Réconciliation et éthique de la mémoire publique

Cet article examine quelques idées concernant ce que j’appelle une éthique de la mémoire publique. Plus exactement, il considère comment les citoyens devraient apprendre à se souvenir du mal politique commis et subi dans des sociétés marquées par les circonstances de la réconciliation, dans lesquelles la stabilité politique et les pratiques démocratiques sont mises en péril par des souvenirs collectifs qui alimentent l’antipathie mutuelle et le ressentiment entre les citoyens d’un même État. Comment des communautés démocratiques fonctionnelles peuvent-elles être réparées ou créées à nouveau lorsqu’elles ont été fracturées par des hostilités historiques ? Cet article examine un certain nombre de réponses possibles à cette question en utilisant une conception délibérative de ce qu’une communauté démocratique fonctionnelle devrait être. Cette conception s’incarne en gros dans deux normes démocratiques : l’impartialité et l’inclusion. C’est en référence à ces deux normes que l’article discute différentes tentatives actuelles de remplacer les anciennes histoires nationales, qui s’appuyaient sur les mythes civiques, par des histoires multiculturelles qui les refusent.This article examines some ideas about what I call the ethics of public memory. More exactly, it considers how citizens should learn to remember political evil done and endured in societies marked by the circumstances of reconciliation in which political stability and democratic practices are thwarted by collective memories that fuel mutual antipathy and resentment among citizens of a common state. How democratically functional national communities can be repaired or created anew when they have been fractured by historical enmities? The article examines a number of possible answers using a deliberative conception of what a functional democratic community should be. This conception is roughly embodied in two democratic norms : impartiality and inclusion. It is in reference to those two norms that the article discusses current attempts at replacing the old national histories, which relied on civic myths, by multicultural histories, which eschew them

Kymlicka o kulturnih pravicah in liberalizmu

Kymlicka’s Liberalism, Community, and Culture originated a highly influential argument about the ethical foundations of minority cultural rights. The argument is explained and assessed in its original context and in the more developed form it took in his later book, Multicultural Citizenship. In its original version the argument was seriously underspecified, but the later version cleared up some problems only to create others. Minority cultural rights were either classed as the rights to self-government of national minorities or the rights of immigrants to integration into the receiving society, a form of incorporation that welcomes the retention of hyphenated cultural identities. The argument still left ample room to doubt that nationality suffices to justify self-government and that reasons derived from the value of multicultural integration could really support immigrant rights. Alan Patten’s recent book, Equal Recognition, goes far to remedy these shortcomings while remaining firmly within the liberal paradigm of cultural rights that Kymlicka established with his first book.Will Kymlicka je v knjigi Liberalism, Community and Culture prvi zagovarjal zelo vpliven argument o etičnih temeljih kulturnih pravic manjšin. Ta argument je dodatno pojasnil in ocenil v svoji poznejši knjigi Multicultural Citizenship. V prvotni različici je bil argument precej nedodelan, novejša različica pa je razrešila nekatere težave, vendar za ceno nastanka nekaterih drugih. Manjšinske kulturne pravice so bodisi opredeljene kot pravice do samostojnega upravljanja narodnih manjšin ali kot pravice priseljencev do vključevanja v priseljensko družbo na način, ki upošteva ohranitev kulturnih identitet. Argument še vedno pušča dovolj prostora za dvom, ali nacionalnost v zadostni meri utemeljuje samoupravo ter ali razlogi, ki izhajajo iz multikulturne vključenosti, lahko podpirajo pravice priseljencev. Zadnja knjiga Alana Pattena Equal Recognition gre v odpravi teh pomanjkljivosti še dlje, kljub temu pa trdno ostaja v liberalni paradigmi kulturnih pravic, ki jih je s svojo prvo knjigo utemeljil Kymlicka

Education in Safe and Unsafe Spaces

Recent student demands within the academy for "safe space" have aroused concern about the constraints they might impose on free speech and academic freedom. There are as many kinds of safety as there are threats to the things that human beings might care about. That is why we need to be very clear about the specific threats of which the intended beneficiaries of safe space are supposed to be relieved. Much of the controversy can be dissolved by distinguishing between "dignity safety," to which everyone has a right, and "intellectual safety" of a kind that is repugnant to the education worth having. Psychological literature on stereotype threat and the interventions that alleviate its adverse effects shed light on how students’ equal dignity can be made safe in institutions without compromising liberty. But "intellectual safety" in education can only be conferred at the cost of indulging close-mindedness and allied vices. Tension between securing dignity safety and creating a fittingly unsafe intellectual environment can be eased when teaching and institutional ethos promote the virtue of civility. Race is used throughout the article as the example of a social category that can spur legitimate demands for "dignity safe space.