They are still good things about the border: the best thing being that you deal with Americans. First, they know how to make a movie: once landed, and while you are waiting (often in long lines), you are shown a movie giving you basic information about the admission process (biometrics). It also features Americans of all sorts (regions, classes and of course in the only Western democracy that has developed a racial classification of its citizens, ethnicities) greeting you with warm “welcomes”. I do not know what the effect is on visitors who are denied entrance moments after having seen the movie welcoming them, but the least I can say is that it is good publicity filming. Beautiful images, enough movement, captions of the landscapes of America… It does create a pleasing visual environment, and for having seen the film hundreds of time, I still find it pleasant enough.

Then, you are “interviewed” by a CPB (Customs and Border Protection) agent who asks you a few questions about the reasons of your stay. Sometimes questions are barked at you. At other times, the accent of your interlocutor is so thick that you have no idea what the question is. Sometimes, well, you just have in front of you one of these nasty human beings one meets in any profession. But quite often, you meet with agents who, while performing their duties thoroughly, are keen on displaying this most American quality: humor.

Recently, arriving in San Francisco, upon hearing that the purpose of my visit was to “see my in-laws”, the CPB agent cried “two weeks with your in-laws? Is it not too long?” He was reassured when I told him that I was to spend the week after in Ohio for my work.

A few years ago, as Chicago was my port of entry for a visit taking me to Texas, after a stop in Indiana, the agent asked: “why on earth one would chose to go to Texas?”

It happened to me to be a protagonist in this border humor. As I was in the line to be called for the interview, the CPB officer was talking to an old gentleman from Africa who did not speak English. There was some kind of problem, and the officer called me and asked me if I spoke French and English. Upon my positive answer, he told me that the old man had declared that he had food and the CPB officer wanted to know what it was. “Can you ask this gentleman if he has food with him?” I turned to the old man and asked him: “do you have food with you?” I heard the CPB officer coughing behind me: “that, sir, I could do myself”. I actually had just repeated the question in English, which my interlocutor understood no more with me than with the border agent. We laughed and I switched to French. It appeared that when the old man had filled his form he had indeed food. “And now where is it?” The answer was very stern: “in my stomach of course, I ate it all!”

I then realized that not only the stores, but also my university and accordingly, my office, were closed. Obviously, tough capitalism had ways to take time off without a warning. It was before the Internet, before you have a gentle reminder by email or can browse the Internet to understand what is going on. Back then, you depended very much on general social knowledge. And mine about life in the U.S. was about zero. For instance, it did not occur to me to look for stores other than the ones I knew and which were closed. As a Frenchman, I could not even imagine that banks, offices and stores would be closed, without having the whole country stopping its activity. French like to be on the same activity level than all their fellow citizens.

Two things struck me about the date. It was odd to have Labor at the beginning of September, when basically, social life resumes its normal pace after the summer break. It is still stranger when you think that everywhere else Labor Day is on May 1^st.

Ironically, Labor Day in May commemorates the moment when the workers’ daily workload was limited in many places to 8 hours… in the U.S. Maybe, September was chosen because America is un at ease with the 1^st May memory of a country where social revolt existed and was successful–though at the price of the life of the victims from police and judicial repression.

Back to this sunny labor day in 1988, and to happier considerations: I also noted how convenient it was that Labor Day that year happened on a Monday. Later only would I realize that American pragmatism had put most of holidays on a Monday. There are few exceptions due to unforeseeable circumstances: Christmas and new year cannot always fall just after the week end. The Founding Fathers have also their responsibilities in initiating a national day which is a different one in the week every year: they had no choice but to declare the independence on a set date. A century and a half later, Roosevelt showed some clumsiness or timidity when he decided to maintain Thanksgiving on a Thursday. For the rest, the American art of using day off to extend a week end is pretty close to perfection.

Let us start with Roger Cohen’s Column, “the netsuke survived” reporting on “Edmund de Waal’s extraordinary book The Hare with Amber Eyes”, which tells the story of Charles Ephrussi’s collection of Japanese netsukes. Given to a cousin as a wedding gift at the end of the 19th century, they miraculously escaped four decades after the Gestapo pillaging of the family’s house after the German rule was imposed to Austria. The “Jewish upheaval and loss” illustrated by the story of this extremely wealthy family scattered by exile, impoverished, if not massacred by the Nazi is, to his opinion, akin to the fugacious relevance of Japanese art. It makes all the glory and patriotism of this Jewish family appear “brittle as aged Japanese parchment”. The sentence is beautiful, but it is a wrong one. It suggests that the wealth, power and destiny of the family were frail and no more than a “tenacious” “delusion”. But the family spirit was not delusional and weak. It was the Nazi brutality and the support of the masses that were too strong even for the boldest of those placed by history on the wrong side of violence. The tenacious delusion was not the one of a Jewish family, but the one of too many people who praised or participated to, or even just silently consented to, the expropriation and mass assassination of Jews. This delusion was not brittle as parchment, but iron-clad collective rage.

On a funnier note, I read (in the Monday issue) that lawyers say that former French President Chirac is healthy enough to be present at his trial, while he requests to be excused for health reasons. French media say exactly the opposite: Chirac’s claim appears to them substantial.

Last but not least, in the same Monday issue, Sciences Po, a well-known academic institution of Paris, is praised for its endeavor to recruit students from “disadvantaged areas”, a policy that shows “signs of success” says the article. Sciences Po, unfortunately, is now the most expensive school in Europe—and still is heavily subsidized by the French tax payer. At that price, having a few (I say a few because the article does not give any figure) disadvantaged students is the minimum that can be done. I always find it a cruel irony that expensive, cosmopolitan and bourgeois Sciences Po is praised for receiving a few people that they usually do not accept while state universities who have masses of young poor people working hard to attend are just ignored for their continuous but not media-glamorous endeavor in favor of the forgotten fringes of French society.

]]> http://thierryleterre.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/in-the-news-spoliation-of-a-jewish-family-two-versions-of-chirac%e2%80%99s-trial-and-sciences-po-paris-helps-a-few-poor/feed/ 0 thierryleterre http://thierryleterre.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/a-european-bond-sweating-together/ http://thierryleterre.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/a-european-bond-sweating-together/#comments Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:31:17 +0000 Thierry Leterre http://thierryleterre.wordpress.com/?p=583 ]]> Once I was comfortably nested in my air conditioned hotel room, a thought crossed my mind: I loved my comfort zone. It had been a long day of traveling, and while I cannot claim to have been uncomfortable, I cannot either pretend it was the best trip of my life. I was off for a four hours train ride to Dusseldorf to pick up a student at the airport who, we feared, could have issues at the border (she did not have any). The train ride itself was OK, though it had been a while since I had travelled 2^nd class on a regular train for a business trip. I was deterred from opening my computer and work on the couple of documents I had planned to review by the shaky ride, the sweaty heat of the car and the lack of a table and the relatively cramped space, and the absence of screens filtering the heat and the sun. Due to a mess in the train’s itinerary, it did not matter so much: the first leg was so completely jammed up that I had to take three trains instead of one, two being those little omnibus trains with no air conditioning on a very hot day first to Trier, then to Koblenz. Everybody dozed in the heat, and so did I. I fixed myself with the daily Luxembourgish and weekly French press between two dehydrated naps, and read a magazine about the tanks in the 1940 battle of France. I like battle history, and I like the details of the French campaign when the French army was crushed by the Germans, not without heavy fights and casualties. My father was in this bloody mess, experiencing that all the bravery in the world does not replace a sound strategy.

Obviously, my little adventure was nothing compared to the 1940 tragedy, yet, it gave me some material for reflection. One obvious thing is how reluctant Europeans are with air conditioning and keeping cold when it is hot outside. Often people who do have air conditioning in their car for instance just decide not to use it: there is a high risk to catch a cold. At home, my mother (a frail old lady to whom cool air is recommended on those hot days of the summer) does not bother with this diabolic invention. A good common sweat is a European experience.

Do not hope too much to compensate for the high temperature with cold drinks. Drinks are rarely cold. Dull warm cokes, tedious warm water. Sometimes, an ice cube floats in the middle of a small glass of tepid soda, like a lonely fighter fading in the lost battle for keeping cool. I am not all for the ice-cold stuff that is trendy in the U.S. And I am definitely against ice cubes in wine, as they do it in the U.S. or in France to American tourist (once I was mistaken for one, and looked grimly at the floating devices in my glass). But cold sodas, cold iced coffees, cold water in the summer are to my taste—an evident sign of Americanization. And yes, when I arrived at the nice Lindner Airport Hotel in Dusseldorf, I crashed in my bed with the coolest air possible and enjoyed it tremendously. Whatever people say about cultural exceptions, I am not in the mood for bashing the Americanization of the world when I get some coolness after a day of sweating. The same went for the iced soy latte I had at the local Starbucks. And by the way, it was not that iced. Plus, there is still enough of cultural exception to make for a little bit of cold globalization: Europeans do not know about iron boards and irons in hotel rooms, Germans have the most improbable way of making beds (no sheets, and comforters are simply folded at the bottom of the bed) as they have delirious and pricey breakfasts…  I go local with great pleasure: I enjoyed my jelly meatloaf with fries and eggs, my (not cold) white wine and my pretzels and my local cookie as much as I did with my Starbucks coffee. I am not one of those picky American tourists who complain about anything different from what they deem normal in their experience. I just enjoy local life far better when I am not dying from being too hot.

Vargas faces deportation, and he knows it. It is the bad part of the news. The good part of the news is that such a story can make the front news, and that, maybe, it will help all those who believe that immigration, even illegal immigration, can help countries and make them stronger by integrating irreplaceable talents. All those who think, like me, that hard work and commitment is a credit to citizenship in any free country. It is to the honor of the United States to have produced Vargas. I hope the country will consider it its honor to offer him a life as a citizen of his country.

Vargas mentions his sexual orientation, and of course, I thought of the other piece of news: the legalization of gay marriage in the State of New York. The fact that governor Cuomo found the right words “Their love is worth the same as your love” did not harm, but the most remarkable is that these words were offered to a panel of powerful republican supporters according to (once again) the New York Times. The last good news to me is that there is still a liberal-libertarian wing among US conservatives. Their agenda is obviously not mine, but I respect and understand and share the view that promotes liberty as a cardinal value. Well, I like coherence, and I like freedom. To somebody who tells me “let me be free and make money, and I am not to tamper with anybody’s liberty to feel, love, exist in the country. I do not like laws restraining freedom and I’m concerned with God and ethics only as regards to me and not to my neighbor” I can only answer: “you are so right”.

The power of denomination is a central device in the organization of what the critical school of sociology calls “symbolic power” and, always according to this school, is at the heart of any potential “symbolic violence”, the violence that imposes on people words to describe their reality in order to deny them from the resources of a legitimate language to defend their own claims.

Bret Stephens’ incidental remark showcases a remarkable illustration for the theory. It is undoubtedly part of the pretension to tell what the “true” meaning of the words is in order to favor a certain perception of reality. For the sake of illustration, let us follow what difference it makes to speak of “Asians” or of “Muslims”.

If you are an “Asian” your fight for recognition is understandable in a world where you have been transplanted. Your fight might not be the right one, but it is understandable by the standards of the community in which you live, a Western, democratic, community that accepts diversity and admits that antagonisms in the public sphere—whether right or wrong—are also part of a thriving democratic culture. Even if the means are illegal and legitimately repressed, it stays within the perimeter of what is workable in a democratic society. It  does not mean that it is tolerable or acceptable, but simply that it belongs to a type of conflicts that is not foreign to the local political and social establishment, when it deals with a discriminated or simply poor and ill-adjusted to its context minority. A supplementary benefit of being qualified as an “Asian” is to soften the whole picture as Asians have a reputation (whether it is deserved or not is another question) for peacefully integrating in their host societies. In other word, it is not all that bad, even if, eventually you face two main options: if your fight is recognized as a right one by collective democratic standards, you will have contributed to a democratic progress; if deemed wrong you will go to jail.

Now, what does the shift from “Asian” to “fanatical Muslim” entail? Obviously, if you are a radical—fanatical—Muslim “convinced” that “you live among the infidels”, well, you are just an enemy, who—quite literally—has no right to express yourself in the context of a public order that you reject. You belong to another cultural context not by the fact that you come from a foreign country but because you share ideals that are foreign to the local culture. Whether these ideals are regarded as foreign because they are radical or because they do not fit the long established Christian tradition, they have no legitimate standing in the context in which you fight. You have no option but being treated as an enemy or rather  only option b (jail) is available as a proper response to your virulence and even a democratic society should not lose time over your problems. You are  deemed to be doomed.

If I were keener on critical approaches, Stephens would offer me a golden opportunity to befriend many critical colleagues who otherwise regard me as a conservative devil. It would just take denouncing the symbolic violence is on poor immigrant populations that struggle to make a decent living in a hostile Western World and are stigmatized as radical Muslims when they dare fight for their rights. I would add that it is well known that qualifying social unrest as “riots” is a frequent way to disqualify class struggle by picturing it as a meaningless disorder, the importance of which is just measured by the energy it takes to calm it down. And I would underscore the fact that the French Extreme Right party has also chosen to switch from denouncing “immigrants” to denouncing “Islam”, a quite annoying companionship in terminology. All this written in this epitome of capitalism that the Wall Street Journal is!

I will not go that far though. Ultimately, against both Stephens and his friends, but also against many “critical” scholars, I believe there is no “right way” to describe social phenomena, even if there are ones which can be described clearly as “wrong”, i.e. unscientific and falsified ones. Indeed, Stephens’ candor in confessing that his understanding is based on a fictional work is a spectacular admission that replacing “Asian” by “Muslim” is as fictional as saying “Asian” in the first place. Let us face it: what both the London Times of the 90’s and Stephens in 2011 try not to say is that “Asian” or “fanatical Muslim” means in fact “mostly Pakistani” as Pakistanis are both Asian and Muslim and constitute (it is not the case in France where Muslims are mostly North African or in Germany where they are mostly Turkish) the bulk of the Muslim population.

I understand why none would accept the terminology of “mostly Pakistani”. It does not look quite as good in an article as “Asian” or “Muslim”. It seems too vague (it is too vague); it could also be regarded as discriminatory or even racist as it would assimilate a certain type of immigration with violence. Stephens is as right as his former colleagues of the London Times when he avoids such a formulation. He is also right in emphasizing the political dimension of religious radicalization that the qualification as “Asian” overlooks. But he is wrong in pretending that he has the only right version. In reality, substituting “Muslim” to “mostly Pakistani” is a politically correct as to substitute “Asian” for the same expression. Only, it is the conservative political correctness, which plays on our contemporary fear of global radical Muslim terrorism rather than describes the reality of the 90’s Great Britain which was struggling with identity issues where—yes—Asia i.e. Indians were also playing its role far beyond the “riots” and far beyond radical Islam.

Social scientists and journalist should be aware that any designation of any sort is a tricky game as all of our categories have to be permanently reviewed: truth is only in nuances and contradictions. It does not fit well into a newspaper article. It is not a sufficient reason to stay blind as regards to our own language while pretending to be lucid with the one of the others.

I took my class of communication in Belgium (Brussels), and in France (Rouen, Normandy, Versailles, Paris). These are some verbatim reflections of mine during our trip.

« Have a message » says John Holland in his presentation of the role of new media in the unrest of the Arab world, comparing it to the fall of the communist regimes in the late 80’s. Political powers, even brutal powers, fail to keep their grip on society when they fail to have a message.

A most remarkable message was delivered by a student at Omaha beach, while we were enjoying the cold waves of the Manche sea on our bare feet. As I was reflecting on the flagrant contradiction between the beautiful weather we were enjoying and on this peaceful beach and the cold hell of D-day, I was answered: “they died then so that we can enjoy it today”. Very profound.

Mothers in law sometimes score excellent points: in Brussels the Head of the European Commission Representation told us about his. A well educated French Eurosceptic, she called him after having viewed a TV news program showing the French President Nicolas Sarkozy among fishermen complaining about fishing quotas. She saw the image, was moved by it, and also complained about irresponsible European policies. However, she did not listen to the—actually correct—commentary of the journalist noting that those quotas had been voted by France and approved by the same president who criticized them after they were implemented. It is a well known truth that the audience of a media is active—despite many “critical” depictions of the media as feeding with superficial news audiences of passives viewers and listeners. However, this activity also leads to selection, and selection often discriminates against what people just do not believe and do not care to change their opinion about.

Endeavors to communicate or at least some of them may be doomed to fail. Though I was overly impressed during our visits by the many efforts of European institutions to reach out to European citizens, I doubt that this will create much more interest about Europe. American students very easily notice when they meet with European officials that there are many flaws in the democratic ideals of the EU. After many discussions on the topic, I am always struck by the fact that Americans see the fact quite clearly while European tend to skip serious issues in that area.

A long discussion is never really easy to turn into a news subject. One thing that was noted by many of our interlocutors (including a Vice-President of the Commission, but it was also mentioned during our visit of the parliament): the type of politics going on at the European level does not fit easily with media news. This is, I believe, a very important fact to understand what modern public opinion is made of. Democracies have developed as communication was able to picture in a media format important decisions regarding collective life. This empowered citizens with the feeling they understood what was going on and with the sense that it was legitimate for them to have an opinion and express it. Critical analysis when it shows how biased the media format is just misses the point: the main fact of modern public opinion is the coalescence of political democratic interests and cultural and economic interests of a new industry—the media. Whatever goes on that cannot be on a media format is just lost to democracy. And most of what goes on at the European level is not media formatted.

The most beautiful American flag I have seen was drawn by students in the sand of Omaha Beach.

In Versailles, it is not difficult to realize that media are far from being responsible for show-off attitudes in communication. Nowhere more evidently the “medium is the message” than in a palace designed by a king who knew he had to defend his power.

Switching from snobbish to candid, I acknowledge that I like everything in it. There is My attraction undoubtedly religious: the richness of the rite, the wonderfully witty sermons, the mix of a cordial atmosphere in the worship and of a very insistent formality typical of Lutheran rituals create a special atmosphere. The attraction of a discreet political context is not neglectable either: I enjoy the politically correct praise of human rights at the entrance and the Yankee praise of Lincoln just past it on the left. The right hand rises to emphasize the eternally silent words of an unknown speech, while the left one, is opened, by the leg, and for this reason reachable by the public. People have taken the habit of shaking it, as shown by the worn out aspect of the dark bronze polished to a golden nuance by the numerous touches. There is irony in this, even a double one: it is an irony that Episcopalians spontaneously reinvented the cult of the saints that Protestantism repudiated in the very heart of their worship place; it is another irony (or maybe just a fairly balanced compensation) that it is a lay saint. Every time I have had a chance to stop by DC on a Sunday, I make sure that I would make it to the Cathedral, a trip which is also a wonderful reminder of my love for my wife, as she is the one who took me there for the first time (overcoming some reticence I had), and with whom I have visited every time since then.

Another thing that I like is the quite impressive aspect to the place. It is, I believe, a common reaction in front of the grandeur of the building, which is built like a Medieval Cathedral. But strangely enough, I do not feel completely at ease in my liking. Perhaps out of unconscious manifestation of good taste, I suspect it to be influenced by a kitschy sense of repetition as the cathedral is exactly what we expect a cathedral to be. The building is of a classical, medieval, gothic style, the “flamboyant” type, and everything, the decorations, the carving of the stones, the columns, mimics the middle Ages. It is desperately non innovative in its outside, visible, features. One must wonder why modern creativity in architecture has been ignored and a pattern that was designed over a thousand years ago was preferred. For sure, modern cathedrals exist: the (catholic) cathedral of Evry (France) is a monument of modernity. The fact is that I am not overly impressed by Evry and I am impressed by Washington. I do not think it is religious partiality on my side, as I grew up as a catholic, and the most beautiful churches for me are the Roman ones (hence, not the Gothic ones which inspired the National Cathedral). So I like something that my mind and my taste at their best tell me I should not. Mystery.

The time of reconciliation with the National Cathedral dawned on me in an unexpectedly intellectual fashion when I linked its millennial brand new architecture with—I hardly dare reckon this—with a concept. It is a concept that I have both used and carefully mistrusted at the same time in my intellectual production: this concept is the one of “long run” in history.

The notion of the “long run” was crafted to fight a traditional approach based on the narrative of events considered as key in historical intelligibility. The “long run” perspective on the contrary considers that an event is just the surface of a deeper move—and if it has any interest it is just in the context of this larger understanding. So, something that we could consider as being a “historical fact” in itself is in reality tied to other facts which may be centuries far from it that make it intelligible.

I have myself used this approach in my own specialization—the history of ideas—to explain concepts such as citizenship which stay stable between the antiquity and modern democracies, which, apparently have hardly to do as regards to broad political structures, time, civilization etc. Despite my own situation, I have always dig in the “long run” with a certain reticence, as I have always wondered how it was that there are things which are transformed so totally at a fast pace while others seem to keep a consistence that goes literally through millenniums.

The answer—the miraculous answer?—came precisely in the National Cathedral when I realized that it was a material illustration of my reflections about the intellectual history. The Cathedral is the proof—the empirical proof so to say—that there is a historical stability that sparkles across civilizations and regimes, conceptions and material organization, and pushes us to keep as the ultimate reference forms that were invented far away in the past. These forms can be material like a church or intellectual like old habits and ways of thoughts—forms of thoughts. And for this, I felt the right to be comfortable both in dealing with the long run in intellectual history and at the Cathedral in my worshiping.

Two different affairs both connected to one fact: in the modern world academic credentials have a social value, which can be paid for. It poses a problem when this value is more and more disconnected from academic values. That a doctoral student, obviously gifted, and obviously aware of what he was doing, could indulge in plagiarism for the sake of putting what Anglophones refer to as the “magic DR.” before his name, that the son of tyrant seeks academic recognition from a well-known institution are sadly meaningful facts. But what is the meaning?

The first, sociological, one is what sociologists of the critical school (and yes, for once, I will praise the critical school) have long denounced as the contamination between the different fields of social competences. It is not that academic status has only recently gained social prestige: it always has, but this prestige used to be limited to the narrow circles of academia. Now, the story is different: the social prestige is not academic, but a tool of distinction in a sphere that is no more academic, but political or social.

The second meaning I see is that the hope academics could have that the diffusion of academic values and academic standards among social elites would raise the standards in the different fields of society is a delusion. We could think that having Ph.D.s in a government is a good thing, as academics would bring a certain conception of fairness and honesty in their opinions. We may dream that training the children of a dictator would help educate elites towards a more opened and democratic way of considering how peoples should be ruled. The sad, and partly tragic, truth is that those elites import their own habits and behaviors in their academic practices rather than the other way round. You want to become a minister and you know that having academic credentials will help, you treat those credentials as mere tools to your goal, and if it takes some copying, it is not that important.

In these two aspects, we see that academia influences society less than society influences academia. This is coherent with the fact that society does not expect from academia the disinterested quest for knowledge. “Disinterested” here does not mean inefficient, or severed from the whole social life. It only refers to the imperative of conducting research through methods which should not be fraught with vested interests. But in this “disinterested” form, academia does not fit with what is requested from science and academic work: to be a social service, mostly providing economic qualification. Graduates are no more expected to knowledgeable in their field, whatever this specialization is, nor are they expected to export this knowledge in the different areas of society where they are to work. They are expected to be well-trained professionals. In the case of politicians, we should not be surprised that they treat academic titles as a mere symbolic qualification in a political sphere where symbols are eminently prized goods.

Nope.

First, the group states its disclaimers: Apple computers should work, no more than “should”. Second, one should use Internet Explorer for which solely the software is approved. Not very professional—whatever you think of Internet Explorer, it is not the state-of-the-art browser and it is not the only one in town at any rate. Third, there is no “autosave” function and you are warned that you will lose whatever you did if you do not comply—comply being the word when one considers the authoritarian tone of the instructions.

My conclusion: neither the language nor the type of technical recommendation gives a favorable opinion of the whole thing.

Fortunately, the email inviting to fill the survey was courteous (but vague enough to make me suspect a well-written spam) and it seems to work even with Chrome…