Jewish groups in Israel and beyond are using what can be interpreted as tactical manoeuvres to silence their opponents. This is a tactical and moral mistake.
Judith Butler recently received the prestigious Theodor W. Adorno Prize, awarded by the city of Frankfurt. The prize is intended to honour someone who reflects, within the philosophical field, on the latest questions concerning the arts, culture and music, as well as her engagement in critical theory.
Butler is a feminist philosopher who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and a specialist in Hegel. She is an eminent feminist intellectual, a defender of “queer theory” and a fierce adversary of Israel and its policies. The decision to award her the Adorno Prize raised a heated controversy in Germany, with the opposition of a few far-left groups and — chiefly — of the Jewish community. The leader of that community, Stephen J. Kramer, questioned the decision to grant her the prize, which, he said, would legitimize the virulent anti-Zionism that Butler represents. Others called on the city of Frankfurt to reconsider its decision.
At first glance, the criticism of Butler seems solid. Her anti-Zionism does not always seem fully aware of the complicated history of that country, nor of the weakening — provoked by her calls for boycott and for the rupture of relations with Israel — of the very groups most able to help, here, in the struggle for justice. More troubling are her declarations of partial support for Hezbollah and Hamas. In response to a question posed during a public lecture, she declared that the two well-known Islamic religious-military groups are part of the global left. The syllogism that lies behind this astonishing proposition is that anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, in all their forms, are part of the global left, that Hamas and Hezbollah fight Israeli imperialism, and that they therefore belong to “the global left” (What this mysterious entity called the “global left” might be, I cannot say).
Understand me well. Intellectually, I have never been particularly interested in Butler’s philosophy. My intellectual affinities draw me closer to feminist intellectuals like Catharine MacKinnon, Seyla Benhabib, or to the African-American feminism of Patricia Hill Collins. What is more, politically, I identify more easily with the ‘old’ left (which concerns itself with wages and inequalities, with racism and immigration laws) than with the New Left of which Butler is a representative (which concerns itself with sexual politics and gender in an attention-seeking way). But as an Israeli of the left, I am at the same time dismayed and troubled by Butler’s positions.
To place Hamas and Hezbollah within the global left is not only to insult the left but to deal it a serious blow. Two armed movements, financed by Iran, that fight for sharia, jihad and the murder of Jews, that impose the ‘sexual purity’ of women, that apply capital punishment and declare themselves homophobic cannot belong to any left that I or most people know. It is Israel and the Jews that motivate the armed struggle of Hamas and Hezbollah, not a more just world order. And whatever Judith Butler may or may not have said on the subject of Hamas and Hezbollah, however nuanced her declarations may have been, she has not explicitly disavowed these groups’ positions on sexuality, gender and religion, to say nothing of their antisemitism.
Butler seems to have trouble understanding that Israel can have a colonial policy and that this policy is being fought by groups that defend many ideas foreign to the left. That she seems to neglect this aspect not only discredits her struggle for justice in Israel but, more seriously, weakens the moral authority of the left. That Israel conducts a colonial policy in the territories and has a repugnant policy toward Eritrean refugees and immigrant workers (thanks to Interior Minister Eli Ishai) does not make Hamas and Hezbollah members of the global left.
This said, I support, and I support firmly, the decision to award Butler the Adorno Prize. I have, for this, four compelling reasons.
1.
A prize of this importance is usually awarded on the basis of the contributions a person has made in his or her field. Having sat on numerous committees awarding such prizes, I think there are two ways for a member of such a committee to choose a fitting laureate: by choosing someone whose work either is intellectually close, or has a significant impact in his or her field, even if one does not particularly approve of that work.
The contribution to a field of work is assessed by criteria such as the number of citations [in specialized journals] and the level of the discussions it generates. From this point of view, there is not the shadow of a doubt that few intellectuals have had as significant an impact as Judith Butler, and that in many fields, such as literature, philosophy, cultural studies, art history, communication, film studies, sociology and anthropology.
Whatever their intellectual affinities, the members of the Frankfurt scientific committee who chose her acted responsibly toward the global scholarly community. No one can ignore her important influence on the renewal of critical theory so dear to Theodor Adorno.
2.
Let us perform a thought experiment. Let us imagine that the prize had been awarded, in theoretical physics, to a laureate holding the same political opinions as Judith Butler. I doubt that in such a case we would have witnessed the same gross interferences in the decision of a scientific committee. In the sciences, the distinction between intellectual work and political positions is structural (for those that use a formalized language); the result is that attempts to interfere in the decisions are less legitimate and less likely to occur. Moreover, the boundary between the humanities and political positions often seems tenuous. This is, of course, an illusion, for the same separation exists, whether the intellectual is a historian of the Middle Ages, a philosopher of language or a specialist in theoretical physics. Likewise, there is no direct continuity between Butler’s analyses of Hegel and her political positions. The integrity of a scientific committee is measured precisely by its capacity to distinguish the laureate’s scholarly contributions from his or her political opinions. The Frankfurt committee is composed of intellectuals of the highest intellectual and moral repute, and one cannot call their decision into question lightly, however disagreeable the laureate’s political opinions may be.
3.
While I can fully understand the source of the suffering expressed by the Jewish community of Germany, its interference represents a tactical and moral mistake. It is in the public sphere that opinions like those of Judith Butler must be fought. Increasingly, Jewish groups in Israel and outside Israel make use of what can easily be interpreted as brutal means of preventing their adversaries from expressing themselves. Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, the Eritrean refugees and non-Jewish immigrants is morally indefensible; criticisms of this policy will make themselves heard more and more, and among them some will be valid and others not. To muzzle the critics, even those that are not valid, cannot be a good response. In fact, it only confirms the central argument that Israel and those who support it rely more and more on undemocratic policies and means. Democracy consists in nothing more than agreeing to oppose, in the same way, both valid opinions and those that are not. Some of Judith Butler’s political opinions are not valid, but the correct way to fight them is to use argument and debate, not the muscular power of an institution.
4.
Finally, had the Frankfurt committee given in to the pressures, it would have opened the door to new forms of scientific and political warfare in which a group strong and noisy enough could contest the legitimacy of scientific awards given to people who hold “bad” political opinions and who express them. Should we, for example, refuse the Nobel Prize to scholars who support the settlements in the occupied territories? This could be the case of the 2005 Nobel laureate in economics, Robert Aumann, who justifies his opposition to Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip by imagining a theoretical case drawn from game theory that he calls the Blackmailer’s Paradox. Should his political positions and his way of mixing science and politics have disqualified him from receiving the Nobel Prize, as numerous appeals published in the European press demanded? The Nobel committee was right to reject them. If it was rejected then, it should also be rejected now. If we look back, the Nobel committee’s refusal to honour Jorge Luis Borges on account of his possibly conservative political opinions cast a shadow over the committee, not over the writer.
Let us recall the deep sagacity of John Stuart Mill, who defended everyone’s right to speech. For the celebrated author of On Liberty, we can never be sure that an opinion reduced to silence does not contain some element of truth. To allow people to express false opinions is useful to society for two reasons. First, false beliefs and ideas can more easily disappear or weaken if they are subjected to a free confrontation of ideas. Second, debate will force the holders of false ideas and of just ideas to examine themselves. For Mill, to hold an opinion, even if it is just, is not enough. An opinion must rather be examined. One must understand why one’s opinion is the right one. This process of self-examination can take place only if we do not act as censors.
But I cannot fail to note the many ironies of the situation: Judith Butler is tasting the fruits of her own political ideas of boycott; and her award is here defended by someone who believes in procedural democracy, whose premises she has rejected throughout her career. Would Judith Butler have supported granting a scientific award to someone whose political opinions she does not respect? I wonder.
A version of this article was published in Der Spiegel.
Eva Illouz, 20 September 2012, published in Haaretz.com
Translation by David Oppenheim.