Public Reason and the Limits of Liberal Anti-Racism in Latvia

Bibliographic Data

ID2142575
AuthorsD Dzenovska (0000-0001-5964-1804, University of Latvia, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume75
Issue4
Pages496-525
Publication date2010-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnos (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1844 • E-ISSN: 1469-588X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00141844.2010.535125
OpenAlexW2009878026
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited39

My paper is a critical analysis of anti-racist and tolerance promotion initiatives in Latvia. First, I trace the historical and geopolitical conditions that enable the emergence of two discursive positions that are central to arguments about racism - that of liberally inclined tolerance activists and that of Latvians with politically objectionable nationalist sensibilities. Subsequently, I argue that, plagued by developmentalist thinking, anti-racist and tolerance promotion initiatives fail in their analysis of contemporary racism. They posit backward attitudes as the main hindrance to the eradication of racism and displace racism as a constitutive feature of modern political forms onto individual and collective sensibilities. Instead of the fast track diagnosis of racism that animates liberal anti-racism, I suggest that an analysis of racism should integrate attention to the common elements of modern racism across political regimes and the historical particularities that shape public and political subjectivities in concrete places. Keywords: Anti-racismliberal political culturenationalismmodern stateLatviapostsocialism Acknowledgements I would like to thank Iván Arenas, Alexandre Beliaev, Bruce Grant, Gillian Hart, Cindy Huang, Katherine Lemons, Saba Mahmood, and Alexei Yurchak for reading and commenting various versions of this article, as well as Guntra Aistara and Hadley Renkin for providing intellectual sustenance at various stages of research and writing. I would also like to thank the editors and the two anonymous reviewers of Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology for their comments and provocations. The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropology provided funding that made research possible. Notes Another such institution - the European Monitoring Center for Racism and Xenophobia - was recently transformed into the European Fundamental Rights Agency, thus possibly suggesting a move away from the language of tolerance to the language of rights. It is important to note that while formally tolerance promotion activities did not specify the ethnic affiliation of their target audience, it was a Latvian public that was interpellated through these activities and that subsequently was produced as the depository of nationalist sensibilities. See Wendy Brown's (2006) Brown, Wendy. 2006. Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] work for a critical engagement with tolerance as a supplement to liberal political rule, a civilizational discourse, and a mode of governmentality. Brown argues that the discourse of tolerance entails hierarchical power relations between those who are to extend tolerance and those who are to be tolerated. Moreover, the discourse of tolerance has a depoliticizing effect insofar as it posits the question of difference as a matter of sensibilities rather than structural inequalities. Finally, it serves as a civilizational device in the discourses of the West about the rest. Rogers Brubaker (2006) has argued that the convergence of the cultural nation and the territory of the state is the primary goal of nationalist politics in Central Eastern Europe. Nineteenth century nation-building and early twentieth century nationalization of multinational territories created states whereby one people were identifed as a state people and others were relegated to the status of minorities (Arendt 1979 Arendt, Hannah. 1979. The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: A Harvest/HBJ Books. [Google Scholar]; Weitz 2008 Weitz, Eric D. 2008. From the Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations, and Civilizing Missions. American Historical Review, December: 1313-1343. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). In a conference presentation, Maria Golubeva (2005) Golubeva, Marija. Neiecietība un izslēdzošie diskursi sabiedrībā (Intolerance and Discourses of Exclusion in Society). Presentation During Conference Family, Marriage and Social Integration in the Context of Diversity and Intolerance. 15 November. www.politika.lv (accessed November 17, 2005) [Google Scholar] outlined how discourse analysis can be helpful in identifying intolerance and racism in public statements. She drew heavily on the work of van Dijk (2002) van Dijk, Teo. 2002. "Denying Racism: Elite Discourses and Racism". In Race Critical Theories, Edited by: Essed, Philomena and Theo Goldberg, David. 307-324. Blackwell Publishing. [Google Scholar] who pioneered discourse analysis as a mode of diagnosing racism. I do not map these positions onto bounded groups or juxtapose them to each other as a priori existing positions. Rather, I treat them as relationally constituted discursive positions that people come to inhabit in particular situations. Due to historical sedimentations, people who consider themselves Latvian are more likely to identify with one rather than the other. Nevertheless, the designation 'Latvian', here serves as what Rogers Brubaker has referred to as a 'category', which has potential for group formation, but is not in itself a group with desires and aspirations (2006:11). Articulation as an analytical construct is borrowed from the work of Antonio Gramsci via Stuart Hall (Hall 2002 Hall, Stuart. 2002. "Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance". In Race Critical Theories, Edited by: Essed, Philomena and Goldberg, David They. 38-68. Malden: Blackwell Publishers. [Google Scholar]). I thank the anonymous reviewers of Ethnos for pointing this out. In intervening on this register, my paper resonates with Alana Lentin's analysis of state-based anti-racism in Europe. Lentin argues that race in Europe has been 'stripped of its politics and modernity', instead relegating it to the realm of backward, un-modern, and pathological attitudes and dispositions, which can be tackled through education and development (2008b:493; see also Lentin 2008a Lentin, Alana. 2008a. After Anti-Racism?. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 11(3): 311-331. [Crossref], [Web of Science (R)] , [Google Scholar]:7). One non-governmental organization used the problem of nationalism as a justification for their program activities in the area of democratization. While a staff member admitted that this is an exaggerated rendering of the situation, he used it, because the problem of nationalism had become an established and recognizable problem for international funders. In this approach, I draw on Karl Marx's insistence to advance from the abstract to the concrete (Marx 1977 [1857] Marx, Karl. 1977 [1857]. Karl Marx: Selected Writings, Edited by: McLellan, David. 345-360. Oxford: Oxford University Press. General Introduction [Google Scholar]; Hall 2003 Hall, Stuart. 2003. Marx's Notes on Method: A 'Reading' of the '1857 Introduction'. Cultural Studies, 17(2): 113-149. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science (R)] , [Google Scholar]). In his general introduction to the 'Grundrisse', widely known as the '1857 Introduction, Marx reflects on the notion of 'production in general' to make this methodological point. Marx's argument is that some form of production occurs in all historical periods and places, such that one can therefore say that there is something in common between them. He further suggests that this identification of a common element - 'production in general' - is a mode of abstraction, which should be the starting point for further scientific inquiry that considers the specific mode of production characteristic of a concrete time and place. This entails tracing all the historical determinations - 'the specificities and the connections' - that make up this concrete situation (Hall 2003 Hall, Stuart. 2003. Marx's Notes on Method: A 'Reading' of the '1857 Introduction'. Cultural Studies, 17(2): 113-149. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science (R)] , [Google Scholar]). The African Latvian Association was established in 2004, and at the time of my research between 2005 and 2008, it consisted of about 30 members. The organization was initially meant as a support group for people experiencing racism on a daily basis. Over the next several years, the organization established a visible presence and participated in tolerance promotion activities. This was largely thanks to determined leadership, for the views of the members differed with regard to how strong their public anti-racist stance should be. With the departure of their former leader in 2007, the activities of the organization have subsided. See Allina-Pisano and Allina-Pisano (2007) Allina-Pisano, Eric and Allina-Pisano, Jessica. 2007. "Friendship of Peoples' After the Fall: Violence and Pan-African Community in Post-Soviet Moscow". In Africa in Russia, Russia in Africa: Three Centuries of Encounters, Edited by: Matusevich, Maxim. 175-198. Trenton: Africa World Press. [Google Scholar] about similar practices in post-Soviet Russia. See Quist-Adade (2007) Quist-Adade. 2007. "The Ones They Left Behind: The Life and Plight of African Russians". In Africa in Russia, Russia in Africa: Three Centuries of Encounters, Edited by: Matusevich, Maxim. 153-173. Trenton: Africa World Press. [Google Scholar] for an account of how the Soviet state tried to manage romantic relationships between local Russian women and African students in Moscow. Hutzuls are a Transcarpathian ethnic group. Many Hutzuls came or were brought to Latvia to work during the Soviet times. Hutzuls are often lumped together with people from further East or South and referred to as 'all those blacks'. By 'killing' Foucault does not mean 'simply murder as such, but also everyday form of indirect murder: the fact of exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or, quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on' (2003:256). The Soviet state's record with regard to 'racial politics' was debated some time ago in a special issue of Slavic Review. In response to the original article by Eric Weitz (2002a) Weitz, Eric D. 2002a. Racial Politics Without a Concept of Race: Reevaluating Soviet Ethnic and National Purges. Slavic Review, 61(1): 1-29. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] in which he suggested that the Soviet state also relied on and constituted racialized difference to organize social and political life, some commentators emphasized differences between the Soviet state in relation to other racist regimes such as Hitler's Germany. Francine Hirsch (2002) Hirsch, Francine. 2002. Race Without the Practice of Racial Politics. Slavic Review, 61(1): 30-43. [Crossref], [Web of Science (R)] , [Google Scholar] argued that the Soviet state explicitly countered racial politics and did not incorporate racial differentiation in statecraft and state practices. She emphasized the distinctiveness of the Soviet regime and thus objected to Weitz's argument that the distinction between race and nationality was blurred during the Soviet period. Such a blurring, she noted, lumped distinctive regimes into the same category of racism. Alaine Lemon (2002) Lemon, Alaina. 2002. Without a 'Concept'? Race as Discursive Practice. Slavic Review, 61(1): 54-61. [Crossref], [Web of Science (R)] , [Google Scholar], in turn, called for attention to race as a discursive practice, which does not require state-based racial politics. On the basis of ethnographic research, she noted how the police could identify people as Gypsies and treat them differently, even as the state did not subscribe to racial politics. Responding to his commentators, Weitz (2002b) Weitz, Eric D. 2002b. On Certainties and Ambivalences: Reply to my Critics. Slavic Review, 61(1): 62-65. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] argued that racial politics are not necessarily about murder, but they can be about construction of hierarchies of difference that lead to discrimination. In his work 'Publics and Counterpublics, Michael Warner (2005) Warner, Michael. 2005. Publics and Counterpublics, New York, NY: Zone Books. [Google Scholar] outlines the way a public figures in the modern imaginary, namely as a stranger sociality conjured up by the circulation of public discourse. The public, thus, exists by virtue of being addressed and recognizing this hailing. Warner also argues that public discourse circulates in struggle with its own conditions, because it does so within the framework of a particular language, culture, and style of address. Such an understanding of racism is different from the one which animates Michael's critique of the seemingly innocent looks which nevertheless suggest that racist imaginations and practices of othering are deeply constitutive of the ways people orient themselves in a world they take for granted. The definition of racism as intentional expression of superiority has been challenged by a multitude of theorists of race who argue instead that modern ways of organizing the world are deeply racialized and that racism therefore manifests itself in myriad micropractices through which people make sense of themselves in the world and through which people are governed (Baker 2002 Baker, Martin. 2002. "The Problems with Racism". In Race Critical Theories, Edited by: Essed, Philomena and Theo Goldberg, David. 80-89. New York: Blackwell Publishers. [Google Scholar]; Omi & Winant 2002 Omi, Michael and Winant, Howard. 2002. "Racial Formation". In Race Critical Theories, Edited by: Essed, Philomena and Theo Goldberg, David. 123-144. New York: Blackwell Publishers. [Google Scholar]; Gilroy 2006 Gilroy, Paul. 2006. Postcolonial Melancholia, New York, NY: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]) or, as Michel Foucault (2003) Foucault, Michel. 2003. Society must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France, 1975-1976, New York, NY: Picador. Translated by David Macey [Google Scholar] would have it, through which populations are regularized. Thus, for example, Martin Baker has suggested in an influential essay 'The Problem of Racism' that the idea that it is natural for human beings to live in separate communities and therefore to fear outsiders is racist (2002:82). For these scholars, racism is not limited to an explicit and intentional expression of superiority, but includes the idea that national or racial separation is natural and inevitable. The poem read: Do you know who I saw on the street? A black African moor! He had a hat on this head; It was small, and round, and stood straight up. And his dress was long and red, And he had gloves on his hands. The image is reproduced with permission from the publishing house Zinātne. See www.dzivesstasts.lv for more information on the archive. As it later turned out, it was a Latvian girl from a good family that was the main perpetrator in the discussed incident. In 1935, Latvians made up 75.5% of the population. At the end of the Soviet rule in 1989, Latvians comprised 52% of the population (Riekstiņš 2004 Riekstiņš, Jānis. 2004. Migranti Latvijā. 1944-1989. Dokumenti (Migrants in Latvia. 1944-1989. Documents, Edited by: Riekstiņš, Jānis. Rīga: Latvijas Valsts Arhīvi. [Google Scholar]). As this paper goes through the final revisions, France continues to expel Roma of Romanian and Bulgarian origin. I take this to be yet another instance of modern racism, that is, of racism enabled by and rooted in modern political forms rather than merely French sensibilities or populist politics. See Uday Mehta's work (1999) Mehta, Uday. 1999. Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth Century British Liberal Thought, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] for an illuminating analysis of the historical relationship between liberalism and racism in the context of British colonialism in India. For example, Alana Lentin notes that mainstream French anti-racist movements criticize the government for their 'failure to uphold the anti-racist fundaments, which, the organization believes, are built into the ideological foundations of the French state' (2008a:314). See Burawoy and Verdery (1999) Burawoy, Michael and Verdery, Katherine. 1999. Uncertain Transitions: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. [Google Scholar] and Yurchak (2005) Yurchak, Alexei. 2005. Everything was Forever, Until it was no More: The Last Soviet Generation, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar] for critiques of 'transitology narratives'. See also Gregory Feldman's (2005) Feldman, Gregory. 2005. Culture, State, and Society in Europe: The Case of Citizenship and Integration Policy in Estonia. American Ethnologist, 32(4): 676-694. [Crossref], [Web of Science (R)] , [Google Scholar] work for how similar monitoring activities in Estonia are limited by the diplomats' own commitment to the ethno-territorial mode of political organization that is at the base of the minority problem in Estonia. During his visit to Latvia in 2005, György Frunda was criticized from all ends of the political spectrum for his lack of knowledge and understanding of the historical conditions that have shaped the minority problem in Latvia (Streips 2005 Streips, Kārlis. 2005. Ciemos atbraucis nezinītis. Apollo.lv, October 19. http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/73/articles/58681 (accessed March 2, 2009) [Google Scholar]). I would like to thank Gustavo Esteva for bringing this text to my attention

Anti-racism · Criminology · Political science · Racism · Sociology · Anarchism and Radical Politics · Gender Studies

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