Racisms Old and “New” at Handsworth, 1985: an Academic Cross-post.

In December, I submitted an article for what was then intended to be the “Winter, 2010″ edition of the University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, an online (but peer-reviewed!) postgraduate history journal.

Well, eight months and one change of editorship later, the piece has finally been “published” (in what has now become the “Summer/Autumn” edition of the journal). The introduction to the current issue is the very apex of bush league. It manages to spell the name of my article’s principle interlocutor, Martin Barker, incorrectly on two occasions and in two different ways. It also finishes with a statement of the journal’s refreshingly modest commitment to “a decent level of historical research quality.” (Though, admittedly, the “open mic night” feel is compounded by a generous sprinkling of SPAG and formatting errors in the main text, for which I & my editors share mutual responsibility, I guess).

So, yes, it is difficult to imagine a more inauspicious start to life as a published historian.

In any case, the article concerns elite discourse surrounding the 1985 Handsworth “riots”. It engages with theoretical work, particularly that of Barker as articulated in his 1981 The New Racism: Conservatives and the Ideology of the Tribe, regarding manifestations of racist ideology. My piece originally began as an undergraduate dissertation of 10,000 words, and was heavily revised (& truncated) for publication here.

Here’s a direct link (will open / start the download of a .pdf file).

The BNP & “Free Speech”: We Revisit a Calamitysite Together.

[I'm going to get lazy and just put a repost up today. My dissertation work is keeping me pretty busy. I will at least add a new postscript to this, though. The piece was originally written on 25th October 2009, around the time of the Nick Griffin/"free speech"/Question Time "controversy". Hopefully the absence of topicality is not terminally vitiating for you.]

Nick Griffin: makes lovely biscuits.

Of the many arguments advanced for allowing BNP leader Nick Griffin to air his opinions on the program Question Time this week, perhaps the most popular is that relating to “freedom of speech”. The word “argument” is in fact over-generous here, since the concept of “free-speech” is rarely unpacked by those invoking it; neither are its implications fully laid out. Rather, the elephantine weight of the signifier is allowed by itself to crush opposition — “free speech” is, after all, an inviolable principle. “No true Englishman” would object to policy which follows its dictates: the ideal is chief amongst those which protect us from tyranny and prevent us from metamorphosing into such popular bogeys as Islamic fundamentalists, Nazi Germans or even (and this is the neatest rhetorical trick) into Griffin himself.

The problem with all this, of course, is that it’s bollocks. As Stanley Fish has argued, “there’s no such thing as free speech — and it’s a good thing, too.” I personally have never encountered anybody willing to countenance the full implications of a society without restrictions on speech. Even that rapacious libertarian Johann Hari (he of “the antidote to free speech is always more free speech”) responds to cases of perceived defamation not by glibly quoting pseudo-Voltairean maxims, but by threatening lawsuits. Likewise, I find it hard to believe that those who are today denouncing those opposed to Griffin’s appearance will tomorrow turn their attentions to the Advertising Standards Agency, the Press Complaints Comission, OFCOM, or those laws which prohibit slander and libel. Too often, absolute commitments to freedom of expression are under-pinned by the naive and unsupportable assumption that language has no practical effect — that, in the semantic realm, “anything goes” because everything is divorced from material consequence. Such a formulation does language no justice at all: “words,” as Stephen Poole is fond of noting, “are weapons.”

Fixations upon “free-speech” appear particularly misplaced in the context of a debate regarding a national television program. This is after all a context in which “speech” necessarily cannot be “free” — it is a limited resource which can be offered to only a particular number of agents. If Griffin is “silenced” by a prohibition upon his appearance, then he is only suffering the same degree of censure experienced by Socialist Party chairman Peter Taafe, by myself, and by former Arsenal left-back Lee Dixon. For none of us, in the last analysis, is likely to be appearing on Question Time anytime soon.

Stanley Fish: not Larry David.

The obvious counter to the above paragraph is that neither myself, Taafe nor Dixon can claim politically to represent a large element of the British population. Evidence for Griffin’s “mandate” is marshaled in the form of British National Party vote counts in this year’s EU Parliament election. This data is certainly significant. However, it might first be noted that EU election voting data can give only an indirect and imperfect sense of national political sympathies. I doubt that many people believe that Nigel Farage will be asked to form Her Majesty’s Opposition next year, or that the Labour Party will come away from a 2010 general election with roughly 15% of the vote. British Euroscepticism seems significantly to assist the fortunes of Right-wing parties in these elections. British unbelief in the desirability or necessity of a European parliament might well also encourage protest votes or abstentions in these polls. If one reverts to a slightly more sound (but still objective) measure of BNP support — the 2005 General Election voting data — then the picture changes rather. The BNP could marshal only 0.7% of the vote at those polls, scarcely higher than the 0.5% of votes recorded by the RESPECT/SSP ticket.

My reference to RESPECT/SSP here is advised. I have not heard any agitation from any quarters this week to the effect that the “far” Left should be given the opportunity to exercise its “freedom of speech” in the way that Griffin has. I suspect that this would be explained via reference again to “representation”. It is worth mentioning at this point that a close association between party vote counts and an invitation to “join the debate” imports a significant bias against the contemporary Left, simply for the reason that it is more fractured than the contemporary Right. Indeed, if all three Left parties represented at the EU elections (NO2EU, the SLP and the SSP) had combined their resources, the resulting coalition would have come away with some 300,000 votes — a virtually identical total to that tallied by the Scottish National Party, an organisation very much “part of the debate.” (This, of course, is a gedankexperiment that probably underestimates the popularity of a broad Left ticket — a united contemporary socialist movement would also have real prospects of drawing voters away from Labour, the Green Party and perhaps also the Liberal Democrats.)

But more broadly, one might question the wisdom of relating vote counts to legitimacy. In a political context that has witnessed the convergence of major parties upon an ever-increasing array of issues, the need for alternative voices is acute. If one permits exposure only to those parties which can prove that they “represent” a “significant” (however this might be figured) proportion of the electorate, then this narrowing of British political discourse is likely only to be re-enforced in a cyclical process. The Left has real and coherent arguments, and is well-positioned to offer a radical critique upon that issue that Griffin himself owes much of his popularity to — immigration. This widening of discourse may well be something in which the BNP has a part to play.

The PCC: imbued w/ great celerity.

But that cannot be taken for granted. My earlier references to the ASA, the PCC and OFCOM were not entirely stabs in the dark. The BNP remains a party which employs lies and fabrications as part of its normative electoral strategy. Lies about the local presence of asylum seekers, about the way in which housing is allocated, even about non-existent murders committed by illegal immigrants. There is no more reason to lend credibility to the party that knowingly propagates these lies than there is to permit the dissemination of the lies themselves (a thing which, I’m confident, not even the most implacable guardian of free expression would prescribe). The BNP may be invited to “clean up its act”, but central planks of its policy programme can only be supported by distortions, since the party relies upon the magnification (and, indeed, fabrication) of marginal issues in such a way that they become urgent problems close to the heart of Britain’s very survival. It is often stated that to censor the BNP “brings us down to their level” — it does nothing of the sort. It serves as a statement that in order for a political party to be given national exposure in this country, that party must conform to certain minimum standards of honesty in its campaigning. The right to freedom of expression, in sum, does not and should not incorporate a right to the distortion of facts or the dissemination of lies.

A final argument in favour of Griffin’s appearance might reflect that this is all very well, but inviting the BNP’s leader onto Question Time is an individual act with no further consequence. This is untrue: self-evidently so. Those who are quick to tender the “freedom of speech” argument tend also to be those who scoff at counter-arguments relating to “legitimation”. Yet the proof of this latter argument is rendered by the actions of those who espouse the former: already the BNP is being defended glibly with hand-waving references to “free speech” — it is “just another party” with a right, nay an obligation, to “represent” those who support it. The peculiarity of the BNP lies not, as is so often stated, in its racism — that attribute is observable across party lines. But rather, the unique crime of the BNP is the centrality of deception to its programme and praxis. If deceptions of this magnitude and consequence were being fostered by a big business between blocks of Big Brother on C4, then there would rightly be trouble. They should be no more permissible — perhaps even less so — on the BBC.

Postscript

Billy Bragg: attracts all sorts.

Recently, I got into an internet argument with some Billy Bragg fans[1] about the rectitude of using court action as a weapon against the BNP. I was surprised to find that many of them were opposed to this tout court: that is, they were opposed to prosecution not only for the notoriously slippery fish of “inciting racial hatred”, but also for good old-fashioned speech circumscriptions such as libel, slander and defamation. This seems crazy to me. The arguments against court action as a legitimate weapon are threefold, I think.

i)  “Democracy is about altering opinions by the free exchange of information and rhetoric.” This reflects what one might call the “optimistic” presentation of democracy’s functioning (or, if one wishes to be spunkier, the “naive realist” presentation of the same): democratic societies are composed of intelligent political consumers, who expose themselves to all available ideologies, before choosing in a free, rational and deliberative fashion, their preferred option. Democracy is this envisioned as one perpetual and multi-polar debate, and the disallowance of any aspect of that debate (however small, marginal and distasteful) threatens democracy.

It is, of course, odd to hear this gloss placed on democracy by anyone on the Left; it is a consumerist and rather ahistorical explanation of the relationship between parties and voters, erasing as it does the considerable degree to which parties consciously represent class interests. The “one big debate” theory of democracy also fails to appreciate the role played by the media in achieving saturation of certain acceptable viewpoints, whilst consigning certain alternative ideological formulations to the dustbin of “extremism”.[2] That is to say, these various ideologues are not just presented “neutrally” so that any consumer can happily make a free, informed and unrestricted choice.

But, even if one were to accept that the “one big debate” theory of democratic politics has much to commend it, it seems eccentric to claim that the quality of this “debate” is determined in a proportional way by its extent; by the sheer volume of speech and speech-acts it comprises. If one wishes to “defend” democratic discourse, then I would suggest that preventing political parties from committing libel, slander and defamation might be a salient aspect of this defense, rather than contrary to it.

ii) “Court action against the BNP would increase support for the party by making martyrs out of its defendants.” This argument is heard very often – to the point, indeed, that almost any action taken against the BNP would seem to be “assisting” it in this manner to some degree. There is some merit to this contention, of course. But I think that it is best applied to “incitement” cases: i.e. in those cases where the judgement tendered relates to something other than the truth-value of the proposition in question. It is effortless to turn defeat in cases of that sort into martyrdom, for reasons too obvious for me to go into.

On the other hand, I don’t think there are many people who want to believe that a political party is just straight-out lying to them. I’m sure that there would be people content to regard a libel/slander ruling made against the BNP as just another piece of evidence for an elite conspiracy against the party. But such people are also unlikely to be moved from their present political position by the fetishised endeavour of “free debate”.

iii) “Court action against the BNP, even when resulting in victory, would not be an effective way of fighting the party.” Obviously, it cannot be the only tactic used. “Debate” (or, perhaps more realistically and specifically, relentless and well-targeted canvassing) has a part to play too. Perhaps the most effective “weapon” in the “fight” against the party is the improvement of material conditions for working class people of all ethnic backgrounds. But to say that court action would be completely ineffective seems odd to me. If the BNP is ruled against, it must be sanctioned in some way (perhaps via a fine or the disqualification of a candidate, depending upon the offence), and its activities (and strategic options) will be reduced to that minimal extent.

But I think that, for some on the Left anyway, there is a fourth and unspoken “argument” against the use of court action.

Francisco Largo Caballero: anti-ethno-nationalist.

To engage with this fourth approach, we must first consider that the discourse of anti-BNP activism is heavily imbued with historical content, drawing upon the interlocked experiences of World War Two and the Spanish Civil War. These two conflicts perform separate but related functions within this discourse. World War Two is well-established as a period of national unity; No True Englishman was opposed to or sceptical about confrontation with Nazi Germany. The Spanish Civil War is simultaneously encoded as a site of political unity. Broad sections of the Left and centre came together for a common (because uncontroversial) cause: the defeat of fascism and the restoration of liberal democracy. The factual content of each of the inscriptions is deeply questionable.[3] But, naturally, it is the puissance of these narratives which matters. And this combination of historical referents does much to shape British anti-racist activity. The strangely parochial and anachronistic moniker of the “Anti-Nazi League” is perhaps the most obvious indication of this. Moreover, the terms “fascism” or “fascist” as words of abuse to be arrogated without much analytical care to one’s right-wing and/or racist political opponents are perpetually present in this discourse (“Unite Against Fascism”, etc.).

This historicist language carries with it other overtones. Considering that these two referents are both wars, it is perhaps unsurprising that they give to the discourse a heavily violent register. Fascism is “fought”; perhaps not because this is the best tactic, but because the “thugs” who espouse the ideology cannot be dealt with in any other way. (On occasions, it is even hoped that “they will not pass” – though to and from where is usually not elucidated).[4]

In this context, then, court action seems positively pusillanimous. It is a cowardly and hopelessly indirect way of “fighting the fascists”, which is not only ineffective (even counter-productive), but indicative of Leftist weakness: “we” should not need to use the “undemocratic” tactic of seeking restitution for “mere” speech-acts.

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[1] Yeah. Facebook; you know, whatever. I don’t even know if these online discursive oddities are worth commenting on anymore.

[2] And here I mean both the media both as an autonomous collection of opinions and narratives, and as a device for refracting the opinions and narratives of “primary definers” (politicians, union leaders, NGOs, industry leaders, police chiefs, etc.)

[3] The cross-class differences in British wartime experiences are well documented. At a conference in Huddersfield recently, I was exposed to a paper by this guy about the specificity of wartime experiences in Britain’s geographical extremities. Paul Gilroy has written about the tension between an establishment of World War Two (a time, after all, of relative ethnic homogeneity in Britain) as the pinnacle of British unity and the performance of anti-racist work. On the Spanish Civil War side, anyone who has read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia should be familiar with at least one aspect of the Republican forces’ internecine strife. This strife was the product, at least in part, of differing conceptions of the war’s function amongst different leftist factions. The conflict ultimately resulted in open fighting between Communist and Socialist/democratic forces.

[4] Incidentally, I don’t even really understand the sloganistic appeal of “They Shall Not Pass” (in either language). I’d much rather declare that some place or other “will be the Tomb of Fascism”.

Dawkins Meets Unspeak: British Humanists & Cultural Essentialism.

Richard Dawkins: good at biology.

Like any good Darwinian, Richards Dawkins no doubt rejects the idea that acquired properties are heritable.  This rejection, given Dawkins’ non-biological standpoints, is likely to become considerably more spit-flecked when the acquired property in question is religion. Given his Vice-Presidency of the organisation, then, the British Humanist Association’s new ‘Atheist Billboard Campaign’ seems to have arisen from a perfect storm of motivations.

But what to make of the endeavour? Certainly it is less punchable/laughable than the previous ‘Atheist Bus Campaign’ (which, to my knowledge, has not even been particularly effective in increasing the number of atheist buses on our streets).[1] There is clearly something in what the BHA are saying; the formulation “Muslim children” should give us some pause.[2] However, there are also several problems with the campaign.

Firstly, I don’t believe the expression “Muslim children” should give us any more pause than the even more common (and related) expression “Muslim community.” That is to say, the BHA’s campaign is ahistorical and acontextual in as much as it fails to appreciate the social, political, and etymological processes which have led us to this linguistic moment. Rather, the campaign takes this particular formulation, identifies it with insidious and brainwashing religious families and communities, and demands that it be expunged. This becomes particularly clear if one considers an article by Johann Hari from last year. Here, Hari presents the formulation (“[x] children”, where [x] is a religionym) as propagated by people who “want to get [children] at an age when their rational faculties are poorly formed, and implant [a religion] so deeply in their minds that they will become upset and confused when they hear rational counter-arguments.” This is not the case. As a quick example, we might mention former Labour MP for Selly Oak, Lynn Jones, an opponent of faith schools who nevertheless in a Commons debate on 6^th February 2002 spoke, she said, “as the parent of a child who attends a school with an intake of approximately 90 per cent Muslim children.”

Johann Hari: a Bertrand Russell for the David Mitchell generation.

Such terms are an outgrowth of broader debates and difficulties about the language to be used when discussing ethnic minorities. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, it was very common to hear Asian, West Indian and African migrants referred to collectively as “black” or “coloured”.[3] During the 1980s, however, this terminology began to change. Instead, the term “black and Asian” was often utilised (with “West Indian” sometimes standing-in for “black”). Since the Rushdie Affair, and especially after 9/11, the separation of a “Muslim community” away from the pre-existing duality has been effected. It is as “Muslims” that such people take their place in discussions about social problems, ethnic relations, and so on because it is their religion (and all that goes with it) that “creates problems”. But, of course, even leaving aside this political motivation which hides behind these discursive changes, none of the terms mentioned is literally accurate as a means of denoting the people they are taken to signify: all persons are “coloured” one shade or another; not all “black” people are “West Indian”; and, pertinently for our present discussion, not all members of the “Muslim community” (for example) are practising Muslims.[4] (This divorcing of a religionym from a strictly religious remit towards a more ambiguous function as a broad cultural descriptor is most clearly observable with relation to “Jewish” people, of course). Once the normative denotation of the descriptor “Muslim person” becomes something other than “a follower of the Muslim faith”, it is naturally only a small step which needs to be taken before we begin to talk about “Muslim children”. This, I believe, is how we arrive at the linguistic terminus which Dawkins, Hari, et al decry; not by the Machiavellian operation of anti-rationalist religious people.

But, even for all this, the above problems are not the most serious with this campaign. We might easily agree that “Muslim children” is to some extent an idiosyncratic formulation. However, the campaign moves from this proposition to a belief that the language concerned is intended to, or at least works to, frustrate freedom of religious choice. The children depicted on the BHA billboards balefully request, “[p]lease don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself.”[5] Yet it should be obvious that, for all its flaws, the phrase “Muslim children” does not foreclose the possibility of religious change. Can it really be that the multitude of actors, each with quite different religious and political perspectives, that use this term desires, tout court, that people should not be allowed to choose their own religion? Hari’s talk about “poorly formed rational faculties” and becoming “upset and confused” at “rational counter-arguments” manifests a similar misconception. Is the implantation of ideals in children really so simplistic a process? If it is, one wonders how there came to be any atheists at all. Many socialists produce, to their horror, conservatively-minded offspring; merely being introduced to a text or teaching is not equivalent to adopting that text/teaching for oneself.[6]

The Provisional Enlightnment Army: has spotted some white Buddhists in Holloway.

Let me gloss what I take to be the position of the NuAtheists on this matter. There is at present an international battle going on for hearts and minds. We, the atheists and agnostics, are rational and tolerant; we regard the scientific method as the only/primary legitimate epistemological activity. They, the religious, are irrational and intolerant; they are suspicious of and hostile towards scientific activity wherever it is performed and whatever its precise concern. We must, therefore, Re-fight the Enlightenment. In this battle, it seems, Our weapons will primarily be textual; whether the text be atop billboards or in piss-weak pop-philosophy monographs. All We need to do is ensure equal access to Our and Their texts, since, when given a free choice between these two world-views, any truth-loving, rational person will of course come and join in on Our side. This equity of access, however, is frustrated by Their refusal to play fair, by Their insistence on furnishing certain young hearts and minds with an impermeable membrane.

There are countless objections to this; I will here raise only two. Firstly, IANAP[7], but I do not believe it is possible for any parent to raise a child without leaving his/her mark upon that child in some way. Most persons would accept – I certainly do – that one function of a parent is to provide his/her offspring with a moral compass of some sort. For all people, I would say – or almost all – morality comes from, or experiences interplay with, religious and political positions. Therefore, for the religious amongst us, the moral tutelage which a parent is required to perform is inextricably linked to that parent’s faith. Even if we presume that Dawkins et al are being good intellectual libertarians, and furnishing their children copies of the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, the Bible, the Kojiki, the Torah, and the writings of Bahá’u'lláh and Meister Eckhart[8], we cannot assume that a parent only leaves the sediment of his/her own religious beliefs in the precious brainpain of his/her child by introducing that child to formally and systematically expressed religious ideologies.

Meister Eckhart: the face of pure evil. Probably burnt a book once, too.

Linked to this, we might consider the way in which the BHA reveals its conception of religion via this campaign. For the BHA, a religion is a textual corpus which aims to convince readers of the truth and falsity of certain propositions. But religions are not, that is to say that are not only, texts. For ethnic minority communities, and especially those for whom religious practice is a keystone of cultural identity, places of worship can function as centres of social support and solidarity; places where people who may be marginalised and in some senses misunderstood by society as a whole can expect to be better understood, in cultural terms.[9] Besides (and this should be a familiar argument), religious teachings do not exist only to convince people that certain propositions are true or false. They equally serve to encourage hope for an imagined, yet unknowable, metaphysical constellation. To tell such people that “THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD” may convince a Humanist that (s)he is a superior and rational being (or even that (s)he is “doing good”), but it is so far removed from reaching and engaging with the motivations for religious faith as to be simply inane.

At the risk of engaging in an unprompted condemn-athon (undoubtedly the worst kind): I am a secularist. This, as far as I understand it, means that I support, inasmuch as it is possible to achieve, the separation of Church and state. This is because I believe in freedom of religion, and that a government with theocratic elements would work against this. The BHA is not, at present, concerned solely with promoting secularism (e.g. with removing the Lords Spiritual from the House of Lords).[10] Rather, it seems concerned with the separation of religion from people’s mindbags. Even if the campaigning strategies of the BHA were not inane, smug, vacuous, posturing, etc., then I would see no reason why this is a social good-in-itself.

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[1] For another attempt by the NuAtheists to partake of deconstruction see this Unspeak.net entry, which concerns a Johann Hari article I will discuss further down in the main text.

[2] And those particular children are, I think, what this is about. Big, brown “Muslim” ones whose parents are in favour of faith schools. Besides, the formulation as applied to Christian children is just a truism; baptism, whether the BHA likes it or not, initiates into faith.

[3] The term “Black” (with this orthography) was often preferred by the Left, reasoning as it did that such terminology worked to promote unity between similarly-oppressed ethnic groups. Tariq Modood discusses this in much of his work; the essays in Not Easy Being British: Colour, Culture and Citizenship (Stoke-on-Trent : Stokeham Books, 1993) are a good, early and brief example.

[4] One might parenthetically wonder how much “practice” is required for one to become “practising.”

[5] As a side note, it is interesting to compare these BHA posters with material published by humanitarian organisations to support charitable work in the developing world. Look at this Oxfam example, which depicts three African children in need of improved health care: http://www.usu.usyd.edu.au/assets/images/oxfam_close_the_gap_poster.jpg In the First World, the “sickness” is a mental malady: creeping and covert desecularisation. “Only you can save” these children by…? Using language differently? Opposing faith schools? Being an atheist?

[6] The manner of this introduction may even invite rejection, of course.

[7] Here the “P” can stand for either “parent” or “psychologist”.

[8] This is a woefully scanty selection, of course; a bibliography far from sufficient to a ensure that a child is making his/her Own Choice.

[9] Virinder S. Kalra talks about this in relation to Muslim communities in Yorkshire and Lancashire in From Textile Mills to Taxi Ranks: Experiences of Migration, Labour and Social Change (Aldershot : Ashgate, 2000).

[10] And, yes, I know that the BHA does campaign for this.

“Political Correctness”: For Politics, Against Common Sense.

"Political Correctness": a very amusing pictoral lampoon.

I am very much enamoured of the blog Unspeak. For those of you unfamiliar with the site (and the book which shares its name), the basic premise of the author’s work is that: i) many words and phrases used in political contexts contain smuggled-in assumptions about the topic they relate to; ii) this has a vitiating effect upon political discourse by discrediting (or providing specious credit to) certain positions without the requisite argumentation; iii) this can indeed circumscribe certain positions by rendering them literally Unspeakable.[1] I don’t believe, however, that Stephen Poole has yet turned his attentions publicly to the concept of “political correctness”.[2]

So, like Alex D. Linz gamely limbering up to stand in for the Culkinator in Home Alone 3, I will here try to provide something of a Poolean analysis of the term “political correctness”. As they say in the “acknowledgements” of scholarly monographs: fanks to ‘im; but if this is shit, it’s my fault, right?

We might start by observing just how voluminous the concept has become for those who like to use it. I learned yesterday, via Roger Ebert’s review of the film, that Tom Six, director of The Human Centipede, has explained his movie via reference to the fact that he gets “a rash from too much political correctness.” So here we have a new (and, to say the least, surprising) definition of “political correctness ”: ‘not directing a horror movie about a grotesque, coporomanic medical experiment.’ To label something as “politically correct”, or to observe in it the Machiavellian hand of “political correctness”, is to do nothing more than to register one’s distaste; the phrase is a ‘boo’ term of very limited specificity.[3]

Dr. Heiter: prefers the vernacular.

It has long been accepted that speech, acts and speech-acts can all be “politically correct.” Indeed, the Wikipedia article for the term notes that, in America anyway, the phrase became especially salient during the Culture Wars. The discourse surrounding the Culture Wars joins speech and action almost inextricably: the merits of various educational “theories” were debated but always, of course, with the conscious recognition that any proposed theory must eventually be prosecuted in the “act” of teaching. Merriam-Webster confirms this duality, for that which is “politically correct” is “conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated.” Yet this definition seems odd. Any society which does not practice Jim Crow-type segregation is most definitely “conforming to a belief that… practices which [bloody well will] offend political sensibilities (as in matters of… [‘]race[’]) should be eliminated.” Yet it seems unlikely to me that many would identify anti-segregationism as a prime example of lily-livered p.c. Linksfaschismus.

Rather, the cudgels of the anti-p.c. brigade make their marks best when applied primarily to linguistic matters.[4] This, reflects, I believe, the “common sense” theorisation of the relationship between society and language. This “common sense” theory is, roughly, that society and language are two hermetically sealed bubbles: the latter exists in order to describe or advance positions relating to the former, but cannot impinge directly upon its reality.[5] Therefore, to oppose the utilisation of certain linguistic formulations is liberal/lefty/loony nonsense, since “it doesn’t really matter” how we name things. Vernacular is good, because… well, because it’s vernacular, that’s why. It’s “our natural” way of speaking, and we won’t give it up for anybody, especially not under the force of base political arguments made by agenda-pushing liberals probably working in the race relations industry.

Emancipation Proclamation: freedom-hating, right-on, p.c. fascism in action.

Of course, this ignores the fact that nominative changes are constantly occurring, have been a part of English throughout its history, and can be effected for both ‘political’ and ‘apolitical’ reasons (a distinction which is, in any case, almost impossible to discern in many instances). Yet I think that this “common sense” position can be assailed from two further related positions. Obviously, I do not agree with this strict separation between linguistic developments, norms, etc., and political activity. But I do not think that opponents of “political correctness” believe in this Manichean separation either. This is tacitly acknowledged in the commonly heard phrase “political correctness gone mad”. This formulation concedes that there is some basis for nominative contestation[6], providing that this is conducted in a ‘sane’ manner. What’s more, most of those who assail “political correctness” do so only because they themselves prefer the political content and implications of vernacular terms. Of course, supporters of vernacular terms would deny that there is any “political” motivation for their preferring those terms, and certainly would not agree that established terms can be just as loaded and discursively noxious as newer, unashamedly ‘agenda-driven’ formlations.

And this is precisely the issue. In the scheme of “political correctness”, “political” machinations belong solely to a certain subset of the Left; vernacular terms are presumably pre-political or apolitical. Those who use “political correctness” as an analytical term occlude any substantive discussion of which terms may be most neutral. It is “just obvious” that, for example, the exclusive use of “he” as a gender-neutral pronoun is preferable because empty of political content; this is, after all, just the way things are linguistically. It is — and not just in this sphere of discourse — only our enemies who have suspicious and decidedly political ‘agendas’: politics is a “point-scoring” game, “played” by the venal, duplicitous, or uncompromisingly ideological.[7] Self-described “opponents” of “political correctness”, then, whilst claiming to inhabit a brave or “common sense” position, as against the hang-wringing idealist unreality of the multiculturalist Left, are exceptionally cringing; their stance is underpinned by a denial of the fact that political contestation is the air we breathe.

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[1] Proposition i) should be uncontroversial. In support of proposition ii), one only has to think about some of Unpseak author Stephen Poole’s favourite examples: “climate change” works to unspeak (discredit or silence without argumentation) the scientific consensus about anthropogenic global warming; “Intelligent Design” speciously credits creationism with a new grounding that is only vaguely and implicitly theological. iii) surely depends on the principle of linguistic relativity: an idea suggesting that propagating or erasing  specific linguistic formulations will actually alter the possible mental conceptions of an idea available to speakers of (in this instance) English.

[2] There is no entry on the blog for the term; and an Amazon search of the book’s contents for the word “correctness” yields no results.

[3] “Very limited”, I think, rather than “no”. The term crops up largely in discussions about censorship, “free speech” and nominative practice. It has especial tendency to appear in material about attitudes towards ethnic and other minorities.

[4] “Primarily”, but by no means “entirely”. Positive discrimination, for example, is a type of policy proposal often decried (and effectively so) for its “political correctness.”

[5] My analysis here is drawing on Stanley Fish’s work; but not in any really specific way so that I can offer a citation. But, you know: go & read some Stanley Fish. G’WARN! Etc..

[6] Incidentally, this phrase is the one that I’m trying covertly to append over the top of “political correctness”. I’ve gotten it into conversation. It’s on my Ron Silliman-syndicated blog now. Sit back & wait, jellyspoons.

[7] Nick Clegg’s public persona is, or was in the lead-up to the election, positively built upon this foundation stone.

Guided by Vuvuzelas through the Dark Continent: African Football & Culture in British Eyes & Ears.

Siphiwe Tshabalala: fROMAFRICA.

One of my tutors, when discussing the ways in which petty ‘Africanist’ misconceptions endure in Europe, will often refer to the idea that “Africa is like a country.” I’m glad that she isn’t a football fan because, if she were, there would be a good few pundits eating through straws right now.

Indeed, the idea that South Africa 2010 is “Africa’s World Cup” has never been far to seek over the past few weeks. Of course, in one sense, this claim is trivially true: this tournament is the first to be held in Africa. And I have no doubt that there are plenty of Africans from, or residing in, nations other than South Africa who are pleased to see the competition reach shores proximate to theirs.

But discussion during the World Cup about “Africa” as a continent (its desires, hopes, emotions, etc.) has been common (pervasive?) in a way that is uncommon. Siphiwe Tshabalala’s opener in the very first game was greeted by Peter Dury as “a goal for all Africa!” Likewise, pundits commenting about Ghana’s match with the USA on Saturday were keen to impress upon us a continental narrative: Ghana’s term were (still are) Africa’s Last Hope. At various times, a team’s “record against African opposition” has been referenced as though it has some kind of explanatory or predictive value. To work out why this should be is left as an exercise for the viewer. It is also interesting to note that perhaps the most frequently heard apologia for the vuvuzela relates to “African tradition”. The instrument is neither “African”[1] nor “traditional” (its introduction dates back to about the 1980s, I believe). One wonders whether there is something about a monotone woodwind instrument that assists its inscription as “an African tradition” irrespective of any empirical basis.

To a degree, this is about Self/Other, I think. People in Europe are happy to ascribe a homogeneity or unity to other continents whilst denying that these exist deeply in their own because the conflicts, differences and disunities of European history and present are, from their perspective, too salient to be obscured.[2] When only Portugal are left remaining as representatives of the Occident, Clive Tyldesley will probably not be averring that Cristiano Ronaldo’s neat stepovers belong to us.

But there does also seem to be something in this presentation which distinctly relates to British perspectives only of Africa. “South America” as a signifier does have some cache in the footballing world, it’s true. South American teams attack with carefree verve and skill (though the Argentines, in English eyes especially, are rather more “pugnacious” than are their Brazilian landmassfolk). “Europe” is not entirely “empty” either; I remember Jim Beglin (I think) talking about Lars Lägerback’s attempts to instil in his Nigerian team “a more ordered, European style.” European sides (the Spaniards excepted, perhaps) are utilitarian; effective, dull, never likely to suffer outright embarrassment.[3] Yet these are totalising ideas which relate specifically to football styles; they don’t assert, though they might imply, specifically political ideas. African homogeneity shades into unity, and follows teams off the pitch and into social life more generally.

Vinny Jones: ordered.

I don’t mean, of course, to impute any malevolent motive to the pundits in question. If anything, in fact, these people are motivated by “progressive” goals (to portray Africa as exhibiting unity and strength, as possessing a cultural life which we should respect, etc.) But I think it is interesting to consider how these images of Africa came to be. I’d like to suggest that, for British commentators (in the broad sense), this idea of Africa is linked to the Empire. Britain’s African empire was largely sub-Saharan (after Egypt’s independence in 1922, Sudan was the only British North African territory, and this was held in condominium). For the British, “Africa” was black and either Christian or pagan. Post-war immigration has not changed this conception, since movement directly from Africa to Britain has been extremely small, and migration to Britain from North Africa’s Muslim areas specifically has been almost non-existent. In short, “Africa” in Britain is black and of dubious religious content; “Muslims” are Pakistani or Bangladeshi.

To return here to the World Cup, I noticed during England’s game with Africa that no mobilisation of the Three Lions’ “record against Africa” occurred; nor were the Algerians presented as the valiant representatives of Hausa villagers and Khwe bushmen. Algerians, olive of skin and Muslim of name, are clearly something other than African.

I wonder how France’s pundits deal with this? France, owing to its own colonial past, would have a bloody difficult job ignoring the multi-ethnic (to say the least) character of Africa and its culture. But in France, I believe, North African immigrants and their descendants are most often “les Arabes”.  What would be required for the popular realisation that, in two senses, the Dark Continent need not be so “dark”?

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[1] That is to say, it is especially South African; it doesn’t belong to the continent holistically.

[2] And here I mean, naturally, “(Some) people in Europe…”

[3] Feel free to make your own jokes about the England back four. Incidentally, the very pinnacle of “outright embarrassment” during a World Cup belongs without doubt to an African player.

[1]

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[1]Feel free to make your own jokes about the England back four. Incidentally, the very pinnacle of “outright embarrassment” during a World Cup belongs without doubt to an African player.