Encounters: France, Islam, and the Secular Order

The articles in this volume critique the representational systems radically demarcating “Islam” and “France”; mutually, the pieces aim at a “recognition” [Anerkennen] of the innate capacity of the subjects implicated in the dialectic of French exceptionalism to free themselves from static particularity and share in the concrete dynamism of ethical life. Our collection opens with a vigorous challenge to the premise of this volume. Questioning from the outset the terms of the debate on the relation of Islam and secularism in France, Elisabeth Roudinesco, in a spirited exchange with Christine Fizser, rejects the notion that particularity in all its forms—including “ostentatious” religious signs—can be taken as a basis for universality. True enough, abstract conceptions of citizenship and universality must find particular and concrete expression: the uniqueness of “French” “laicit e,” after all, necessarily consists in its historical specificity. Its inherited forms, moreover, cannot easily be displaced or preserved intact: they resist and remain subjects of performative resignification. Acknowledging and giving primacy to the given forms of the secular order, Roudinesco argues that the discourse on and expressions of Islam in France must be engaged in the unique context of the “French exception.” She thus rejects new terms from the left like “Islamophobia” in favor of more normative concepts like “racism” and those from the right like “Islamogauchisme” in favor of the traditional defense of free intellectual exchange. It could be asked whether there is a false equivalence here: “Islamophobia” refers to a well-documented phenomenon in France, while “Islamogauchisme,” many argue, names a non-existent conspiracy. At the same time, the latter term marks a quintessential articulation of the universalist order. Critical analysis reveals the term’s performative function: to conjure and stoke fear of a racialized specter in the service of the autochthonous tendencies Roudinesco clearly despises. “Islamo-gauchisme” in this respect exposes the ironic structure and thus dialectical instability of the universalist concepts of French secularism and, moreover, instantiates their perversion in the service of hegemony. Given the rising tide of ethnonationalism in France, we view the deconstruction of “Islamo-gauchisme” and other such terms as an increasingly urgent task. We further defend, with Hegel, the aesthetic modality through which universality—a fundamentally revolutionary impetus in its Islamic and French forms—can find recognitive expression on earth: for freedom must emerge