[D66] Laïcité or identity?

[J.N.]

Identitair secularisme, het nieuwe fundamentalisme in Frankrijk?


https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2823

Etienne Balibar: Laïcité or identity?

By Etienne Balibar / 31 August 2016

The controversial banning of the "Burkini" by several French
municipalities last week - and it's overturning by the state council -
has once again brought the question of what laïcité actually means, and
who it works for, in contemporary France. In this short article,
originally published in Libération and translated here by David Broder,
Etienne Balibar traces the vicissitudes of the concept to show how we
have ended up with the "monster of identitarian laïcité".

...


Evidently, the emergence of this ‘monster’ that is identitarian laïcité
is a phenomenon that cannot be isolated from the multiple tendencies
toward the exacerbation of nationalisms and the ‘clash of civilisations’
taking place in the world today, indeed in association with extreme
violence. Yet it takes a specific form in France. It deeply troubles us
because it tends to invert the political function of a principle that
has played an essential role in our political history: at its worst, a
certain laïcisme has taken the place once occupied by clericalism. It is
vital that we react to this. But we have to understand what is taking
place, redraw the ‘fronts’ and not fight the old battles over again in
identical fashion.