Entering public debate may require disrupting its inherited assumptions, not accommodating them

Evidence

If the adherents of a religion enter the public sphere, can their entry leave the preexisting discursive structure intact? The public sphere is not an empty space for carrying out debates. It is constituted by the sensibilities—memories and aspirations, fears and hopes—of speakers and listeners. And also by the manner in which they exist (and are made to exist) for each other, and by their propensity to act or react in distinctive ways. Thus the introduction of new discourses may result in the disruption of established assumptions structuring debates in the public sphere. More strongly: they may have to disrupt existing assumptions to be heard. Far from having to prove to existing authority that it is no threat to dominant values, a religion that enters political debate on its own terms may on the contrary have to threaten the authority of existing assumptions. And if that is the case, what is meant by demanding that any resulting change must be carried out by moral suasion and negotiation and never by force? After all, “force” includes not only degrees of subtle intimidation but also the dislocation of the moral world people inhabit. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 902

Categorization

• XREF: Directly complicates the vaulted Cooper/Asad bridge: the demand that religious entrants adopt ‘moral suasion, never force’ presumes a neutral public sphere that Asad shows is itself constituted by prior normative assumptions. — connects to: Debate framing narrows when alternatives are excluded from broadcast
• DEEPTHINKING: Asad’s key re-theorization: the public sphere is not neutral terrain but a constituted moral world, so ‘disruption’ of it is itself a form of force — dissolving the secularist frame that separates persuasion from coercion.