TALAL ASADthing is life in this world, human life. The worldly life of the individual is the object of
protection and welfare for every progressive republic; life is also ‘‘the ultimate sacrifice’’
the individual can make for its sake. It is the ‘‘sacredness’’ of the Republic, its legibility as
‘‘the sacred,’’ that gives it the authority to dissolve the paradoxes of gender equality. This
assumption of ‘‘sacred’’ authority contrasts with Scott’s insistence that the tension be-
tween individual difference and general equality must be accepted as a paradox.
The modern, abstract republic is invisible in itself. It therefore needs to represent
itself through signs. But can an image represent the invisible? Or, in theological terms:
How can the unrepresentable God be represented for humans? One way, famously, is
through the icon, an image that mediates and organizes the relationship between the
invisible God and his human worshippers. The icon isdynamic, linking the presence of
the divine to the cultivation of the human spirit. By analogy, it is in the veryactof sign
deployment that the republic realizes itself in its citizens.
Re ́gis Debray, politician, philosopher, and member of the Stasi commission, argues
that the myth of the social contract is a sacred principle, functionally equivalent to divine
revelation. In proposing that the Republic’s respect for what is sacred to others requires
that others respect the sacred principle on which the Republic is founded (a social com-
pact defining citizenship), he seems to imply that the toleration of difference is a more
appropriate attitudebetween‘‘civilizations’’ than within them.^72 At any rate, simple invo-
cations of the sacred in secular arguments of this kind dissolve the old Christian pair
‘‘spiritual’’ and ‘‘temporal’’ into the Republican ‘‘sacred.’’ By attaching the sign of sanctity
to the modern concept of the abstract, de-Christianized state, it seeks to make political
power exercised in the name ofthe nationuntouchable, even as it is unspeakable.
Some members of the Stasi commission are also members of a nation-wide organiza-
tion called ‘‘le Comite ́Laı ̈cite ́Re ́publique’’ (CLR), whose purpose is to defend and further
the principles of French secularism. Founded in 1991, it includes members with Jewish,
Christian, and Muslim backgrounds, many of whom are well-known personalities. CLR
is clearly inspired by the positive philosophy of Auguste Comte and of his followers (espe-
cially E ́mile Littre ́). It can rightly claim to be at the ideological center of ‘‘the French
Republic.’’
The Web site that advertises the aims of this organization reflects the spirit and some-
times the wording of the Stasi commission report:
The school is the sacred place of the Republic, where one learns to become a citizen,
where all children are taught to become free women and men, equal in rights and
interdependent, regardless of their color, their origin, and their religious, philosophi-
cal, or cultural belonging. It is there that liberty, equality, and fraternity acquire their
full, concrete meaning. That is why the school must remain a protected sanctuary,
and with regard to it secularism should never allow commercial, communitarian, or
dogmatic interests to intrude.^73PAGE 520520.................16224$ CH25 10-13-06 12:36:33 PS