Abstract
Reviewed by: Dubi Kanengisser (dubi.kanengisser@utoronto.ca ), University of Toronto
Peoples under prolonged foreign rule will tend to develop submissive traditions, most likely mediated through religious institutions. To negate this submissiveness, those elements of the people who strive for liberation are likely to negate religion altogether, and they might do this by adopting an ideology from the very foreigners they oppose. These secular liberation movements are engaged in a double struggle: opposing the foreigners in the name of the primordial peoplehood; and opposing the religious tradition through the ideologies of the foreign rulers. Yet while the fight against the foreigners may be successful, the fight against tradition rarely is. This failure to truly replace traditionalism with secularism enables the traditionalists themselves to undergo a transformation into a radical form. Radical religion sheds its former submissiveness while maintaining its illiberal faults. The result of the religious counterrevolution is a threat to the very secular revolution that enabled it to hatch. This, in brief, is what political theorist Michael Walzer terms “the paradox of liberation”: in order to succeed in the project of liberation, the people must be “liberated” from the very ways and values that they cherish. His recent thought-provoking book discusses this paradox, rejects those explanations that deny it, and strives to understand its underlying logic. This is achieved through an examination of three cases: Algeria, India, and Israel, which, Walzer argues, have gone through similar processes to that described above.
It is difficult to critique Walzer’s argument since the book is replete with caveats and disclaimers. First and foremost, he states that his goal is “understanding, not scientific explanation” (xi), that he does not claim to describe “laws” but merely offer a “beginning for a necessary inquiry” (ibid.). He further concedes that the three cases differ in many ways, and that “each can be described in ways that would greatly complicate my schematic account” (ibid.). And yet, other than occasionally recognizing these differences, little is done to reconcile them with the broad argument.
Thus, with any argument about the historical veracity of the descriptions and validity of the comparisons fully pre-empted, one is left with almost no perch for an analytical debate of the argument presented. For example, with regard to Israel, one may point out that despite the substantial impact that the religious settler movement has had and continues to have on Israeli politics, it is still far from anything resembling hegemony in what remains very much a secular state; that far from touting anti-modernist values, the leader of the National Religious Party today is a high-tech entrepreneur who has placed STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education as a top priority for the education ministry under his guidance; that while it is true that the ultra-orthodox community is the fastest growing community in Israel, this is true not because of “the willingness of many women to return to Orthodoxy and accept a version of the old subordination” (130), but primarily because of the natural growth of a population with a much higher birth rate than the secular one. One may even venture to point out that the subordination of women within the orthodox communities in Israel has gotten worse over the years, and in no way reflects a “return to the old subordination.”
Surely, a reader better versed in the histories of Algeria and India can spot many such flaws in the arguments relating to those countries as well. Neither Algeria’s nor India’s historical trajectory has been as uniform and clear cut as Walzer would have us believe: fully secularized revolutionaries, replaced with an inexorable religious counterrevolution. Even a cursory look at the past few decades in both countries would lead us to reject such a statement. Indeed, Walzer hardly denies that his description is schematic at best. But then we must ask if any conclusions—any “understanding”—can be drawn from what is essentially a deeply flawed representation of history.
Walzer also fails to provide even an intriguing solution to the puzzle he constructs. At one point, he dismissively states that “ultimately, the counterrevolutionists [in Israel] will fail” (63) although he offers no explanation for this conviction. His proposed solution to the paradox is surprisingly uninspired: liberation must be “negotiated” within each nation and each religious community to achieve a compromise that is acceptable to all. Religion may be critically appraised only from within, after it has been “incorporated into the culture of the new” (126). Yet it is not clear what authority will enable this critical appraisal. Indeed, “moderate,” “reformed” forms of every religion already exist, including in Judaism, but these have failed to find much purchase within national homelands (as Walzer himself points out). Instead, to take again the Israeli example, even the secular Jews in Israel are orthodox secular Jews. Walzer neglects to discuss the question of why such liberal forms of religion have faltered in all of his examples. Nor does he discuss how a process of “negotiation” of illiberal traditions can avoid sacrificing the freedoms of some as compromises on the way to a negotiated liberation.
Walzer is at his best when he eschews the attempt at comparison and discusses with nuance and sensitivity the specificities of each case. His portrayal of each nation’s struggle of liberation is edifying and provides insights that, on their own, would have made for a sufficiently worthwhile study of the topic. Ultimately, however, Walzer fails to achieve his stated goal of “understanding” the phenomenon he describes. In part, it is because he gives himself so much leeway in presenting his argument that it is not clear that there is truly a phenomenon that requires understanding at all. But it is also because, even within the terms that he sets, he offers far more questions than answers.