If we find 'bittersweet ironies' in Milton's qualified defence of free speech, does that not mean that we think he ought to defend free speech without qualifications?

 

It strikes me as breathtakingly naive to imagine that giving up the right to speak freely means that the government official who controls what may or may not be said will do it in favour of minorities?

 

Isn't it just, if not more likely that governments will use the restrictions on free speech to restrict minority opinion? Unless you are confident against all experience that you can control the censor, then it would make more sense to have no censorship.

 

It is all a question of who you trust, your fellow citizens, or the

state. I go with the citizens.

 

And in any event, how can we expect people to move from a prejudiced to an enlightened view if we forbid them from saying what they think. You cannot coerce people into changing their minds, you have to persuade.

 

Make the state the judge of what is best and you make us all into

babies.

 

James

Tara, but on what level are we arguing? It seems we go everywhere...

 

The whole debate is kind of false. To say that speech should or could be limited in some ways is to deny the power of self-determination and critical self-interpretation, self-questioning so to speak.

 

The whole debate on free speech can be illustrated with the Foucault 's concept of governmentality. The dismantling of welfare-state forms of intervention is accompanied by a restructuring of techniques of governing, which transfer the leadership capacity of state apparatuses and instances to the population, to "responsible", "prudent" and "rational" individuals. This development relates primarily to the self-government, self-discipline and self-controlling individuals. So, if we self-govern ourselves, obviously we cannot allow this critical self-questioning such as free speech..

 

The problem of the concept of governmentality in this context lies primarily in the appearance of an inescapable totality, which seems to leave a defeatist withdrawal and individual exodus (Bartleby) as the only "forms of action" possible. Foucault, however, also sees a possibility specifically in the indissoluble linking of power and self-techniques. This possibility is developed in his Berkeley lectures from 1983 in the genealogy of a critical stance in western philosophy within the framework of the problematization of a term that played a central role in ancient philosophy: (parrhesia means in Greek roughly the activity of a person "saying everything"), freely speaking truth without rhetorical games, even when this is hazardous. The parrhesiastes speaks the truth, not because they are in possession of the truth, which he makes public in a certain situation, but because they are taking a risk. The clearest indication for the truth of the parrhesia consists in the "fact that a speaker says something dangerous - something other than what the majority believes." According to Foucault's interpretation, though, it is never a matter of revealing a secret that must be pulled out of the depths of the soul. Here truth consists less in opposition to the lie or to something "false", but rather in the verbal activity of speaking truth: "the function of parrhesia is not to demonstrate the truth to someone else, but has the function of criticism: criticism of the interlocutor or of the speaker himself."

 

Michel Foucault, Diskurs und Wahrheit, Berlin 1996, p.14 (discussion of parrhesia)

 

http://foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/) – very revealing  ]

 

 

Best, Julia

 

It seems to me that in arguing that it is not a matter of free speech but of incivility v solidarity one simply avoids engaging in the substantive arguments for and against.

What if for example if large groups of 'liberal fundamentalists' got together and started protesting that the governments of say, Saudi Arabia or Algeria should resign because their policies towards women were fundamentally uncivil and offensive to the principles of liberalism? It seems that if we accept that governments are answerable to people other then their own citizens in this way then this would not be objectionable. By calling the argument something else, these most obvious issues are just avoided before we even get onto the more important arguments for free speech. For example, in the hypothetical case above, whose feelings have the most value, who will decide on this etc.

Personally, as a liberal fundamentalist, I am against the way in which women in Saudi Arabia are treated, for example.  However, I also believe in democracy and self-government, and am prepared to accept that other governments have a right to govern in a way which I find objectionable or offensive.

Tara

Dear all,

If you don't have a chance to read Fish's assault on Free Speech
(highlighting the easy slippage between postmodernism and enlightened
authoritarianism) - there is an interview link below:
http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-February-1998/fish.html

Best wishes,

David Chandler

Dear Abdelwahab,

Salaam and many thanks. This is a very good and subtle piece, which serves
to highlight - as an American Supreme Court judge once put it - that there
are times and contexts in which the principle of freedom of speech provides
a refuge for rogues. I have done quite a lot of work on the genealogy of the
free speech principle, itself a European Protestant invention of the early
seventeenth century. Amidst all the recent trumpet blasts in favour of Free
Speech, nobody seems to have spotted the bitter-sweet ironies associated
with its Christian origins - in particular the ways in which Milton and others appealed to freedom from pre-publication censorship in order better to round on Catholics, Jews, Muslims and others considered unworthy or incapable of exercising the 'Reason' supposedly given by God. The remembrance of such precedents understandably prompted the distinguished American literary critic, Stanley Fish, to incite uproar of late by
proposing that there isn't such a thing as free speech, and that that's a good thing.
No doubt your fine points will come up during at Democracy Club talk by
Bhikhu Parekh.

All good wishes,
Professor John Keane

The real story of the "cartoon war" is the tension between Europe's hierarchical worldview and the multiculturalism pluralism of the planet, argues S Sayyid.

The attitude of many of those responsible for publishing the hostile cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (praise be upon him) can perhaps be best understood by a Marxist analysis. I refer to the quip by (Groucho) Marx: "How dare she get insulted just because I insulted her?"

read the full article on openDemocracy.net

http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-terrorism/old_europe_3269.jsp

Dear All,

Please find below link to Dr. Abdelwahab El-Affendi article in the Muslim News on the Cartoons controversy, where Dr. E-Affendi argues that the question is not one of free speech, but of human solidarity against incivility:


http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=2320

The way out of the Danish quagmire: Not an apology, but a resignation

By Abdelwahab El-Affendi

The Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, should be very, very
sorry. Not because a Danish newspaper has offended most Muslims and
many
others beside, but because he has presided over the destruction of his
country's international reputation, in particular in the Muslim world.
Within just three months, Denmark's image has plummeted in status from
that
of a squeaky clean Scandinavian nation that hardly offends anybody, to
a
status down there below the US and Israel in the ranks of Muslim
demonology.
Things have deteriorated so much that even American-occupied Iraq took
the
"revolutionary" step of cancelling all reconstruction contracts granted
to
Danish companies. When things get that far, and when even Saudi Arabia
decides to withdraw its ambassador, and the Afghan Parliament issues
condemnations, you know that you have a problem on your hands.

In terms of thinking about why one might argue for free speech the following comment piece by Professor David Cesarani from Royal Holloway in yesterday's Guardian might be of interest for anyone coming to the next Democracy Club. He argues in defence of David Irving's conviction, and why the classic liberal arguments for free speech are no longer relevant today.

Tara

 

David Cesarani, Wednesday February 22, 2006

The Guardian

 

There is no martyrdom in this pathetic denouement

read the whole article:

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/farright/story/0,,1715177,00.html

 

Professor Lord Bhikhu Parekh, On Hate Speech, Tuesday, March, 7th, 2006, 6 pm. Read more

 

The Club is based at CSD (Centre for the Study of Democracy), University of Westminster. Regularly, usually once or twice a month, we host a meeting with a guest speaker addressing topics relating with the subject of democracy. The aim of the Democracy Club is to openly share and compare views on Democracy without being constrained by the sometimes too tight Academic rules.

Our meetings are very informal and self-organising. We like our speakers and audience to feel free to throw provocative thoughts into the discussion.

As prof. Keane wrote, the Democracy Club strives "overall to be an open space for differently-minded people a non-partisan association of scholars and others who do not make presumptions about what democracy is or can be, but instead are bound together by a strong sense that democracy matters, that it is a fragile and precious way of life, and that its fate is now, for the first time in its history, surrounded by uncertainty on a global level ."

To learn more about the Democracy Club, to read more on our past and upcoming events, please visit the following web address: http://www.johnkeane.net/dc/dc.htm


Regards ,

Giovanni Navarria
The Democracy Club