Secularism, Assimilation and the Crisis of Multiculturalism It Is Meant to Overcome
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IMISCOE Jansen This remarkable book develops a political theoretical critique of contemporary RESEarcH discourses on secularism and assimilation. Jansen argues that the perspective of assimilating distinct ethno-religious minorities by incorporating them into a secular and supposedly neutral public sphere can generate and perpetuate the very distinctions of Multiculturalism Assimilation and the Crisis Secularism, it is meant to overcome. To flesh out this insight she borrows from the literature on the paradoxes of assimilation as experienced by the French Jews in the late 19th century, through a contextualised reading of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Secularism, Assimilation and Jansen offers a dynamic, critical multiculturalism as an alternative to discourses focusing on secularism, assimilation and integration. the Crisis of Multiculturalism Yolande Jansen is a senior researcher at the Amsterdam Center for Globalisation Studies, University of Amsterdam. She is also a Socrates professor of humanism in relation to religion and secularity at the VU University Amsterdam. French Modernist Legacies “[A] brilliant and thorough philosophical reading of current writings on assimilation, multiculturalism and secularism, weaving together a rereading of Proust on Jewish experiences of the paradoxes of assimilation with current debates about the situation of Muslims in Europe.” John R. Bowen, Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis Yolande Jansen “Jansen’s brilliant and insightful analysis draws on a variety of fields and lucidly shows how the crisis is a crisis in modernity.” Brian Klug, Philosophy, University of Oxford “Jansen’s work is a hard-hitting and back to basics reminder of multiculturalism fundamentals. It also offers a brilliant, pragmatic and insightful analysis of what secularism makes invisible about the position of Muslims in France today.” Rim-Sarah Alouane, Université Toulouse I-Capitole Amsterdam University Press 978 90 8964 596 8 · .. Secularism, Assimilation and the Crisis of Multiculturalism imiscoe International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe The Imiscoe Research Network unites researchers from some 30 istitutes specialising in studies of international migration, integration and social cohesion in Europe. What began in 2004 as a Network of Excellence sponsored by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission became, as of April 2009, an independent self-funding endeavour. Imiscoe promotes integrated, multidisciplinary and globally comparative research led by scholars from various branches of the economic and social sciences, the humanities and law. The network furthers existing studies and pioneers new scholarship on migration and migrant integration. Encouraging innovative lines of inquiry key to European policymaking and governance is also a priority. The Imiscoe-Amsterdam University Press Series makes the network’s findings and results available to researchers, policymakers and practitioners, the media and other interested stakeholders. High-quality manuscripts are evaluated by external peer reviews and the Imiscoe Editorial Committee. The committee comprises the following members: Tiziana Caponio, Department of Political Studies, University of Turin / Forum for International and European Research on Immigration (fieri), Turin, Italy Michael Collyer, Sussex Centre for Migration Research (scmr), University of Sussex, United Kingdom Rosita Fibbi, Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies (sfm), University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland / Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lausanne Agata Górny, Centre of Migration Research (cmr) / Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, Poland Albert Kraler, International Centre for Migration Policy Development (icmpd), Vienna, Austria Jorge Malheiros, Centre of Geographical Studies (ceg), University of Lisbon, Portugal Marco Martiniello, National Fund for Scientific Research fnrs( ), Brussels / Center for Ethnic and Migration Studies (cedem), University of Liège, Belgium Eva Østergaard-Nielsen, Department of Political Science, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain Marlou Schrover, Institute for History, Leiden University, The Netherlands Patrick Simon, National Demographic Institute (ined), Paris, France Imiscoe Policy Briefs and more information on the network can be found at www.imiscoe.org. Secularism, Assimilation and the Crisis of Multiculturalism French Modernist Legacies Yolande Jansen IMISCOE Research Front cover art: Eva Meijer Colour editing front cover image: Daphne Rosenthal and Wouter van Riessen Back cover image: ‘Choisis, tu es libre’, cartoon by Auguste Roubille for L’Assiette au Beurre, 1904 Cover design: Studio Jan de Boer bno, Amsterdam Layout: Trees Vulto dtp and book production, Schalkwijk Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the us and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 596 8 e-isbn 978 90 4852 213 2 (pdf) e-isbn 978 90 4852 214 9 (ePub) nur 610 © Yolande Jansen / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2013 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written per- mission of both the copyright owners and the authors of the book. Table of contents Acknowledgements 9 1 Introduction The crisis of multiculturalism, new assimilationism and secularism 13 1.1 Contours of the book 13 1.2 Zigzagging between assimilation and multiculturalism 20 1.3 Where the secularism-religion framework comes in: A bifurcation within multiculturalism 38 1.4 The paradoxes of Jewish assimilation in France and the prism of In Search of Lost Time 46 1.5 Outline of the chapters 51 1.6 Disciplinary note 55 2 Assimilation in the French sociology of incorporation from a multicultural perspective 59 2.1 Why reintroduce assimilation? 59 2.2 Gérard Noiriel: Writing the history of power in the context of migration 61 2.3 A multicultural perspective: ‘I been in the right place, but it must have been the wrong time’ 73 3 The liberal sociology of assimilation and citizenship and its transnationalist alternatives 83 3.1 A sociological debate about assimilation and its normative implications for multiculturalism 83 3.2 Critique of postnationalism, multiculturalism and integration 84 3.3 The alternatives proposed by the ‘liberal assimilationists’ 90 3.4 Complications for a diagnosis: ‘On their turf’ 96 3.5 Alternatives 102 3.6 Against the new discourses of assimilation 108 TRANSIT I Proust as a witness of assimilation in 19th-century France 117 4 Alfred Bloch’s personal integration test at the threshold of his friend’s home 137 4.1 ‘And what’s the name of this friend of yours who is coming this evening?’ 137 4.2 The Revolution’s conditions of Emancipation 140 4.3 Bloch coping with paradox 151 4.4 Partiality, perspectivism and assimilation 155 5 Stuck in a revolving door Cultural memory, assimilation and secularisation 165 5.1 Assimilation, metaphor and cultural memory 165 5.2 Hannah Arendt reads Proust; from Judaism to Jewishness 176 5.3 ‘The Christians at the surface’; Zygmunt Bauman and the paradoxes of assimilation 179 5.4 ‘A consubstantial malaise of republican society’ 184 TRANSIT II Laïcité and assimilation in the Third Republic and today 195 6 Elements of a critique of the laïcité-religion framework 203 6.1 Towards a genealogy of the laïcité-religion framework 203 6.2 Laïcité and neo-Kantian liberalism 204 6.3 Kant at school; Durkheim and Buisson 212 6.4 Privileging Protestantism and the genealogy of the religious sign with a French twist towards ordre public 216 7 Secularism, sociology and security 225 7.1 The sociology of secularisation, normative laïcité and multiculturalism 225 7.2 The Stasi report: Un rapport sans médiation 226 7.3 Secularism or democratic multiculturalism? 229 7.4 Postmodern identity politics and security 236 8 The highly precarious structure of assimilation Modernist philosophical schemes, memory and the Proustian narrative 253 8.1 The invention of tense pasts after assimilation 253 8.2 Adorno’s and Benjamin’s exchange about assimilation and the rejection of Swann 255 8.3 Public and private Dreyfusism 258 8.4 The social discipline of forgetting 265 8.5 Forgetting and cultural memory 268 9 Concluding remarks 275 9.1 Introduction 275 9.2 The assimilation of the French Jews as a memory for today 275 9.3 Getting stuck in a revolving door in the early 21st century 277 9.4 Problematising the laïcité-religion framework instead of defining a ‘better’ laïcité 282 9.5 Multicultural alternatives 287 Notes 297 Works cited 311 Index 333 Acknowledgements One of the things that kept me going while writing this book was the thought that it would one day be finished and I would be able to write the acknowledgments, in which I would finally give a place to the team that sustained me. A range of people and institutions made this study possible. First of all, I would like to thank the supervisors of my PhD dissertation, which formed the basis of this book: Ieme van der Poel and Veit Bader. I greatly benefited from Van der Poel’s great knowl- edge of French studies and of the work of Marcel Proust in particular. Bader’s enormous erudition both in sociology and in social and politi- cal philosophy, particularly his interest in multiculturalism and secu- larism, has been invaluable