Lifestyle and rights

The human being always exists in a world, which presents itself in a constant state of flux. Within this undifferentiated and highly intense environment of integration, there is no room for a recognition of that person’s self as a distinct being. In a well-known correspondence with Freud, the French poet Romain Rolland named this feeling of being a drop in an infinite and abysmal ocean, as ‘le sentiment océanique’ (Freud, 2001: 65). Actually, there is nothing wrong in taking this nebulous experience also as a sort of ‘pure immanence’. However, whenever the human being attempts to distinguish himself or herself from the rest, the continuum of this state of being-in-the-world is necessarily interrupted. Although we can consider this as a primal disruption, it is not the once-and-for-all act of deducing oneself from an all-embracing environment. In order to survive, one needs not to lose the connection with other ‘residents’ of this world. So, there is nothing surprising about our encountering all other beings as ‘objects’ of desires flowing from our needs. Briefly, objects we encounter in the world always appear to us as ‘equipment’ (Heidegger, 2010: 66–72), that is, as tools assigned to certain sorts of tasks. Hence, we, as the beings-in-the-world, regard all other elements of this environment as beings-for-us.

From this point of view, all the surrounding world seems to be a constellation of tools assigned to certain jobs. In this regard, every tool is evaluated in terms of, first, the importance of the ends it is specified for, and then its compliance with the jobs it is intended for. Thus, the primordial state of an unbounded and liquid world gives way to a hierarchically structured world of equipment. In this world, all beings are either ready at hand or standing in reserve for satisfaction of prospective needs of human beings. Within the framework of this mode of existence, the only possible way of being connected to the world takes the form of an exteriority (Bataille, 1989: 27–30). That means to say that the underlying principle of any meaningful connection to those other objects depends strictly on the utility they yield. However, a connection which is based on utilization of the outer world presupposes, by some way or other, a producing or creating subject for whom this utility matters. In this way, the modus operandi of this world of objects as defined in terms of their usefulness for us is predetermined by an activity of production or creation.

However, this idea of production is always under a risk of infinite regress. Since the thing by means of which another thing is produced is also a thing, it also needs to be produced by means of another thing, which surely is another thing. So, the metaphysics of production requires us to construct an endless series of production, unless we assume a ‘thing’ that is not produced but from which everything else is produced. Assuming an ultimate source of production is the only accessible solution for problems posed by this mode of ‘exteriority’. The integrity and coherence of all creatures are secured by positioning a special kind of being which is able to create everlastingly on this ultimate ground. The locus of this being is the home where the ‘sacred’ dwells. Nevertheless, in order not to end up in the above-mentioned limitless ‘ocean’, a separation of the domain of the sacred from the not sacred is required. Through accompanying the primal disruption by a second disruption in the chain of beings, this act of separation leaves the door wide open for transcendence. From now on, it is impossible to experience the world as an area in need of nothing other than its own sources to sustain it; rather it is a transient environment constituted through influences emanating from a transcendent power.

Now, the fundamental question confronting various constructions of sacredness becomes more evident: What is the proper way of limiting the domain of the sacred that will secure the transcendence and exteriority of the ultimate source of all beings? This domain is defined by distinguishing objects connected to transcendence by way of differentiation and sublimation from objects of a worldly life. Religion takes its share from transcendent power to the extent that it performs well in separating the domain of sacredness; it is said to be a bond between human beings and gods. This bond ties us to each other, and thus forms the basis of social life. This understanding is also supported by an argument from the meaning of the etymological root of the term, the verb ‘religo’ – which in Latin means ‘to bind back, fasten up’ (Lewis and Short, 1956). However, this argument has its merit to the extent that it highlights an experience of transcendence which is possible only by means of participating in collective beliefs and rituals of a community. Nevertheless, the more the sacred integrates human beings in a whole, the more it discriminates between the objects of worship and worldly use. The sacred is possible only via a simultaneous and double use of integration and discrimination. To put it in other words, the sacred is the result of an ambivalent act of discriminating by means of integration and integrating by means of discrimination.

In a nutshell, religion determines the province of the sacred by way of delimiting and excluding the domain of objects defined through their material utility or value. What is at issue is to radicalize the primal disruption which qualifies human beings as singular and distinct entities through reproducing the discontinuity at the level of transcendence. Therefore, not only the classical formulation of secularism, which aims at liberating the public sphere from the domination of ‘the sacred’, but also the political-theological approach, which addresses the problems of modernity within the context of a disguised and refurbished dominance of ‘the transcendence’, ¹ suffer from the same insufficiency in regard to the basic problem of contemporary secular politics. According to these approaches, the basic issue stems from a realignment in relations between logics of the sovereign and the sacred or a redefinition of the position of state against religion. However, secularism is, at the deepest level, a reaction to the experience of transcendence that constitutes and redirects the collective life of human beings. Disregarding the limits imposed in favor of the transcendental dimension, and regaining the objects excluded from the daily life of citizens, constitutes the core of a neo-secular approach to the problems of politics. Unlike the classical formulations of secularism, the point is not to build boundaries between the profane and the divine, but to transgress these boundaries and reclaim the whole of life. ²

So, a really secular approach to the issue of human dignity could hardly be acquired by following the way outlined by Roland Dworkin (1993: 89–94) when he suggested a new understanding for ‘the secular sacredness’. To secularize the sacredness of human life means nothing more than refurbishing the other-worldliness by means of new conceptions. Since being secular means always being in contact with the material world, it is better to take a stroll outdoors for a breath of fresh air than serving a life sentence in the prison of sacredness. What is to be done is to give the dignity back to the common use of human beings and to invent new uses for the concept. This means to say that we have to pursue the ensemble of material traits constituting the value of being a human in the continuum of the everyday life of individuals. Thus, the issue of ‘lifestyle’ comes to light as the central question of the argument. Actually, unlike its Western counterpart ‘religion’, the etymological interpretations of the Arabic word ‘din’ lead us directly to reconsider the relations between religion and lifestyles. Eliminating various rival interpretations, Fazlur Rahman (1979: 100) eventually suggests that we understand this word as ‘the following of [the right] way and its subject is man’. In this regard, a full compliance with the obligatory rules which regulate our whole life in order to be a faithful person constitutes the essence of the word ‘din’. This is not a reflection of the holistic and repressive character of Islam, as most of the specialists of Islam believe. But it is a specific realization of a general property of the sacred in the context of Islam. A religious way of life is possible only on the grounds of stripping things in contact with the sacredness from their material utility.

Therefore, a radical conception of the secular requires us to inquire about the possibilities of leading a dignified life within a power network which longs for a control over the whole lives of individuals and legitimizes itself with a reference to transcendental dimension. Lifestyle is the sum product of human relations with the world created through the above-mentioned disruptions. One is obliged to interrupt the continuity of the immanent world and to draw thick limits in order to delineate one’s bodily existence and to make room for oneself. Those limits constitute the formal conditions of individuals presenting themselves as distinct beings in social life. I named the ensemble of those conditions as ‘lifestyle’. Lifestyle, from this view, seems to be the domain of distinctive subjectivities and irreducible singularities. For instance, the statements like ‘He is a man of style’ or ‘This is not her style’ are referring not only to aesthetic dimensions of self-presentation, but also to someone’s uniqueness and originality by way of underlining that person’s style. At this stage, we are apparently dealing with qualities that set individuals apart from the collectivity.

Perhaps some help from aesthetic theory may serve to highlight another feature of the concept of style. As it is widely known, the process of interpreting a work of art, mostly if not always, starts by determining the style of the artist. What is at issue here when we declare that a painting was painted in a classical style or that the architecture of a building has a Gothic style? Obviously, beside other factors, our opinions get their strength mostly from our knowledge of a common feature which goes beyond the individuality of those works and beyond what they share with other works of the same nature. Whenever the style of the work is at issue, a reference to an aesthetic partnership which eliminates the distinct and unique character of it is also in place. Hence, the work is subsumed under a law of universality which goes beyond its individuality.

Evidently, style is a means of placing a part in a greater whole (Simmel, 1991: 65), or rather representing singularity by means of the whole. Therefore, style finds its essential meaning in a relation of representation which operates by way of separation, on one hand; and by way of integration, on the other. It seems plausible to define lifestyle as one way of complying with this general law of representation. All activities of individuals concerning their affective and sexual orientations, habits of eating and drinking, domestic life, choice of vacationing, etc., are closely related to their lifestyle. Tastes and preferences which determine those activities are supposed to be a manifestation of the individuality of persons. Lifestyle designates how a person gets recognized by others through a presentation of the self by means of tastes and preferences; that is, it is an aestheticized form of one’s self-consciousness. From this point of view, it simultaneously connects a person to greater social groups and separates that person from others. By way of integrating people to identity groups, style subordinates all individuals to the laws of universality.

Now, it seems clearer why any definition of the sacred cannot remain indifferent to the lifestyle of human beings. To bring all humans together in accordance with the requirements of the sacred depends on extracting some properties that assure the specific qualities unique to the sacred from the routine of our daily life. The safest way of subjugating the immanence of life to the rule of transcendence is to determine the conditions of their preferences by way of lifestyles. The context within which the style acquires its political character is essentially related to this determination. In this regard, factors shaping the attitudes and behaviors of political actors are conditioned by production of styles, not by the style or mode of production. Because of this, there is nothing surprising about finding that in countries like Turkey, the political tensions stemming from the process of ‘modernization’ are essentially consequences of conflicts between lifestyles of different social groups.

The experience of Turkey is very much worth examining from this perspective. The subjectivities that determine individuals’ life-choices are also oriented through these structural agents of political modernization. In this context, the sense of personal belonging is determined by the choices of individuals who construct their selves and organize their lives on the basis of the limits of a politically defined ideal of citizenship. Changing fashions and dislocations in consumption culture caused by society and economy perform their effects only through engaging that citizenship ideal. In other words, state-specific rationalities and the state’s controlling eye govern its impact on the market and the lifestyles of social classes by engaging these with it. In line with this, it is obvious that the imperatives or standards of apparatuses such as schools, hospitals, workshops or quarters are quite decisive in forming lifestyles. ³

That these orienting institutions are organized by the law demands that one attach specific importance to the relations between law, politics and individuals. In this regard, legal moralism is the primary object of our discussion. I use the term ‘legal moralism’ to refer to the general tendency of political powers to aim to organize interpersonal relationships just as much as the relationship between the state and the individuals. Here, the notion of political power addresses the ideal of creating a better and more reliable society and being a stronger state. Legal moralism is utilized to determine the norms of law in terms of moral values and to define the political point of view that aims ultimately at the correspondence of morality and law. The immediate problem emerging in this regard is that the norms of morality, which are always controversial and are based on partially valid values, are enforced on the public via law. The basic form of that enforcement’s legitimization can be referred to as ‘legal paternalism’. Legal paternalism, without considering individuals’ consent, embraces the whole body of methods and tools that are utilized to realize the ‘general good’ of a specific value system.

The zone of intersection between legal moralism and legal paternalism is the exact ground of the problem: the very emergence of the politics of lifestyle in Turkey as a human rights issue. It would not be a mistake to say that this kind of legal paternalism has a historical background corresponding with the history of modernization in Turkey. Both the state-oriented nature of modernization and the role of the state as the driving agent of modernization lead to the subordination of human rights and freedoms in this process. However, these rights and freedoms are still seen as the ultimate and mediated acquisitions of ‘the process of modernization’. The ultimate aim of such a modernization process has become the creation of citizens equipped with the western values treated as the reference point of modernity. The focus of state policies, often enforced by legal sanctions, has become the dissemination of the cultural symbols representing these values and the diffusion of a system of pleasure and choices in the social field. In line with this, the values and lifestyles of individuals have been one of the main areas of intervention for state policies since the early republic.

This intervention process has operated via a complex mechanism that includes economic, political and ideological powers of the state as much as other apparatuses of force. The most striking effect of this mechanism emerges in relation to the use of rights allocated to citizens. Although citizenship is supposed to be defined on the basis of equal constitutional and legal rights, the disadvantaged position of some citizens relative to others necessitates a conceptualization specific to this issue. Since a right is supposed to be an authority recognized in an individual, it emerges as an indispensable condition of rights that individuals be equipped with the capacity to make the right’s use possible. Another necessity emerges: that there exists confidence that the use of a right will not force individuals into situations of disadvantage. We can conceive of the limits on the capacity seen as necessary to exercise a right, the domain of individuals excluded from the definition of ‘acceptable citizen’, as the ‘weak citizenship zone’.

Weak citizenship can be described in terms of the limitation of freedoms by way of de facto restrictions, invisible barriers and specific legal regulations, despite formal citizenship rights. Accordingly, individuals who utilize the freedom to organize their lifestyles in line with their own values and beliefs are directly or indirectly dislocated to this weak citizenship zone as they resist hegemonic value systems and legal paternalism. This is due to the fact that the power of legal paternalism in Turkey owes so much to sanctions of citizenship positions that de facto restrict the utilization of rights and freedoms. As an example, conservative and religious elements of society have been forced to reside in this weak citizenship zone throughout the long history of modernization in Turkey. This period can also be understood in terms of the struggle for the right to survive against the status of weak citizenship by those who have traditional values and are targeted by modernization practices.

Another facet of this period, however, is the emergence of social groups responsive to the aims of the modernization process. These social groups, which define themselves with reference to modernity and which have relatively internalized a western lifestyle and are mostly urban, have been privileged in terms of the utilization of citizenship rights in comparison with groups with traditional values. However, the social and political transformations that began in the early 1980s and have recently accelerated have caused a reversal of the equilibrium in favor of groups with traditional values. It is obvious that this transformation is influenced by various agents across various complex processes. Of these agents, one of the most significant is the elimination of socialism, once seen in many quarters as an ideal form of society, as a practicable alternative. This is because it has become possible for a dislocation to take place from the ground of material antagonisms defined in terms of divisions of relations in the political field to an axis centered on antagonisms of moral values.

This new axis paves the way for the definition of Islam as the belief system that determines the values of social groups that have long been in the weak citizenship zone. Islamic values thus gained a determinant position in the establishing of the renewed bond between conservative political actors and these social groups, and in the constitution of the framework of the communication between these agents. Initially, the effects of this transformation drew attention to the empowerment of the freedom of expression for groups once oppressed and excluded from the public sphere and citizenship rights. In other words, the addition of a spiritual intervention to politics was seen as involving a relatively modest political agenda. In fact, a legal moralism has emerged that can now demand the power of enforcement for its own moral values in the name of ‘general interest’ and ‘the common good’.

Several repercussions of this legal moralism can be traced across the polarizations around alcohol prohibition, abortion, obscenity, women’s rights, LGBTI rights, smoking and drug regulations, freedom of belief and freedom of expression. In these polarizations, the reference points for the new conservative gaze are the family, religion and communities formed by belief groups, all of which are supposed to hold society together. These reference points also indicate the existence of a transition towards seeing anything injuring these three institutions in the value system of legal moralism as against the general interest and the requirements of common life. In line with this transition, different lifestyles are evaluated through new polarizations that redefine positions and values across political divisions.

I propose that lifestyles are colonized by two different approaches, one of which refers to ‘modernity’ and defines itself through ‘westernization’, while the other refers to religion and defines itself through tradition and community. Yet current dynamics suggests that social groups who define themselves through modernity and westernization have become the new residents of the weak citizenship zone now determined by legal moralism. Legal moralism leads to difficulties in utilizing rights and freedoms for citizens simply because their values are condemned by the majority or their lifestyles are found immoral. This profoundly contradicts the belief in equal respect and value for each human being.

Here emerges the first aspect of legal paternalism that is of significance for the issue of human rights in Turkey. At this point, there emerges a different domain of concerns, related to the inviolability of private life; personal rights; freedom of expression; and freedoms of family, religion and conscience. If we consider these concerns in relation to the idea of de facto weak citizenship in Turkey, we move beyond the values of an individual alone, towards a new aspect of the problem that is important for political participation and the management of democratic mechanisms. The Gezi protests of 2013, with their main motif of political discontent, are the most significant indication of this dimension. Insofar as the paternalistic framing that has come to pervade the legal system and processes of political participation lacks institutional solutions for the opposition against moralism, this framing led to the emergence of widespread, continuous and determined street protests and to the violation of many human rights, including the right to life, in the course of their suppression. This is likely one of the reasons this period was referred to as a ‘revolt of dignity’.