
Finally, the disturbances of this contract expected for the
future are also discussed.
1. The first thing to be mentioned about the Czech society
is that unlike in Poland or Hungary, the real economic
transformation has been postponed and so were many
aspects of the social and cultural transformation. Thus for
e.g., the
phenomenon of
unemployment
started to
become a
serious
social
issue
Claire Wallace, Peter Guran, Milica Antic
beginning as late as 1997. Within the so far low unemployment rate the female unemployment was virtually
negligible. Since recently, this is no longer the case and
the dynamic increase of unemployment in the last months
up to ten or more percent includes the nascent recognition
of the female population as far more vulnerable. Yet
proper research findings are not yet available, neither is
the assessment of the functionality of the system of
unemployment payments as introduced some years ago.
So I will focus here on some selected areas where the
social reform affected the two sexes before this new
development. In the first phase after 1989, major attention
was paid to the pensioners. To moderate the communist
legacy in income inequalities, the pension payments were
partly separated from the previous incomes, which somewhat weakened the gap between male and female pensions. Yet the system of regular valorization of the pensions, calculated as a certain percentage from the respective pension, gradually deepens the existing differences
anew, to women’s disadvantage. Another disadvantage
can be found in the private pension insurance, where
women get less benefits for the same payments. Also in
the maternity (parenthood) support, the social reform has
separated the social benefits from the previous income,
which begins to affect different groups of women in
different ways. By the more successful women, this form
of state support is perceived as unjust, as something that
does not encourage and “reward” their motherhood. The
situation in housing policy in the Czech Republic is also
more and more tense — again with a differentiated impact. The regulated rent protects those who already
occupy a place, but lead to distortions in the apartmentmarket which disadvantage especially young people
without places to live. This is obviously one of the causes
of birth rate decline and of changed marital strategies in
young women: compared with the communist time they
marry about three years later in the average.
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
2. Due to the economic recession, an absurd situation
occurred in the Czech Republic, where the average income
is sometimes lower than an unemployment support if
there are children in the family. So while the social
benefits are set down by the law and are regarded as a
matter of human rights and legitimized by both the standards of the European Union and by the high value of social
security in post-communist societies, the incomes depend
entirely on the strength of the national economy and are
not legally secured (with the exception of the minimal
income, which in the Czech Republic virtually does not
exceed the unemployment support either). Not only does
this mean that the center of the problem is not the social
security system, but also gender traps should be sought
rather in the character of the relation between social
benefits and women’s salaries. Although the social
benefits are the same for
the two sexes, salaries are
not. Due to the economic
crisis, the incomes have
been restricted (frozen),
particularly in the state sector, where women employees prevail (administration,
education, health services).
But also in feminized provHana Havelkova
inces, women’s salaries are
about 75% of those of men due to the vertical segregation,
i.e. more men in management positions. In sum, women
(especially single mothers with two or more children) are
more likely to belong to the group whose income is the
same or lower than the sum of benefits the family has the
right to in case of unemployment, and thus to those more
tempted to leave their jobs. These paradoxical and demotivating conditions did not however lead so far to the
unemployment as a life choice for women. The situation is
the more absurd given that the under-rewarded and demotivated women at stake are often well-educated middleclass women. The value of the work is high in general, but
the incomes are more frustrating in case of women than of
men. Yet part of the population did change their strategies
already: some couples do not get married to profit from
the social benefits, a considerable part of the receivers of
the support are suspected to work black.
its convenience for all the participants: for the men because they can share their breadwinner-responsibility with
their wives, for the women because of their financial
independence and the social and personality benefits from
their work (though at the cost of zero leisure time), for the
state because women are at the moment irreplaceable in
big segments of the (gender-segmented) labor market and
are more easily to be exploited (work for less money —
see above) and finally, also for the children — assuming
that a psychically satisfied and creative mother is a good
mother. Indeed, the concept of housewife as a life-long
program turns out to be quite obsolete, the model of a
childless career woman is also very rare.
The model where neither the women nor society
expects woman’s choice between career and children is
positive, but in the new situation of much harder social
competition, the way the combination of the two female
roles has been practiced will not be sustainable in the long
run. The double burden of women has been redoubled
after 1989 due to increased demands in both the sphere of
work and at home: not only the increased competition and
efficiency demands at work require more energy than
before, but many women take additional jobs to cope with
economic hardships. At home more coordinational and
psychical energy (woman’s task) is being required at this
unstable time of hiring and firing, children attend courses
to be prepared for the demands of the new competition,
there is the drug threat etc. It is well known that paradoxically, the self-esteem of the “super-women” has not been
very high in the labor market and that even the best
educated women are not career-oriented in the western
sense of the word. This contributes to their disadvantaging and exploitation in the labor market, which has been,
ironically, often noted in foreign companies, which do not
keep here the gender standards binding in their home
countries. As a result, the above mentioned gender
contract based on the working mother model contributes
to a discriminatory milieu for women. It must be recognized that the whole burden of this “all-round convenient”
model cannot be born by women only, whose enormous
work is ignored but
assumed. An
interesting illustration may be provided by a recent
Slovak research
(there is no Czech
research on precisely these comJane Lewis, Janos M. Kovacs
paring thoughts)
showing that between 50 to 70% of Slovak women (with
similar biography to the Czechs) claimed they are worse
off than women in the west, men in Slovakia and women
under socialism. Therefore it is no accident that only very
recently, the problem of women’s double burden began to
be discussed in the media as a serious social problem,
though not yet explicitly connected with the increased
problems of women’s health and a steep increase of
psychic problems within the female population.
The interconnection between this inherited practice of
overburdening women and their level of education remained even more hidden so far. Though women are
better educated than men on the high-school level, far
3. The communist societies were characterized by the
existence of “super-women”, who combine full engagement in both employment and motherhood and housework. As to the Czech Republic, this model, which can be
regarded as a more or less general, homogenized female
life model (almost all women are full time employed, more
than 80% having at least two children), still persists and
seems to be irreversible. Hypothetically, two things could
have happened after 1989: voluntary or enforced increase
of female unemployment, and lesser engagement of the
state in ensuring the child-care services. None of these
happened so far: as to the former, changes will probably
start only now; as to the latter, the network of kindergartens remained preserved to a satisfactory extent – only
the nurseries for the smallest children have been virtually
eliminated. The Czech sociologist Marie Cermáková
explains the persistence of the working mother model by
Page 7
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 8
more women than men lack any higher education such as
vocational training, and among university graduates
women did not yet achieve parity in the whole history.
Their percentage has been permanently but slowly growing during the communist era and afterwards up to 44% in
1997 when it leveled off. New reports show that in the last
years, women are less admitted to universities (10% less
than men) although they apply in higher numbers (10%
more). These are hitherto hidden aspects of social policy,
deeply rooted in social (state included) and cultural gender
patterns, keeping women in a rather mediocre position
while men prevail among homeless as well as among the
management.
My last remark relates the issue of cultural change
again to the given economic context: although competition for jobs has increased, the efficiency of the economy
and the productivity is still lower than in the west. Thus
the really hard efficiency pressure — including its gender
impact — is to be expected only in the future. This can be
demonstrated by the example of career rules: while there
are, for example, age limits for achievement of the level of
a lecturer or professor in western countries, no such
limitations have been enacted here, and so the system
was better meeting women’s biographies. This is going to
change, and so we will probably face social discussion
and bargaining on issues like this in the near future.
Program
Chair: Jane Lewis
Welcome and Introduction: Janos Matyas Kovacs
Country Case Studies:
Czech Republic: Hana Havelkova
Slovakia: Peter Guran, Commentary: Claire Wallace
Hungary: Katalin Levai, Commentary: Zsuzsa Ferge
Poland: Jolanta Supinska, Commentary: Antoinette Hetzler
Slovenia: Vlasta Jalusic, Commentary: Milica Antic
Participants
Helen Addison, Former SOCO program coordinator, Vienna;
Michaela Adelberger, IWM Program Associate; Milica Antic,
Reader in Sociology, University of Ljubljana; Charles Bonner, IWM
Program Associate; Eva Cyba, Associate Professor of Sociology,
Vienna; Zsuzsa Ferge, Professor of Sociology, Eötvös Lorand
University, Budapest; Paul Gillespie, IWM Visiting Fellow (Ireland);
Maria Gomez, IWM Junior Visiting Fellow (Colombia); Peter Guran,
Head of Scientific and Research Department, International Center for
Family Studies in Bratislava; Hana Havelkova, Associate Professor
of Sociology, Charles University, Prague; Antoinette Hetzler,
Professor of Social Policy, Lund University; Michal Ivantysyn, IWM
Junior Visiting Fellow (Slovakia); Vlasta Jalusic, Director and Senior
Research Fellow, Peace Institute, Ljubljana; Don Kalb, Associate
Professor in General Social Science, Utrecht University, SOCO
program coordinator, Visiting Fellow IWM, Vienna; Ira Katznelson,
Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University, New York; Janos Matyas Kovacs, Professor of Economics,
Permanent Fellow IWM, Vienna; Ulrike Krampl, IWM Junior Visiting
Fellow (Austria); Katalin Lévai, Professor of Sociology, Head, Equal
Opportunities Office, Ministry for Social and Family Affairs, Budapest; Jane Lewis, Professor of Sociology, University of Nottingham,
Oxford; Jarmila Maresova, IWM Junior Visiting Fellow (Czech
Republic); Klaus Nellen, IWM Permanent Fellow; Katharina Pewny,
IWM Junior Visiting Fellow (Austria); Karin Slamanig, SOCO
Program Assistant; Jolanta Supinska, Professor of Sociology,
University of Warsaw; Claire Wallace, Professor of Sociology,
Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna; Violetta Zentai, IWM Junior
Visiting Fellow (Hungary).
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 9
Series
Vienna – Moscow – Vienna
Viennese and Moscow audiences were given vivid insight into the cultural scenes of both
capitals through the series “Vienna – Moscow – Vienna” which was organized by the journal
Wespennest in collaboration with Transit - Europäische Revue.
The series began in Vienna in the spring with four evenings (see Newsletter 60). On April 29, in the IWM Library,
Irina Prochorowa, literary scholar, publisher and editor of
the journal NLO presented a snap-shot of the Russian
intelligentsia after the collapse of communism entitled
»Look Forward in Anger«.
Austrian writers and musicians met their Russian
colleagues from September 10 - 14 in Moscow at well
frequented marathon literature readings in the “Maly
Who will win the “Lenin-Look-Alike-Contest”? Bodo Hell, Franz
Koglmann, Dmitri A. Prigov or Walter Famler?
was opened at IWM by a lecture entitled “Ein Deutscher
auf Bestellung – Das Bild des Faschisten im Sozialistischen
Realismus” by the Moscow philosopher Michail Ryklin.
The last evening, November 23, was devoted to a bilingual
reading of Russian poetry; Austrian authors had made the
translations and read the poems.
The following authors participated at the events in
Vienna and Moscow in autumn: From Russia: Michail
Aisenberg, Gennadij Ajgi, Asar Eppel, Sergej
Gandlevskij, Juli Gugoljev, Timur Kibirov, Dmitri A.
Prigov and Lev Rubinstein and Olga Sedakova; From
Austria: Franz-Josef Czernin, Sabine Gruber, Bodo
Hell, Heidi Pataki, Walter Pilar, Robert Schindel,
Evelyn Schlag, Ferdinand Schmatz, Julian Schütting
and Peter Waterhouse.
The series was conceived by the publicist and translator Erich Klein and supported by KulturKontakt, the Department for Cultural Affairs
of the City of Vienna and the
Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
The last part of the series
was organized in collaboration with the Kunstforum
Bank Austria and the
Literarisches Quartier Alte
Schmiede.
Manège”. That it hapened to be the dramatic days of the
state crisis and that the venue lay directly opposite the
Duma, added a special dimension to this literary event.
In November finally the Russians came to Vienna
where the third and last part of the series (six evenings)
Erich Klein
IWM-Vorlesungen zur modernen Philosophie 1996
Bernard Williams
Der Wert der Wahrheit
Truthfulness as an ideal reveals itself in the passionate desire to lift the veil
and to take to court false consciousness and mystifications. But how does this
central issue of modernity apply to the concept of truth? And what political
implications might follow?
Passagen Verlag, Vienna 1998
104 pp., DM 24,80 / öS 178,ISBN 3-85165-277-0
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 10
Book Presentation
Peter Demetz: Prague in Black and Gold
On November 18, on occasion of the presentation of the German edition of Peter Demetz’
book “Prague in Black and Gold” Peter Demetz and Charles of Schwarzenberg reflected on
the history and culture of Prague. We print an excerpt from the introduction of the book.*
Multiethnicity, or a livable society made of many different
societies, has become a fundamental commitment in
political life and in academic studies, at least in the United
States. It is sad to see that in the Old World many places
of multiethnic traditions have, in the past generation or so,
turned to the more solid enjoyments of a single national
culture characterized by policies of exclusion and a dash
of xenophobia. In this particular moment it may not be
useless to explore the history of a European City built over
many centuries by Czechs, Germans, Jews, and Italians —
though many of the national historians would like to
diminish the contributions of one or the other group and
often agree only in their efforts to ignore the people of the
Jewish Town. Prague has a long history of mass murder,
whether triggered by street mobs or organized by bureaucrats, and religious and ethnic “cleansings” that invariably
dirtied the hands that “cleansed.” Prague had the pogrom
of 1389, in which three thousand Jews were killed, Maria
Theresa‘s expulsion of the Jews from their ancient town in
1744, and the Shoah of 1940–45, the transports to
Theresienstadt (Terezin) and to the killing camps; Prague
historians know the story of the forced expatriation of all
Evangelicals, Czech and German, after the Battle of the
White Mountain in 1620, and the expulsion of nearly all
Germans, whether culpable or not, after May 1945.
Yet there were many moments when Prague societies
lived with each other, or at least next to each other, and
the names of those who attempted to guide different
people to tolerance and sympathy with each other deserve
new respect today, whether they are famous or known
only to the happy few. I am thinking of the philosopher
Bernard Bolzano, of President T. G. Masaryk, his disciple
Emanuel Radl, and the German ministers who served
Masaryk‘s republic loyally in the shared government of
1926-38. I also think of Franz Kafka‘s onetime friend
Milena Jesenská, who at the time of Munich described, in
a series of compassionate essays addressed to her Czech
compatriots, the personal and political tragedy of the
German Socialists and liberals in the Sudetenland, or the
philosopher Jan Patocka, whose lectures I attended before
I left Prague and succeeded in crossing the border in the
thick of the Bohemian forest. Prague can be proud of these
thoughtful citizens.
There is yet another favored narrative that blocks the
view of the fullness of Prague history. It has its rather
recent origins in the idea that Prague harbors more secrets
of the magic, or mystical, kind than any other city in
* Excerpt from PRAGUE IN BLACK AND GOLD: SCENES FROM A
EUROPEAN CITY by Peter Demetz. Copyright © 1997 by Peter
Demetz. Reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang, a
division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.
Europe; the new travel industry lovingly cherishes the
mystical aura for market reasons. International tourists
arrive with images in their minds of the golem, of Franz
Kafka (rather simplified), and of alchemists, but they hear
little and know less about the mathematicians at the court
of Rudolf II, the pedagogical reforms of the stern moralist
Rabbi Loew, or the sober philosophy of T. G. Masaryk, and
they are led by their guides through the ancient quarters
of the City and never set foot in the old proletarian suburbs of Karlin or Smichov. lt is difficult to discover any
sustained traces of Prague‘s alleged mystical ideas in
historical documents (though a few may be found by the
searching scholar), and it is only fair to assume that
stories about “magic Prague” must be ascribed to an early
wave of international travelers, mostly from the Protestant
countries, who came to Prague and Bohemia in the early
and mid-nineteenth century and were struck by its many
ancient churches and by the old Jewish quarter. I hope to
show, at least briefly, that the images of mystical Prague,
created by English, German, and American travelers only
a few decades before the Prague city government began
in 1895/96 to raze the timeworn Jewish Town and the
adjacent Baroque corners, were eagerly developed by
Prague Czech and German “decadents” of the fin de siècle
(among them young René Rilke, as he was called in his
youth) and, after the first German golem movie (1914),
were amply used by eclectic German writers of varying
talents and inclinations, in World War I
and later, not by
Czechs. Gustav Meyrink‘s Golem (1915),
an international bestseller, was not the first
to shift the old gothic
novel to Prague, but
Meyrink combined its
conventions with
those of early whodunits in a highly effective but kitschy
melodrama.
Strangely enough,
“magic Prague” and
its conventions were
brought to new life in
the early 1960s when
challenging questions
of social and cultural
importance
were
asked again in Prague.
The idea of “magic
Prague” was seized
Peter Demetz
Newsletter 63
upon by the dissident left, both in Prague and elsewhere, in
its protest against the decaying prescriptions of socialist
realism, and in an intricate ideological process linked the
late-nineteenth-century idea with the revolutionary pleasures of French surrealists, great friends of alchemy. These
combinations were codified in the Italian scholar Angelo
Maria Ripellino‘s Praga Magica (1973), which aimed to
resuscitate the city as an eerie place of mystics and
specters, madmen and alchemists, poets maudits and
soothsayers of occult powers — all in legitimate protest
against the boring world of state planning and against the
wooden and mercurial apparatchiks who feared change
and spontaneity. The new left myth of magic Prague was
more productive within the neo-Stalinist regime than after
its demise. Before 1989 it helped to undermine an official
construction of life and literature, but in the new parliamentary democracy it runs the danger of prolonging
yesterday‘s protest (long turned into a tourist commodity)
into a kind of romantic anticapitalism. It is not much of a
surprise that Ripellino‘s Praga Magica has been translated
into many languages while Karel Krejci‘s Praha legend a
skutecnosti (Prague: Legend and Reality, 1967) has not
found many readers beyond the family of his Czech
contemporaries. Krejci, of course, tries to circumscribe the
amplitude of Prague‘s royal, imperial, bourgeois, and
plebejan past, and carefully avoids imaginative
simplifications. In my own views I find myself closer to
Krejci than to Ripellino, but I have to confess that I have
felt most encouraged if not inspired by Ilsa Barea‘s Vienna
(1966), which I have often assigned in my undergraduate
courses. Ilsa Barea (née Pollak, from Vienna, later married
to a general of the Spanish Republican Army) shows with
greater precision and
yet closer sympathy
than anybody else
what the traditional
versions the history of
Vienna hide and obfuscate, and I only
hope that I was at least
partly able to follow
her admirable example.
Peter Demetz, born
in Prague in 1922,
1948 Emigration.
Sterling Professor
Emeritus of German
Charles of Schwarzenberg
and Comparative
Literature, Yale University. Literary critic and for many
years member of the jury of the renowned Ingeborg
Bachmann Literature Prize. Recent publications include
Böhmische Sonne, mährischer Mond. Erinnerungen
(Vienna1996).
Charles of Schwarzenberg, born 1937 in Prague,
moved to Strobl, Wolfgangsee (Austria) in 1948. In 1965 he
took over the management of the Schwarzenberg estate;
1984 - 1991 President of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights; 1990 - 1992 Chancellor of the office
to CSFR President Václav Havel.
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 11
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 12
Junior Visiting Fellows Conference
Paradigms and Contentions
On December 10 and 11 the Junior Fellows held a conference as at the end of every semester to present the results of their research during their stay at IWM. The papers will be published in the Proceedings of the Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences.
Philip Steger’s paper — “The long Goodbye to the Catholic
Country or: How Powerful is Poland’s Roman Catholic
Church?“ — had two aims. First, it sought to acquaint
those readers who are not familiar with the Catholic
Church’s role in Poland with the actual role which the
Church has played there since 1989. Secondly, it aimed to
assess the political power of the Church by analyzing three
issues which were of great importance and which reveal
its political goals. These issues are: the nationwide elections since 1989, the abortion debate, and the concordat
between the Holy See and the Republic of Poland. In
conclusion, Philip tried to determine both the extent to
which the church is a “powerbroker“ and the likelihood
that Poland will remain a “Catholic nation“.
In “From Losers and Winners to Victims and Perpetrators“, Violetta Zentai used the example of Hungarian
society to examine how the rhetoric of victimization
mediates critical thoughts in post-socialist societies.
Although these societies are on the verge of becoming
differentiated and structured along the lines of gender,
generation, class, ethnicity, and geographical location,
critical discourses are ever more inclined to dramatize the
social consequences of transition in terms of simple
dichotomies. Most importantly, these discourses distinguish between “winners“ and “losers“ in the process of
social transformation. This distinction efficiently propels
the rhetoric of victimization. In her paper, Violetta discussed the ways in which critical accounts understand the
experience of victimhood and highlights the broader
social, political, and moral implications of these accounts.
Although there exist a number of studies on the
different aspects of labor migration to the Czech Republic
(or Czechoslovakia), very little attention has been paid to
the movement of Czech (Slovak) nationals. In “Labor
Migration to Austria (Czech and Slovak Temporary Workers in Vienna“, Jarmila Maresova provided more information about these population movements by using the
example of Czech and Slovak temporary workers in
Vienna. Besides calling attention to the factors which
condition these migrations (and to their characteristic
patterns), Jarmila’s research sought to verify the applicability of certain migration theories (such as the neoclassical theory of migration or the dual-labor market
theory).
In “The main Feaures and Trends of Policy-making in
Slovakia“, Michal Ivantysyn began with the general
assumption that the main problems underlying current
political and social life in Eastern European countries —
Slovakia included — are directly connected with the
transformation from a one-party state to a democratic
regime and from a centrally planned economy to a more
or less free-market economy. The purpose of Michal’s
paper was to shed light on processes which, while rooted
in the precommunist past, continue to exert an influence
in present-day Slovakia.
Taking her own field of research — the tension between “magic“ and “fraudulence“ in eighteenth century
Paris — as a starting point, Ulrike Krampl brought her
microhistorical methodology to bear on two questions: (1)
How, generally speaking, can we write about people who
themselves did not leave written traces? (2) How does the
“particular“ relate to the “general“ and, more specifically,
how do “women’s“ history and “gender“ history relate to
V. Zentai, Piotr Graczyk, Jarmila Maresova, Jack Burgers, Ann Guthmiller
“general“ history? In “Methodological Questions on the
Appearing of False Witches in Eighteenth Century Paris“,
Ulrike responded to these questions and outlined a larger
project, one which problematizes social and gender
history through the changing figure of the “witch“.
In “Eco-Knowledge for the Future or: ‘Interference is
the only way to stay Realistic’ (Heinrich Böll)“, Margit
Leuthold used the Heinrich-Böll Stiftung as a means of
investigating methods of contemporary political and civic
education, focusing particularly on ecological programs.
How and in what ways is ecological discourse a political
discourse? To answer this question, Margit proposed three
ways in which ecological education “interferes“ with
current norms and practices: it introduces different
understandings of basic values, develops a different
picture of civil society, as well as a different picture of
decision-making processes and structures.
In his paper, “Action and Obligation in Hume’s Moral
Psychology“, Stefan Kalt presented an interpretation of
Hume’s account of the motive force of conscience, of our
tendency to act because we “feel“ that we ought to. He
introduced this topic with some general remarks about
Humean sentimentalism. He then focused on Hume’s
conative psychology to prepare the ground for an examination of the virtue of benevolence, the virtue which best
illustrates the nature of moral motivation as Hume conceives it. After reconstructing the specifically Humean
“sense“ of obligation, Stefan drew a brief comparison
between Hume’s ethical views and those of Kant and
Aristotle.
Newsletter 63
The question of recognition occupies a central position
in contemporary political and philosophical debates.
However, it carries with it a number of conflictual meanings. Certainly, such meanings cannot be detached from
the contrasting political views which, in part, form them.
In “Bodies that Mean: On (Mis)recognition of the Female
Body“, Maria Gomez contrasted the notion of recognition
as it is presented in certain contemporary discourses with
the challenge posed by the critique of ideology. For
feminist purposes, however, it is not enough to offer a
critique: feminisms also envision the transformation of the
symbolic order. Thus, Maria offered a critique of the
heterosexual/“ho(m)mosexual“ paradigm under the
aspect of “recognition vs. ideology“ in order to explore
how this paradigm is inscribed on the (female) body.
In “Simone Weil – Love and Language“, Piotr Graczyk
inscribed an interpretation of Simone Weil’s thought into a
particular approach towards the history of the relationship
between reason and faith in Christian Europe. First, he
showed the centrality of this relationship to the history of
European philosophy, the proper modus of which is
philosophizing-toward-religion. This condition of philosophy — which Piotr called “apocalyptic“ — displays itself in
several possible attitudes towards the relation between
faith and reason, attitudes which he sketched in the course
of his paper. The final attitude was Weil’s. Hers is a “tragic
skepticism“ which “contemplates mystery but does not
illuminate it; which binds reason, but does not break it“.
Through a reading of Simone Weil’s essay: “The Iliad, or:
The Poem of Force“, Piotr showed how three metaphors
which operate at the very heart of European philosophy
belong together. These are: the metaphor of light, the
metaphor of the mirror, and the metaphor of the cross. He
discussed their unity by interpreting Weil’s essay in the
light of the Platonic parable of the cave.
In her paper, “Antigone: ‘Make Straight your Path to
Destiny’“, Ann Guthmiller engaged in a close reading of
Sophocles’ Antigone. Her perspective was oriented
around two interests. First, she examined the play’s
depictions of gender. How are Antingone’s deliberative
abilities and weaknesses portrayed? In what ways does
she transcend gendered stereotypes about women’s
deficient rational capacities and in which moments is she
still enclosed within them? Ann approached these questions by examining Antigone’s statements and behavior in
her interactions with Creon (her uncle and the ruler of
Thebes) and Ismene (her sister). She then reflected on
how Sophocles portrays the confines and limitations of
human moral judgment, more generally understood.
In the Science of Logic, Hegel shows how monism and
dualism both operate — covertly — on a triadic categorial
system. If these intrinsically deficient metaphysical “positions“ are thought through, they unveil their ultimate
triadism. In his paper, “Hegel and the Critique of Traditional Metaphysic“, Franco Cirulli fleshed out the character of Hegel’s trinitarian ontology. To do this, he examined
the third part of the Logic, i.e., the Concept, and carefully
considered its tripartate structure in relation to the previous two parts, Being and Essence.
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 13
Proceedings of the
Junior Visiting
Fellows Conferences
Vol. I Jack Russel
Weinstein (ed.)
Academic Inquiry: in
Progress
Vienna (IWM) 1995
Contributions by: Philip
Cafaro, Lucie Cviklova,
Antke Engel, Marcus
Kreuzer, Balasz Mezei,
Borislav Mikulic, Judith
Nagy-Darvas, Alexey
Verizhnikov, Jack Russel
Weinstein
Vol. II Lawrence P. King and Barry Gilbert (eds.)
Justice and the Transition
Vienna (IWM) 1997
Contributions by: Alexandr Altunjan, Eszter Babarczy, Maja
Brkljacic, Gabriella Etmektsoglou, Dariusz Gawin, Barry
Gilbert, Lawrence P. King, Joe McCoy, Gabriele Neuhäuser,
Piotr Nowak, Ognjen Pribicevic, Alejandro A. Vallega
Vol. III Charles W. Lowney (ed.)
Identities: Theoretical Considerations & Case
Studies
Vienna (IWM) 1998
Contributions by: Pertti Ahonen, Anna I. Artemczuk, David S.
Dornisch, Iouliia Gradskova, Brano Hronec, John S. Leake,
Charles W. Lowney, Sinisa Malesevic, Tomasz Merta, Sayres
Rudy, Tim Snyder, Katalin Tardos, Alina Zvinkliene
Vol. IV Jonathan Hanen (ed.)
The Dialectics of the Universal and the Particular
Vienna (IWM) forthcoming
Contributions by: Csaba Dupcsik, Ludger Hagedorn,
Jonathan Hanen, Maciej Janowski, Christina Lammer,
Katharina Pühl, Stefanie Rocknack, Mateusz Werner,
Sergei Zherebkin
Vol. V John K. Glenn III and Andrea Petö (eds.)
Ideas in Transit
Vienna (IWM) 1998
Contributions by: John K. Glenn III, Bradley Herling, Peter A.
Johnson, Andrea Petö, Anna Sosnowska, John Symons,
Mariusz Turowski, Bettina Zehetner
The volumes can be ordered from IWM
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 14
IWM Field of Research
Gender Studies
The IWM Field of Research “Gender Studies” has received grants from the Austrian Ministry
of Science for the next three years. The Gender Studies Program is directed by IWM Permanent Fellow Cornelia Klinger. Presented here is an interview with her about the state of
research and the problems feminist theory currently faces.
Peripheral Co-optation: New Forms of Exclusion of
Feminist Critique
Ursula Konnertz: How would you explain the fact that
the very differentiated feminist critique of texts of the
philosophical tradition has not become part of the discipline or rather, that it couldn’t be integrated.
Cornelia Klinger: I would certainly continue to argue that
a feminist approach has found its way into philosophy
later and more slowly than in other and related scholarly
fields. Now, however, we have caught up this backlog. My
impression is that feminist critique and reflection in
philosophy is by now just as present — more or less — as
in other disciplines. So much for the good news!
I would nevertheless agree with your pessimistic
assessment that the feminist critique of the philosophical
tradition has hardly penetrated philosophy as an academic
subject, so that the question of gender difference ist still
regarded as an “odd”. But I don’t think this situation is
confined to philosophy — and that really is the bad news.
Other academic disciplines likewise refuse to integrate the
gender aspect into their approaches, or to incorporate the
results of feminist research into the established body of
knowledge of their subject, and, last but not least, to take
the new approach into account in the appointment policies
of research and teaching organizations. The reasons are
clear and easily comprehensible, but the strategies deployed to support this refusal are varied. As to the reasons: It cannot be denied that in its approach and self
conception, the feminist critique questions the traditional
production of knowledge and its bearers in a radical and
comprehensive way. So it is hardly surprising that a
powerful challenge meets with tough resistance. This is
something we have to live with, and we can live with it,
ultimately it even constitutes the raison d’etre of feminist
critique. But our attention should focus less on the existence of this resistance than on the diverse ways in which it
manifests itself. The days are long gone when feminist
critique would meet with overt rejection and explicit
dismissal to which it could then so predictably and justifiably react with outrage, an outrage which, in turn, would
exert pressure on existing conditions. Over the years
much less direct forms of exclusion or immunization have
developed, which are more difficult to identify and therefore don’t serve as a source for counter-pressure. First,
there are the numerous instances of lip service paid by
colleagues in the academy. While their rhetoric wholeheartedly concedes the feminist critique an enormous
importance and significance, their intellectual practice and
thinking remain entirely unaffected. Second, there is what
I would call peripheral co-optation. The university as an
institution readily accommodates student demand for a
wider range of lectures and courses on feminist topics and
arranges for special teaching posts, visiting professors
and other temporary facilities of the kind. Thus, demand
is met, feminist approaches are co-opted, but it happens in
the most peripheral, temporary, and uncommitted way
possible, never reaching the stage of institutionalization.
Once the immediate demand from below, i.e. from the
students, disappears, the feminist approach is out the
window. The third, possibly most insiduous, form of
resistance or immunization consigns feminist critique to
the past, as having been made redundant through success. This line of argument goes as follows: it claims that
almost everything feminist critique had to offer has been
accepted and integrated, all demands have been met, all
aims achieved. The innovative potential of feminism has
been exhausted, so now the time has come to return to
business as usual.
Konnertz: In the early eighties the reception of
Foucault’s interpretation of power as a productive force
brought about about a shift in feminist theory, away from
the unilateral critique of repressive hegemonial patriarchy,
its structures and practices and its social and symbolical
order. Consequently, the idea of a simple political utopia
of women’s liberation was also abandoned. The reconstruction (and deconstruction) of gender-defined subjectivity and its potential for political resistance moved to the
centre of theoretical concerns. You have always been
sceptical of Foucault’s concept of power. Why?
Klinger: In my opinion you considerably overestimate
Foucault’s significance and influence if you make him
solely responsible for the changes of attitude and direction
in recent feminist debate. I wouldn’t want to entirely deny
Foucault’s role in this process, but I feel that not just one
cause but a number of factors come into play. The internal feminist debate between women of different classes,
ethnic origins, cultures, religions, generations, etc. have
made a greater contribution than Foucault to defusing the
drama of the dualistic line of conflict between hegemonial
patriarchy on the one hand, and women (Woman as
Principle Subject) and their omnipresent and unchanging
repression on the other. Another factor, which must not be
underestimated, lies in the fading of dualistic confrontations at the level of Realpolitik. With the disappearance of
the confrontational bipolarity of socialism and capitalism
the oppressive compulsion to see every power struggle in
terms of a showdown between two duelling partners has
relaxed a little, in other words, our sensitivity to the
multipolarity of power relations has increased.
For me, the lasting merit of Foucault and his concept
of power lies on the same trajectory other (French) thinkers (like Derrida, for example) chose long before the
disappearance of the confrontation of two major systems.
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 15
Their disappointment with Marxism and subsequent
rejection of it was guided by the insight that the mere
inversion of power relations, based on the idea of bipolarity, could not result in liberation because power is an
infinitely more complex phenomenon. This insight originally developed as an explanation for the failure of the
experiment of ‘really existing’ socialism, and while it is no
doubt correct, it has since been turned into a truism to
attack various feminist challenges to patriarchal dominance. Post structuralist master thinkers have endlessly
lectured feminists on the inadequacy of a mere inversion
of above and below, of power and helplessness between
the genders. As if an inversion as simplistic as that had
ever been posited in feminist debate! They quickly made
use of the lesson they believed they had learned —
painfully and rather late — from the socialist experiment
and applied it to other emancipation movements, without even considering whether
it was appropriate.
Let me take a different approach to get
back to Foucault in a less polemical way:
The sceptical attitude to Foucault’s concept
of power which you, not without reason,
ascribe to me, is not concerned with any of
Foucault’s theories about power. I am certain that a great deal of what Foucault wrote
on those topics has enriched and enhanced
our idea of power and of the workings of
the mechanisms of power. It does, however, Cornelia Klinger
become problematic if this knowledge of the
subtleties and complexities of power structures is abused
to deny or disguise the existence of crude power relations.
I am willing to accept that there are many different types
of power, formal and informal power, mutual and highly
intricate dependancies also of the powerful on the
disempowered, that power is structured like a net, is not
external and alien but is internalized in many different
ways, that power cannot be abolished etc. In spite or
perhaps precisely because of these insights, affected by
them and yet regardless of them, I would continue to
maintain that in our society there are very clear hierarchies and power relations, that it is necessary and possible to oppose them and, finally, that these hierarchic
power relations continue to exist between the genders.
Insofar as Foucault’s complex insights can help to understand power relations, they can serve as a basis to question dominance and hierarchy. In this context they seem to
offer scope for development and are welcome. Incidentally, I have always seen Foucault’s intentions in this light.
But a reading of Foucault’s theories as an attempt to
obscure power structures, complicating them and their
interpretation as a legitimation of the indispensability and
the inevitability of power is, I believe, detrimental and a
misconstruction of his writings.
Konnertz: Would you say that, as a result of the social
changes of the last 40 years, men and women have an
almost equal share in access to legislation, in participation
in and subjection to power structures and opportunities
for effective action?
Klinger: That is a difficult question — almost as difficult
as the question whether a bottle of wine is half full or half
empty. On the one hand we only need to look at a film or a
commercial from the fifties or sixties to recognize that the
gender specific clichés of those years and our contemporary reality are worlds apart. Confronted directly with the
past, we give a sigh of relief when we realize how much
has indeed changed and improved. It seems that we need
a comparison of this kind to become aware of all the
changes in the ways of thinking and feeling, in the
behavior and actions of women but also of men, because
once these changes have taken place they no longer
impress us. I would say that the developments in gender
relations are mainly located in the field of cultural change,
and there the rule applies that, after taking a while to get
under way, changes are deleted from the collective
memory of the society as soon as they have been completed. That was, as it were, the first part of an answer to
your question. In relation to the second part of my answer,
however, I would like to point out a peculiarity of gender
relations which I like to call the
“hedgehog and hare syndrome”:
Women do indeed have access to
legislation, participation in and
subjection to power structures,
they have obtained opportunities
for effective action. Figuratively
speaking: the hares rushed
everywhere at great speed. And
yet the possibilities, the rights
and opportunities of either
gender are still far from equal, in
other words, the hedgehogs are
still sitting on their privileged
seats, and when the hares arrive panting at those seats,
the hedgehogs have already made themselves comfortable in another place which now sems to be the real seat
of power and privilege. But power remains power, while
women seem disempowered even though they dominate
the scene. Coming back to my initial image: the bottle has
long been more than half full and yet it looks half empty.
Over the past 40, 50 or 100 years women have achieved a
lot, they have conquered a number of male domains, they
have a lot of self confidence and independence, they have
developed many new self concepts. All this has shaken the
hard core of social and political power relations, but these
shake ups have only led to structural shifts and new forms
of resistance but not to its downfall. Therefore the success
and progress achieved over the last 40, 50, or 100 years
has remained reversible, the point of no return in the
restructuring of gender relations is far from being reached,
backlashes remain possible, they are even happening in
front of our very eyes right now.
Konnertz: Over the last 15 years you have been trying in
your work to acknowledge in equal measure feminist
theory and philosophy in the USA and in the German
speaking countries. Do you think it is possible to apply the
analyses of the American work to the German situation in
spite of the differences in the legal system and in forms of
political activity? Is not too little consideration given to the
differences, the cultural contexts in which the theories
developed and to which they are transferred?
Klinger: The reception of US American feminist theory
does indeed give too little consideration to the differences
between the legal systems, the various political, cultural
and social differences between the US-American and the
European or German situation. The same words often
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
stand for entirely different realities and experiences. This
can be a source of misunderstandings which may in some
cases be productive, in others not helpful at all. Although I
have always followed the American debate very closely
and still continue to do so, because I see no alternative to
it, I do regret the fact that Anglo-saxon theory has such a
dominant, even hegemonial position also or in particular
with reference to the feminist debate. Not only because
many of the American approaches, topics and issues
cannot be transferred to the German or European reality,
but also because many of the topics and issues here and
in other parts of the world never even appear in the
American perspective. I also think it is disastrous that in
every part of the world we keep our eyes fixed on the
United States, without paying attention to what is happening in our own immediate neighborhood. The almost
monopolistic predominance of American feminism seems
to rest not so much on its quality but rather on its overwhelming quantitative presence which, in turn, is the
result of the fact that feminist research and teaching is
institutionally embedded in academy to an infinitely
greater extent than here. The international status of the
English language also gives it a considerable advantage.
The fact that we can nevertheless not avoid concerning
ourselves with US imports is again a result of the backlog
in the institutionalization of feminist research in local
scholarship, which we discussed earlier.
and the Permanent Fellow and director of the Gender
Studies Program, Cornelia Klinger), to give talks and to
participate in the various events organized by the IWM.
The Visiting Fellows also have the opportunity to give
talks and participate in events in Vienna and other cities in
Austria and some of the neighboring countries. A wealth
of scholarly contacts have been initiated this way.
Between 1996 and 1998 nine young scholars (from
Austria, Germany, Russia, Lithuania and the Ukraine)
received Junior Visiting Fellowship grants to work on their
doctoral theses. Two Austrian Junior Fellows were invited
thanks to the cooperation between the IWM and the
Austrian Academy of Sciences. During their stay, they
were all involved in active exchange and debate among
themselves but also with the Senior Fellows working in
their field. While the IWM Gender Studies Program can
only accommodate a small number of scholars at a time,
the Working Group, set up in 1993, with its regular meetings and range of committed younger colleagues working
in other contexts in Vienna, contributes greatly to the
liveliness of debate.
The best known public face of the IWM Gender Studies Program is the annual three part lecture series. In 1996
these lectures were held by Rosi Braidotti, in 1997 by
Teresa de Lauretis, and in 1998 by Iris Young. Among
colleagues and students in Vienna there is a large audience for these lectures.
The library, with its extensive collection of books,
periodicals and journals on Gender Studies (currently
about 1600 book titles), makes the IWM an important
research center in this field. The library is open to the
public every weekday (9 am – 5 pm).
In the autumn of 1997 the IWM began to develop a
longer term program of cooperation with the Graduate
Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York
in the context of a facilitation scheme subsidized by the
Austrian Ministry of Science. Cooperation is not limited
exclusively to the field of Gender Studies. Nancy Fraser
(familiar with the IWM and its members since her six
months’ stay in 1994) and Cornelia Klinger agreed on
“Gender and Democracy” as the focal theme for the
cooperation. In the second half of 1998 two doctoral
students from the New School came to Vienna under the
auspices of this cooperation.
The interview appeared in German in: Die Philosophin.
Forum für feministische Theorie und Philosophie, No 18/
October 1998.
Translation by Esther Kinsky
IWM Field of Research Gender Studies
Within the context of this field of research, scholars of
international reputation are invited as Senior Visiting
Fellows to spend six months at the IWM in Vienna. Primarily, the program intends to give the scholars the opportunity to work on their own projects, to enjoy an intensive
exchange with other participants of the Gender Studies
Program at the IWM (namely the Junior Visiting Fellows
Jan Patocka-Gedächtnisvorlesung 1996
Albert O. Hirschman
Tischgemeinschaft
Zwischen öffentlicher und privater Sphäre
Passagen Verlag, Vienna 1997
80 pp., DM 24,80 / öS 178,ISBN 3-85165-267-3
In this Lecture Albert O. Hirschman traces the genealogy of the public/private
dichotomy back to the distinction made in the old testament between lower and
higher values (“Man does not live from bread alone”) and discovers—with
referene to Georg Simmel—in commensality an institution in which both
spheres merge.
Page 16
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 17
IWM-Working Report
Paul Gillespie: Ireland and the European
Integration
Paul Gillespie, senior foreign editor at the Irish Times, was Milena Jesenská Fellow at IWM
from October – December.
That Ireland could become a model for other states
seeking to escape from the overbearing influence of larger
neighbours within the European Union has become
something of a commonplace in contemporary analysis.
Ireland has in fact achieved real independence by pooling
sovereignty within the EC/EU over the last generation,
insofar as that is indeed possible in today’s interconnected
and interdependent world. This may have lessons to offer
Polish leaders, who are anxious to become less dependent
on Russia and Germany. On a recent visit to Poland I was
surprised at how often Ireland as a model came up in
conversation and discussion. Poles, having suffered so
much themselves from domination and partition by
imperial powers, are understandably anxious to discover
possible analogues of their experience as they face into
the most challenging opportunity they have had to escape
from such a baleful and divisive history. There are indeed
a number of points of comparison between the two
countries historically and culturally. The same applies to
their prospects as a new European order is created. But it
is also necessary to sound a cautionary note about drawing too mechanistic comparisons between countries that
also differ substantially in scale, interests and potential
development. It may not be possible to replicate the Irish
experience too easily in an EU which will be changed
profoundly by the very process that draws Poland in as a
member-state.
The suggestion that Ireland could provide such a
model is reinforced by the Belfast Agreement on Northern
Ireland and the international reaction to it, including the
award of the Nobel Peace Prize to John Hume and David
Trimble. Achievement of the agreement is intimately
bound up with Ireland’s changing European identity,
without which it would not have been possible to find the
confidence to reach it and to make the necessary historic
compromises that underlie it. There are very interesting
aspects of the agreement relating to majorities and
minorities and to multiple identities that are intriguingly
replicated in the experiences of central and eastern
European states. Indeed I am convinced that the experience of state and nation-building in Ireland has more in
common with those in central and eastern Europe than
with its western parts. It is only since the collapse of the
Stalinist states that this is becoming clearly apparent. A
number of the conceptual tools advanced recently to
explain the course of nationalism in central and eastern
Europe fit the Irish experience. I am thinking in particular
of Rogers Brubaker’s imaginative paradigm*, which
distinguished between national minorities, nationalising
states and external national homelands. This triadic
structure, dealing with circumstances in which there is a
substantially less congruent relationship between states
and nations, is much closer to Ireland’s politics than the
dyadic patterns typical of western Europe, where national
minorities have a much less pronounced role. (In Poland,
however, the Nazi extermination of the Jews and the postwar expulsion of the German-speakers removed the most
significant minorities from national politics and made for a
more homogenous society in some ways more typical of
western Europe). In the process of EU enlargement
Ireland is, therefore, becoming a more normal society,
having been used for so long to having our conflict
dismissed as insoluble.
The recent strong performance of the economy is also
a strong factor in Ireland’s positive experience of the EC/
EU. For many years following formal independence in
1921 the south of Ireland remained economically and
politically dependent on
Britain. A largely agricultural economy found its
main markets there, at the
cheap food prices Britain
had made into a key
feature of its own economic model. When
Ireland joined the EC in
1972 with Britain that
country took two thirds of
Irish exports.
In the same way
Paul Gillespie
Anglocentricity characterised Ireland’s politics and foreign policy. Partition remained a running sore and the country’s political cleavages were largely determined by divisions over how best
to respond to it. Neutrality during the second World War
reinforced national sovereignty and asserted the country’s
independence, but also the determination of British
governments not to surrender the North of Ireland. There
was a prolonged effort to roll back the overwhelming
influence of Anglophone culture by restoring the Irish
language and emphasising Ireland’s distinctive traditions,
including, notably, its Catholic ones. This is not at all
surprising, given that for three centuries from the early
1600s Anglicisation was the policy pursued by the British
government in Ireland, ”in the sense of governing Ireland
with English priorities and in English interests”, as the
Irish historian Roy Foster, puts it. He adds that ”part of
this strategy meant Protestantisation”. Compared to
Poland or Hungary the attempt to restore the Irish language must be counted a failure, insofar as it remains a
secondary language. Many Polish people are fascinated by
how it was possible to retain national identity without
restoring the language — and by whether it is possible to
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 18
Call for Applications
International Summer School 1999
Strengths and Deficiencies of Democracy
Cortona, Italy, July 19 - 30, 1999
The Institute for Human Sciences is accepting applications for its international Summer School in political
philosophy.
Courses and Faculty:
Organization:
Students are required to enroll in three offered seminars,
which will meet for one hour and a half each week-day.
Weekend excursions will also be arranged for students.
The summer school is organized in cooperation with the
IWM’s four “partner institutions:” the Erasmus of
Rotterdam Chair at the University of Warsaw; the New
Europe College, Bucharest; the Center for Theoretical
Studies, Prague; and the Society for Higher Learning,
Bratislava. The school is generously supported by the
Robert Bosch Foundation.
Leszek Kolakowski currently holds the Erasmus of
Rotterdam Chair at the University of Warsaw and is a
Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. His three-volume
treatise, Main Currents of Marxism was published in
1976. His most recent book is God Owes Us Nothing: A
Brief Remark on Pascal’s Religion and on the Spirit of
Jansenism (1995).
1. Basic Concepts of Political Philosophy
Krzysztof Michalski is Permanent Fellow and Director
of IWM, and Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. His book Logic and Time was published in English
translation in 1997.
Participants:
Approximately fifty graduate students from Eastern and
Western Europe and from the USA.
1. Liberalism and Pluralism
Applications:
Applicants should be graduate or advanced students
with a background in the humanities or social sciences
(e.g. philosophy, political science, sociology, or history),
and they must have a good command of English, the
language in which the summer school is conducted.
John Gray is Professor of Philosophy at the London
School of Economics. His recent works include Beyond
the New Right: Markets, Government, and the Common
Environment (1994) and Post-Liberalism: Studies in
Political Thought (1993).
Prospective participants should apply directly to the
Institute for Human Sciences (attention: Dr. Charles
Bonner, Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen,
Spittelauer Lände 3, A - 1090 Wien) no later than April
15, 1999. This application should be submitted in
English and include a curriculum vitae and a brief essay
explaining why the student wishes to attend.
Marcin Krol is Professor of the History of Ideas at the
University of Warsaw and Dean of the Department of
Applied Social Sciences. He has published widely on
political science and philosophy, including Liberalism of
Fear or Liberalism of Courage (1996).
Students are not required to pay tuition for the Summer
School and, contingent upon availability of funds, the
Institute for Human Sciences will provide room and
board. Students are responsible for travel costs to and
from Cortona and for incidental expenses.
3. Can Democracy be Improved: Comparative and
Global Perspectives
Courses and Seminars:
Each course will be taught by two professors and supported by a team of Junior Faculty members who will
lead afternoon seminar discussions intended to prepare
students for the courses. Each course meets for 90
minutes each week-day; and all students are required to
register for three courses and complete assignments (to
be announced) in order to receive a certificate verifying
successful completion of the summer school.
Claus Leggewie is Professor of Political Science at
Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen. His recent publications include: Multi Kulti. Spielregeln für die
Vielvölkerrepublik (1990); Die 89er. Portrait einer Generation (1995) and America first? Der Fall einer
konservativen Revolution (1997).
Manfred Schmidt is Professor of Political Science at
the University of Bremen.
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 19
retain and develop that identity in the process of European integration.
The EC/EU integration experience in fact changed this
basic formula. If the ethno-cultural project of Irish nationalism was to deAnglicise Ireland, the achievement of the
civic modernisation project of the last generation has been
substantially to reduce its Anglocentricity. This has been
accomplished by a twin process of economic and political
diversification away from dependence on Britain.
Ireland’s exports to Britain are now less than one third
of the total. One of the most open small economies in the
world, its strong growth in recent years has been fuelled
by heavy multinational, especially US, investment in
computers, electrical engineering, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, which sell in the EU and elsewhere in world
markets (although traditional sectors still rely largely on
the UK). Ireland has been able to pursue its own interests
in Brussels by maximising benefits from the Common
Agricultural Policy and the structural and cohesion funds
(often by helping to invent common policies from which it
was bound to benefit). While such transfers have been
crucial in creating the conditions for economic takeoff
(notably by substituting capital expenditure during a time
of necessary fiscal retrenchment in the early 1990s),
analysts point out that they account for only some 10-15
per cent of Ireland’s extraordinarily strong growth since
then. It was more the use to which the funds were put and
the institutional setting of social partnership, coalition
government and low inflation, than their scale which
mattered in creating that growth; at its peak they represented some 4-5 per cent of GDP, a figure now running at
less than half that.
The Irish political culture, accustomed to dealing with
larger states and skilled in wheeler-dealing and clientelist
politics, also took enthusiastically to the Brussels circuit,
operating effectively in the multilateral setting of Council
meetings, which, in an unanticipated fashion, levelled the
playing field with British ministers. Foreign policy and
diplomacy were likewise multilateralised, freeing Irish
ministers and officials from a crippling fixation on London.
This was in due course perceived as a kind of liberation,
an achievement of real rather than formal independence.
It has, of course, helped that Ireland remained enthusiastic
about EU integration as British leaders went through their
prolonged disenchantment with it, a circumstance that is
changing under the Blair government. The most concrete
manifestation of this differentiation is that Ireland will
participate in economic and monetary union without
Britain, despite the undoubted vulnerability of key sectors
to sterling volatility, and just as the Belfast Agreement
comes into effect.
That agreement would not have been possible without
the confidence engendered by Ireland’s EU membership,
and the overarching umbrella it has provided for a more
Europeanised Irish identity, more willing to share the
island with those who continue to maintain a British
identity. It is similar in several ways to the way in which
other nationalisms have sought to switch allegiance by
seeking either separate statehood or substantial regional
autonomy within the wider setting of the EU — one thinks
of the Scottish National Party’s formula of ”independence
in Europe”, mirrored in Catalonia and the Basque country.
One thinks also of the ways in which the umbrella concept
and its associated political and legal order has encouraged
the central and eastern European accession states to
address minority rights questions and good neighbourliness in a new fashion. However imperfect the achievements to date, development within and between Hungary
and Romania, or in the Baltic states dealing with Russian
minorities, have very interesting parallels to the process
between Ireland and Britain in Northern Ireland.
This process has enabled Irish people to rediscover
their own historical European identity, including a rich
history of relations with Poland. It has also enabled the
development of a new relationship with the 70 million
strong community of the Irish diaspora around the world,
44 million of them in the United States. Many observers
are struck by the greater cultural reach and creativity
released in Ireland as a result. National identity has been
reaffirmed and renewed in the process, escaping from a
narrowly essentialist, isolated and introspective preoccupation with cultural purity and transformed into the
hybrid, multiple identities that better fit Ireland’s historical
and contemporary experience as one of the most open
economies and societies in the world. Similar stories
could perhaps be told about Finland’s enthusiasm to use
EU membership as a means of escaping from overreliance on or preoccupation with Russia and Sweden, of
Portugal vis-a-vis Spain, or Austria vis-a-vis Germany. But
these are all smaller member-states, beneficiaries of the
EU’s institutional balance which gives them a privileged
position within its councils and its supranational institutional architecture.
With enlargement this framework is due to change. It
remains to be seen whether these analogies thrive in the
new context. Certainly Poland and the other accession
states see EU and NATO membership as an imperative
process in escaping from the overbearing presence of
Russia and a means, too, of reducing a newer overreliance on Germany. Compared to Ireland the economic
diversification away from the east and towards the west
has been achieved in a miraculous few years since 1989 —
it took Ireland a generation to the same vis-a-vis Britain.
But these states will enter an EU which will itself be
transformed by enlargement. Will there be one or several
Europe’s, in the words of Helen Wallace, the British analyst
who has taken such an interest in Poland’s case? Ireland
was privileged to find a niche at a distinctive time in the
EC/EU’s development.
Irish ministers are fearful that the enlargement process could disadvantage them at a time when their country is making a gradual transition from net receiver to net
contributor status as a result of successful economic
growth. Poland is the one undoubtedly large state among
the 11 candidates for accession. Irish negotiators are
concerned to preserve their access to and representation
in EU institutions, just as they insist that the costs of EU
enlargement should not be at the expense of existing
cohesion states. It will take some skill to harmonise these
diverging Irish and Polish approaches, despite the firm
commitment of the Irish government to the principle of
enlargement, described in a White Paper as a political and
moral imperative.
* Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, Nationhood and the
National Question in the New Europe, Cambridge University
Press, 1996.
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Guests
Visiting Fellows
The following Visiting Fellows ended their stay at
IWM in December
Jack Burgers (July – December)
Associate Professor of Sociology at Erasmus University
Rotterdam, worked at IWM in the framework of the “Joint
Research Fellowships for Scholars from the Netherlands
and East Central Europe”.
Paul Gillespie (October – December)
Foreign Editor, Irish Times, Dublin, and Milena Jesenská
Fellow.
Elzbieta Kaczynska (July – December)
Professor of Sociology, Department of Applied Social
Sciences, University of Warsaw. Her stay at IWM was
under the auspices of the “Joint Research Fellowships for
Scholars from the Netherlands and East Central Europe”.
Don Kalb (January – December)
Associate Professor in General Social Sciences, Utrecht
University, also part of the “Joint Research Fellowship for
Scholars from the Netherlands and East Central Europe,”
is SOCO Project Coordinator since January (please see
under Varia).
Vera Koubova (July – December)
Translator and Interpreter, Prague
(Translation Program).
Kazimierz Poznanski (July – November)
Professor of International Studies, Henry M. Jackson
School of International Studies, University of Washington,
Seattle.
Pavel Pseja (October – December)
Political Scientist and Translator, Faculty of Human
Sciences, Masaryk University, Brno (Translation Program).
Visiting Fellows starting in January 1999
Csaba Bathori (January – June)
Essayist and Translator, Budapest (Paul Celan Translation
Program) will translate Jacob Burckhardt: Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen from German into Hungarian.
His latest translation is Goethe’s Faust into Hungarian.
Tannelie Blom (January – June)
Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy,
Faculty of Arts And Sciences, University of Maastricht
(Joint Research Fellowship for Scholars from the Netherlands and East Central Europe). He works in the field of
social and political philosophy with a special focus on
European integration, European identity and the problems
Page 20
of democracy. During his stay at the IWM he will concentrate on the question whether, or to what extent, the
fundamental analytical and normative categories of
mainstream (liberal democratic) western political thought
still hold when confronted with the process of European
integration as it has actually developed.
His recent publications include: Complexiteit en
contingentie – een kritische inleiding tot de sociologie van
Niklas Luhmann (Complexity and Contingency: A Critical
Introduction to Niklas Luhmann’s Sociology), Kampen
1997; “Why does System Therapy have no Frame of
Reference? Or has it?”, in Family Therapy, February 1999.
Adrian-Paul Iliescu (January – June)
Professor and Head of the Department of Political and
Moral Philosophy, Bucharest University (Robert Bosch
Visiting Fellow). He specializes in political philosophy,
history of ideas and philosophy of language. His research
project aims at describing a certain philosophical presupposition that he has called “the Encapsulation Supposition”, which seems to underline the views and the arguments of both classical and contemporary liberalism. This
supposition suggests that all elements that are relevant
for identity (of political actors, political values, political
arrangements or models) are to be found in a concentrated, or ‘encapsulated’ form, easily summarized in some
‘principles’.
Recent publications include: The Philosophy of Language and the Language of Philosophy, Bucharest 1989;
The Anglo-Saxon Conservatism, Bucharest 1994; Liberalism: Between Success and Illusion, Bucharest 1998 (all
books in Romanian).
Gabriella Ilonszki (January – March)
Associate Professor, Szechenyi Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Economic Sciences, Budapest (Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Fellow)
specializes in democratic institutions and politics from a
comparative perspective. Her current research project
examines the institutional responses of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to the challenge of European
integration.
Recent publications include: Westminster Variations.
The Anglo-American Political Systems, Aula 1999;
“Some Issues Concerning the Institutionalization of the
Hungarian Parliament”, in Szazadveg, Summer 1998;
“Parliamentary Institutions in Hungary and in Europe”, in
Politikatudomanyi Szemle 1998/1 (all publications in
Hungarian).
Martin Kanovsky (January – June)
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Comenius University,
Bratislava (Paul Celan Translation Program), specializes in
social and cultural anthropology and contemporary French
philosophy. During his stay at IWM he will be translating
Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Anthropologie Structurale I et II
from French to Slovak.
Recent publications include: “An Expedition to the
Parrots’ Nest: Semantics of a Myth,” in Hieron. Journal for
the History of Religion 1/1996; “Cognitive Semantics of
Religious Representations: An Application to Australian
Aboriginal Religion,” in Religio, Masaryk University Brno
1999; “Cognitive Constraints and Cultural Transmission,”
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 21
Paul Celan Translation Fellowships
January – June and July – December 2000
The Institute for Human Sciences (Institut für die
Wissenschaften vom Menschen or IWM) is an independent, international, and interdisciplinary center for
advanced study. IWM regularly invites academics to
translate important works in the humanities or the
social sciences from an Eastern into a Western European language, or vice versa, or from one Eastern
European language into another. To date almost 50
translators from 14 countries have been invited to work
at the Institute.
The purpose of IWM’s Translation Program is to help fill
the gaps in the relevant literature in these fields, thus
promoting an exchange of ideas between the East and
the West or within Central and Eastern Europe. The
program bears the name of the poet and translator,
Paul Celan, whose work – perhaps more than any
other’s in this century – thrives on the diversity of
European cultures and also mediates between them.
The applications should include the following
materials:
•
•
•
•
•
Works which are thematically related to IWM’s fields of
research and ongoing projects will receive preferential
treatment:
•
A jury of experts meets each year to evaluate applications and select finalists. The Program is supported by
the European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam. In the
past, it was also sponsored by the Central and East
European Publishing Project, Oxford (1987 - 1994), the
Getty Grant Program (1994 - 1996) and the Ford Foundation.
As a rule, finalists are invited to spend six months
(January – June or July – December) at IWM as Visiting
Fellows in order to complete their projects. IWM places
a stipend of ATS 160,000 at their disposal which covers
the expenses of their stay in Vienna and provides them
with an office, a PC, and access to IWM’s in-house as
well as other relevant Viennese research facilities.
a curriculum vitae with a bibliography of translations and other publications, if applicable,
the author and work to be translated (from the
original language) and an explanation for the
choice thereof,
exact number of pages,
a contract with a publisher for the publication of
the translation or a letter of intent from a publisher; proof that the translator/publisher holds the
rights to the translation and its publication (or has
an option for them); planned date of publication,
information on the program of the publishing
house.
•
•
•
Political Philosophy of the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries
Gender Studies
The Philosophy of Jan Patocka
History of Political and Economic Ideas in Central
and Eastern Europe
Applications for Paul Celan Translation Fellowships
for the year 2000 must be submitted in English or
German before April 15, 1999. They should be
addressed to IWM, Paul Celan Translation Program,
attn: Ms Rosemarie Winkler. Applicants will be notified
on the status of their applications by the end of June
1999.
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
in Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Cognitive Sciences, Slovak Technical University, Bratislava 1999 (all in
Slovak).
Junior Visiting Fellows
Jacek Kurczewski (January – June)
Professor and Chair of Sociology of Custom and Law,
Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw
(Joint Research Fellowship for Scholars from the Netherlands and East Central Europe) specializes in the sociology
of law. His project is concerned with the functioning of
civil society in Poland. His research is comparative
in the context of the transformation experience of other
former communist countries in Europe, and within the
recent debates on the future of European institutions and
democracy within the European Union.
Recent publications include: Family Law and Family
Policy in the New Europe, edited together with Mavis
Maclean, Dartmouth 1997; “Poland” in Lester M. Salamon
(Ed.), The International Guide to Nonprofit Law, New York
1997; “A Selfcommissioned Sociology for the People:
Ossowski on Marxism and Marxist Society,” in Polish
Sociological Review, 2/1998.
Janusz Marganski (January – June)
Translator, literary scholar and editor, Publishing House
“Studio Φ”, Bydgoszcz, Poland (Paul Celan Translation
Program) will be translating works by Emmanuel Lévinas:
De l’existence à l’existant; Le temps et l’autre; Autrement
qu’être ou Au-delà de l’essence from French to Polish.
Recent translations into Polish include H. Crouzel,
Origène; H.D.F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy; and M. Proust,
Ruskin.
Dobrinka Paroucheva (January – March)
Researcher at the Institute for Balkan Studies, Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences, Sofia (Andrew W. Mellon Visiting
Fellow), specializes in the history of Southeastern Europe
in the 19th and 20th century, and in gender studies. Her
current research project is entitled “War and Peace in the
Balkans: The Women’s Perspective” and investigates
women’s attitudes towards war, women in wartime and
the substantial changes that have taken place along the
road to women’s emancipation. Her thesis claims that
wars provide periods of amassing a unique experience of
freedom and responsibility.
Recent publications include: “La social democratie et
la minorite juive en bulgarie et en roumanie au debut du
20ème siècle,” in Etudes Balkaniques, 3-4/1996; “Emancipation Between Feminism and Socialism: A Bulgarian
Example of the Turn of this Century,” in Etudes
Balkaniques, 1-2/1997; “The Political Elite in Southeastern
Europe, late 20th - early 21st Century. A Sociography of
the Governmental Elite in Bulgaria and Romania,” in Elite
and Society, Open Society Foundation (Ed.), Plovdiv 1998
(in Bulgarian).
Page 22
The following Junior Fellows ended their stay at
IWM in December
Franco Cirulli
Doctoral candidate in Philosophy, Boston University
Maria Gomez
Doctoral candidate in Political Science, New School for
Social Research, New York
Piotr Graczyk
Doctoral candidate in Philosophy, School for Social
Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw
Ann Christine Guthmiller
M.A. candidate in Political Theory, New School for
Social Research, New York
Michal Ivantysyn
Doctoral candidate in Political Science, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava (Volkswagen Junior Visiting Fellow)
Stefan Kalt
Doctoral candidate in Philosophy, Boston University
Ulrike Krampl
Doctoral candidate in History, Vienna University / Ecole
des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris (Stipendiary in the framework of the doctoral program of the
Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Jarmila Maresova
Research Associate, at IWM in the framework of the
“Joint Research Fellowships for Scholars from the
Netherlands and East Central Europe.”
Philipp Steger
Doctoral candidate in Law, University of Innsbruck /
Jagel-lionian University Cracow (Stipendiary in the
framework of the doctoral program of the Austrian
Academy of Sciences)
Violetta Zentai
Associate Professor at Janus Pannonius University,
Pecs, and doctoral candidate at Rutgers University
(Volkswagen Junior Visiting Fellow)
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Junior Visiting Fellows from January to June 1999
tion of western free-press principles and the degree to
which Eastern European journalists still experience
government censorship.
She has written various articles for the online news
services of the Boston Business Journal and the Boston
Herald.
Paulina Bren
Ph.D. candidate at the New York University, specializes in
20th Century European History, particularly Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Her current research project is a history
of Czech “normalization” (1969 to 1989), with an emphasis
on how an ascendant ideology of consumption intersected
with the practices of everyday life during these last decades of communism.
Between 1992 and 1995 she published several papers
about contemporary issues in “Czechoslovakia” in the
RFE/RL Report on Eastern Europe. Her essay “Weekend
Get-Aways: DIY and the Search for Satisfaction during
Czech Communism” is to be included in an upcoming
collection of essays on material culture in Eastern Europe.
Dan Dungaciu
Dan Gheorghe Dungaciu
Assistant Professor, Ph.D.
candidate, Department of
Sociology, University of
Bucharest (Volkswagen
Junior Visiting Fellow), works
in the fields of the the history
of sociology and the sociology of nationalism. His
project entitled “Nationalism
and Religion in Western and
Eastern Europe. A Comparative Approach,” analyzes the
relationship between the
European religions (Catholicism, Protestantism and
Orthodoxy) and nationalism.
Recent publications include: “Nation and Nationalism
in the European Debate”, in Romanian Review, no. 336/
1996, (in English); he is co-author of History of Sociology.
Contemporary Theories, Bucharest 1996, (in Romanian);
and of Sociology and the Geopolitics of the Frontier,”
Bucharest, 2 vol. 1995 (in Romanian).
Aneta Gawkowska
Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate School for Social Research, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish
Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, works in the field of
political philosophy. In her research project she analyzes
the communitarian critique of liberalism and individualism. The questions of rights, civic duties and virtues, the
self and its community, the human goods and telos, etc.
are taken into consideration.
Recent publications include: “The Invisible Hand of
Democracy: Can we Trust the Procedures? The United
States in Search of its Identity,” in Polis 4-5/1997;
“Indochina - A Bone of Contention: The Growing Tension
in American-Japanese Relations, June 1940 - December
1941,” in Polis 5-6/1996 (both in Polish).
Roseanne Gerin
Master of Science in Business & Economics Journalism,
College of Communication, Boston University, is working
on a project devoted to the practice of journalism in
Eastern Europe. She will examine the current state of the
Eastern European media, the adoption and implementa-
Page 23
Petra Jedlickova
Project Manager, Consultant, National Training Fund,
Prague (Volkswagen Junior Visiting Fellow), specializes in
information science, feminism and media theory. Her
research project focuses on the media and information
industry as powerful elements in the transformation process.
Recent publications include: “Women in cyberspace,”
in Women and Men in the Media, Gender Studies Center
(ed.), Prague 1998; “Women on the Wires, or Czech
Cyberfeminism,” in One Eye Open, special issue, Vol. 1,
Spring 1998; her paper “Women on the Net: The Role of
Women in the Cyberdemocracy,” was published on the
internet at www.webgrrls.at.
Piotr Korys
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Economics at Warsaw
University (Robert Bosch Junior Visiting Fellow), works in
the field of economic history, history of economic thought,
and history of ideas. His research project is entitled
“Conservatism as an Economic and Political Ideology.
State and Economy in Polish Conservative Ideology in the
20th Century.”
Recent publications include “Visa immigrants in the
Warsaw Voivodship. A Research Survey”, in Immigrants in
Poland, K. Iglicka et al. (eds.), Working Paper of the ISS,
Warsaw 1997;
“Temporary
Workers in
Poland, 19951996,” in Official
Statistics of
Migration to
Poland, K.
Genbicka et al.
(eds.), Working
Paper of the ISS,
Warsaw 1997.
Piotr Korys and Aneta Gawkowska
Iulia Motoc
Ph.D. in Law, Aix-Marseille III; Ph.D. in Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Associate Professor at the Faculty of
Political Science, University of Bucharest (Robert Bosch
Junior Visiting Fellow), works in the field of legal philosophy and political science. Her project aims at an understanding of the role of legal egality in the political writings
of Eastern and Central Europe in the inter-war period and
the post-communist era.
Recent publications include: Interpréter la guerre,
Bucharest 1997, “Ne diritto ne potere, owero quando il
semipresidenzialismo passa all’Est”, in Il semipresidenzialismo: dall’arcipelago europeo al dibattito italiano, Adriano
Giovannelli (ed.) Torino 1999; “The Communist Manifesto,
Totalitarianism, and the Post-Totalitarian Legal State:
Three Faces of the Rejection of Political Modernity” in The
Communist Manifesto (commentated edition), Bucharest
1998 (in Romanian).
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Matthew Simpson
Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy, Boston University, works in
the field of political philosophy. His research concentrates
on Montesquieu’s theory of democracy — in particular his
analysis of the conditions under which democracy is
possible, and how positive law can be used to achieve and
sustain these conditions.
Guests
Ana L. Stoicea
Teaching Assistant at the University of Bucharest,
Faculty of Political and Administrative Sciences (Robert
Bosch Junior Visiting Fellow), works in the field of political
sociology and discourse analysis. In her research project
she focuses on the concept of the nation as it is used in
the French social sciences discourse since the mid 1980s.
She translated Norberto Bobbio’s Liberalism and
Democracy from Italian to Romanian, with an essay “A
Sociological Perspective on Bobbio’s Liberalism and
Democracy,” Bucharest 1998; she has also translated from
the French: Raymond Boudon, Effets pervers et ordre
social, Bucharest 1998; and forthcoming in spring is her
translation of Sylviane Agacinski Politique des sexes.
Daniel Vojtech
Research Fellow at the Institute for Czech Literature,
Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague (Jan Patocka Junior
Visiting Fellow; Volkswagen Junior Visiting Fellow), works
in the field of the history of Czech literature focusing on
the period of early modernism from the turn of the century
to the 1920s and 1930s. He is currently working on the
forthcoming edition of Jan Patocka’s writings on art,
literature and culture, editing the two volumes Art and
Time.
Recent publications include: “Milos Marten as Critic,”
in Ceska literatura 44/1996; “Milos Marten and Modern
Review,” in Literarni archiv 28/1997; “The Polemic in the
Conception of F.S. Salda’s Novel,” in Ceska literatura 46/
1998.
Karin Wetschanow
Ph.D. candidate in Linguistics, University of Vienna specializes in feminist linguistics, gender studies and discourse analysis. Her research project analyzes German
language TV talk shows which thematize rape. She examines the concepts of rape that lie behind these media
discourses and the stereotypes and myths that are reproduced with this form of broadcasting.
Her publications include: M. Kargl/ K. Wetschanow/ R.
Wodak/ N. Perle, Kreatives Formulieren. Anleitungen zu
geschlechtergerechtem Sprachgebrauch, Vienna 1997.
Szymon Wrobel
Ph.D., Pedagogical-Artistic Institute, Kalisz (Poland), works
in the field of philosophy of mind. His current research
project is entitled “Power, the Subject and the Concept of
Rationality of Action” and is a comparison of Foucault‘s
genealogy of power with Habermas‘s discourse ethics. He
will try to give an answer to the question: Which paradigm
of these two critiques is most defensible philosophically?
His book, Discovery of the Unconscious or Destruction
of the Cartesian Concept of Mind appeared in Warsaw/
Wroclaw in 1997.
Page 24
One month research stays
Silke Wenk (November)
Professor of Art Theory (Focus: Gender Studies), Carl von
Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, works on the meaning of
gender differences in visual representations of the political
in modernity. She focuses on the close connection between the construction of the two sexes and the nation as
an “imagined community” and its tacit continuitiy in the
field of the visual up into the late 20th century.
Her publications include Versteinerte Weiblichkeit.
Allegorien in der Skulptur der Moderne, Cologne/Weimar/
Vienna 1997; and Henry Moore, Large two forms: eine
Allegorie des modernen Sozialstaates, Frankfurt a.M. 1997.
Jerzy Szacki (December)
Professor of Sociology, University of Warsaw; Member of
the IWM Academic Advisory Board, works in the field of
the history of ideas. During his stay at IWM he worked on
the topic of alienation for an encyclopedia of sociology;
and he prepared a lecture series on national identities.
His publications include: History of Sociological
Thought, Westport 1979, Liberalism after Communism,
Budapest (CEU Press) 1995; One Hundred Years of Polish
Sociology, Warsaw 1995.
Nancy Fraser (January)
Professor of Philosophy and Political Science, Graduate
Faculty, New School for Social Research, New York, works
in the field of political philosophy, social theory, and
feminist theory. In her current research she seeks to
integrate the emancipatory aspects of the two apparently
competing paradigms of justice — redistribution and
recognition — in a single, comprehensive framework.
Her publications include: Unruly Practices: Power,
Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory,
Cambridge 1989; Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections
on the “Postsocialist” Condition, Routledge 1997; forthcoming in 1999 are: Adding Insult to Injury: Social Justice
and the Politics of Recognition, London 1999; Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange,
together with Axel Honneth, London 1999.
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 25
Publications
Krzysztof Michalski
Heidegger i filozofia wspólczesna
(Heidegger and Contemporary Philosophy)
Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy
Warsaw 1999
The second edition of the habilitation first published in
1978 appeared recently.
We have a new
Homepage!
Please visit us at:
www.univie.ac.at/iwm/
Identities
IWM Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences Vol. III
Charles W. Lowney (Ed.)
Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna 1998
382 pp.
SOCO Project Papers
Contributions by: Pertti Ahonen, Anna I. Artemczuk, David
S. Dornisch, Iouliia Gradskova, Brano Hronec, John S.
Leake, Charles W. Lowney, Sinisa Malesevic, Tomasz
Merta, Sayres S. Rudy, Tim Snyder, Katalin Tardos, Alina
Zvinkliene.
The SOCO-Program has been carried out since 1992
with the aim of contributing to the limitation of the
social costs of the transformation.
IWM publishes the SOCO research studies in a
SOCO Project Paper Series. They cover a wide
range of issues including: unemployment, labor market
policies, housing policy, pension reform, health care,
education, poverty, individual and family coping
strategies, local social welfare delivery, demographic
change, disadvantaged groups, regional disparities.
Ideas in Transit
IWM Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences Vol. V
John K. Glenn III and Andrea Petö (Eds.)
Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna 1998
138 pp.
Contributions by: John K. Glenn III, Bradley Herling, Peter
A. Johnson, Andrea Petö, Anna Sosnowska, John
Symons, Mariusz Turowski.
F. Znaniecki, Education and Social Change
edited and introduced by Elzbieta Halas
Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt M. 1998
Elzbieta Halas was Visiting Fellow of the IWM in 1996.
During her stay she was doing research for this book.
Andrzej Maciej Kaniowski
Supererogacja
Zagubiony wymiar etyki
(Supererogation: A Neglected Ethical Dimension)
Oficyna Naukowa
Warsaw 1999
During his research stay at IWM in 1996 Kaniowski was
working on this book.
Alexis de Tocqueville, O Americkoj Povijesti
(Democracy in America)
edited by Drago Roksandic and Maja Brkljacic
Zavod za Hrvatsku povijest
Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu
United States Information Service, Zagreb 1998
SOCO - Social Costs of Economic Transformation in Central Europe
The SOCO Project Papers are available via Internet at:
http://www.univie.ac.at/iwm/prg-soc2.htm
IWM Working Papers
To its Fellows and to scholars who contribute to the
Institute’s Research Fields and Programs IWM offers
the possibility to present their work for discussion in
the Internet.
Contributors include: Claus Leggewie (New York),
Alexander Etkind (Petersburg), Don Kalb (Utrecht),
Rastko Mocnik (Ljubljana), Reinhold Wagnleitner
(Salzburg), Dimiter Denkov (Sofia), Zsuzsa Ferge
(Budapest), Peter Dews (Essex), Ton Nijhuis (Amsterdam/Maastricht), Christine Di Stefano (Seattle),
Vlasta Jalusic (Ljubljana), Selma Sevenhuijsen
(Utrecht).
Since 1996 IWM Working Papers have been published
regularly on IWM’s homepage. They only cost you a
mouse-click on:
http://www.univie.ac.at/iwm/pub-wp.htm
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Jean Francois Noel, Sveto Rimsko Carstvo
(Le Saint-Empire)
edited by Drago Roksandic
Barbat, Zagreb 1998
Tuesday Lectures
3 November
Gianfranco Pasquino
Professor of Political Science,
University of Bologna; Adjunct
Professor at the Bologna Center of
the Johns Hopkins University
Political Parties and Reconstruction of Democracy in
Eastern und Central Europe
In cooperation with the Italian
Cultural Institute
Drago Roksandic was Visiting Fellow of IWM in 1997 and
Maja Brkljacic was Junior Fellow of IWM in 1996.
Essays
Günter Bischof (Guest of IWM, 1998)
“Der Marshall-Plan und die Wiederbelebung des
österreichischen Fremdenverkehrs nach dem Zweiten
Weltkrieg”, in “80 Dollar”. 50 Jahre ERP-Fonds und
Marshall-Plan in Österreich, 1948-1998, Günter Bischof/
Dieter Stiefel (eds.), Vienna 1999.
Elzbieta Halas (Visiting Fellow of IWM, 1996)
“Dialogical versus hegemonic models of interactions
between national culture societies”, in: Nation, Ethnicity,
Minority and Border. Contributions to an International
Sociology, Alberto Gasparini (ed.), Gorizia 1998
Cornelia Klinger
“Feministische Philosophie als Dekonstruktion und
Kritische Theorie. Einige abstrakte und spekulative
Überlegungen”, in Kurskorrekturen. Feministisches
Denken zwischen Kritischer Theorie und Postmoderne,
Gudrun-Axeli Knapp (ed.), Frankfurt 1998.
“Liberalismus – Marxismus – Postmoderne. Der
Feminismus und seine glücklichen oder unglücklichen
‘Ehen’ mit verschiedenen Theorieströmungen im 20.
Jahrhundert”, in: Kritische Differenzen – geteilte Perspektiven. Zum Verhältnis von Postmoderne und Feminismus,
Antje Hornscheidt/ Annette Schlichter/ Gabriele Jähnert
(eds.), Opladen 1998.
Page 26
Pasquino
10 November
Political Ecology III
Edgar Morin
Directeur de recherche em., CNRS,
Paris; Editor, Communications
Terre-Patrie
In cooperation with the Political
Morin
Academy of the Austrian Green
Party and with ProMedia Publishers
17 November
Jack Burgers
Associate Professor of Sociology at Erasmus University
Rotterdam
Undocumented Immigrants in a Dutch City
From the IWM Translation Program:
Max Weber
Metodologie, sociologie a politika
(On Methodology, Sociology and Politics)
OIKOYMENH, Prague 1998
edited and translated into Czech by Milos Havelka
24 November
Silke Wenk
Professor of Art Theory (Focus: Gender Studies), Carl von
Ossietzky University, Oldenburg
Geschlechterdifferenz und visuelle
Repräsentationen des Politischen
1 December
Carlo Ginzburg
Franklin D. Murphy Professor of Italian
Renaissance Studies, University of
California Los Angeles
The Old World and the New, Seen
from Nowhere
In cooperation with the Italian Cultural
Institute
Ginzburg
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
19 January
Nancy Fraser
Professor of Political Science, Graduate Faculty of the New
School for Social Research, and co-editor of the journal
Constellations
Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, Participation
Seminar: ”Themen ästhetischer Theorie im 20.
Jahrhundert: Das Verhältnis zwischen Ethik und Ästhetik”
at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Tübingen
(10-12 December).
26 January
Götz Aly
Historian, editor of the Berliner Zeitung and Guest Professor at the Institute for Contemporary History, University of
Vienna
Wie deutsch ist die Vorgeschichte des Holocaust?
Travels and Talks
Page 27
Janos Matyas Kovacs
Lecture: “Approaching the EU and Reaching the US?
Transforming Welfare Regimes in East-Central Europe” at
a Workshop on »Long-Term Implications of EU Enlargement«, European Commission, Brussels (11 January).
Jarmila Maresova
Lecture: “The Migration Situation in the Czech Republic”
(SOPEMI Report), at the SOPEMI-Conference of the national correspondents, OECD Headquarters, Paris
(2-4 December).
Krzysztof Michalski
Conference: “The Long-Term Implications of EU-Enlargement: The Nature of the New Border,” organized by the
European Commission, Forward Studies Unit, Brussels
(11 November).
of IWM Fellows, Guests and Staff
Charles Bonner
Participated in the conference “Il bene cultura. Il male
scuola.” hosted by the Nova Spes International Foundation; presentation summarizing the activities organized
under the auspices of the IWM project, “Transformation of
the National Higher Education and Research Systems in
Central Europe” (TERC), since the project’s inception in
1991, Rome (20-22 November).
Paul Gillespie
Lecture: “Multiple Identitites and the Nation State” at the
conference “National Identities and the EU”, University
College Dublin (5 November).
Conference: “The End of the Empires – Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanov, Soviet, British” organized by the Austrian
Cultural Institute, London (27-28 November).
Lecture: “Multiple Identities in Ireland and Europe: A
Comparative Perspective,” University of Salzburg
(3 December).
Michal Ivantysyn
Book presentation: V. Krivy, Value Orientation in Slovakia
– Group Portraits, Institute for Public Affairs, Bratislava
(17 December).
Elzbieta Kaczynska
Lecture: “Shadows of the Past. The Obstacle in the Way of
Modernization: Contemporary Poland in Comparison with
Slovakia,” jointly organized by the Milan Simecka Foundation and the Polish Institute, Bratislava (15 December).
Cornelia Klinger
Lecture: “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen
Produzierbarkeit,” at the Symposium “Identitätsbildung in
der Ich – Medien – Beziehung” organized by the Ev.
Stadtakademie Hannover (26-28 November).
Radio broadcast: ”Von der Interessenpolitik zur
Identitätspolitik,” in the NDR series “Gedanken zur Zeit”.
Violetta Zentai
Lecture: “From Losers and Winners to Victims and Perpetrators” at the “Annual Conference of the American
Anthropological Association,” Philadelphia (3-6 December).
Varia
Don Kalb
Associate Professor in General Social Sciences, Utrecht
University, Visiting Fellow of IWM in 1997/98, has taken
over the coordination of the SOCO-Program (Social
Consequences of Economic Transformation in Central
Europe) in January.
Marianne Obi
Starting in February Marianne Obi is Program Manager of
the SOCO Project. Ms. Obi received her Ph.D. from Vienna
University in 1992 with a thesis on ethnic identities and
race problems. She has over ten years of experience in
research, project and event management in the fields of
social development, public affairs and administration.
Until August 1998 she was Assistant to the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees in Vienna working on the
re-organization of the “Country of Origin Information”
documentation system.
Timothy Snyder
Junior Visiting Fellow of IWM in 1996, has been awarded
the Oskar Halecki Polish and East Central European
History Award for his book Nationalism, Marxism, and
Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz KellesKrausz, 1872–1905 which was published in 1997 by
Harvard University Press. The Halecki Prize is administered by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of
America.
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 28
Guest Contribution
Charles Taylor: Faith and Identity: Religion and
Conflict in the Modern World
Charles Taylor is Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at McGill University in Montreal and a Vice-Chair of the Academic Advisory Board of IWM. The following piece is an
excerpt of the lecture he gave on occasion of the Wiesenthal Conference in December. The
complete text will appear in German in Transit – Europäische Revue No.16.
A question can arise for the modern state for which there
is no analogue in most pre-modern forms: what/whom is
this state for? whose freedom? whose expression?
This is the sense in which a modern state has what I
want to call a political identity, defined as the generally
accepted answer to the “what/whom for?” question. This
is distinct from the identities of its members, that is the
reference points, many and varied, which for each of these
defines what is important in their lives. There better be
some overlap, of course, if these members are to feel
strongly identified with the state; but the identities of
individuals and constituent groups will generally be richer
and more complex, as well as being often quite different
from each other.
So there is a need for common identity. How does this
generate exclusion? In a host of possible ways, which we
can see illustrated in different circumstances.
The most tragic of these circumstances is also the
most obvious, where a group which can’t be assimilated
to the reigning cohesion is brutally extruded; what we
have come today to call “ethnic cleansing”.
But there are other cases where it doesn’t come to
such drastic expedients, but where exclusion works all the
same against those whose difference threatens the dominant identity. I want to class forced inclusion as a kind of
exclusion, which might seem a logical sleight of hand.
Thus the Hungarian national movement in the nineteenth
Century tried forcefully to assimilate Slovaks and Romanians; the Turks are reluctant to concede that there is a
Kurdish minority in their Eastern borderlands. This may
not seem to constitute exclusion to the minority, but in
another clear sense, it amounts to this. It is saying in
effect: as you are, or consider yourselves to be, you have
no place here; that’s why we are going to make you over.
Or exclusion may take the form of chicanery, as in the
old apartheid South Africa, where millions of Blacks were
denied citizenship, on the grounds that they were really
citizens of “homelands”, external to the state.
All these modes of exclusion are motivated by the
threat that others represent to the dominant political
identity. But this threat depends on the fact that popular
sovereignty is the regnant legitimacy idea of our time. lt is
hard to sustain a frankly hierarchical society, in which
groups are ranged in tiers, with some overtly marked as
inferior or subject, as with the millet system of the Ottoman Empire.
Hence the paradox that earlier conquering people
were quite happy to coexist with vast numbers of subjects
which were very different from them. The more the better.
The early Muslim conquerors of the Ommeyad empire
didn’t press for conversion for their Christian subjects,
even mildly discouraged it. Within the bound of this
unequal disposition, earlier empires very often had a very
good record of “multi-cultural” tolerance and coexistence.
Famous cases come down to us, like that of the Mughals
under Akbar, which seem strikingly enlightened and
humane, compared to much of what goes on today in that
part of the world and elsewhere.
lt is no accident that the twentieth Century is the age
of ethnic cleansing, starting with the Balkan Wars, extending in that area through the aftermath of the First World
War, and then reaching epic proportions in the Second
World War, and still continuing — to speak only of Europe.
The democratic age poses new obstacles to coexistence, because it opens a new set of issues which may
deeply divide people, those concerning the political
identity of the state.
***
Democracy thus underlies identity struggles, because the
age of popular sovereignty opens a new kind of question,
which I’ve been calling that of the political identity of the
state. What/whom is the state for? And for any given
answer, the question can arise for me/us, can I/we “identify with” this state? Do we see ourselves as reflected
there? Can we see ourselves as part of the people which
this state is meant to reflect/promote?
These questions can be deeply felt, strongly contested, because they arise at the juncture point between
political identity and personal identity, meaning by the
latter the reference points by which individuals and
component groups define what is important in their lives.
If it is important to me that I belong to a French-speaking
community, then a state defined by its official language as
English will hardly reflect me; if I am more than a pro
forma Muslim, then a state defined by “Hindutva” cannot
fully be mine; and so on. We are in the very heartland of
modern nationalism.
But these “nationalist” issues are the more deeply
fraught, because the personal and group identities which
vie for reflection are often themselves in the course of
redefinition. This redefinition is often forced by the circumstances, and at the same time, extremely conflictual
and unsettling. We can see the forces surrounding this
process if we follow the serial rise of nationalisms in the
modern world.
We might ask ourselves the question: Why does
nationalism arise in the first place? Why couldn’t the
Germans just be happy to be part of Napoleons liberaliz-
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 29
ing empire, as Hegel would have liked? Why didn‘t the
Algerians demand the full French citizenship to which they
would have been entitled according to the logic of
“l’Algerie, c’ est la France”, instead of going for independence? And so on, through an immense range of similar
questions.
First, it’s important to see that in very many situations,
the initial refusal is that of certain élites, generally the
ones who are most acquainted with the culture of the
metropolis they’re refusing. Later, in a successful national
movement, the mass of the people is somehow induced to
come on board. This indicates that an account of the
sources of such a movement ought to distinguish two
stages.
So let me try to tackle the first phase: why do the elites
refuse metropolitan incorporation, even, perhaps especially when they have accepted many of the values of the
metropolis? Here we have to look at another facet of the
unfolding process of modernity.
From one point of view, modernity is like a wave,
flowing over and engulfing one traditional culture after
another. If we understand by modernity, inter alia, developments like: the emergence of a market-industrial
economy, of a bureaucratically-organized state, of modes
of popular rule, then its progress is, indeed, wave-like. The
first two changes, if not the third, are in a sense irresistible. Whoever fails to take them on, or some good functional equivalent, will fall so far behind in the power stakes
as to be taken
over, and forced
to undergo
these changes
anyway. There
are good reasons in the
relations of force
for the onward
march of modernity so defined.
But moderCharles Taylor
nity as lived
from the inside, as it were, is something different. The
institutional changes just described always shake up and
alter traditional culture. They did this in the original
development in the West, and they have done this elsewhere. But outside of those cases where the original
culture is quite destroyed, and the people either die or are
forcibly assimilated — and European colonialism has a
number of such cases to its discredit — a successful
transition involves a people finding resources in their
traditional culture to take on the new practices. In this
sense, modernity is not a single wave. It would be better
to speak of multiple modernities, as the cultures which
emerge in the world to carry the institutional changes turn
out to differ in important ways from each other. Thus a
Japanese modernity, an Indian modernity, various modulations of Islamic modernity will probably enter alongside
the gamut of Western societies, which are also far from
being totally uniform.
Seen in this perspective, we can see that modernity —
the wave — can be felt as a threat to a traditional culture.
lt will remain an external threat to those deeply committed
against change. But there is another reaction, among
those who want to take on some version of the institutional changes. Unlike the conservatives, they don’t want
to refuse the changes. They want of course to avoid the
fate of those aboriginal people who have just been engulfed and made over by the changes. What they are
looking for is a creative adaptation, drawing on the cultural resources of their tradition which would enable them
to take on the new practices successfully. In short they
want to do what has already been done in the West. But
they see, or sense, that that cannot consist in just copying
the West’s adaptations. The creative adaptation using
traditional resources has by definition to be different from
culture to culture. Just taking over Western modernity
couldn’t be the answer. Or otherwise put, this answer
comes too close to engulfment. They have to invent their
own.
There is thus a “call to difference” felt by “modernizing” élites which corresponds to something objective in
their situation. This is part of the background to nationalism. But there is more. The call to difference could be felt
by anyone concerned for the well-being of the people
concerned. But the challenge is lived by the élites concerned overwhelmingly in a certain register, that of
dignity.
***
I have been attempting to give some of the background of
modern identity struggles. These have a locus, which is
frequently inescapable, in the modern state, which poses
the question of political identity: what/whom is this polity
for? and the derivative questions: do I/we have a place
here? These issues can be particularly charged, because
they are the point at which the necessary redefinition of a
traditional way of life may be carried out. Indeed, the very
staking of a claim for “us” as a people demanding our
own state, or calling for reflection in an existing state
whose definition excludes us, this very move to
peoplehood in the modern sense, will often involve a
redefinition of what “we” are. Thus on the erstwhile
dominant, conservative and clerical, definition of “la
nation canadienne-française”, this was not meant to
realize itself primarily in political institutions, but rather in
the conservation of a way of life in which the Church
played the major role. The political strategy was to hold
North American Anglophone-Protestant society at bay,
both in its concentration on economic growth, and in its
tendency to enlarge the state’s role in the management of
certain social affairs, especially education and health
matters. This required the jealous guarding of provincial
autonomy, but also the self-denial of the provincial government which refrained from itself entering the domains
from which it was excluding the federal government. Quite
a different self-definition underlies the present identity as
“Québécois”, which for some people at any rate motivates
the demand for separate statehood.
Of course, this move involved a shift away from a
religious self-definition. The last 50 years have seen a
rapid laicization of Quebec society. But the earlier variant
of nationalism also involved a controversial stance on
what it meant to be a Catholic community in majority
Protestant Canada and North America, as the long and
bitter quarrel with Irish clergy testifies.
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 30
The point is that the resolution of issues of political
identity: what kind of state will one settle for? Do we have
a real choice? Can we strike out on our own? Should we
accept to assimilate? goes along with the settling of the
major issues of personal or group identity: who are we
really? What really matters to us? How does this relate to
how we used to define what matters? What is the important continuity with our past which makes us = us? (e.g., is
it just speaking French on this territory for four centuries;
or is it also being Catholic?)
These re-assertions or redefinitions are particularly
fraught, not just because they are anguishing, the point at
which people may feel that there has been a loss of
identity or a betrayal; but also because they are often lived
in the register of dignity: the issue of whether the identity
we end up with somehow will brand us as inferior, not up
to the rest, as a group destined to be dominated, cast in
the shade by others. This may indeed be how we are seen
by powerful others, but the issue is how much this gets to
us, how much we feel that only by changing ourselves in
some direction (“modernizing” our economy, reforming
some of our social practices, attaining statehood or
autonomy) could we really refute this disparaging judgement, and hold our heads high among the nations. And
our plight is not made easier by the fact that one person’s
essential reform, by which dignity is recovered, is another
person’s utter betrayal.
Now religion gets caught up in this process of struggle
through redefinition. Sometimes the result is negative: the
old faith is extruded or marginalized, as for instance in
Jacobin-nationalist or Leftist identities. But sometimes it
seems to be revalorized. “Reformed” versions of an old
religious tradition come forward as the way to embrace
what is good in modernity, even rediscover these good
things in a neglected part of our tradition (Brahmo Samaj,
for instance). Or against these, the counter-claim is made
that they have abandoned what is essential, and new,
more rigorous returns to the origins are proposed. But
these latter efforts take place in a modern context, and
very often while attempting to meet the demands of
power, statehood, economic and military viability, with full
use of communications technology, which belong to this
age. And so they are frequently less of a pure return to
origins than they claim on the surface to be. The pathos of
“fundamentalism” is always a certain hybridity. Presentday Protestant Biblical “fundamentalism” would have
been unthinkable in the symbolic universe of mediaeval
Catholicism, where everything was a sign; it presupposes
the literal-mindedness of the modern scientific age. Earlier
Christian centuries lived in a world in which secular time
was interwoven with various orders of higher time,
various dimensions of eternity. From within this time
sense, it may be hard to explain just what is at stake in the
issue whether ‘day’ in Genesis means “literally” the 24
hours between sunset and sunset, let alone get them to
see why they should be concerned about it.
Or to take another example, the Iranian revolution and
subsequent régime has been deeply marked by modern
communications, modes of mass mobilization, and forms
of state (a sort of attempt at a Parliamentary theocracy).
Now looked at from a certain angle, these movements
can be seen as attempts to live the traditional faith to the
full in contemporary conditions. The ultimate goal in each
case is something which would be recognized as such
across the history of the tradition in question — e.g., in the
Muslim case, living the life of submission to God in the
light of Qu’ran and hadith — even if some of the forms
might seem strange and new. But to the extent that the
struggle for re-assertion/redefinition becomes entangled
in identity struggles, a displacement comes about. Two
other goals or issues begin to impinge, which may draw
the enterprise out of the orbit of the religious tradition.
These are the twin goals/issues of the power and the
dignity of a certain “people”. These may impose objectives which are more or less alien from the faith, not only
as lived historically, but even in terms of what can be
justified today.
Constituting a dominant people, especially one with
the power to impose its will through weapons of mass
destruction, has never been seen as a demand of Hindu
piety. A case to the diametrically opposite effect would be
easier to make, as Gandhi showed, and as his brutal
elimination by the spiritual ancestors of the government in
Delhi underlines. Nor has genocide been seen, as a goal of
Orthodox Christianity, even allowing for the worst modes
of perversion of the faith historically.
In many of its most flagrant cases, the contemporary
violence which seems “religious” in origin is quite alien to
it. lt is powered by something quite different. lt arises in
identity struggles which are constituted by and help
constitute “peoples”, self-defining groups struggling to
define themselves and to attain political identity, where
religion serves as a historical marker, while the demands
of piety have utterly disappeared or atrophied: the “Serb”
militants, the IRA and Orange killers, much of the leadership of the BJP.
Even more mixed are various of the militant Muslim
movements of our day. Many of these are undoubtedly
powered by deeply-felt conceptions of piety. But this
doesn’t mean that their form and course may not be
deeply influenced by the context of identity struggle. lt
would be absurd to reduce Islamic integrism to a single
mode of explanation; we are dealing with a complex,
many-sided, over-determined, reality. I nevertheless would
like to argue that its various manifestations have some
features of the profile I have been outlining above. The
sense of operating of the world scene, in the register of
threatened dignity, is very much present; as is the overvehement rejection of the West (or its quintessence,
America, the “great Satan”), and the tremendous sensitivity to criticism from this quarter, for all the protestations of
hostility and indifference. Islamic societies are perhaps if
anything more vulnerable to a threat to their self-esteem
from the impact of superior power, in that Islam’s selfimage, was of the definitive revelation, destined to spread
outward without check. The Islamic sense of Providence, if
I may use this Christian expression, can cope with the
status of conquerors, but tends to be bewildered by the
experience of powerlessness and conquest.
Again, for all their protestations of faithfulness to the
origins, this integrism is in some respects very modern, as
I argued above. lt mobilizes people in a modern fashion, in
horizontal, direct-access movements; it thus has no
problem using the “modern” institutional apparatus of
elected legislatures, bureaucratic states, armies. While it
would reject the doctrine of popular sovereignty in favour
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
of a species of theocracy, it has also delegitimated all the
traditional ruling strata. The Iranian revolution was carried
out against the Shah. Those enjoying special authority are
exclusively those who “rationally” merit this, granted the
nature and goals of the state, viz., the experts in God’s law.
Not to speak of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s media-oriented
abuse of the Islamic judicial forms in issuing his fatwa
against Salman Rushdie. And to what extent was the
heinousness of Rushdie’s “crime” greatly increased by the
fact that he published his “blasphemies” in English and
for a Western audience?
Again, we do not understand as fully as we might the
tremendous emphasis laid on the dress and comportment
of women in contemporary Islamic reform movements.
Very often the demands seem to spin out of all relation to
Qu’ran and tradition, as with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But we can trace the way in which women have become
the “markers” for “modernism” and integrism. Atatürk
insisted that women dress in Western fashion, that they
walk in the streets and attend social functions, even dance
with men. The traditional modes were stigmatized as
“backward”. Perhaps this has something to do with the
extraordinary stress an rigorism in dress and contact
imposed on women in many places today. These matters
have become internationally-recognized symbols of where
one stands, ways of making a statement, of declaring
one’s rejection of Western modernity. The struggle in
international public space may be dictating what happens
here more than the weight of the shariat or hallowed
modes of piety.
Moreover, seeing nationalism, proletarian internationalism and religious fundamentalism in the same register
may help us to understand their interaction, that they are
so often, in fact, fighting for the same space. Arab nationalism gives way to Islamic integrism, just as the demise of
Soviet Marxism opens the way for virulent nationalisms.
The search for a categorial identity, to answer the call to
difference, and be the bearer of the sought-for dignity, can
take many forms. lt is understandable why the discrediting
of some must strengthen the appeal of others.
***
This discussion yields a rather mixed picture. lt cautions
up against taking “religion” as a clearly identifiable
phenomenon, once and for all, responding to a single
inner dynamic. lt ought to be clear that there is more than
one dynamic going on today in connection with religion.
We have to be particularly aware of this if we want to do
something to overcome the violence which is often
associated with religious differences.
I have argued here that there is a particularly modern
dynamic which can issue in “religious” hatred and violence, but which is in some ways rather alien to religion in
its devotional thrust. There are clear cases, where this
alien nature stands out; but there are also very mixed
cases, where religious movements are traversed by a
number of different demands, of fidelity to the past, piety,
of recovering social discipline and order, as well as of the
power and dignity of “peoples”. In these cases, there is no
single dynamic at work.
Page 31
Krzysztof Michalski (Hg.)
Aufklärung heute
Castelgandolfo-Gespräche Bd. VII
Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1997
260 pp., DM 68,- / öS 496,ISBN 3-608-91856-6
Krzysztof Michalski
Zur Einführung
Stanley Rosen
Die Aufklärung neu denken
Paul Ricoeur
Das Paradox der Autorität
Charles Taylor
Die immanente Gegenaufklärung;
Hans Maier
Die Freiheitsidee der Aufklärung
und die katholische Tradition
Hans-Ludwig Schreiber
Menschenrechte nach der Aufklärung;
Jozef Tischner
Die Nation und ihre Rechte
Jean Bethke Elshtain
Individuelle Rechte und soziale Pflichten
Gertrude Himmelfarb
Armut und zweierlei Aufklärung
Ira Katznelson
Vom Bettelstand zur Armut. Gesellschaftliches Wissen und die soziale Frage
Robert Spaemann
Der innere Widerspruch der Aufklärung
Claus Leggewie
Zwischen Kulturkampf und Kapitalismuskritik. Der
politische Katholizismus in den USA am Scheideweg
Johannes Paul II.
Ein neuer Blick auf das Phänomen der Aufklärung
Newsletter 63
November 1998 – January 1999
Page 32
Vom Neuschreiben
der Geschichte
Erinnerungspolitik
nach 1945 und 1989
Tony Judt Nachkriegsgeschichte neu denken
Pieter Lagrou Die Wiedererfindung der Nation
Claudio Pavone
Italien: Der verdrängte Bürgerkrieg
Norman Naimark Nationalismus in Osteurope 1944-47
Istvan Deak Politische Prozesse in Ungarn
Petr Pithart Doppelcharakter des Prager Frühlings
Wolfgang Höpken Vergangenheitspolitik in Jugoslawien
Ernst Hanisch Wien: Heldenplatz
Im Burgtor Photographien von Leo Kandl
Heidemarie Uhl Gedächtniskultur in Österreich
Erinnerungsorte Photographien von Susanne Gamauf
R. Münz / R. Ohliger Vergessene Deutsche – Erinnerte Deutsche
Mark Mazower Europa, dunkler Kontinent
Robert Menasse
Die Geschichte ist kurz und ewig
Adalbert Evers Engagement und Bürgersinn
verlag neue kritik
15
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