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Religion 0 Society 0 Polity 0 Arts
In this issue...
Destroying 0 Community, Erasing Memory Editorial
Models and Enactmenis of Transformation:
A Response
Cultural Cleansing: Charles V. Carnegie
Radical Black Feminism and the Bahá’í Faith: Moments of Connection, Models of Change Michelle Maynerick
Poems by Daniel B. Lord, Ron Price, Hedyeh Sadeghi, and Janet Tomkins
3 ‘aces of Change—in Postnationalism
and the Equality of the Sexes and Races 2004 Volume 35. No. 4
[Page 0]
Religion . Society - Polity - Arts
2004 VOLUME 35, NUMBER 4
WORLD ORDER AIMS TO
STIMULATE, INSPIRE, AND SERVE
ITS READERS IN THEIR SEARCH
TO UNDERSTAND THE RELATlONSHlPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND
CONTEMPORARY REUGIOUS TEACHINGS
AND PHILOSOPHY.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Betty J. Fisher
Arash Abizodeh Monireh Kozemzcdeh Dione Loffi
Kevin A. Morrison Robert H. Stockmon Jim Stokes
CONSULTANT IN POETRY Herber’r Woodward Morfin
INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS
World Order is published quarterly by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, 536 Sheridan Road, Wilmette, IL 60091—1811. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher or of the Editorial Board.
Peer review: Submissions to the journal will be subject to external blind peer review if they fall outside the expertise of the Editorial Board or upon request by the author.
Submissions and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to the Editor, Worldorder, 7311 Quail Springs Place NE, Albuquerque, NM 87113-1780 or e—mailed to <worldorder@usbnc.org>. Detailed information for contributors may be requested in writing or by e—mail.
Manuscripts may be typewritten or computer generated; manuscripts accepted for publication are requested on computer disk (Microsoft Word or WordPerfect preferred) or by electronic submission. Article and review manuscripts must be double—spaced throughout and prepared in a 12-point Courier font; the footnotes must be at the end of the text and not attached electronically to the text. Each manuscript should list on the first page the article title, the author(s), and addresses, including telephone, fax, and e-mail.
Articles may range in length from some 3,750 to 6,250 words.
Reviews vary in length. Review Notes run from some 125 to 150 words; Mini—Review: run from some 1,000 to 2,500 words, and Review Ersays, from some 3,750 to 6,250 words.
Poems should be single spaced with clearly marked stanza breaks.
World Order is indexed in the Index of American Periadiml Verse, the ATLA Religion Database, and The American Humanities Index.
INFORMATION FOR SUBSCRIBERS
Subscription Rates: U.S.A. and surface to all other countries, 1 year, US $25; 2 years, US $48. Airmail to all other Countries, 1 year, US $30, 2 years, US $58, Single copies US $7 plus shipping and handling. Make checks or money orders payable to Bahá’í Distribution Service. Send address changes to and order subscriptions from the Bahá’í Distribution Service, 4703 Fulton Industrial Boulevard, Atlanta, GA 30336-2017. Telephone: 1—800—999—9019, United States and Canada; 404-472-9019, all other countries. Or, please e-mail: <subscription@usbnc.org>.
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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2004 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States; all rights reserved. World Order is protected through trademark registration in the U.S. Patent Office. Printed in the U.S.A. ISSN 00438804.
ART CREDITS
Cover design by Richard Doering, cover photograph, copyright by Stasys Eidiejus; p. 8, photograph, Steve Garrigues; p. 29, watercolor, “Running with the Wind,” October 1973, Walter Hatke; p. 32, photograph, Steve Garrigues; p. 47, photograph, Linsay Carlson.
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33
48
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,zcu", ICI __ nfl‘ '- Inc a Commurflivflmlng Memory
Editorial Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor
Radiant Axis of Beauty a poem by Ron Price
Models and Enactments 0! Transformation: A Response by Charles V. Carnegie
To Iran a poem by Hedyeb Sadegbi
Radical Black Feminism and the Bahá’í Faith: Moments of Connection, Models of Change
by M irbel/e Mayneric/e
Daylighfs a poem by Darlir’l B. Lord
First I pray {I paem byjzmet Tomkins
Editorial Cultural Cleansing: Destroying a Community, Erasing Memory
In june 2004 in Fhran, on orders of clerical authorities, a wrecking crew demolished an aesthetically important building associated with the history of the Bahá’í Faith. The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’í': Of the United States ixmed a statement that was puhlished in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and dozens of other newspapers in the United States as well as in newspaper: in Canada, Australia, France, Britain, and Germany. \Ve reproduce it here as an editorial that expresses the views andfeelings of millions of Baha’ ’[5 throughout the world. —THE EDITORS
For Twenty—five years The government of The Islamic Republic of Iron
4”
has persecuted ’rhe Boho IS, a peaceful, Iow-obiding religious minority.
4”
More Than Two hundred leading Boho IS have been pu’r ’ro death, Tens of Thousands have lost Their jobs, Tens of Thousands more have feh‘
compelled to leave their homeland, Bahá’í youth have been denied access to higher education, and retired workers have had their pensions summarily canceled. In 1991 an official government document signed by Supreme Leader Khamenei spelled out measures aimed at slowly strangling the community.
The hatred of the extremist mullahs for the Bahá’ís is such that they, like the Taliban of Afghanistan who destroyed the towering Buddhist sculptures at Bamiyan, intend not only to eradicate the religion, but even to erase all traces of its existence in the country of its birth. It was for this reason they demolished the House of the Báb in Shiraz, center of pilgrimage for the Bahá’ís of the world and a gem of the city’s cherished past. This is why they confiscated Bahá’í cemeteries and bulldozed the graves of Bahá’í heroes and saints. This is why they desecrated the resting place of Quddús, one of the apostles of the Faith.
This June a wrecking crew descended upon a historical monument, a precious example of Islamic-Iranian architecture, “a matchless model of art, spirituality, and architecture.” “How is it,” a brave Tehran newspaper article asked, “that in the middle of the day . . . the very essence of our cultural heritage is being destroyed?” The answer is heartbreakingly simple.
The demolished building was the house of a great nineteenth—century statesman,
calligrapher, and literary figure, Mirza Abbas Nuri. Although he was born and died
2 World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4
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EDITORIAL
a Muslim, his son, Bahá’u’lláh, founded the Bahá’í Faith, 3 religion that promotes abolition of all prejudice, independent investigation of truth, equality of women and men, universal education, harmony of religion and science, and universal peace. For this the clerical bigots have declared Bahá’ís, followers of Bahá’u’lláh, to be heretics and apostates, deserving of death.
In their determination to rid Iran of the Bahá’í community and obliterate its very memory, the fundamentalists in power are prepared even to destroy the cultural heritage of their own county, which they appear not to realize they hold in trust for humankind. Surely the time has come for Iranians everywhere to raise their voices in protest against such willful desecrations.
NATIONAL SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY OF THE Bahá’ís OF THE UNITED STATES
World Order, 2004, VOI. 35, No. 4 3
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Interchange
Letters from and to the Editor
As we complete W715! Order’s thirty—fifth volume, the Editors have been ruminating about the many faces of change, transformation, and renewal.
Our editorial, about the destruction by Islamic fanatics of an architecturally significant house that once belonged to the father of Bahá’u’lláh, confronts those who fear change. Such people, wherever they may be found and whatever holy or cultural sites they may deface or destroy, seek to rid the world not only of the physical reminders of that with which they disagree but also of the ideas and beliefs underlying the physical.
For other-——and positive—faces of change we turn to two authors. Charles V. Carnegie, in “Models and Enactments of Transformation: A Response,” continues the dialogue on postnationalism begun in Volume 34, Number 4. He argues that “the prophetic founding figures of the world’s religions . . . initiate cycles of social renewal based on fresh conceptualizations of the human condition and its potentiality.” Stuck as we are between nationalism and postnationalism, Carnegie explores how “achieving a more just world requires simultaneous change in both the structural and symbolic—ideological dimension of social order.” Thus change, for Carnegie, involves embracing transformation, new articulations of old patterns, and an everadvancing renewal.
4 World Order, 2004, Vol. 35. No. 4
Michelle Maynerick, in “Radical Black Feminism and the Bahá’í Faith: Moments of Connection, Models of Change,” compares and contrasts the underlying theories and approaches to change that both advocate. Once again, change involves self—awareness, inevitable transformation, and renewal.
LVorld Om’er’s topical index of articles, editorials, and reviews, included in this anniversary issue, is a microcosm of thirty—five volumes of renewal and change as the magazine has sought to explore with its readers “the relationships between contemporary life and contemporary religious teachings and philosophy.” Whatever the topic—the arts, social and economic development, education, health and healing, human rights, persecution of the Iranian Bahá’ís, aspects of the new world order, spiritual teachings, urban planning, and more— World 07'der has often broken new ground and led important discussions on pressing social, cultural, and spiritual issues.
To the Editor DOES ANGER OR SATIRE BELONG IN BAHA'I’ CRITIQUE? I have very much enjoyed reading the latest issue of World Order [VOL 35, No. 3, 2004] with its valuable discussions ofMa/eing the Cracked Stng/at. I have only one concern about one portion in the useful article by Arash Abizadeh, “Politics Beyond
[Page 5]
War,” on page 22, where he writes: “This is not
to say there is no such thing as Bahá’í critique;
it is to characterize the nature of Bahá’í critique.
Nor is it to say that there is no place for anger,
indignation, outrage, biting satire, or struggle in
Bahá’í critique or politics. The point is, rather,
that anger or outrage, satire or struggle, should
find political expression in ways that do not simply reproduce enemy relations.”
But that is the whole point, isn’t it? As I write this we are on the eve of the US. national election of November 2, a public event marked by evidence of many examples of production of “enemy relations” on local, state, and national levels whose “outcome” is unknown, but whose process has provided Bahá’ís with the most recent exposure to that public process. How different could the Bahá’í “political” environment become from this public model if we think, as stated by Abizadeh, that
n a
“anger,” “indignation, outrage,” and/or “biting satire” should find “political expression” in the Bahá’í political process? How could such behavior not result in “enemy relations”?
SHEIIA BANANI
Santa Monica, California
THE AUTHOR REPLIES I am grateful to Sheila Banani for her thoughtful letter about my article “Politics Beyond War” [World Order, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2004], in which she reminds us that satire, anger, and indignation can certainly take destructive political forms. She asks whether it is possible for these forms of expression to play a positive political role. It may help to think about this question with some concrete examples in mind.
One of the many delights of living in Montreal is being able to see live performances at the “Just for Laughs" comedy festival every year. The most
INTERCHANGE
memorable of the shows I saw this past summer was a doubIe—billing of the American comedian Sinbad and the British Bahá’í comedian Omid Djalili. Both were hilarious (some will know Sinbad and Djalili from their roles in American television sitcoms, but seeing them live, doing stand-up comedy, is an experience unto itself). The comedy sometimes had a political dimension. The backdrop of some of Djalili’s material, for example, was the aftermath of September 11 and particularly Western attitudes toward the Middle East and people of Middle Eastern descent (like Djalili himself). Part of the success of Djalili’s performance was that he was able, through parody and (sometimes rather biting) satire, to get his predominantly “Western” audience to confront its own attitudes and fears about Middle Eastetners. What I found politically significant about Djalili’s performance was his ability to get his audience to laugh at itself and, in the process, to reflect critically on its more ridiculous prejudices, without making its members feel as if they were being demonized as enemies. I give this example because I think that comedy—including satire—has the potential to effect critical reflection without drawing battle lines. Instead of being a declaration of war, comedy can be an invitation to see the world in a new light. It all depends on how it is done.
So, too, with the political expression of anger, outrage, or indignation. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela certainly gave political expression to the anger that they felt over the injustices perpetrated in their societies. But their politics were guided by spiritual principles that enabled them to channel the expression of that indignation by appealing to other political actors’ humanity, instead of by dcmonizing them. One might even argue that the International Criminal Coutt—to cite an example with which readers of World Order will be familiar—is in part
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4 5
INTERCHANGE
the political expression of the outraged indigna tion that we humans have come to feel over the
most horrific atrocities committed by our own kind.
ARASH ABIZADEH
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
MORE ON APOLOGETICS
I would like to thank the editors for having dedicated Volume 35, Number 3 (2004) to a review and instructive response articles by Seena Fazel, Arash Abizadeh, Firuz Kazemzadeh, and Roshan Danesh 0n Udo Schaefer’s, Nicola Towfiqh’s, and Ullrich Gollmer’s Making the Crooked Straight: A Contribution to Ba/m' ’z’Apologeticx (George Ronald, 2000). It was a judicious choice, for this book has had a considerable impact, not only in the Bahá’í community, but in non—Bahá’í’ academic circles on students, scholars, and critics of the Bahá’í Faith.
As one of a team of several consulting editors and advisers who offered support for this project, before the book’s publication, I had the pleasure of being able to participate in a working visit with Udo Schaefer, and his talented researcher and able secretary—assistant, wife Sigrun, in Heidelberg. During that visit Dr. Schaefer was able to explain to me, in some detail, the negative impact Ficicchia’s Der Baht? 75mm had in certain departments of Religious Studies, particularly in Germany.
If it was not already made clear from a perusal of the articles in the 2004 issue of World Order, I want to draw readers’ attention to the fact that the publication of this book, a serious and thorough scholarly rebuttal of Ficicchia’s deliberate distortions in his Balai 'ixmw, is something of a
success story. Before Olms Vetlag published‘
Desinflmation 41; Method? in 1995 (the original German version of Making the Crooked Straight), Ficicchia’s book had succeeded in being touted by German reviewers as the ‘3tandardwer/e”(standard work) on the Bahá’í Faith in Germany. Through the publication of their book, as well as by personal Visits and lectures to professors of the Academic Study of Religion in Germany, our three authors were, happily, able to correct the many
6 World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4
false impressions left by Ficicehia’s by now discredited book.
Three morals of this story come to mind: First, the politics of silence are never helpful under such circumstances. In the interests of truthfulness and accuracy, and the good reputation of the Bahá’í Faith, such attacks require a ready response, in spite of the fact that some scholars of religion, Whether 01' not they are Bahá’ís, might assert that we are better off living in a post—polemic age. As Firuz Kazemzadeh has pointed out in the conclusion to his article, “Misuses oinstory,” we should disabuse ourselves of the notion that attacks on the Bahá’í Faith are now passe’. They are, more probably, about to begin in earnest. (This assumes, of course, that the Bahá’í Faith begins to grow in much larger numbers.) In this respect, Schaefer, Towfiqh, and Gollmer have laid an important foundation for future work.
Second, it is naive to assume that non—Bahá’í scholars know better. Non-Bahá’í academics are entirely dependent on reliable sources for their information on the Bahá’í Faith. It should not be assumed that they can clearly distinguish truth from falsehood.
Third, despite the fact that a few Bahá’í scholars would like to relegate critical apologetics to a second class type of scholarship—the first being “scholarship,” the second being apologetics—it is only too clear that such a View, particularly at this historical juncture, is ill—advised and premature. This is not to decry the importance of scholarship that does not serve overtly apologetic purposes. Such approaches are badly needed. But it needs to be recognized—and this book succeeds well in this endeavor—that apologetics and scholarship need to be part and parcel of the same enterprise.
As an afterthought to this last point, it is important to remember that Bahá’u’lláh has exempted no one, regardless of his or her academic discipline or persuasion, from defending the Bahá’í Faith when it is subject to such attacks. Such an injunction is scriptural. It is to their credit that these three authors took on the long, painstaking, and onerous task of refuting Ficicchia’s book. We have all greatly benefited from their labors.
JACK MCLEAN Ottawa, Canada
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Radiant Axis of Beauty
Ḥaramayn, Jerusalem, Bodh Gaya,
Najaf, Karbila, Mecca, Medina cynosures of worlds apart through
time. Wu—T’ai Shan, Omei, too,
gradually accumulating mana, while Canterbury, Walsingham, Khurásán,
Lourdes, Lisieux gave birth to shrine
worlds on pilgrimage-horizons, holy
grounds like Nazareth or Bethlehem,
pristine sacredness, soul-resorts, spurs
to superhuman effort, to deft practitioners
to protocols of piety, rehearsed petitioners, who even now, as they enter that rare Presence on this sacred mount, feast their eyes, gathering memories for the time when they must leave Carmel’s bony spine and this radiant axis of beauty.
Amidst the sandy convolutions of this landscape and its grainy, parched surface where hot winds mutter apocalypticaily.
—RON PRICE
Copyright © 2004 by Ron Price
RON PRICE, a prolific poet, has spent most of his adult life studying the many facets of education and sociology while teaching in Canada and Australia.
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4
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CHARLES V. CARNEGIE
Models and Enactments of Transformation: A Response
World Order devoted most afl/olume 34, N0. 4, to exploring the concept Ofpoxtnatz'onalism, publisbing an editorial on the topic and a review by Deborah A. Tbomas, an assistant professor in cultural antbropolagy at Duke University, of Cbarles V. Carnegie} book Postnationalism Prefigured: Caribbean Borderlands. Thomas praised the book as “an excellent and tbougbtfal contribution to contemporary analyses afglobalizatz'om. ” Steven K Tbomsan, 10/70 is completing, at Boston University, a doctoral dissertation on a multietbm'c community in coastal Africa fbuna’ the book a “bold” wor/e tbat “inspires us to examine nationbooa’ a5 cbaracterizea’ by national inclusion and exclusion defined in racial terms.” But botb Tbomas and Tbomson raisedprovocative question: about several aspects of the book including Carnegie} :Dresentation of the Baba’z’ Faitb a5 a cultural model ratber tban a set of Rrinczple: for ‘living well togetber’ . . . tbat migbt catalyze broader social transformation. ” Carnegie respond: by amplifying bis approacb to antbropology and by exploring farther the model of the Baba’?’ Faitb. —THE EDITORS
After the relative isolation of research and writing, it is deeply rewarding to have one’s work read and taken so seriously by the editors of erd Order and the two essayists selected to respond in Volume, 34, No. 4, to my book Postnationalism
Prefigured: Caribbean Borderlandy.‘ That Deborah Thomas and Steven Thomson Copyright © 2004 by Charles V. Carnegie. 1. See Charles V. Carnegie, Posmationalz'xm Przfigured: Caribbean Borderlandx (New Brunswick, NJ, USA: Rutgers UP, 2002).
CHARLES V. CARNEGIE ‘
Charles V. Carnegie who holds a docfmafe from Johns Hopkins University Is professor of anthropology of Bates College, in Lewiston, Maine where he also chairs the Program In African American Studies. His essays and reviews have appeared In Nafural History, Cultural Anfhropology, New West Indian Guide, and other journals. He Is The author , of Posmaflonallsm Prefigured: Caribbean Borderlands (Rutgers UP, 2002) and edh‘Cr of i and contributor to 1116 volume Afro-Carlbbean Villages In Historical Perspecfiva (AffliCcn , ' Corlbbeon lnsfiMe of Jamaica, 1987). His recent work focuses on Identify categories and issues of nofionohsm and fransncflonalism He currenfly serves on the editorial board of the journal Transforming Anrhropology and as a member of the editorial coliecfive of The Canbbeon journal of crh‘idsm. Small Axe.
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4 9
CHARLES V. CARNEGIE
younger scholars of varied backgrounds in the front ranks of American anthropology—found my book stimulating and generative of insight for their own work is especially gratifying. My response seeks to spell out part of the book’s broader context that is relevant to issues raised by the reviewers and to amplify my thinking on passages that raised their more critical comments and questions.
What Thomson describes as the book’s “welcome turn from the increasingly despairing tone of most of the politically engaged anthropological writing I read,” was made at some professional risk.2 Postnatz'onalism Prefigured urges, after all, that
scholars take seriously the task
POSTNATIONALISM PREFIGURED of laying an analytical founda_ URGES THAT SCHOLARS TAKE SERIOUSLY tion for the achievement of a THE TASK OF LAYING AN ANALYTICAL FOUNDATION global sociopolitical order. Yet FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT OF A it does so in a climate—marked GLOBAL SOCIOPOLITICAL ORDER. by PmiStent iHIUStiCC and 0P“
pression, fundamentalist religious strife, terrorism on a global scale, new imperial consolidation, and disunity among states regarding the role of the United Nations—in which there is abiding skepticism about the possibility of humanity’s ever being able to realize a shared set of values or a common program.
In Postnationalz'sm Prefigured, I show how this skeptical view pervades the work of many influential and otherwise refreshingly critical writers on nationalism. However, its deeper intellectual roots are worth further discussion. I want to suggest that the academy’s present incapacity to envision the possibility of humanity’s committing itself to a working global social order is related to the thoroughgoing, deserved, and successful critique of the modern West’s most influential universalizing discourse to date—that of Enlightenment Man. It seems to me that an unexamined consequence of that critique puts us in peril of throwing out the baby—the unity of humanity and its realization—with the bathwatet: “universal man.”
THE INEVITABILITY AND THE THREAT OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCE The emphasis on rationality, and accompanying ideas of liberty, equality before the law, and a political order that depends on the consent of the governed, are a few of the justly celebrated ideals of Enlightenment thought that continue, even today, to nurture democratic political systems around the world and provide standards toward which many can aspire. Notwithstanding their beneficial impact, however, Western Enlightenment ideas have been subjected to considerable critical scrutiny. The two currents of criticism I want to highlight challenge related, though distinct, aspects of Enlightenment universals: The first line of criticism maintains that the Enlightenment view of our common humanity is erroneous in terms of how
2. Steven K. Thomson, “Citizenship and Belonging: Local and Postnational Forms,” World Order 34.4 (2003): 23.
10 World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4
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MODELS AND ENACTMENTS OF TRANSFORMATION
that view was constituted because it posits a human nature that ignores or displaces humanity’s itremediable cultural diversity. The second critical current argues that the Enlightenment view of humanity is disingenuous, duplicitous even, because its central trope, “man,” far from including all human beings on an equal footing as it pretends, disguised from the outset a fundamental partitioning of the human species, on the basis of race and gender, into human and subhuman subjects. As the philosopher Charles Mills argues, the idea that Western democracy is based on a social contract between consenting and equal human beings masks the persistent and ugly reality of white racial domination. There is an unnamed Racial Contract, Mills argues, that has supplemented and operated in tandem with the social contract to legitimize and make possible white racial political and economic dominance. The sad chronicle of colonial conquest and domination, the displacement of native peoples, slavery, and enduring racism, Mills argues, should be viewed not as aberrations, unfortunate exceptions to, or deviations from the ideals of Enlightenment humanisn but rather as fundamentally constitutive of it.3
Mills’ analysis of the intractable systemic condition of racism finds support in the work of countless other respected scholars. One recent instance is the well—known legal scholar Derrick Bell’s work on the US Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. Bell argues that, contrary to more widely held views, the decision to overturn the separate—but—equal principle in American education has been significant more for its symbolic value and the appearance of racial equality it has created than for its actual impact. At a time when American racism was receiving searing criticism abroad, the Supreme Court’s decision served to give the appearance of a watershed corrective, thus lending new legitimacy and face validity to the state and to U.S. policy. The Court’s ruling suggested that the country was finally coming to uphold the principles of equality it professed. Yet, fifty years after the important decision, racial inequality remains almost as deep—rooted as before.4
But what of the erroneous conventional view of human nature (the argument I want to examine more closely here)? For the Enlightenment view of human nature—man, “the naked reasoner that appeared when he took his cultural costumes off,” a view that downplayed differences of tradition and temperament as unimportant—nineteenth and twentieth-century anthropology gradually substituted a more appropriate view that saw human cultural variability not as incidental but central.5
THE IDEA THAT WESTERN DEMOCRACY IS BASED ON A SOCIAL CONTRACT BETWEEN CONSENTING AND EQUAL HUMAN BEINGS MASKS THE PERSISTENT AND UGLY REALITY OF WHITE RACIAL DOMINATION.
3. See Charles \W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY, USA: Cornell UP, 1997).
4. Lecture by Derrick Bell, New York University law professor, at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, October 28, 2004. See Derrick Bell, Silent Covenants: Brown 1/. Board of Education and the Unfidfilled Hapesfieraciaqufler (New York, USA: Oxford UP, 2004).
5. Clifford Geertz, “The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man,” in The Interpretation of Culture: (New York, USA: Basic Books, 1973) 38.
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4 H
CHARLES V. CARNEGIE
In his elegant essay “The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man,” Clifford Geertz—one of the leading American anthropologists of the present generation and an influential voice across the disciplines—sets out the position widely held in late—twentieth century anthropology that “there is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture”; “men,” he says, “unmodified by the customs of particular places do not in fact exist, have never existed, and most important, could
not in the very nature of the case exist.”6 Integrating the findings of human evolutionary biology and other disciplines, Geertz further notes that “We are . . . incomplete or unfinished animals who complete or finish ourselves through culturewand not through culture in general but through highly particular forms of it.” Human evolution is not, as had been thought, a sequential process with biological changes coming first and paving the way for cultural ones to follow. Instead,
AS OUR CULTURAL DIFFERENCES cultural—symbolic systems play an “BECOME Less EASILY SET OFF integral role in the physical evolu AS WILD ANOMAUES," tionary development of the human DIFFERENCE BECOMES ALL THE MORE SALIENT SPCFICSI The 956 9f Symbols, and
A M ARK OF THE HUMAN CONDITION. their elaboration in complex cul tural ensembles, both enable humans to adapt themselves to widely varied environments and serve as catalysts for some of the crucial biological changes in brain size, hand dexterity, and the like that came to set them apart from their nearest nonhuman relatives. Similarly, from a developmental standpoint, it is by means of distinctive sets of “extragenetic, outside—the-skin” cultural mechanisms, learned gradually over an extended childhood, that human beings—born more unfinished, ill—prepared, and vulnerable than other mammals~come eventually to function as mature adults.7 In another well-known essay “The Uses of Diversity,” Geettz posits that a paradigmatic shift has occurred in the last fifty years or so toward viewing diversity as a fundamental rather than incidental property of human social life and as perennial rather than fleeting. This shift is paradoxical, since the varieties of cultural experience have become less discontinuous one from another: In many ways they have softened “into a paler, and narrower spectrum.” That is, as our cultural differences “become less easily set off as wild anomalies,” as we jostle ever more closely together in a world where variant cultural meanings are constantly up against each other (in Geertz’s image, a world more collage than landscape or still life), difference becomes all the more salient a mark of the human condition.8 It is salient but also philosophically disconcerting because the paradigm shift toward diversity raises the specter, and moral uncertainties, of cultural relativism. How can we best live with these moral uncertainties in this our present—day collage world? In “The Uses of Diversity,” Geertz reiterates his own response to the question,
6. Geertz, “Impact,” in Interpretation OfCultum 38, 35.
7. Geertz, “Impact,” in Interpretation of Culture: 49, 44.
8. Geertz, “The Uses of Diversity,” in The Dnner Lectures on Human Value: VII, ed. Sterling M. McMurrin (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1986) 253, 271.
12 World Order. 2004. Vol. 35. No. 4
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MODELS AND ENACTMENTS OF TRANSFORMATION
angling his views against what he regarded as the ethnocentric positions he detected in essays by two other eminent scholars, the French anthropologist Claude LeviStrauss and the American philosopher Richard Rorty.9 All three (Lévi-Strauss, Rorty, and Geertz) explicitly distance themselves from contemporary variants of a tepid universalism: as Geertz characterized it, “the desperate tolerance of UNESCO cosmopolitanism,” “cosmopolitanism without content.” 1" At the same time, all three worried about the morally disabling consequences of relativism and its potential for undermining cultural integrity.
Trying to walk a line between “vacant murmurs of common humanity,” on the one hand, and an anything—goes relativism, on the other, Geertz argues that both Le’vi-Strauss and Rorty fall back into a dangerously ethnocentric self-centeredness, a “parochialism without tears.”11 In the case of Lévi—Strauss, who wished to preserve difference and the creativity that cultural autonomy makes possible, Geertz sees an anthropologist (of all people) counseling retreat and arguing that we ought to maintain “‘a certain deafness to the appeal of other values.”12 Rorty, on his part, expresses a comfortable self-satisfaction in the moral achievements of liberal society and wants “‘to convince our society that loyalty to itself is loyalty enough.”13
Taking a different approach to the question of how we ought to regard diversity, Geertz cautions against the indifference evident in the varieties of resurgent, latemodern ethnocentrism against “an easy surrender to the comforts of merely being ourselves” (and resignation “to
the Pleas“res Of inVIdious com' RATHER THAN ADOPTING A POSE OF
P3350“ ) that h” C°Heagues MORAL SELF-SATISFACTION IN RELATION TO OTHER WAYS Levr—Strauss and Rorty seem to OF BEING IN THE WORLD,
' 14 _ exempllfy. Rather than adopt GEERTZ COUNSELS A MORE PROCESSUAL APPROACH mg a pose of moral self—satrs OF BRINGING SELF AND OTHER
faction in relation to other ways
of being in the world, Geertz INTO DIALOGUE counsels a more processual approach of bringing self and other into dialogue, having each other “explore the character of the space between them.” As in many of his other writings, he invokes once again the vital necessity of anthropology’s mediating, conversation—enabling role in this: ethnography’s capacity to shed light on and to dramatize other ways of going about things, to permit “an imaginative entry into (and admittance of) an alien turn of mind.” Even as the world comes “at each of its local points to look
9. See Claude Le’vi—Strauss, The View from Afar, trans. J. Neugroschel and P. Hoss (New York, USA: Basic Books, 1984), and Richard Rorty, “Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism,” journal afP/ailoxopby 80 (1983): 383—89.
10. Geertz, “Uses of Diversity” 257, 274.
11. Geertz, “Uses of Diversity” 274.
12. Lévi—Strauss, quoted in Geertz, “Uses of Diversity” 256.
13. Rorty, quoted in Geertz, “Uses of Diversity” 258.
14. Geertz, “Uses of Diversity” 260, 273.
15. Geertz, “Uses of Diversity” 270.
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CHARLES V. CARNEGIE
more like a Kuwaiti bazaar than like an English gentlemen’s club,” Geettz maintains, “imagining difference” (that is, making it evident) “remains a science of which we all have need.” He asserts that The job of ethnography . . . is indeed to provide, like the arts and history, narratives and scenarios to refocus our attention; not, however, ones that render us acceptable to ourselves by representing others as gathered into worlds we don’t want or can’t arrive at, but ones which make us visible to ourselves by representing us and everyone else as cast into the midst of a world full of itremovable strangenesses we can’t keep clear of.16 Besides a collective refocusing of attention (and leaving aside the problematic, imperial “us” and “we” the vantage point of which Geertz continues to privilege unquestioningly), what are the payoffs Geertz expects from a cultivation of habits of sustained engagement that anthropology makes possible? They allow us to understand ourselves and others better—to discover “at what sort of angle we stand in the world.”17 They also serve to expand and make more fecund our imaginative and intellectual horizons, and they open up to us possibilities for change. In Geettz’s words: It is the asymmetries . . . between what we believe or feel and what others do, that make it possible to locate where we now are in the world, how it feels to be there, and where we might or might not want to go. To obscure those gaps and those asymmetries by relegating them to a realm of repressible or ignorable difference, mere unlikeness, . . . is to cut us off from . . . the possibility of quite literally, and quite thoroughly, changing our minds.18 In regard to the process of cultivating habits of sustained engagement, Geertz is adamant in his expectation about the yield’s being worthwhile. Reminding readers of an established truth of anthropology, he notes that human communities are never windowless monads (or self SOCIETIES, JUST AS INDIVIDUALS DO, contained cultural isolates) BORROW FROM EACH OTHER, and that “the history of any
INVENT AND ADOPT NEW WAYS OF DOING THINGS, people separately and all AND CHANGE WHAT THEY BELIEVE AND VALUE. peoples together, and indeed
of each person individually, has been a history of such a changing of minds.”19 In other words, societies, just as individuals do, borrow from each other, invent and adopt new ways of doing things, and change what they believe and value.
However, Geertz is more cautious, I would even say pessimistic, when it comes to foreseeing possible directions in which a changing of minds in our present condition—huddled ever more closely together—might occur. Having shown that the Enlightenment view of a common human nature existing somewhere beneath
16. Geertz, “Uses of Diversity” 269, 273, 271. 17. Geertz, “Uses of Diversity” 261. 18. Geertz, “Uses of Diversity” 264. 19. Geertz, “Uses of Diversity” 264.
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the veneer of cultural differences was naive, and perhaps ethnocentric, Geertz wisely steers clear of “bloodless universals” and what we might expect from them: Universal consensus—trans-national, trans-cultural, even trans-class—in normative matters is not in the offing. Everyone—Sikhs, Socialists, Positivists, Irishmenis not going to come round to a common opinion concerning what is decent and what is not, what is just and what is not, what is beautiful and what is not, what is reasonable and what is not; not soon, perhaps not ever.20 Reiterating his argument in favor of the benefits of engaging in cross—cultutal conversation (and the perils of not doing so), Geertz, again realistically, observes that it is not that we must love one another or die (if that is the case—Blacks and Afrikaners, Arabs and Jews, Tamils and Singhalese—we are I think doomed). It is that we must know one another, and live with that knowledge, or end marooned in a Beckett—world of colliding soliloquy.21 For Geertz, knowledge, greater understanding, and illuminating cross-cultural conversation, then, seem to be as far as we can go. Having earlier recognized and made clear the weakness of the conceptual foundation on which the modern Western
view of a universal human nature was
built, is Geertz then unwilling to FOR GEERTZ’ KNOWLEDGE’ contemplate other, perhaps less flawed, GREATER UNDERSTANDING, AND ILLUMINATING
founding narratives? Is he failing to CROSS‘CULTURAL CONVERSAT'ON anticipate, moreover, that shared ad- SEEM TO BE A3 FAR AS WE CAN GOversity might lead the world’s peoples,
as willfully divisive as the historical record indicates human beings have been, to arrive at a fundamental change of mind about how we live together on the planet, to find common agreement about global governance that recognizes and preserves diversity yet articulates principles of unity by which all might be bound.>22
PROSPECTS FOR THE EMERGENCE OF A UNIFYING GLOBAL DISCOURSE
What, moreover, of the possibility that, in the trenches of present-day life, forms of symbolic meaning are even now being produced that, over time, might blossom into ways of being that eschew narrow parochialisms and provide the scaffolding for a working global system? Where might Geertz place mine and Thomson’s “rural cosmopolitans” and the processes of “postnational community building” in which they engage?23 Muslims, United Statesians, and Frenchmen, to take only a few examples, all were made 50, out of a disparate assortment of other selves at different times in the distant and not-so—distant past; and some of them even now perhaps are being remade into European Unioners. Some of our most powerful theoretical
20. Geertz, “Impact," in Interpretation of Culture: 43, and Geertz “Uses of Diversity” 258.
21. Geertz, “Uses of Diversity” 271.
22. This question, and the argument developed here, draws on the Universal House of Justice, The Promise of World Peace (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1985).
23. Thomson, “Citizenship and Belonging” 24, 36.
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CHARLES V. CARNEGIE
insights about symbolic systems and how they work (insights we owe to the work of Geertz himself, as well as others) emphasize the malleability of meaning. Moreover, our historical and ethnographic accounts are constantly recording societies’ collective changes of mind. Yet, despite all this, Geertz remains glum: “Such changes have not necessarily been for the better, perhaps not even normally.”24 May we not now, in the closer quarters of our contentious present, be working out unawares those shared symbolic forms that might give content to cosmopolitanism? Consensus may be out of the question, as Geertz remarks; and diversity surely is intrinsic. But diversity need not preclude unified social undertakings even on a global scale. Nor does rejection of a vapid, toothless, diversity-intolerant, and self interested “humanism” (witness, for DIVERSITY NEED NOT PRECLUDE example, the “world community’s”
UNIFIED SOCIAL UNDERTAKINGS blind denial of the genocide in plain
EVEN ON A GLOBAL SCALE. view in Rwanda in 1994) necessarily
rule out conceptual and symbolic
forms arising from below and giving meaning to planetary notions of belonging no less historical than the parochial ones we currently celebrate.
I am arguing, in other words, that perhaps a creeping awareness on the part of anthropologists and other scholars of the shallow and disingenuous character of the idea of universal man produced by Enlightenment humanism now hampers their ability to envision models of global belonging or to recognize embryonic ones as they emerge. Thus scholars of nationalism, for example, having performed a tremendous service by demonstrating nationalism’s historical contingency, appear unable or reluctant to see beyond it, as I point out in Postnationalism Prefigured. Political scientist Benedict Anderson, in his path—breaking work Imagined Communities comes to the following bleak prognosis: “The reality is quite plain: the ‘end of the era of nationalism,’ so long prophesied, is not remotely in sight. Indeed, nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time.”25 For Anderson, the ease with which nationalism took root, and its tenacity, rest in part on what he calls “the fatality of human linguistic diversity.” “Particular languages can die or be wiped out,” Anderson notes, “but there was and is no possibility of humankind’s general linguistic unification.”26 While Anderson recognizes the processes of linguistic consolidation and standardization that have taken place, much of it over the past two centuries at the instigation of the state, he seems unable to envision, as Baha’u’llah, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, does, the possibility of the world adopting an auxiliary universal language.
Scholars, along with the rest of us, need to recognize their/our capacity to influence the outcomes that lie ahead for the world. Since all representational and symbolic forms serve both as images of reality and as images that actively participate
24. Geertz, “Uses of Diversity” 264.
25. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, UK: Verso, 1991) 3. 26. Anderson, Imagined Communities 43.
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in producing reality, our responsibility is particularly acute. Prevailing skeptical and dystopian views have the capacity to become self—fulfilling prophecies, ingredients in producing the condition they anticipate.
To challenge the positions widely held by such scholars as Geertz, LéVi—Strauss, Rorty, Anderson, and others—to dare to suggest that global agreement outside of the platitudinous, hegemonic framework of universal man may, indeed, be attainable is heretical enough. That Postnationalism Prefigured does so by drawing on Baha’u’llah’s prophetic model of world order, and on the experiences of the Bahá’í community, risks even greater censure from an academy habitually intolerant of religion. This intolerance persists despite the influence of an eclectic, anything—goes pluralism (coming out of some segments of postmodern thought) that claim to value the historical contributions and popular culture of the West’s “Others,” exploited and neglected during centuries
Of colonial rule and postcoloniai PRESENT'DAY GLOBALIZATION
- VCSFCF“ P011‘1C313rld economlc IS BEST VIEWED AS INVOLVING BOTH PRESSURES
omlnance' , , ON THE PART OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM Of course, as Postnatzonalzsm FOR PEOPLE TO ACQUIESCE TO NEW FORMS Prefigured makes clear, recent . OF CONSUMPTION AND LABOR EXPLOITATION work 1n anthropology, much of AND COUNTERVAIUNG STRATEGIES
it influenced by postmodernism, has in many ways been alert to ON THEIR PART TO CIRCUMVENT THAT IMPETUS
current global trends. Thomas TO CONFORMis right to emphasize in her review essay, for example, that present-day globalization is best viewed dialectically as involving both pressures on the part of global capitalism for people to acquiesce to new forms of consumption and labor exploitation and countervailing strategies on their part to circumvent that impetus to conform. She notes that one contribution anthropologists writing on transnationalism and globalization have made is to discredit the oversimplified view that cultural formations and development at a transnational level are exclusively driven by global consumer capitalism.27 People around the world have been engaged in creating cultural forms and practices that question and subvert some of capitalist globalization’s more pernicious influences and forging new understandings and social alliances, despite the uprooting, homogenizing impact the increased mobility of capital and new patterns of consumption have on their lives. Taking a few examples from the Caribbean and its diaspora, Thomas mentions that scholars have focused on the ways women workers remake themselves as they maneuver between global economic and political processes, on the one hand, and local categories of tace/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality, on the other. Others are investigating emergent patterns of social mobility and autonomy
27. See Deborah A. Thomas, “Transcending the Limits of Political and Intellectual Boundaries: A Review of Charles V. Carnegie’s Posmationalixm Prqflgurm’: Caribbean Borderlands,” World Order 34.4 (2003): 17—18.
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CHARLES V. CARNEGIE
among lower—class Jamaicans, counter-hegemonic strategies pursued by St. Lucian
small—scale agricultural producers about economy and work, and processes of
identity formation and negotiation through the consumption of mass cultural
products among West Indian youth in Brooklyn. Anthropology has highlighted that sense of agency in ways that can make us all a bit less despairing and a bit more hopeful about prospects at the present juncture of world affairs. As Thomas points out, while such studies “may not lead to wholesale shifts in power relations either locally or globally,” they do afford us useful opportunities “to recognize contemporary struggles as lenses through which we might reframe all too often dominant understandings of globalization. . . .”23
Postnationalixm Prefigured seeks to contribute to the growing appreciation of the sociocultural agency of ordinary people showing, for example, how inter—island traders attempt to sustain family and community ties as they move across national frontiers to make a living and how they rewrite through their everyday pursuits ideologically restrictive nationalist narratives. Or, to take another instance, Posmationa/ism Prqfigurm’ shows how members of the transnational Universal Negro Improvement Association in the 19205 participated in a political movement that was simultaneously local and international and gave new meaning to their own social identities in the process. In these and other ways, my work endorses trends Thomas highlights in her essay.29
What is generally missing from much of the scholarship on agency, from my perspective, however, is a sense that a unifying global discourse might emerge, or is even conceivable, to connect the dispersed, counter—hegemonic strivings of ordinary folk. Through the work of anthropologists and others, the way in which people are
drawing creatively on trans THE WAY IN WHICH national intersections and
PEOPLE ARE DRAWING CREATIVELY influences is now more apON TRANSNATIONAL INTERSECTIONS parent than ever. New genres
AND INFLUENCES of music invented by disposIS NOW MORE APPARENT THAN EVER. sessed Immigrants llVlng “1
global cities like London; emergent international movements among women, indigenous peoples, environmentalists, and others that have grown up and proliferated in the 19805 and 19905; the newly apparent capacity for forms of cultural politics devised in one part of the world to serve as portable fire—sticks that can ignite new forms of consciousness and self-realization in others continents away (Jamaica’s Bob Marley, for example, helping to inspire the revival of Australian aboriginal music and politics of dignity and selfworth)——-these and much more are all being described, analyzed, and closely watched.
28. Thomas, “Transcending the Limits of Political and Intellectual Boundaries” 18.
29. Besides anthropologists, one can also point to scholars in various other fields currently working on questions of transnational political agency. See, for example, Joshua Karliner, “Grassroots Globalization: Reclaiming the Blue Planet,” and John 8011 and George M. Thomas, “World Culture in the World Polity: A Century of International Non—Govemmental Organization,” in The Globalization Reader, ed. Frank]. Lechner and John Boli (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2000).
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But out of this is a “movement of movements” (as the title of one recent book terms it) possible?30 Where is this growing momentum leading? Are such dialectical processes through which new cultural ideas and alliances are being created sufficient in themselves to produce lasting ideological and social change in the direction of a just and unified world community in which the diversity of the constituent elements is protected?
II Having now made more explicit a part of the context for my work not fully spelled out in Postnationalism Prefigured, I come more directly to other questions raised by my reviewers, Deborah Thomas and Steven Thomson. I completely agree with Thomas’ general theoretical point that the conceptual, symbolic order is intimately and inextricably tied to structural
and economic practices and that THE CONCEPTUAL, SYMBOLIC ORDER racial categories are buttressed by IS INTIMATELY AND INEXTRICABLY TIED class. Hence the sense in which I TO STRUCTURAL AND ECONOMIC PRACTICES, entitle the book’s concluding chap— AND RACIAL CATEGORIES
ter “World Community Imagined” ARE BUTTRESSED BY CLASS.
is meant to encompass both ide ational and performative aspects of an embryonic world citizenship. The chapter’s title calls attention, in other words, to a conceptual blueprint of world citizenship as well as to the early signs of the efforts of ordinary people to alter their attitudes, behaviors, and the quality of their interaction as they seek to realize this new condition. My intent was not to stop, as Thomson suggests, with mere imagining, in the sense of an unreal mental image.“ The chapter’s title alludes to Benedict Anderson’s influential book, Imagined Communities, with which Postnationalz'sm Prefigurm’ is in dialogue throughout.32 For Anderson (and for me), “imagined” entails the conceptualization of nationalism as a quintessentially modern sociopolitical form, as well as the ways in which nationalisms, organizationally, are produced and maintained. Thus, for example, his chapter “Census, Map, Museum” illustrates how each of these practices served as political instruments—first, in the colonial context and, later, in postcolonial states—as institutions of power that helped to alter older forms of identity, reifying and fixing them into new ones more congruent with colonial and national design.
Using examples from Southeast Asia, Anderson shows how colonial and postcolonial census categories, for example in Malaya and Malaysia, “became more visibly and exclusively racial,” insistent that each person have one and only one such identity, intolerant of earlier forms of self—identification and of multiple and ambiguous identities. The new “demographic topography” these censuses created on the basis
30. See Tom Mertes, ed., A Movement of Movements: 1: Another WzrldReally Poxsible? (London, UK: Verso, 2004).
31. See Thomson, “Citizenship and Belonging” 33.
32. See Anderson, Imagined Communitiex.
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CHARLES V. CARNEGIE
of naming and quantification was reinforced by parallel and related processes for organizing judicial and other bureaucratic systems that prescribed and oversaw how people could marry, reside, be buried, and the like.33 Peoples who before colonial rule had not seen themselves as “Malays” or “Chinese” or “Indians,” for example, became so because the colonial state’s new administrative practices sorted, enumerated, and treated them as such. The invented identity categories into which they were corralled varied over time in any one place and varied from the colonies of one European power to the next: Peoples whom the Dutch East India Company in Indonesia and the British in Malaya labeled “Chinese” were known for many years by the Spanish in the Philippines as Sangley (from the Hokkien sengli meaning “trader”). Peoples variously integrated into their societies and distinguished by rank and status were reclassified by race. And the interlocking practices of state power ensured that the new classifications stuck.
“Like Censuses, European—style maps worked on the basis of a totalizing classification,”34 which reshaped the imagination of peoples in one world region after another and imposed sharp, often arbitrary, political-territorial frontiers, on populations that otherwise overlapped (such as the Tamils in India and Sri Lanka, Fulani and Hausas peoples in West Africa, and so many others around the world). The coordinates of peoples’ most fundamental orientation to the land, to each other, and to the sacred were rearranged by the Mercatorian map:
Cairo and Mecca were beginning to be Visualized in a strange new way, no longer
simply as sites in a sacred Muslim geography, but also as dots on paper sheets
which included dots for Paris, Moscow, Manila and Caracas; and the plane relationship between these indifferently profane and sacred dots was determined
by nothing beyond the mathematically calculated flight of the crow.”35 Building on Anderson’s work (and in keeping with Thomson’s suggestion), Postnationalz'sm Prefigured seeks to make Visible ways in which people in a variety of local settings even now may be learning and acting out emergent forms of citizenship that cut against
POSTNATIONALISM PREF/GURED the grain of identities the SEEKS TO MAKE VISIBLE WAYS nation—state grid prescribed. IN WHICH PEOPLE IN A VARIETY OF LOCAL SETTINGS If Postnationalz‘sm PreMAY BE LEARNING AND ACTING OUT figuml'appears to downplay, EMERGENT FORMS OF CITIZENSHIP as Thomas suggests, “the
THAT CUT AGAINST THE GRAlN OF IDENTITIES rClati‘mShiP betW€€n the THE NATION-STATE GRID PRESCRIBED. conceptual order and Per’
sistent structural hierarchies at local, national, and global levels,” it is only because my sense is that scholars concerned with social transformation have tended traditionally to do the oppositenamely, to emphasize that structural change precedes, and is more important than,
33. Anderson, Imagined Communitiex 164, 169. 34. Anderson, Imagined Communities 173. 35. Anderson, Imagined Communities 170—71.
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conceptual and ideational change.36 My contention is that correcting structural inequities, such as patterns of ownership of the means of production, without a fundamental reformulation of the conceptual order cannot ultimately succeed.
I think that Thomas and myself agree that racial categories are not merely symbolic and ideological. They coincide with real, though human-made, structural differences, and they enable processes of material class exploitation. Our emphases differ, however, in that, when Thomas asks, rhetorically, “can a conceptual reformulation really transform the structural conditions that continue to imbue mainstream political concepts with racial and national identities?” she seems to imply that structural conditions have to be attended to first, before the conceptual and symbolic order can change.” I am suggesting that the two move in tandem but also that working at the conceptual—ideational end of things may provide critical leverage for more meaningful structural transformation.
As I argue in Poxtnationalism Prqfigured, nationalisms in the Caribbean (ideologically buttressed by race) and in other parts of the nonmetropolitan world were and are a vital part of ongoing struggles against economic and political domination. Moreover, the terms on which racial mobilization around notions of a black ethnicity have occurred have varied over time and place and are often contested from within. Hence, for example, as I indicate in Posmationalism Prefigured, the Garvey movement’s internationalization of black ethnic politics in the 19205 differed qualitatively from more circumscribed black ethnic mobilizations that preceded it, even as it built, in new ways, on a transnational cultural politics long present in the black diaspora world. When, in colonial Jamaica, slaves and former slaves united on the basis of their “racial” identity to resist the un just rule of the colonial plantocracy, ACHIEVING A MORE JUST WORLD
they did so by building political net- REQUIRES S'MULTANEOUS CHANGE
works primarily within the territorial IN BOTH THE STRUCTURAL AND confines of the island. In their strategy, SYMBOLIC-IDEOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS
they were less systematic than the Garvey OF THE SOCIAL ORDER.
movement would later be in creating a transnational constituency that saw itself acting both locally and internationally using circuits of travel that black sailors and others had maintained over centuries. The central questions for me are as follows. Can political organizing on the basis of “race” (and of nationalism), no matter how much these ideologies are adapted to new political circumstances, ultimately succeed? And are attempts to bring about change through structural transformation (vital though such transformation is) sufficient? While I concur that the terms of ownership and economic exchange play an important role in sustaining race and racism, I maintain that achieving a more just world requires simultaneous change in both the structural and symbolic—ideological dimensions of the social order. Attempts at structural transformation without explicit attention to ideological issues of the sort with which I am concerned may suppress racial and nationalist sentiments for a time but fail to root out the ideo 36. Thomas, “Transcending the Limits of Political and Intellectual Boundaries” I9. 37. Thomas, “Transcending the Limits of Political and Intellectual Boundaries” 19.
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CHARLES V. CARNEGIE
logical investment in ethnonationalist and racial concepts and hence preserve their capacity to reemerge with a vengeance. Though socialist Cuba and countries in Eastern Europe, for example, often claimed that by overhauling their systems of political economy they had undermined the foundations of racism and nationalism, more recent events (and analyses of these societies) have proven their claims wrong.38 And while the appeal to racial solidarity might appear to be the most effective way to combat economic and political marginalization already couched and coded in a discourse of race, it is well to remember that the smoke screen of racial affinity is also being used to mask the narrowly seIf—interested policies of ruling elites in many postcolonial countries. I take the view that broader alliances than can be stitched together on the basis of “race” need now to be formed to deal with the challenges facing an increasingly interdependent world.
The theoretical issues I am raising have to do with the need to address disabling limitations in the ideational system—that is, conceptual contradictions embedded in the very ethos of race—based modern social systems that are so deeply rooted that, even with the best of intentions, people find themselves incapable of surmounting
them. Cross—racial and cross CROSS-RACIAL AND CROSS-NATIONAL ALLIANCES national alliances, if and WILL REMAIN FRAGILE UNLESS STEPS ARE TAKEN when they form, will remain TO CONFRONT AND ROOT OUT fragile unless steps are taken
THE IDEOLOGICAL FALLACIES to confront and root out the OF RACE THINKING. ideological fallacies of race
thinking. My argument finds support in the work of other scholars of the Caribbean, the social systems of which I use to demonstrate this ubiquitous global problem.
In his insightful book Afio—Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean, Richard D. E. Burton, Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Sussex, argues that those cultural gestures that have often been seen by scholars of the Caribbean as indications of a popular will to subvert and resist the status quo ultimately fall short of achieving real or lasting transformation because they are perpetually indebted to and compromised by the dominant order they seek to transform. Burton adopts for his analysis the distinction French cultural theorist Michel de Certeau makes between “resistance” and “opposition.” Resistance, Burton argues, involves “those forms of contestation of a given system that are conducted from outside that system, using weapons and concepts derived from a source or sources other than the system in question.” It requires “an ‘eIsewherem (by which I take it he means an external location, perspective, or source) “from which the system may be perceived and grasped as a whole and from which a coherent strategy of resistance may be elaborated.”39 Opposition, by contrast, “designates those forms
38. For a recent and insightful discussion of race in Cuba, see, for example, Alejandro de la Fuente, A Natianfor All: Race, Inequality, andPolitit: z'n Twentz'et/J—Cmmry Cuba (Chapel Hill, NC, USA: U of North Carolina P, 2001).
39. Richard D. E. Burton, Afio—Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean (Ithaca, NY, USA: Cornell UP, 1997) 6, 50.
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of contestation of a given system that are conducted from within that system, using weapons and concepts derived from the system itself.”0 Resistance contemplates a clean sweep of an oppressive status quo; opposition aims tactically only to subvert it. Notice how readily competition or conflict (the former more common to liberal political thought, the latter, to Marxist models) tend to be seen as the primary vehicle for achieving social change, both perspectives quite diflErent from the model of social transformation proposed by Baha’u’llah.
Burton discusses a range of events and practices in Caribbean life past and present, from carnival to cricket, showing that, for all their attractiveness as oppositional forms, their long—term revolutionary capacity remains forever compromised by the debt they owe to the very system they mock. On one hand, Burton argues, tl’lCSC RESISTANCE CONTEMPLATES A CLEAN SWEEP
cultural practices represent “reactions to OF AN OPPRESSIVE STATUS QUO,‘ and compensations for, the state of chronic OPPOSITION AIMS TACTICALLY disempowerment to which, historically, ONLY TO SUBVERT IT,
most West Indians have been condemned.”
On the other hand, they are ways of adjusting to and becoming reconciled with the dominant order. West Indians took to, and took over, cricket, for example, that most English of games, infusing it with distinctive style. As many have observed, West Indian teams succeeded in achieving—through their mastery of the game and their victories over England, their former colonial masters—a larger symbolic victory. Yet, as Burton observes, their triumphs on the field offer to players and crowd alike more the fantasy than the reality of power: These symbolic Victories are, paradoxically, indications of West Indians’ lasting historical incorporation into the master’s rulegoverned domain. Thus “West Indian popular culture appears to combine a perpetual rebelliousness with an inability to effect lasting Changes in the structures of power it rebels against.”1
I would argue, further, that even those more radical movements that Burton claims exemplify the quality of resistance, have— in the absence ofdisinterestedsources of external inspiration—inevitably posed their radicalism more in negative than in positive terms. In the two primary cases of resistance Burton points to—the Haitian Revolution and the so—called Baptist war of 1831 in Jamaica—partieipants were bent on the overthrow of slavery but had articulated no clear idea of the system of social relations that might replace it. The “elsewhere” from which the system was perceived, grasped, and resisted was still largely a European “elsewhere,” with its recognizable hierarchy of officers and the like and reliant on fundamentally materialist ideas about human beings and the purpose of their existence.
The MacArthur prize-winning anthropologist Brackette Williams, whose study Stain: 071 My Name, IVar in My Veins: Guyana and the Politics of Cultural Struggle (discussed at length in Posmatz'onalism Prcfigured), makes an argument that I see as comparable to that made by Burton about the inability of Guyanese (despite
40. Burton, Afio-Creale 6. 41. Burton, Afro—Creole 263.
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CHARLES V. CARNEGIE
considerable effort) to surmount a hegemonic ideological system of ethnic categorization in which their cultural system’s invidious distinctions are rooted.42 Presentday Guyanese are entwined, in other words, in an all-encompassing, race—based system of ideas that purports to explain fundamental elements of their country’s history as well as the capacity, worth, and contributions of its constituent ethnic groups. Even though they recognize the colonial origin of these ideas, and have freed themselves from white political control, the racialized ideology that gave birth to and supported the colonial order are proving intransigent. Having overturned white political dominance, Guyanese still face the challenge of how to extricate themselves from the legacy of race thinking.
While I agree that the conceptual/ideational and material/structural aspects of the social order are interdependent, in this instance, racial categories and ideology are produced and maintained both by historical and by on—going economic processes, I maintain that the ideological impasses that Burton and Williams identify for the
Caribbean and that, as I suggest in
RACIAL CATEGORIES AND IDEOLOGY Postnationalism Prqfigured, can also
ARE PRODUCED AND MAINTAINED be seen at a global level, necessarBOTH BY HISTORICAL AND BY ON-GOlNG ily impede the achievement of ECONOMIC PROCESSES, lasting structural transformation.
Building on such textual and ethnographic analyses of Caribbean social systems, I am suggesting that the practices of “‘living well togetherm to which Thomas calls attention, though important and necessary, are limited in their capacity to produce fundamental social transformation.43 To extricate themselves from such intractable conceptual/ideational dead-ends as Burton and Williams describe, our social systems (and movements to transform them) need to be able to draw on ideational resources more genuinely external to themselves. While the eflbrts of people to identify and overcome the internal contradictions and shortcomings of their societies can lead to social change, the processes of critical self—examination in which they engage might be greatly enhanced
by drawing on models and ideas whose sources are outside the social system they inhabit.
III Postnationalism Pnfigured proposes an idea (somewhat commonplace to Bahá’ís and adherents of other world religions but unusual these days to secular academics)namely, that the prophets of the world’s great religions are generative sources of social renewal and that the analyses and prescriptive principles they offer to the societies of their day afford a means for precisely the ideational ground—clearing from an external source that can breathe new life into a social order. As Bahá’u’lláh suggests, the prophetic founding figures of the world’s religions intervene periodically in
42. See Brackette F. Williams, Stain: 071 My Name, Whr in My Veins: Guyana and t/JePolin'cs of Cultural Struggle (Durham, NC, USA: Duke UP, 1991). 43. Thomas, “Transcending the Limits of Political and Intellectual Boundaries” 18.
24 World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4
MODELS AND ENACTMENTS OF TRANSFORMATION
human history. They initiate cycles of social renewal based on fresh conceptualizations of the human condition and its potentiality that are consonant with, though independent of, the prevailing order. Their symbolic/conceptual formulations are infused with a capacity not only to connect meaningfully with distinct and variant local histories and symbolic systems but also to provide peoples living in different circumstances with an illuminating analy sis of their historical and social condi— THE PROPHENC FOUND'NG FIGURES tion. OF THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS
As the world has become ever more INITIATE CYCLES OF SOCIAL RENEWAL closely interconnected, correspondingly, BASED ON FRESH CONCEPTUALIZATIONS the analysis and remedial prescription OF THE HUMAN CONDITION Baha’u’llah’s writings contain might prove AND ITS POTENTIALITY.
regenerative at both a world-systemic level
and at the level of the varied constituent societies. The Bahá’í model (sketched in its barest outlines in the concluding chapter of Postnationalism Prefigured) seeks to bring about radical change at both the material/structural and conceptual/ideational levels. It articulates a wide—ranging set of transformations that need to take place in economic, social, and political life and also invites, indeed, urges and compels, us to reconfigure fundamental conceptions of life, history, humanity, and the principles governing human interrelationships, and more.
The Bahá’í model also addresses the role and place of the individual in relation to an emergent world social system. Many would argue that attempts in the recent past to bring about social and political transformation at national or wider levels have encouraged a mindset of apathy and dependency on the part of the individual and discouraged initiative and agency at the local level. By contrast, Baha’u’llah’s writings encourage both individual and structural transformation. They allow people to see themselves, and slowly begin to operate, as fundamentally spiritual beings: seeing themselves as having a profound interconnectedness with everyone on the planet; liberated from that crippling distinction—abrogated by Baha’u’llah—between people of the Book and those not of the Book as beings who are not simply content with individual “salvation” only, unencumbered by the materialist categories of race and nationality, for example, woven into prevailing notions of personhood. Baha’u’llah’s writings empower people to work locally to effect changes that can ultimately have an impact at national and global levels.
Distinctly at variance with more passive, salvationist conceptions of religion that rely on the initiative of an ordained clergy as intermediaries,44 the Bahá’í model encourages a high level of civic involvement, and individual volition within a framework of a participatory democratic system consisting of local, national and global elected institutions. Bahá’ís take on Baha’u’llah’s encompassing global blueprint and make it their own. The model allows new forms of citizenship to be
44. In this and other respects the Bahá’í world community contrasts markedly with Pentecostalism and other international religious movements mentioned in Thomas’s review, “Transcending the Limits of Political and Intellectual Boundaries” 19—20.
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CHARLES V. CARNEGIE
practiced and perfected even within older, existing social arrangements. It anticipates and prepares for a time when the old order will give way, in part, under the weight of its own contradictions, to be replaced by one vastly more just. In practice, this has meant that Bahá’ís are caught up in their local Bahá’í communities in vital processes of struggle (as Thomson points out) as they seek to understand and make this new system a living reality.
Thomas and Thomson both express the desire for Posmationalism Prcfigured to provide more evidence of the efficacy of the Bahá’í model and for an extension of the discussion of how Bahá’í communities translate precept into practice. Beginning this process, Thomson himself expands on my ideas, applying them to material from his own ethnographic research in The Gambia and to his experiences in (as well as published accounts of) various Bahá’í communities. Thomson’s essay uses Postnationalism Prefigured to open up and animate the staid, taken-for-granted concept of citizenship, showing how citizenship is configured differently and is continually being reformulated in varying local contexts in response to a variety of social forces, many of them at the present time transnational in origin. “Citizenship,” Thomson suggests, needs to be viewed as “a social act to be performed, not simply a category of existence, arbitrarily granted.”5
Thomson’s example of the successful struggles of the Bahá’í community of Washington, D.C., in the early decades of the twentieth century to implement the principle of racial equality in a segregated social environment is a notable instance of the processes of transforma tion that are very much a part IN COMMUNITIES AROUND THE GLOBE,
of Bahá’í life. Bahá’u’lláh’s blue— BAHA'I’S IN PRACTICE
print for worldwide social trans— HAVE INCHED GRADUALLY TOWARD
formation often goes againSt IMPLEMENTING BAHA'I’ PRINCIPLES
ingrained Patterrls and CXiSting IN SPITE OF PRESSURES, BOTH FROM WITHIN forms of social domination. Yet AND OUTSIDE THEIR RANKS,
in communities around the globe, Bahá’ís in practice have
inched gradually toward implementing Bahá’í principles in spite of pressures, both from within and outside their ranks, to conform to prevailing norms.
It bears noting that patterns of interracial association in the United States Bahá’í community continue to be in advance of those in the country as a whole. Take, for example, the cultural rule of endogamy that discourages interracial marriage and serves as a crucial mechanism for perpetuating white dominance in a racialized society. The social pressures that not so silently enforce this cultural rule are such that the rate of interracial marriage among white Americans today is still less than 2 percent, a negligible 1 percent improvement since the 19605. By contrast, preliminary data from a 2003 survey of individuals from high—growth Bahá’í commu /’I '
nities show that about 28 percent of married Baha IS 1 the forty-eight contiguous
TO CONFORM TO PREVAILING NORMS.
45. Thomson, “Citizenship and Belonging” 26.
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MODELS AND ENACTMENTS OF TRANSFORMATION
United States are married to a person of a different racial or ethnic background.“6 On a broader, collective scale, well-developed initiatives such as the Black Men’s Bahá’í Gathering and the Institutes for the Healing of Racism also bear eloquent testimony to the ongoing efforts of Bahá’ís to confront and overcome the normalized, oppressive impact of racism.“7
Another case worth mentioning is that of the advance toward gender equality in the Bahá’í community of Iran in the first half of the twentieth century. It represents an example not only of a break with time-honored patterns of male dominance but also of transnational collaboration between Bahá’í communities. Under the systematic and tactful guidance of the appointed heads of the Faith, the Iranian Bahá’í community’s resistance to the equality and full participation of women became gradually transformed over the course of several decades. First, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’u’llah’s son and appointed head of the Faith from 1892 to 1921, and, later, Shoghi Effendi, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s appointed successor, encouraged and supported close collaboration between the Bahá’ís of North America and Iran that led to the establishment of boys’ and girls’ schools and other
projects of community development in Iran. BY THE 19705!
Beginning in 1909 with the arrival of physician PERSIAN BAHA'I WOMEN
Dr. Susan Moody, accomplished North Ameri— WERE AMONG THE MOST PROMINENT can Bahá’í women were encouraged to settle in PROFESSIONAL WOMEN IN IRAN.
or travel to Iran to assist the Iranian Bahá’í community to advance these projects. They included other medical professionals such as Elizabeth Stewart and Dr. Sarah Clock; teachers Lillian Kappes, Dr. Genevieve Coy, and Adelaide Sharp; university lecturer and writer Keith Ransom-Kehler; and Martha Root, a journalist who traveled around the world five times.“8
Such women pioneered in opening up the fields of education and medicine and in advancing the education of women in particular. Through their presence and their work, moreover, they demonstrated to women and men alike what women were capable of accomplishing if given equal opportunity. Indeed, by the 19703, Persian Bahá’í women, emulating the example of the earlier long—term Bahá’í visitors from North America, were among the most prominent professional women in Iran. The
46. The rates of interracial marriage for the United States are from census data reported in Gary D. Sandefur et al., “An Overview of Racial and Ethnic Demographic Trends,” in Neil J. Smelser, William Julius Wilson, and Faith Mitchell, eds., America Betoming: Racial Penal: and Their Camequences, vol. 1 (Washington, DC, USA: National Academy P, 2001) 75. The statistic on the rate of interracial marriage in the Bahá’í community was supplied by the Office of the National Teaching Committee of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and is based on research conducted in 2003.
47. Founded in 1987, the Black Men’s Gathering is a network of more than one hundred Bahá’í men. The group’s main emphasis is on prayer, fellowship, and service. The Institutes for the Healing of Racism, based on individual initiatives by members of the Bahá’í community that draw on their Faith’s teachings on race unity, seek to educate people about racism and to promote reconciliation in the wider community through trained facilitators.
48. See Baharieh Rouhani Ma‘ani, “Interdependence of Bahá’í Communities—Services of North American Bahá’í Women to Tran,” in The Baha"! World.- An International Record, Volume )0(, prepared under supervision of the Universal House of Justice (Haifa: Bahá’í World Centre, 1998) 1091—1114.
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CHARLES V. CARNEGIE
innovative and sustained process of transnational collaboration helped transform the ethos of the Iranian Bahá’í community to the extent that, starting in 1954, women were regularly elected to serve on the community’s highest governing body, the National Spiritual Assembly.” Resistance to the unqualified equality of women did persist throughout these decades, and the number of women elected to the community’s governing councils was small. Yet distinctive patterns of gender relations began to emerge within the Bahá’í community that were at variance with those in the wider society and began to exert a positive influence for change on the norms and expectations regarding the place of women in Iran as a whole.
At this early stage in the development of the Jamaican Bahá’í community, just over sixty years old at present, the ways in which “Bahá’í-inflected postnationalism has challenged and transformed ordinary social dynamics” are less readily demonstrated than in instances such as the advancement of women in Iran and the efl'brts of Bahá’ís in the United States to overcome the effects of racism.50 The Jamaican Bahá’í community is relatively small‘comprising less than 1 percent of the country’s population—and the primary research needed to begin to assess its impact in anything other than impressionistic terms has yet to be done. At the same
THE LACK OF SCHISM IN THE BAHAIl WORLD COMMUNITY OVER MORE THAN 160 YEARS
AND THE CAPACITY TO STAND UP time, the transnational TO SEVERE PERSECUTION ethos that Jamaica and the OFFERS COMPELLING PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE rest of the Caribbean have
OF AN ABILITY TO RESIST long enjoyed, and the exTHE ALLURE OF CO-OPTATION' perience these societies have
had incorporating newcomers who differ culturally and in physical appearance from the rest of the population also means that whatever contrasts exist between patterns in the nascent Bahá’í community and the surrounding Jamaican society are in many respects less striking than they might otherwise be.
Thomas’s question as to “how panterritorial religious visions of all sorts can be co—opted by minority interpretations to serve the very exclusionary projects they propose, in theory, to transcend” is an extremely important one the answer to which, for the Bahá’í Faith at least, must ultimately come from the test of longer experience in the broad cross—section of countries where the Bahá’í community has been established.51 However, the lack of schism in the Bahá’í world community over more than 160 years and the capacity to stand up to severe persecution that Bahá’ís in Iran and elsewhere have shown for much of that history, refusing to recant their Faith or to compromise its fundamental principles, offers compelling preliminary evidence of an ability to resist the allure of co—optation.
49. In 1979, after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, all Bahá’í institutions were disbanded. 50. Thomson, “Citizenship and Belonging” 35. 51. Thomas, “Transcending the Limits of Political and Intellectual Boundaries” 20.
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MODELS AND ENACTMENTS OF TRANSFORMATION
IV
Posmationalism Prefiguredacknowledges and builds on advances made in the flourishing contemporary scholarship on nationalism and transnationalism and points inquiry in potentially fruitful new directions, drawing on historical and ethnographic material from the Caribbean and on the Bahá’í model of world community. In conceding the point that Thomson and Thomas both make in different ways that we need to know more about how the Bahá’í Faith restructures and transforms its members’ everyday life practices, I would remind readers that the book is an attempt to lay the foundation for asking precisely these sorts of questions and for doing the research to address them. Its concluding Chapter, though central to the overall angle of vision, was, of necessity, suggestive and brief. If my argument can help others break out from a paralyzing set of constraints in contemporary scholarship—identified in the book and elaborated on here—and clear the way for more venturesome work, it will have succeeded in its aims. I am delighted that Postnatz'omzlz'sm Prefigureu’ is being positively received and that others are already beginning to find ways of applying it in their own work.
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4 29
30
To Iran
They said it couldn’t last
That the riots, the anger, the shouts Were just a short—lived scene
That would tire out and fizzle away, Like the rebellion of a wayward child But this child’s anger would not end Her destruction would not cease But grew :1 little more each day Until there were no smiles,
No laughter, no lullabies
Until our children carried guns And our streets were washed with blood Until sons betrayed fathers
And mothers buried sons
Believing it was all for the good That the cause was just
And power was now
In the hands of the righteous
Who took the reigns
And, with them, beat the horse That had carried them for centuries Across a sacred land
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[Page 31]
Iran, what have they done to you?
Who took your poets, your peaceful nights, Your noble arts, philosophy,
Historical sites
And turned them into a cauldron
Of hate and greed?
We feed on misery,
And day and night
Can no longer be told apart,
For darkness is all we ever see.
The mansions of a privileged race
Have become gilded cages
Through whose bars they dare not look. The rich are made poor
And the poor are allowed to languish. God is no longer
Life and light
But dusty books and sharp, black whips And those who love Him as He was Must rot in filthy prisons
Or die a painful death
While schoolgirls have
The laughter snatched from their throats, And must hide their polished fingertips
Beneath a veil of oppression
Iran, I do not recognize you Can barely recall
Your gentle skies
And waving palms
All I hear now
Are the bombs
And the plaintive, desperate cry Of those who die,
Not those who live
To see the hell they’ve made
Still, I say to you I cannot let you go.
All I have now Is your past.
—HEDYEH SADEGHI
Copyright © 2004 Hedyeh Sadeghi
HEDYEH SADEGHI has been reading and writing poetry and fiction since childhood. When he was five years old, he, his mother, and an aunt escaped from Iran and spent eleven months in Pakistan before immigrating to Canada. From McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, he has obtained a nursing degree and an honors BA. in psychology. He is an assistant project manager for Philip Analytical Services, an environmental industry,
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4 31
[Page 33]
MICHELLE MAYNERICK
Radical Black Feminism and The Bahá’í Faith: Moments of Connection, Models of Change
The Bahá’í Faith, which began in 1844, has been compared to various social—Change movements. Indeed, many people associated with such movements are attracted to the Bahá’í Faith because of its emphasis on its principles, which include, among others, the essential oneness of humanity, the equality of women and men, and the eradication of prejudice. Like many social-change theories, the radical black feminist movement, which dates from the late 19603 and the early 19705, intersects with the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith at several points. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the Faith shares more profound commonalities with the “radical” element of black feminism than might be assumed from a superficial glance. Radical black feminism offers one of the few theories of
Change that (196511“ seek PiCCC' THE BAHA'I FAITH'S AND RADICAL BLACK FEMINISM'S meal reform w‘thm current 50ml DIVERGENT PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN NATURE
structures but tether asserts that AND REALITY QUICKLY COMPLICATE authentic liberation for oppressed
. THEIR CURSORV CONNECTIONS. peoples can only be realized
through an entirely new model of
social and institutional interaction. This position is founded on the belief that, to achieve unity and justice, the interconnected nature of social realities necessitates the transformation of all social identities.
The Bahá’í Faith’s and radical black feminism’s divergent perspectives on human nature and reality, however, quickly complicate their cursory connections. The teachings of the Bahá’í Faith describe the nature of reality and the purpose of human life in spiritual terms; hence its social teachings are essentially spiritual. Thus the emphasis on social change within the Bahá’í writings is founded not only on respect for basic human integrity but on a fundamental love relationship between human beings and God. Further complications become apparent when we discover that the seemingly revolutionary principles of the Bahá’í Faith for such change are contextualized
Copyright © 2004 by Michelle Maynerick.
MICHELLE MAYNERICK ’
an artist and educator. recently spent six months In San J
started a visum program for chIIdren In the Iorgesthausm
bean. She Is now teaching In a ChIcogo after—scmd program
that merges viobnce ptevenfion and the arts. Her Interests I
between social and splrh‘uol pdnprIes.
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4 33
MICHELLE MAYNERICK
within a developmental, world—embracing process that is moving humanity toward spiritual maturity Within this framework, the eradication of this or that social evil is superseded by the creation of a new world order, “‘the illumination of an entirely new way of life,” that Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, seeks to educate humanity to embrace.1 Yet despite the differences between the Bahá’í Faith and radical black feminism, a comparison between the two proves useful. By investigating the lens through which radical black feminism makes sense of the world, its diagnosis of social ills, and the corresponding remedies it suggests, we can survey the ways in which the Bahá’í Faith offers an important correc BY INVESTIGATING THE LENS THROUGH WHICH tive to theories of radical RADICAL BIACK FEMINISM MAKES SENSE OF THE WORLD, social change because it WE CAN SURVEY THE WAYS IN WHICH THE BAHA’F FAITH places such theories in an OFFERS AN IMPORTANT CORRECTIVE TO eXpanded Spiritual frame THEORIES OF RADICAL SOCIAL CHANGE. work My definition of black feminist thought is neither comprehensive not static, for, by its nature, it is in a continuous state of dynamic development shaped by many voices. Similarly, my presentation of the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith reflects my own understanding; I am conscious that, while Bahá’ís consider Baha’u’llah’s teachings appropriate to the needs of humanity in this age, they are still struggling to understand their full implications and thus to implement them effectively in their personal and community lives.
Origins of Contemporary Black Feminist Thought
Contemporary black feminism developed in the late 19605 and early 19705 in connection with both the civil-rights movements and the second wave of the women’s liberation movement in the United States.2 The second wave of the women’s liberation movement explored social and political constructions of gender and asserted that women’s personal struggles had profound political implications. By effectively challenging the definitions of womanhood that kept women dependent on men and excluded them from patriarchy’s power centers (business, government, and the like), they made great strides in proposing a theory of female solidarity that could hypothetically unite all women. The women’s liberation movement, however, was dominated by white women, largely from educated, middle— to upper—class backgrounds, who found a public voice that presented their own particular life circumstances as normative to the Female experience in America.3 This, in effect, belittled the issues that were central to the lives of women of color and poor women who did not share the social privileges enjoyed by the white elite and whose subordination,
1. The Universal House of Justice, letter to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, July 21, 1968, quoted in the Department of the Secretariat of the Universal House of Justice, letter to Sen McGlinn, April 27, 1995.
2. See Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement,” in Beverly Guy—Sheftall, ed., Word: of Fire: An Anthology ofAfiican—American Feminist Thought (New York: New P, 1995) 233.
3. See bell hooks, “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory,” in Guy—Sheftall, ed., Word: of Fire 271.
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RADICAL BLACK FEMINISM AND THE BAHA'I’ FAITH
therefore, took drastically different forms.4 Within the societal power structure of white racial dominance and by virtue of their connection to white men, white middle—class women often benefited from the exploitation of the lives and communities of black women and other women of color.S The white feminist movement, largely ignorant of the racial and class elements that would complicate their formula of sisterhood, left many black women feeling alienated and silenced within the very movement that purported to advocate the liberation of all women.
In 1973 the National Black Feminist Organization was formed by a group of women who had been extensively involved with the Civil Rights
movement, Black Nationalism,
IN 1973 THE NATIONAL BLACK FEMINIST ORGANIZATION CALLED FOR AN INNOVATIVE, INTEGRATIVE ANALYSIS THAT COULD ADDRESS THE OVERLAPPING OF OPPRESSIONS OF RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER
and the Black Panthers. They PARTICULAR TO BLACK WOMEN'S EXPERIENCE were responding not only to IN THE UNITED STATES THAT HAD PREVIOUSLY BEEN perceived inadequacies within LEFT EITHER UNACKNOWLEDGED ore IGNORED the mainstream feminist move— BY THE CONVENTIONAL ClVIL-RIGHTS, BLACK-POWER, ment but to the neglect of AND FEMINIST MOVEMENTS OF THE TIMES.
gender issues in other move ments concerned with racial justice. They called immediately for an innovative, integrative analysis that could address the overlapping of oppressions of race, class, and gender particular to black women’s experience in the United States that had previously been left either unacknowledged or ignored by the conventional civilrights, blaCk-power, and feminist movements of the times.6
The Shift to Radical Black Feminism
Although common themes can be identified in the oppressions that black women
face in the United States, the variations in how they are experienced and interpreted
has led to differing theories and lines of action.7 Ella Black, a prominent social—justice
activist in the civil—rights era, articulated the problem as follows: In order for us poor and oppressed people to become a part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed. This means we are going to have to learn to think in radical terms. I use the term radical in its original meaning—getting down to and understanding the root cause. It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you change that system.8
4. See hooks, “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory,” in Guy-Sheftall, ed., Word: ofFire 271.
5. See Aida Hurtado, The Color of Privilege: Three Blasphemie: on Race andthz'nixm (Ann Arbor, MI, USA: U of Michigan P, 1996) 5.
6. See Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement,” in Guy—Sheftall, ed., Words OfFire 233.
7. See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Comcz'oumm, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000) 25.
8. Ella Baker, quoted in Joy James, Shadowboxing: Representation: of Black Feminist Politics (New York: St. Martins P, 1999) 73.
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4 35
MICHELLE MAYNERICK
In 1977 the Combahee River Collective, a group originally formed as the Boston chapter of the National Black Feminist Organization, conceptualized a new theory of black feminism that sought to identify and challenge the fundamental causes of oppression. The Collective’s integrated analysis highlighted the interconnected nature of all major forms of oppression and linked their manifestation to a common source: according to their organizational statement, sexism, racism, heterosexism (the privileging of heterosexuals), and classism all find their roots in the beliefs and policies imposed by a capitalistic, patriarchal state. The state, in turn, promotes a brand of cultural imperialism that privileges the values and concerns of the ruling class in society’s centers of power. This was a drastic break from the focus of the white women’s liberation movement, which had concentrated largely on the actions and attitudes of men in their direct and personal relationships with women. It was also a break from trends in the mainstream black-feminist movement, which, like the women’s liberation movement, did not seek to dismantle the state but rather sought gradual reform within already established sociopolitical structures.
According to the Combahee River Collective, oppression must be confronted at an institutional level where it reproduces itself and maintains power in perpetuating the status quo. For this reason, the response that the Collective deemed necessary
for the liberation of all sub ACCORDING TO THE COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE, jugated peoples was no less OPPRESSION MUST BE CONFRONTED than the complete eradica AT AN INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL tion of these institutions WHERE |T REPRODUCES ITSELF AND MAINTAINS of oppression.9 This analy POWER IN PERPETUATING THE STATUS ouo. sis helped to introduce a
new phase within the black feminist movement itself, one that linked radical theory With revolutionary action. While the shifting sociopolitical context and evolving ideological positions by which movements define themselves make it extremely difficult to grant foundational status to any one position, this particular position is the basis of what originally asserted itself as radical black feminism.10
Identifying Social Theory: Points of Orientation
Radical black feminist theory over the past thirty years has gradually contributed to the formation of a certain conceptual framework that, in turn, informs its methodology of social transformation. Every collective of individuals, whether they are united through a religion or a social-change movement, must agree upon some fundamental perception of reality and recognize some authoritative source that informs interaction with that reality.11 In the efforts to identify social problems correctly and thus to devise appropriate means through which to address these problems,
9. See Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement,” in Guy—Sheftall, ed., W/anit OfFire 233.
10. See James, Sbadowboxing79.
11. See Century of Light, supervised by the Universal House of Justice (Haifa, Israel: Bahá’í World Centre, 2001) 41.
36 World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4
RADICAL BLACK FEMINISM AND THE BAHA’T FAITH
we must explore who has the best vantage point through which to propose social theory and action. While many of the social principles in the Bahá’í Faith and in radical black feminism are similar, each proceeds from a different conceptual framework, and each employs different methodologies of transformation.
RADICAL BLACK FEMlNISM
The radical black feminist analysis asserts that the most insightful expositions of our culture’s limitations have come from those who have been historically marginalized from the spaces (such as school curricula, the media, and local and national government policies) where dominant cultural narratives are created. Consequently, it
is from activists and theorists who most embody the image Of the dlS- THE RADICAL BLACK FEMINIST ANALYSIS
enfranchised that radical social ASSERTS THAT THE MOST INSIGHTFUL EXPOSITIONS
theory emerges. From the beginning OF OUR CULTURE'S LIMITATIONS of slavery in the United States to HAVE COME FROM THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN the present time, black women, by HISTORICALLY MARGINALIZED.
virtue of their physical characteristics and societal position, have generally been considered to be the opposite of what constitutes power and privilege in mainstream US. society. According to the Combahee River Collective, “Black women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule.”12
There is little mystery about the differences between black women and the white power structure. The icon of power in American culture is embodied in the hegemonic male: white, heterosexual, middle— to upper-class, and Christian. The iconic history of the United States is also reflected in the stories of the country’s Founding Fathers who fit such a description: the politicians, explorers, and military leaders who are immortalized for establishing the institutions of American freedom and justice. This image of normalcy is embedded into the social structures as well as in the dominant cultural psychology of the United States, naming all who stand outside the norm as deviant.13 An obvious example can be found in the pre—Civil War era portrayal of the black male slave as the embodiment of laziness and ignorance and the black female slave as an oversexualized “Jezebel” or a desexualized “Mammy.”14 Each of these representations has been and continues to be exploited to make whites appear, by contrast, hard working, pure, knowledgeable, and civilized.15
Only in recent decades have the long—silenced histories of oppression and resistance by marginalized groups been articulated and gained credibility within centers of cultural production. Black women, because they have been historically situated
a
12. See Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement,’ in Joy James and T. Denean Sharply—Whiting, ed., Black FeministReaa’er (Massachusetts, USA: Blackwell P, 2000) 262.
13. See Diane Roberts, The [Myth of Aunt jemima: Representations of Rare and Region (London: Routledge, 1994) 9.
14. See Leith Mullings, “Images, Ideology, and Women of Color,” in Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill, ed., Women of Color in US. Society (Philadelphia, PA, USA: Temple UP) 269.
15. See Roberts, lVIyt/y of Aunt [emima 9.
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4 37
MICHELLE MAYNERICK
outside of the centers of society’s power, have been able to see and understand the privileges and oppressive societal conventions that function in a manner that is virtually undetectable to those who often unknowingly benefit from them. African American Studies Professor Patricia Hill Collins has observed that, “overall, US. Black Women as a group live in a different world than that of people who are not Black and female. For individual women, the particular experiences that accrue to living as a Black woman in the United States can stimulate a distinctive consciousness concerning our own experiences and society overall.”‘6 By privileging the unique knowledge and theorizing of black women, radical black feminist thought established a conceptual framework cognizant of overlapping oppressions and oriented toward addressing their root cause.
THE BAHA'I’ FAITH
From the inception of the Bahá’í Faith in 1844, its sacred scriptures have acknowledged that marginalized peoples have unique insight into society’s limitations. It is significant to note the emphasis placed on the roles and responsibilities of African Americans in particular, Who, as Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, explains, “epitomize the feelings of color prejudice so rife in the United States.”17
This suggests that African Amer FROM THE INCEPTION OF THE icans have a particular under BAHA’I’ FAITH IN 1844, ITS SACRED SCRIPTURES standing of the effects of racHAVE ACKNOWLEDGED ism in the United States, as the
THAT MARGINALIZED PEOPLES HAVE UNIQUE INSIGHT blaCk feminis‘ analYSiS would INTO SOCIETY'S LIMITATIONS. later observe. In the early part
of the twentieth century, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá noted that “‘Baha’u’llah . . . once compared the colored people to the black pupil of the eye surrounded by the white. In this black pupil is seen the reflection of that which is before it, and through it the light of the spirit shineth forth.”18 The pupil of the eye enables vision, reflecting “that which is before it.” While the Bahá’í writings stress that all people are endowed with the capacity for independent thought and vision, this passage implies that black people have a particular clarity of perception; hence one may infer that this perception is directly related to their experiences in a society dominated by white people.
Acknowledging the significant role that African Americans play in detecting the effects of racism does not diminish the importance of the perceptions of other marginalized or oppressed peoples, nor does it take away their equally important place in negotiating justice and unity in community life. Shoghi Effendi points out that, “in our Faith, unlike every other society, the minority, to compensate for what might be treated as an inferior status, receives special attention, love and consid 16. Collins, Black Feminixt Thought 23.
17. On behalf of Shoghi Effendi, letter to Race Unity Committee, December 30, 1945, quoted in “Object of Inter—Racial Work,” Babzi’t’Neu/x 188 (October 1946): 3—4.
18. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, quoted in Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine justice, lst pocket size ed. (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1990) 37.
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RADICAL BLACK FEMlNISM AND THE BAHA'l FAITH
eration. . . ."19 This principle permeates every level of community interaction from individual efforts to root out prejudice from one’s heart to the administrative procedures that value minority inclusion in certain situations: If any discrimination is at all to be tolerated, it should be a discrimination not against but rather in favor of the minority, be it racial or otherwise. Unlike the nations and peoples of the earth, be they of the East or of the West, democratic or authoritarian, communist or capitalist, whether belonging to the Old World or the New, who either ignore, trample upon, or extirpate, the racial, religious, or political minorities within the sphere of their jurisdiction, every organized community enlisted under the banner of Baha’u’llah should feel it to be its first and inescapable obligation to nurture, encourage, and safeguard every minority belonging to any faith, race, class, or nation within it. So great and vital is this principle that in such circumstances, as when an equal number of ballots have been cast in an election, or where the qualifications for any office are balanced as between the various races, faiths, or nationalities within the community, priority should unhesitatingly be accorded the party representing the minority, and this for no other reason except to stimulate and encourage it, and afford it an opportunity to further the interests of the community. . . .20 The minority presence is valued for its contribution to “further the interests of the community” (emphasis added). Thus the privileging of the disenfranchised is seen not just as a friendly gesture to make someone feel included but rather an indispensable element in addressing the needs of all involved. While the voices of the marginalized are certainly valued within Bahá’í discourse, they do not have a formative role in shaping the conceptual framework of the Faith. In the Bahá’í Faith the guidelines for living given by the Manifestation of God and
the appointed protectors of His Covenant constitute the foun_ WHILE THE VOlCES OF THE MARGINALIZED
dational organizational frame_ ARE CERTAINLY VALUED WITHIN BAHA’I’ DISCOURSE, work—that is to say, the ulti— THEY DO NOT HAVE A FORMATIVE ROLE mate “privileged” voice in the IN SHAPING THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Bahá’í Faith is found in the au- OF THE FAITH.
thoritative sacred texts of Baha’u’llah; the writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Whom Baha’u’llah appointed the interpreter of His sacred writings; the elucidations of Shoghi Effendi, whom ‘Abdu’l-Bahá appointed the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith; and the Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing and administrative body of the Bahá’í Faith. The Bahá’í writings are considered to offer direct guidance from God, appropriate to the needs of humanity in this age.
Those who have recognized Baha’u’llah have made a conscious decision to attempt
l9. Shoghi Effendi, on his behalf, to one of the National Spiritual Assemblies of Latin America, July 1957, in The Pupil of the Eye: African Ameritam in the era' Order OfBaIJni ’u’lla’la, comp. Bonnie J. Taylor (Los Angeles: Palabra Publications, 1995) 142.
20. Shoghi Effendi, Advent of Divine justice 35.
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4 39
MICHELLE MAYNERICK
to see Him with “His own eyes.”21 That is, they endeavor to use the worldview presented in the Bahá’í writings as a lens through which to make sense of their own experiences. This worldview provides all people, marginalized or otherwise, a framework through which to understand the maladies of our age and a methodology for remedying our current historical predicament. Within this context, the varying accounts of experience and struggle brought by peoples from various racial, cultural, and economic backgrounds serve to assist individuals in understanding the wisdom behind all of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings. Within the Bahá’í community, preserving diversity is an uncompromising element of establishing unity, so long as various expressions of diversity are not contrary to fundamental principles of the Faith. The emphasis on the Bahá’í teachings as the lens through which to interpret reality is the principal area of discordance with radical black feminism and other socialchange movements. Indeed, many people from social-change backgrounds have become Bahá’í’s because of their strong conviction in particular social teachings, only to leave once they discover other teachings at variance with their own beliefs. Ultimately, a religion is not
THE EMPHASIS ON THE BAHA’I’ TEACHINGS reducible to a social moveAS THE LENS THROUGH WHICH TO INTERPRET REALITY ment, though it may very
IS THE PRINCIPAL AREA OF DISCORDANCE well possess significant so WITH RADICAL BLACK FEMlNlSM cial precepts. The struggle AND OTHER SOCIAL—CHANGE MOVEMENTS. Bahá’ís face is understand ing the social teachings in the context of the entire revelation. This is not to say that the Faith is at odds with the sentiment that those who have been oppressed best articulate the consequences and recognize more ably the sources of oppression. As we have seen, such voices are given a special and significant role within the Faith. It is only to say that the emphasis on such voices is informed by and contained within the guidelines for social and institutional interaction outlined in the Bahá’í writings. In the final analysis, the writings provide the principles that comprise the conceptual framework of the Faith. To the adherents of the Bahá’í Faith, this guidance is understood to spring from an essentially divine source, and obedience to it aids in unfolding an understanding of the purpose of human life: to know and to worship God.
Identifying Interconnectivity and
Seeking the Fundamental Source of Oppression
Despite differing conceptual frameworks, the radical black feminist movement and the Bahá’í Faith seem to share a similar conviction about social problems. Any theory of change is directly informed by an analysis of what the problem is and from where it springs. Many social-changc efforts address problems in isolation, focusing on eradicating poverty among a particular population or preserving a certain ecological
21. Baha’u’llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolfi trans. Shoghi Effendi, lst pocket size ed. (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1988) 151.
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RADICAL BLACK FEMINISM AND THE BAHA'I’ FAITH
environment, as if the ultimate resolution to such problems could take place without any transformation in the surrounding social structures. Both radical black feminism and the Bahá’í Faith reject such an assumption. While both will not hesitate to organize and participate in grassroots socio—economic development projects, each recognizes, at the same time, the reality of the interconnected nature of social problems, and each describes the problems as springing from one fundamental source. Thus, if we are to achieve any real and lasting social change, our focus should turn toward addressing the source of oppression rather than being distracted by any of its particular symptoms.
RADICAL BLACK FEMINISM
Central to radical black feminist analysis is the recognition that social oppressions such as sexism, racism, and classism are by their very nature interlocking and inseparable. These elements combine and shape the conditions of black women’s lives: Their experience is unique in that it has often been conditioned simultaneously by their racial and gender identity, as well as by their limited access to economic resources.22 Radical black feminism identifies the common source of these oppressions as the beliefs and policies imposed by a capitalist, patriarchal state, thus shifting the emphasis of feminist theory from individual relationships to the behavior of major social institutions.
Oppression of race, sex, and class cannot be eradicated through any piecemeal reform within the capitalist state; the same systems that are structured around and dependent upon the subordination of any given group of people cannot at the same time promise absolute liberation for all people, for this would undermine the very foundation of the structure itself. Thus the radical black feminist movement also claims a universal dimension to its struggle for justice. Sociologist Patricia Hill—Collins writes that,
if black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be
free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression. Because of the interdisciplinary basis of black feminism, it is only natural that its proponents recognize their own struggle as part of a greater struggle for human dignity and justice.23 For this reason, radical black feminism may be considered a theory of liberation for all peoples. Rather than preoccupation with this or that social wrong, it asserts that authentic freedom and justice for all will result only from the eradication of our current dominant social structures.
CENTRAL TO RADICAL BLACK FEMINIST ANALYSIS IS THE RECOGNITION THAT SOCIAL OPPRESSIONS SUCH AS SEXISM, RACISM, AND CLASSISM ARE BY THEIR VERY NATURE INTERLOCKING AND INSEPARABLE.
22. See Barbara Omolade, introduction, “The Evolving of Feminist Consciousness among African American Women,” in Guy—Sheftall, ed., Wardx ofFireZ. 23. Collins, Black Feminist T/Jaugkt41.
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4 41
MICHELLE MAYNERICK
THE BAHA'l FAITH
The need for completely restructuring the order in which human beings live is clearly
reflected in the Bahá’í writings, which reframe the source of social ills: There is little to be gained by trying to invent a precise way of ranking various complex problems such as racism or by attempting to resolve these problems on a piecemeal basis. The piecemeal efforts of those . . . who are concerned with the many grievous ills facing humanity have had little lasting success. Their wellmeaning endeavors have suffered from a lack of appreciation of the spiritual origin of these illnesses. . . .24
On the one hand, the need for an entirely new system of social organization to
eradicate all oppressions is absolutely affirmed. Baha u llah points to the inevitable transformation in the state
THE NEED FOR COMPLETELY RESTRUCTURING of affairs as we currently
THE ORDER IN WHICH HUMAN BEINGS LIVE know it: “Soon will the IS CLEARLY REFLECTED IN THE BAHA’I‘ WRITINGS, Present'day order be toned WHICH REFRAME THE SOURCE OF SOCIAL ILLS. UP, 311d 3 new 0116 Spread
out in its stead.”25 Shoghi Effendi asserts that the recognition of the oneness of humanity calls for “‘no less than the reconstruction and demilitarization of the whole civilized world.”26 Yet, on the other hand, while the grievous failings and oppressions of the current social structures are explicitly referred to in the Bahá’í writings, the Universal House of Justice does not point to them as the direct source of all social ills. Bahá’u’lláh made it abundantly clear that the first step essential for the peace and progress of mankind was its unification. As He says, “The well—being of mankind, its peace and security are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.” (The erd Order ofBa/Jd’u 7147), p. 203) To this day, however, you will find most people take the opposite point of view: they look upon unity as an ultimate almost unattainable goal and concentrate first on remedying all the other ills of mankind. If they did but know it, these other ills are but various symptoms and side effects of the basic disease—disunity.27 The implications of disunity as the source of all social ills are enormous, and the dimensions of the concept of disunity are far too complex to address here. We can, however, note the emphasis placed on the establishment of unity, without which the welfare of mankind is “unattainable.” The recognition of humanity’s oneness and the promotion of world unity are considered fundamentally spiritual endeavors. They require the recognition of a spiritual dimension to the human reality, a dimension that defines our authentic identity beyond secondary attributes such as color,
24. The Department of the Secretariat of the Universal House of justice, letter, March 24, 1998.
25. Bahá’u’lláh, Cleaning: from the Writing: of Baba’h’lla’b, trans. Shoghi Effendi, lst pocket size ed. (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1985) 7.
26. Shoghi Effendi, quoted in The Universal House of Justice, The Promise of erd Peace: To the People: Of the Wbrla'(Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1985) 29.
27. The Universal House of Justice to a Bahá’í, December 8, 1967, in The Universal House of Justice, Menage: From the Universal Home of justice 1963—1986: The Third Epoch of the Formative Age, comp. Geoffry W Marks (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1996) 555.3.
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RADICAL BLACK FEMINISM AND THE BAHA'I’ FAITH
ethnicity, or nation. It is through such recognition that, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says, “we may associate in perfect love and accord and consider humankind as one family, the surface of the earth as one nationality and all races as one humanity.”28 The Universal House of Justice notes: World Order can be founded only on an unshakable consciousness of the oneness of mankind, a spiritual truth which all the human sciences confirm. Anthropology, physiology, psychology, recognize only one human species, albeit infinitely varied in the secondary aspects of life. Recognition of this truth requires abandonment of prejudice—prejudice of every kind—race, class, color, creed, nation, sex, degree of material civilization, everything which enables people to consider themselves superior to others.29 The Bahá’í writings explain that diversity and justice are indispensable elements in realizing unity. Bahá’u’lláh has taught that “the purpose of justice is the appearance of unity among men,”30 and Shoghi Effendi has called unity in diversity the “watchword” of Baha’u’llah’s teachings.31
While black feminism has shifted the emphasis of feminist theory from individual relationships to the behavior of major social institutions, the Bahá’í Faith emphasizes spiritual principles, or moral values, that in form both individual and institutional rela- THE BAHAIlWRITINGS tionships. Through this approach, oppressive EXPLAIN THAT DIVERSITY AND JUSTICE social structures in themselves cannot be AREINDISPENSABLE ELEMENTS identified as the source of social ills. Their TO THE REALIZATION OF UNITY.
outward expressions, such as their organiza tional structure, policies, and overall interests in society, are informed by a particular worldview that is largely preoccupied with the material aspects of life and largely neglectful of the reality of humanity’s inherent oneness. The Bahá’í focus on the spiritual underpinnings of unjust social structures is a drastic break from the emphasis of most social—change movements, which are largely concerned with addressing the side effects of this fundamental crisis of conscience.
Historical Frameworks
While the way in which radical black feminism and the Bahá’í Faith each identify root causes will necessarily influence their methodologies for social change, another point bears mentioning. Though not always explicitly stated, social theory always situates its concerns within a particular historical framework. That is, a general period of time is designated within which the causes and effects of a problem are perceived
28. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Pramulgation of Universal Peace: 7211/25 Delivered by .‘Aba'u ’l-Ba/m’ during Hi: Vixit to the United State: and Canada in 1912, comp. Howard MacNutt, 2nd ed. (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1982) 99.
29. The Universal House of Justice, Promise of WorldPeaee 28—29.
30. Bahá’u’lláh, Dblet: OfBa/Ja’ ’u ’lla’h revealed after the Kim’b—i-Aqa'ax, comp. Research Department of the Universal House of Justice, trans. Habib Taherzadeh ed 31., lst pocket size ed. (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1988) 67.
31. Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Babd’u’lla'l): Selected Letterx, new ed. (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1991) 42.
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4 43
MICHELLE MAYNERICK
to operate. This narrowing of time allows an easier designation of root causes, as one can point to a general starting point wherein certain forces collided and resulted in oppressive social configurations.
The radical black feminist movement is concerned with a period of history that begins roughly with the ttans-Atlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century, spans the pre- and post—Civil War eras, the civil-rights decades, and carries into the twentyfirst century. This focus supports the conviction that the patriarchal, capitalist state can be blamed as the source of oppression, since the consolidation of colonial, culturally imperialistic forces, which later evolved into this state, allowed slavery to flourish in the new world. Radical black feminist theory articulates how power was
constructed, beginning with the
RADICAL BLACK FEMINIST THEORY slave trade in the western HemARTICULATES HOW POWER WAS CONSTRUCTED, isphere, and how the mainteBEGINNING WITH THE SLAVE TRADE nance of power has depended IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE, on certain formulations of raAND HOW THE MAINTENANCE OF POWER Cial and gender identity HAS DEPENDED ON CERTAIN FORMULATIONS While aCkHOWledging the
particular abuses of the sixteenth century to the present time, the Bahá’í writings offer a broadened framework with which to make sense of our current historical predicament. The upheavals in the world’s sociopolitical landscape throughout the past few centuries are situated within an overall developmental process of humanity’s spiritual and social development. Just as an individual grows and Changes during infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, humanity, too, must pass through similar developmental stages. In this current period of adolescence, humanity stands at a crossroads:
Whether peace is to be reached only after unimaginable horrors precipitated by humanity’s stubborn clinging to old patterns of behavior, or is to be embraced now by an act of consultative will, is the choice before all who inhabit the earth.32
The awareness of the unity of humanity, with all of its social, economic, and political implications, will be the hallmark of our long—awaited coming of age. The transition from humanity’s allegorical adolescence into maturity is characterized by the twin processes of disintegration and integration: the disintegration of old—world structures that are at odds with the reality of unity and the simultaneous emergence of structures built on the foundation of unity. While the processes of disintegration are painful, they, too, drive humanity in the same direction as the processes of unification: On the one hand, the vast network of agencies and individuals that promote understanding and cooperation among diverse peoples affirms ever more powerfully the growing recognition that the “earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” On the other hand, it is equally clear that the world is moving through a period of social paralysis, tyranny and anarchy, a period marked by the wide OF RACIAL AND GENDER IDENTITY.
32. The Universal House of Justice, Promise of era’Peace 13.
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RADICAL BLACK FEMINISM AND THE BAHA'I’ FAITH
spread neglect of both governmental and personal responsibility, the ultimate
consequences of which no one on earth can foresee. The effect of both devel opments, as Shoghi Effendi also pointed out, will be to awaken in the hearts of
those who share this planet with us a longing for unity and justice. . . .33 Thus the Bahá’í Faith contextualizes particular oppressions and injustices within a vast developmental framework, the forging of a global civilization, with the ultimate goal of “the unification of all the peoples of the world in one universal family.”34 This expanded vision of how op pression operates within history THE Bahá’í FAITH CONTEXTUALIZES differentiates the Bahá’í Faith PARTICULAR OPPRESSIONS AND INJUSTICES
from virtually all social—change WITHIN A VAST DEVELOPMENTAL FRAMEWORK, movements. For the first time, WITH THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF “THE UNIFICATION we are given a framework that OF ALL THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD
helps us to understand not only IN ONE UNIVERSAL FAMILY."
the fundamental causes of social maladies but assures us that our current conditions will necessarily be transformed and improved.
Approaches to Social Change
The various ways that both radical black feminism and the Bahá’í Faith identify the nature and causes of oppression, and the historical framework within which they contextualize oppression, leads to different methodologies of social change. Because the Bahá’í Faith sees disunity as a condition that humanity will outgrow, its approach toward change is drastically different from most social—change movements.
The language of revolutionary change, espoused by movements such as radical black feminism, often refers to the eradication, destruction, or even annihilation of the social structures that maintain injustice. They frame discussion around identifying the intricate ways in which such structures have failed us and asserting that these systems, therefore, need to be removed. The action of breaking down oppressive social structures may take place at many levels. The state emerges from and is a reflection of the culture in which we live; thus the dismantling of social structures, the decolonization of the mind, and the unlearning of prejudice may all be considered revolutionary acts, inasmuch as they challenge the internalized messages about self and society that maintain inequitable relationships. Radical black feminism suggests that true liberty will arise through the elimination of social and institutional relationships that cause injustice and suffering.
The Bahá’í methodology of social change arises from a complete reframing of the issue. The Bahá’í teachings are not simply concerned with methods by which to destroy old world structures, institutional or otherwise. Bahá’í individuals, communities, and administrative bodies, instead, work toward positive values, striving
33. The Universal House of Justice, letter to Believers Gathered for the Events Marking the Completion of the Projects on Mount Carmel, May 24, 2001. 34. The Universal House of Justice, Promise of \VorldPtate 35.
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MICHELLE MAYNERICK
to instill “a fundamental change of moral consciousness and behaviour” based on spiritual principles:35 the Bahá’í’s are following a completely different path from that usually followed by those who wish to reform society. They eschew political methods towards the achievement of their aims, and concentrate on revitalizing the hearts, minds and behavior of people and on presenting a working model as evidence of the reality and practicality of the way of life they propound.36 A Bahá’í methodology of social
WHILE RADICAL BLACK FEMINISM change is, therefore, neither reacAND SOCIAL—CHANGE MOVEMENTS IN GENERAL, “on‘uy nor radlcal' 1‘ ‘5 contcxwal‘
lzed Wlthln a developmental proBRING TO LIGHT OFTEN HIDDEN OPPRESSION . , . cess of humanltys coming of age AND EMPHASIZE THE NEED FOR
, ,, and is centered around the creation .1 DRASTIC CHANGE, THE BAHA I FAITH EXPLAINS of social and institutional relation THAT WE MUST ADDRESS THE ships based on spiritual values.
SPIRITUAL DIMENSION While radical black feminism may
OF OUR PRESENT WORLD CRISES- advocate the need for revolutionary
change, the Bahá’í Faith sees such
change as embedded within an evolutionary process. Rather than focusing on means
1 of destroying structures that reflect outdated worldviews, its teachings focus on
i establishing entirely new patterns of social and institutional interaction: “the illu‘ mination of an entirely new way of life.”37
Conclusion Radical black feminism offers insight into the multiple conjunctions of racism, sexism, and classism in the United States and their consequences. While radical black feminism, and social-change movements in general, bring to light often hidden oppression and emphasize the need for drastic change, the Bahá’í Faith explains that we must address the spiritual dimension of our present world crises: for a Bahá’í the ultimate issues are spiritual. The Cause is not a political party 1 nor an ideology, much less an engine for political agitation against this or that social wrong. The process of transformation it has set in motion advances by «1 inducing a fundamental change of consciousness, and the challenge it poses to i everyone who would serve it is to free oneself from attachment to inherited 2 assumptions and preferences that are irreconcilable with the Will of God for humanity’s coming of age. Paradoxically, even the distress caused by prevailing conditions that violate one’s conscience aids in this process of spiritual liberation.38
35. Century ofLigbt 90.
36. The Department of the Secretariat of the Universal House of Justice, letter to Sen McGlinn, Apri127, 1995.
37. The Universal House of Justice, letter to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís Of the United States, July 21, 1968, quoted in the Department of the Secretariat of the Universal House of Justice, letter to Sen McGlinn, April 27, 1995.
38. Century 0sz'gIJt136.
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RADICAL BLACK FEMINISM AND THE BAHA’Y FAITH
As radical black feminist theory works to deconstruct configurations of social power, the Bahá’í Faith orients itself toward the construction of new patterns of social interaction and asserts that such change depends upon nothing short of authentic spiritual transformation. Such transformation, in a Bahá’í context, is born from an essentially mystical connection between human beings and God and is expressed by directing personal and institutional values and actions toward the promotion of justice and unity. The insertion of positive virtues into human relationships at all levels, in tum, results in the transformation of the world in which we live.
While itself engaged in a developmental process, the Bahá’í Faith offers one model of a worldwide community consciously striving to establish unity by recognizing humanity’s inherent oneness. In recognizing our essential oneness, we “accept responsibility for the welfare of the entire human family,”39 allowing us to appreciate our common history and our common destiny as participants in an ever—advancing global civilization.
39. The Universal House of Justice, letter to Believers Gathered for the Events Marking the Completion of the Projects on Mount Carmel, May 24, 2001.
World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4 47
[Page 48]
Daylights
See them stand ’round us, like night lamps, Emblems of meekness
in the broad daytime,
Saints without number and martyrs, You, who cast away even your own names,
You, from whose lifeblood beauty streamed, Whose flames of love moved the sun to shine.
Clear more of my sight by your lights,
Bathe me in brilliance so no self remains!
—DAN|EL B. LORD
Copyright © 2004 by Daniel B. Lord
DANIEL B. LORD holds a BA. from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Michigan. He also holds a law degree from the University of Iowa, where he was a William S. Anderson Scholar.
First I pray
First I pray
then I live
the rest of the day in order to give.
—JANET TOMKINS
Copyright © 2004 by Janet Tomkins
JANET TOMKINS, who holds degrees in English and sociology from the University of Nebraska, is interested in music, archaeology, anthropology, and the interconnections between environmental sociology, medical sociology, and genetics.
48 World Order, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 4
[Page 49]
Rellglon . Society 0 POMy - Ans
Help World Order confinue To break new ground during its second ’rhir’ry-five years.
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erd Order has been published quarterly since 1966 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States.
[Page 50]
Forthcoming...
“The Question Presented by Brown v. Board of Education,” an editorial
A roundtable on Brown v. Board of Education by Steven Gonzales, Michael Penn, June Thomas, Richard Thomas, and others
Adrienne Jervis reviews or’ris’r Robin Whi’re’s renderings of island life in New Zealand and Kiribcfi
3. Barry Darugar explores escaping from Iran in a short story
Anne Gordon Perry reviews a Touring exhibit of The multifaceted work of African-Americon or’risf Romore Beorden
ISSN 00438804
