Daniel Gordon

Unmasking and disclosure as sociological practices: Contrasting modes for understanding religious and other beliefs

Unmasking is a recurrent feature of modern sociology and cultural criticism. While false consciousness is imputed by intellectuals to religious groups and to certain social classes, unmasking is, or claims to be, a corrective performed by intellectuals themselves. Unmasking supposes that enlightened enquirers are able to help the less rational to understand their real interests; a type of exposure, it offers a cognitive tool of emancipation. This article (a) examines unmasking; and (b) contrasts it with an approach to understanding that we call disclosure. Our claim is that disclosure is more attuned to the full keyboard of social action, and less demeaning of its players, than unmasking is. Disclosure attempts to grasp what actions are like for those who enact them. Nothing has been more often or consistently unmasked and with more venom than religion. It is the main example explored in this article.

From the headscarf to the burqa: the role of social theorists in shaping laws against the veil

Abstract Opposition to the burqa is widespread in Europe but not in the United States. What explains the difference? Focusing primarily on the French case and its Belgian facsimile, we seek to underscore the role of social theorists in legitimizing bans on the full veil. Ironically, this role has been largely disregarded by Anglophone theorists who write on the veil, and who often oppose its prohibition. This article suggests that Europe tends to be more repressive towards full veils because its political process is more open to multiple theoretical representations of the phenomenon of veiling. Conversely, the United States is more open to the provocative display of religious symbols in public because the political process is pre-structured by legal conventions that tend to filter out social theory. The push to ban the burqa in France principally derives from its brand of republicanism rather than being a product of racism and Islamophobia. Of particular significance in the French case is the emphasis on reciprocity as a political principle, a principle that is elongated into an ideal of sociability by French theorists in different disciplines. The arguments of these theorists are described, their rationale is explained and the impact of their intervention on the policy process is documented. The French case, where the popular press and legislature play a major role in shaping policy towards the burqa, is contrasted with that of the United States, where the judiciary, defending religious freedom, remains the most influential collective actor. Each country has correspondingly different attitudes to democracy. In France, the mission of democracy is to extend political equality to the social realm whereas in the United States it is religion that is prioritized so as to protect that which is deemed most sacred to the individual.

Bernard Groethuysen and the Human Conversation

Philosophie et Histoire. By Bernard Groethuysen. Edited with an Introduction by Bernard Dandois.

In search of limits: Raymond Aron on ‘secular religion’ and communism

Beginning in the 1940s, Raymond Aron used the concept of ‘secular religion’ to condemn communism. This article traces the history of ‘secular religion’ within his writings. Aron’s earliest critique of communism, in his doctoral thesis of 1938, entitled Introduction to the Philosophy of History , was philosophically powerful yet did not rely on ‘secular religion.’ The concept first emerged in his wartime writings; it then became central in his famous book The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955). The ambiguities of the concept of ‘secular religion’ are discussed in this article. On the whole, the idea of ‘secular religion’ appears to be a weak spot within the corpus of a thinker who was usually very precise in defining his concepts. The article suggests that Aron is a case study in the failure of many Cold War intellectuals to wrestle productively with the concept of religion.

The Unbearable Heaviness of Being in Eighteenth-Century Studies

behind her. That symbol of empire unmade evokes the coming american empire and its ideological justifications, expanding and conquering across the american continent and beyond. on the back cover, one of three dhoti-clad brahmins bows to female britannia. To modern eyes he is giving up himself and his goods, but in the print’s imperial narrative he is receiving Hindu law from britannia, with her victories engraved on the lion-topped plinth behind her. in this civilizing mission, one gets one’s own back: the ironies are complex. back on the front, however, Marshall’s designer superimposed the brightly colored american print on the gray british one. america, replacing the bowing brahmin, gazes directly into the eyes of britannia, while the other two dhoti-clad brahmins now stand beside america, her equals, at her height. imperial futures become future equalities.

Capital Punishment for Murderous Theorists

Book reviewed in this article: The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists areMurdering our Past, by Keith Windschuttle