Habe eben begonnen, den neuesten Kommentar von Etyen Mahçupyan, erschienen heute auf Englisch in "Sunday's Zaman", zu übersetzen, das ist ziemlich schwierig und wird daher vermutlich auch mehrere Tage dauern, bis ich eine deutsche Fassung ins Kurdmania-Magazin stellen kann. Hier erstmal der Originaltext, für alle, die sich selbst an so umfangreichen Texten in einer fremden Sprache üben wollen:
Quelle: "Sunday's Zaman", 12. Oktober 2008
ETYEN MAHCUPYAN
e.mahcupyan@zaman.com.trWhile modernity is transformed: on democracy and being a democratAll change is relative. Everything that changes can really only be analyzed in relation to other change. This is because in nature nothing is static. And while we are able to easily see and perceive the realities of change in the world around us, we don’t seem to think these realities apply to us. Of course, we are easily able to make surface-level observations about ourselves, noticing things like how we are aging, how societal traditions are changing or how the younger generations are different from us. But it is much more difficult for us to comprehend how the limited nature of our lifetimes works to limit our reference points in seeing and perceiving change.
But the fact that a human life has a certain average span works roughly to divide our perceptions of reality into two, so that we perceive more clearly the changes outside of ourselves. This category includes phenomena like the environmental conditions that surround us, from the streets where we live to the cars that we use, from institutional practices around us to the daily language we speak. There is so much that enters into this category in life. In fact, in recent times, due to global warming trends, we can even say that the climate has become something in which we observe changes.
But, unlike the observable changes listed above, there are certain phenomena that change far too slowly for humans to observe during their lifetimes. This arena includes mostly the various ideologies that surround and engulf us. One clear example of this is religion. Even though it’s certainly hard to deny that there have been clear changes in religiosity and people’s ways of living their religions, we have a hard time actually seeing and understanding these changes as we live in the middle of them. This is because the speed with which change occurs in religion is much slower than that of the change that occurs in our personal lives. What’s more, just as with any other ideological subject, there is a need to present “non-change” or “lack of change” as a positive dimension to religion. To put it another way, no matter which religion we are talking about, people claim that their own religions have not changed “in essence” and, what’s more, they show a need to believe this. It is by asserting that their religions have not changed that people feel they are part of an ancient tradition; by doing so, they also assert the belief that “true reality” can only be found in “that which does not change.”
It is likewise important to understand that being religious calls for people to believe not only in their own god and the various tenets of their religion, but also to believe that these tenets have not changed over time. After all, for someone who believes in God, the characteristics and commandments of God exist independently of the various perceptions of these characteristics and commandments. But it is also true that, as humans, we comprehend and perceive within the limitations set by our own lives as humans and, thus, these phenomena that we perceive as “unchanging” are actually being viewed by us through the lens of a constantly changing system of perception. Thus, the belief that religion has not changed is dependent on the belief that the perception of religion itself has not “essentially” changed over hundreds of years, which is in itself an extremely weak philosophical way of looking at things.
In the meantime, other ideologies are not as “lucky” as religion when it comes to change and being treated as unchanging. To wit, whenever any of the ideologies in this second arena are referred to as being in essence unchanged, we can comfortably assert that the ideology, whatever it may be, has become “religious” or “dogmatic.” This is the very difficult situation that today’s orthodox left finds itself in. For the same reason, those on this same left always try to portray this orthodoxy as based in “knowledge” or “learning.” This is because this same left, which doesn’t seem to comprehend that science and scholarliness are in themselves attributes that can change, is trying to make itself unchanging by basing itself on an unchanging platform of knowledge.
We can say the above problems also apply to Kemalism. As an ideology that cannot handle change and takes hope from the idea of a static society and state, today’s orthodox perception of Kemalism is based on the idea that Kemalism itself is unchanging. So much so, in fact, that there seems to be an expectation that Kemalism could continue indefinitely into the future, enlightening and attaching meaning all along the way. Fear felt over any possible changes to Kemalism is dealt with by placing this ideology firmly within the greater arenas of other unchanging factors. At the head of these arenas come the arenas of learning and knowledge. For example, to the degree that secularity is based upon “knowledge,” it can turn into dogma, and as it does, it becomes a symbol for progress.
It is worth noting from the very start that to see modernity as either a good thing or a bad thing is in itself a sign of a sort of dogma. Like many other ideological integralities, modernity has produced many good results, as well as bad ones. Just as backing every aspect of modernity is nothing but ignorance, the same can be said for opposing every aspect of modernism. Thus, our point of departure is to try and understand modernity from a slightly removed viewpoint and to accept that modernity is in itself quite varied and in a constant state of change. Therefore, modernity is not, as the Kemalists believe, an unchanging fact of life. What this means, then, is that certain systems that have arisen along with modernity, such as the nation-state, are inevitably going to change. Thus, we understand why in recent days the institutional spokespeople for Kemalism have pointed to post-modernism as a threat. We are all having trouble facing and accepting the idea that this giant ideological surrounding of ours, which we thought would never change, is in fact changing.
Failure to recognize changeThe real heart of the matter here is the failure to recognize certain changes while they are occurring. When this happens, it is only natural that the changed or changing situation is presented as a threat when it appears to suddenly loom before us. At the same time, the perception of change as a threat is actually an admission that it was not recognized on time, when it was actually occurring. What lies beneath this insistent failure to see change is the existence of a system that certain factions don’t want to see changed.
A system of perceptions that rejects reality is not just a problem that Turkey has to deal with, although the truth is that very few places in the world live engulfed in such an on-the-surface system that receives such strength from brute force. But still, the Western world was itself not so fast in internalizing changes in modernity. For example, it is just now that the Western world is rediscovering the concept of democracy. What lies underneath all the chronic problems that we face is a lack of dealing with the problem itself.
Under the influence of 19th century positivism, the modern world cut off all its ties with its own past, embracing instead a meta-ideology based on the future. The institutional structures created by liberalism and capitalism began to be perceived almost as universal categories on their own. From an ideological perspective, the basic subjects at hand were the individual and the nation-state. Concepts such as freedom, equality and justice were truly completed within the framework of the borders drawn in harmony with these concepts. The discipline of history then reflected this perception by bringing about the idea of “the people of a nation,” while the justice-based projection of this perception created the term “citizen.” All of the other united political and sociological concepts were the direct results of this almost-linear progression from individual to citizen, and from there to people of the nation and all the way to the nation-state. What liberal ideology has made operational along these lines is the “market system” and “democracy.”
Of course, these two terms -- market system and democracy -- do not express any sort of meeting of concepts. Human history shows how widely these two terms have been used. But used in concert with modernity, these two terms were recreated within the parameters of liberal ideology, and thus, in a sense, achieved their “real” meanings. Thus the word “democracy” began to be perceived as a sort of “mechanism” within liberal ideology’s idea of the individual, stretching all the way to the nation-state. Democracy became the name of the system that allowed administrations to be changed as a result of regularly held elections, or gave the freedom for political parties to be formed. Modernity thereby opened up a space for democracy.
The Western world was not all that excited about the word “democracy.” Looked at from a positive perspective, a “democrat” meant a person who believes in democracy, a person who defends that democracy. Clearly, this democracy was meant to be a liberal democratic order. Looked at from a negative perspective, some leftists who opposed this liberal system saw a oppositional force called democracy that took as its target certain inequalities and social sharing mechanisms.
Social democrats were just as “modern” as the liberals. The democracy espoused by these social democrats was created from the same “democracy” from which the left’s ideology also sprang. Taking into account class warfare and revolutionary politics, democrats from this tradition can be perceived as being defenders of democracy.
If the mentality that grounded modernity had not changed, this terminology would have stayed on its feet for much longer. But changes to mentality are some of the slowest and most difficult phenomena for people to perceive. However, we now come to the changes that are widely perceived and that people have to harmonize themselves with. The popular phrase today, “postmodern,” is truly one of the carriers of these changes in mentality. To put it another way, when we talk about a postmodern situation, we are not only talking about the difficult problems presented by modernity or about hopelessness and altered societal relationships. We are really saying that our ways of perceiving things have changed. The main ingredient in this change, the mentality itself, is, just like modernity, undergoing a transformation. The mental atmosphere that preceded modernity was a combination of a patriarchal and authoritarian mentality. While modernity put this patriarchal mentality on trial, it protected the authoritarian aspect. We have seen the outcome of this as a perception of secularity that binds the arena of religion, as well as a kind of nationalism that legitimizes the placement of the state over the people of the nation. Modernity has put into action the relativist mentality that places the individual, as well as the individual’s gains and benefits, front and center.
While the authoritarian mentality during this, an era that some may call “transitory,” is being tried and found guilty, it is the democratic mentality, which pushes speech, morality and conviction to the front, that is marking the agenda. This finding is one that indicates that the use of brute force has been reduced. But, as it is, the use of brute force is a phenomenon that is now seen widely as problematic in terms of legitimacy, and one which leads to no lasting or real solutions. What’s more, the view taken by the authoritarian mentality that every means possible is permissible in the achievement of goals is no longer acceptable. In concert with this, a growing democratic mentality which underscores that reciprocal relations are more important than singular, individual ones, and that maintains that societal morality can be achieved only by seeing and accepting “the other” is starting to become the norm.
“Democracy” is not, in fact, a point of departure, but a derivative point at which we must arrive. Democracy is the name of a system that can only come alive within a democratic mentality, which can demonstrate itself, from a sociological perspective, in many different forms. Beyond being a technical solution, it implies the existence of certain codes of behavior that guarantee the legitimacy of societal unity.
Thus, the relation between democracy and democratic concepts gets turned around when passing from modernity to the postmodern situation. In the modern situation, the essential thing was democracy and democrats were identified in correlation to this concept of democracy. But now, the essential factor at hand is the democrats themselves and democracy is reproducing and deriving itself directly from these democrats.
It is not an easy thing to observe changes in mentality during the limited human lifespan. In fact, this sort of observation becomes possible only when the change itself becomes completely clear, and when it starts to reflect the norms and forms of everyday life. Right now, we are in such a “lucky” period of time, a period of time when certain things that we thought were “unchangeable” are in fact changing right before our eyes.
12.10.2008
