Laïcité, grammar, fable: secular teaching of secularism

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Notes

1. Using the word ‘secularism’ rather than ‘laïcité’ risks obscuring the specifically French aspects of this debate. I propose to retain ‘laïcité’ throughout the article.

2. The section of the law of 1905 from which today's self-evident principle stems is Article 2, which states, ‘La République ne reconnaît, ne salarie ni ne subventionne aucun culte’ [The Republic neither recognises, nor remunerates [the representatives of], nor subsidises any religion]. In 2005, as part of the commemoration of the 1905 law, the French National Assembly made available a facsimile of the original report that Aristide Briand presented to the Parliament. The text is preceded by an introduction by Jean-Louis Debré, President of the National Assembly, who reiterates his faith in the principle of laïcité as it exists in France: ‘Un siècle après son adoption, la loi de 1905 figure au nombre des grandes lois de la République, de notre République. Elle constitue une clé de voûte de notre modèle de la laïcité. A ce titre, elle constitue un élément fondamental d'un modèle social français, à la fois singulier et exemplaire, auquel je suis profondément attaché.’ [One century after being passed, the law of 1905 constitutes one of the keystones of our model of laïcité. As such, it is one of the fundamental elements of our French social model, both singular and exemplary, and to which I am profoundly attached.] (Jean-Louis Debré, ‘Avant propos’, in Aristide Briand, Rapport concernant la séparation des Eglises et de l'Eta,1905, facsimile <http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/evenements/1905/rapport1905-r.pdf> pp i–iv, p i.) Note that all translations are my own, except where otherwise indicated.

3. For example: Etienne Balibar, ‘Les nouvelles frontières de la démocratie européenne’, Critique Internationale 18, Janvier 2003, pp 169–179; Jean Bauberot, Laïcité 1905–2005, Entre passion et raison, Paris: Seuil, 2004, and Histoire de la laïcité en France, Paris: PUF, 2005; Jean Bauberot and Michel Wieviorka (eds), De la séparation des Eglises et de l'Etat à l'avenir de la laïcité, Paris: Éditions de l'aube, 2005; Paul Airiau, Cent ans de laïcité française, Paris: Presses de la renaissance, 2005.

4. See Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Toleration as Recognition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp 115–137.

5. The flood of responses relayed by the media included a special issue of the weekly the Nouvel Observateur in which a number of prominent intellectuals published a series of militant position papers that set the tone of the debate. See especially ‘Profs, ne capitulons pas!’ signed by Élisabeth Badinter, Régis Debray, Alain Finkielkraut, Élisabeth de Fontenay and Catherine Kintzler (2–8 novembre 1989).

6. For a useful synthesis of the different points of view that were expressed in popular newspapers immediately after the ‘affaire’, see Florence Rochefort, ‘Foulard, genre et laïcité en 1989’, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire 75, July–September 2002, pp 145–156. See also: Françoise Gaspard and Fahrad Khosrow-Khavar, Le Foulard et la République, Paris: La Découverte, 1995; Jean-Michel Helvig, La Laïcité dévoilée. Quinze années de débat en quarante ‘Rebonds’. Les Dossiers de Libération, Paris: Éditions de l'aube, 2004, pp 9–13.

7. For example: Emile Poulat, Liberté, laïcité: la guerre des deux Frances et le principe de la modernité, Paris: Cerf, 1987; René Rémond, La Laïcité, Paris: Seuil,1995; Guy Haarscher, La Laïcité, Paris: PUF, 1996; Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux, Les trois âges de la laïcité, Paris: Hachette, 1996; Guy Bedouelle and Jean-Paul Costa, Les Laïcités à la française, Paris: PUF, 1998.

8. See Bauberot, Histoire de la laïcité en France.

9. See for example the ‘Weil Report’ presented in 1997. The academic Patrick Weil had been asked to rethink immigration and asylum rights after the high-profile ‘sans-papiers de Saint-Bernard’ affair had made it clearly impossible to ignore the grievances of a well-organised community of undocumented immigrants in the summer of 1996. See also the 1988 ‘Rapport de la Commission de la nationalité’, presented by Marceau Long (also a member of the Stasi committee, discussed below). The report was especially influential in 1993 when the government set out to reform the nationality code (on the links made between Islam and French nationality, secularism and schools in that earlier report, see Jeremy Jennings, ‘Citizenship, Republicanism and Multiculturalism in Contemporary France’, British Journal of Political Science 30(4), 2000, pp 575–597).

10. For a list of members, see <http://www.elysee.fr/elysee/elysee.fr/francais/actualites/a_l_elysee/2003/decembre/liste_des_membres_de_la_commission_stasi_sur_la_laicite.6707.html>. The commission included well-known scholars (Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux, Jean Bauberot), philosophers (Régis Debray) and sociologists (Alain Touraine) as well as political figures and administrators. Patrick Weil, author of the Weil Report, was also a member (see note 9, above).

11. Ref.: L. no. 2004-228: 15-3-2004 (Journal officiel, JO 17-3-2004). The law's descriptive title is worth translating: ‘Law […] to regulate, in accordance with the principle of laïcité, the wearing of symbols and apparel displaying religious affiliation in public primary schools and high schools’.

12. Journal officiel 118, 22 May 2004, p 9033, text no. 10, see Legifrance.gouv.fr (<http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/WAspad/UnTexteDeJorf?numjo=MENG0401138C>).

13. See ‘Le Rapport de la Commission Stasi sur la laïcité’. The report was published in Le Monde on 12 December 2003 and is available at: <http://medias.lemonde.fr/medias/pdf_obj/rapport_stasi_111203.pdf>

14. Jean de La Fontaine, ‘Le Pouvoir des Fables’, Œuvres Complètes, VIII, 4th edn, Liechtenstein; Paris: Garnier frères, 1872, pp 83–85, vol. 57, p 85 (see <http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k23437j.notice>).

15. I am indebted to two beautiful narratological interpretations of La Fontaine's fable: Louis Marin's reading of how the ambassador is trapped by the narrative: he is both allowed to dismiss fables and forced to recognise their power as a diplomatic tool (Louis Marin, ‘Le Pouvoir du récit’, in Le Récit est un piège, Paris: Minuit, 1978, pp 15–34). Ross Chambers, on the other hand, insists on another form of duplicity and distinguishes between narrators who count on the seduction of their own narratives to compensate for a position of relative weakness (Ross Chambers, ‘Power and the Power to Oppose’, in Room for Maneuver, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp 56–101). I use the translation that Chambers publishes as part of this chapter (‘Power and the Power to Oppose’, p 61).

16. La Fontaine, ‘Le Pouvoir des fables’, vol. 57, p 85; vol. 2, p 83.

17. La Fontaine, ‘Le Pouvoir des fables’, vol. 54, p 85; vol. 60, p 85.

18. La Fontaine, ‘Le Pouvoir des fables’, vol. 62–64, p 85.

19. See the Observatoire des sites gouvernementaux: <http://moteur-auracom.com/cgi-bin/aurweb.exe/ppm/phr?CRITA=%22grammaire+des+religions%22> (accessed 20 February 2007) for the script of the speeches delivered by the prime minister in the Parliament (03/02/2004) and at the Grande Mosquée de Paris on 17 November 2003.

20. Antoine Arnault and Claude Lancelot, Grammaire générale et raisonnée ou la Grammaire de Port Royal, Herbert Brekle (ed.), Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1966; Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002.

21. See the famous Toubon law no. 94-665, 4 August 1994. The first article reads: ‘Langue de la République en vertu de la Constitution, la langue française est un élément fondamental de la personnalité et du patrimoine de la France’ [French is the language of the Republic according to the constitution, it is a fundamental element of France's personality and heritage].

22. Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Discours à la Grande Mosquée de Paris, 23 November 2003 (see the Observatoire des sites gouvernementaux, as per note 19, above).

23. See Azouz Begag's argument: speaking the language of the banlieues—the often underprivileged outer suburbs of big cities that tend to include big migrant populations—entails a risk of ‘positivisation’ and generalisation that outweighs the liberal desire for inclusion (Azouz Begag, ‘Trafic de mots en banlieue: du “nique ta mère” au “plaît-il”?’ Migrants-Formation 108, March 1997, pp 30–37, p 33). For a diverging position, see Jean-François Dortier ‘“Tu flippes ta race, bâtard!”: Sur le langage des cités’, Sciences humaines 159, 2005, pp 40–41.

24. Ahmed Boubeker, ‘Sous le voile, la mascarade de l'identité’, in Helvig, La Laïcité dévoilée, pp 168–172. Boubeker suggests that after the demonstrations of the 1980s, ‘la faim d’égalité des beurs semble pourtant dépassée par une politique de l'identité. Gamines voilées et “préfet musulman” occupent aujourd'hui la une des médias, comme un zoom arrière des focales publiques à rebours de l'immigration, au temps de l'Algérie coloniale et des citoyens de seconde zone, “Français de confession islamique”’ [the children of immigrants’ desire for equality seems to have been replaced by a politics of identity. Veiled girls and ‘Muslim appointed head of region’ make headlines, as if local authorities were calling for a very fast ‘zoom out’ in a retreat towards the time of colonial Algeria and of ‘Muslim French’ second-class citizens], p 170.

25. François Pouillon, ‘Le Tchador est toujours debout’, in Helvig, La Laïcité dévoilée, pp 17–21.

26. Michel Onfray, Traité d'athéologie, Paris: Grasset, 2005, pp 222–226.

27. Bauberot, Laïcité 1905–2005, pp 233–239.

28. Régine Azria, Le Fait religieux en France, Paris: La documentation française (dossier 8033), 2003, pp 58–59.

29. Debray's report on the teaching of ‘religion as fact’ suggests that some canonical objects are in danger of becoming completely incomprehensible. He lists: ‘les tympans de Chartres, la Crucifixion du Tintoret, le Don Juan de Mozart, le Booz endormi de Victor Hugo, et la Semaine Sainte d'Aragon’ [the Tympanum of Chartres cathedral, Tintoretto's Crucifixion, Mozart's Don Juan, Victor Hugo's Boaz Asleep, and Aragon's Holy Week] (Régis Debray, ‘Rapport à Monsieur le Ministre de l’Éducation nationale: L'enseignement du fait religieux dans l’École laïque’, février 2002, <http://lesrapports.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/BRP/024000544/0000.pdf>, p 3).

30. And this recommendation itself was the foundation of another bill of law to which the report of the Stasi committee alludes. See Debray, ‘Rapport à Monsieur le Ministre’, and Régis Debray, L'Enseignement du fait religieux dans l’école laïque, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2002. See also, Régis Debray, ‘Pourquoi et comment enseigner le fait religieux’, in Helvig, La Laïcité dévoilée, pp 196–206; Azria, Le Fait religieux en France.

31. Onfray, Traité d'athéologie, p 64.

32. Onfray, Traité d'athéologie, p 27.

33. André Chervel, Histoire de la grammaire scolaire, Paris: Payot, 1977.

34. See Michel Jeury's analysis of the anthologies written for students between 1850 and 1950. Some of the excerpts from the Lectures primaires (Paris: Hachette, 1907), addressed to students in their last years of primary schools and written by Emile Toutey (an inspector from the Education Nationale), are edifying vehicles (or ‘wheelbarrows’ as I will style the ambi-valent tool of the classroom, in my conclusion): ‘D'ailleurs l’école vient compléter l'oeuvre de la colonization par son action bienfaisante sur les jeunes indigènes, qui sont tout fiers et tout heureux de nous montrer qu'ils savent s'exprimer avec facilité, sinon correctement en français’ [Schooling completes the colonising mission thanks to its beneficial influence on young natives who are happy and proud to show that they can express themselves comfortably in French, if not correctly] (cited in Michel Jeury, La Gloire du Certif: les trésors des livres d’école 1850–1950, Paris: Laffont, 1997, p 318).

35. Eric Savarèse ‘Histoires héroïques’, Histoire & Patrimoine 3, 2005, pp 52–58, p 56.

36. ‘Le Rapport de la Commission Stasi sur la laïcité’, section 4.1.1.2.

37. ‘Le Rapport de la Commission Stasi sur la laïcité’, section 4.1.1.1; section 4.1.1.2.

38. Slavoj Žižek, Que veut l'Europe? Frédéric Joly (trans.), Castelnau-le-Lez: Climats, 2005, p 161. In Žižek's text, the wheelbarrow serves to demonstrate that one cannot separate the result of the war in Iraq from the American intervention itself.

39. Jacques Rancière uses ‘mésentente’ to refer to a specific type of political disagreement that re-organises the parts of the community as they exist. The French word means ‘mishearing’, ‘misunderstanding’ as well as ‘dissent’. See Jacques Rancière, Mésentente, Paris: Galilée, 1995.

40. ‘Le Rapport de la Commission Stasi sur la laïcité’, section 4.4 (‘L'adoption d'une loi sur la laïcité’).

41. Law no. 2004-228 (15 March 2004) ‘to regulate, in accordance with the principle of laïcité, the wearing of symbols and apparel displaying religious affiliation in public primary schools and high schools’, Journal officiel, 17 March 2004 (<http://www.admi.net/jo/20040317/MENX0400001L.html>).

42. Again, in Rancière's sense, where only when the parts of the community are shaken does ‘le politique’ replace police work (La Laïcité).

43. A first version of this text was presented at a conference on ‘Laïcité/Secularism: 1905/2005’ at the Center for French and Francophone Studies at Columbia University in November 2005. I wish to thank Antoine Compagnon and Madeleine Dobie for their invitation and hospitality.