untitled

SUBJECTS OF TOLERANCE

intolerable. Liberalism’s promotion of tolerance is equated with the valorization of indi-
vidual autonomy; the intolerance associated with fundamentalism is equated with the
valorization of culture and religion at the expense of the individual, an expense that makes
such orders intolerable from a liberal vantage point.
These logics share the assumptions about individuals and groups that appear both in
Kant’s grammar of moral autonomy and in Freud’s pathologization of groups. They entail
two particular conceits about autonomy in liberal orders: the autonomy of the subject
from culture (the idea that the subject is prior to culture and free to choose culture) and
the autonomy of politics from culture (the idea that politics is above culture and free of
culture).



‘‘Cultureis one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language,’’
Raymond Williams begins the entry ‘‘Culture’’ inKeywords.^42 The term emerges as a
noun, he tells us, only in the eighteenth century and is not commonly used as a noun
until the middle of the nineteenth century.^43 Originally deployed mainly as a synonym for
civilization, the noun described the secular process of human development.^44 In our time,
however, Williams writes, culture has acquired four broad categories of usage: (1) a physi-
calist usage that reaches back to the old, synonymic relationship that the verbculturehad
with husbandry; (2) a usage that approximates ‘‘civilization’’ and refers to a general proc-
ess of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development; (3) an anthropological usage that
indicates a particular way of life of a people, period, group, or humanity in general; and
(4) a usage that refers to a body of artistic and intellectual heritage or activity.^45
Williams mentions briefly that these meanings do not remain distinct today, but their
admixture requires closer scrutiny for us to appreciate the problematic of culture within
contemporary liberal democratic discourse. If culture signifies a material process, a com-
mon way of life, a process of development of the distinctly human faculties of intellect
and spirit, and a valuation of selected products of these faculties, then this very complex
of meanings represents a certain vexation within liberalism. On the one hand, liberal
societies generally regard themselves as representing the world-historical apex of culture
and cultural productions. On the other hand, liberalism conceives of itself as freeing
individuals from the mandate of culture in any of its senses, that is, as producing the
moral and intellectual autonomy of the individual to self-determine the extent of partici-
pation in culture(s) in every sense of the word. Whether construed as high art, as the
acquisition of knowledge, or as an ethnically inflected ‘‘way of life,’’ culture in liberal
societies is largely deemed an objectifiable good that is optional and privately enjoyed,
hence the common reference in multicultural schools today to ‘‘sharing one’s culture’’
(by which is usually meant sharing food, holiday rituals, or performing arts) or ‘‘respect-
ing another’s culture’’ (by which is usually meant respecting another’s dietary practices,

PAGE 311

311

.................16224$ CH15 10-13-06 12:35:34 PS