|
As he points out,
“Common imaginaries have disappeared. Utopia has been replaced by moral
judgement and support for categorical causes.” Instead of trying to
change society as a whole, we see “the demand from an atomized set of
subjective positions for safe spaces for themselves” — not a politics of
engagement or integration, but a practice of social protectionism.
“Intersectionality” has become a demand for recognition of individuals
suffering from multiple oppressions instead of a cry for revolution to
overcome their circumstance by assembling a united front with others.
What Constitutes “The Culture” Anymore?
The emergence of this condition sets the stage for today’s pitched battles over what constitutes “the culture.”
Roy recounts the
stumbling effort to define European culture when a new constitution for
the European Union was considered in 2000. Was Europe a “secularized
Christian culture” rooted in “natural law, family and gender
complementarity?” Or were its principle cultural pillars “the liberal
values that have become dominant since the 1960s: sexual freedom,
feminism, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, etc.?” Which set of norms were
Muslim immigrants supposed to adopt or respect?
In the end, the
Christian reference was rejected, in Roy’s surmise, since “part and
parcel of the liberal project is deculturation” that rejects identity
embedded in any holistic or organicist context bequeathed by the
historical past. The default substitute was “the European way of life”
vaguely defined in lowest common denominator terms such as “freedom and
democracy.”
That settled nothing
fundamental. A quarter of a century later, movements led by the likes of
Victor Orban in Hungary and Giorgia Meloni in Italy have found wide
enough resonance in their call for the return to a more traditional and
less liberal culture to take center stage. The Alternative for Germany
party is now more popular than Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social
Democrats. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally garnered its
largest share of votes ever in recent elections and is wrangling over a
new government with the waning center and broad left that banded
together to blunt its chances. The hung parliament duly reflects a hung
society.
“Family, faith and
nation,” as in earlier times, has become the rallying cry of these
constituencies against the far left and liberal elites whom they see
opening up borders to foreign hordes that poison homeland purity and
transgress the norms of natural law by wholly embracing the LGBTQ+
agenda. The most emotional normative combat is over questions of
same-sex marriage, gender identity, parental control and, still after
all these years, abortion. American politics these days roughly
corresponds with these divisions. All politics, it appears, are no
longer even local, but increasingly personal and even bodily.
In this standoff
where there is no arbiter, both the once dominant and newly insurgent
cast themselves as victims under assault by those who would threaten
restoration or further encroach on their diminishing domain. As with the
original French Revolution of 1789, the cultural revolt of 1968 to
which Zhou referred is eating its own children. The starkest
reverberation pits a return to the ancien regime against the guillotine of cancel culture.
Thrown out with the dirty bathwater of the culture wars is the universal dimension of all identities. While, as Roy posits, liberal universalism by
definition implies deculturation, humanism connects both what is common
and distinct in the human condition. Tragically, that integral quality
is what is being lost. “What we are living through now,” he concludes in
the book’s last line, “is a true crisis of humanism.” |