OPTIONAL THEME:
KNOWLEDGE AND POLITICS
BURKINI: COMPETING FREEDOMS
MIPSTERZ: Somewhere in America
PREAMBLE
This activity culminates in a written assignment. It will explore the difficulty of satisfying a range of conflicting freedoms arising from the 2016 Burkini controversy in France.
The intention of the activity is to enable students to appreciate the sheer complexity of contentious global issues, and to adopt some default, evidenced-based, critical thinking strategies prior to establishing a personal position. It is important to adopt a respectful mindset and tone whilst wrestling with incommensurable cultural perspectives. Begin with the following guiding question:
What kinds of preliminary questions must we ask before plunging into discussion about a sensitive and controversial issue?
Before addressing the meta-question as a class, allow students individually to familiarize themselves with the Burkini controversy using the following sources:
SOURCE #1
SOURCE #2
Aheda Zanetti designed the Burkini in Australia in 2004. Her online article I created the burkini to give women freedom, not to take it away, in the August 24, 2016 Guardian Opinion section, is an interesting source and contains an additional short video.
SOURCE #3
French seaside town bans bathers from wearing burkinis. In the August 4, 2023 article in Connexion, the mayor of, the seaside town, Fréjus states that burkinis “run counter to our fundamental republican principle of secularism.”
Competing freedoms CLASS DISCUSSION
After allowing students to immerse themselves in the controversy, lead them in some lively class discussion. Start open-ended spirit by by asking
What is going on here?
If it doesn’t emerge naturally, continue with all or some of:
Referring back to our unit on intersectionality in Epistemic Justice, what identity factors are in play?
Misogyny?
The male gaze?
Islamophobia?
What else?
Before student perspective fizzles out, ask a modified version of the original generative question:
What’s missing here? What else do we need to know about the context? What questions must we ask before plunging into some deeper discourse around the burkini controversy?
Record the questions on the white board as they emerge. Steer them towards the notion of competing freedoms:
What kinds of freedoms are at stake here?
Record the class generated list of competing freedoms on the white board as they emerge. Your list will likely encompass:
Freedom of religion
Freedom to maintain modesty
Freedom from patriarchal impositions on the conduct and dress of women
Freedom of a nation state to set its own laws on religious expression in the public realm
GOING DEEPER: laïcité
A boy holds a sign asking 'Liberty, fraternity?' at a gathering in Toulouse, France.
Photo source: Alain Pitton/Getty Images
“Each time an act of jihadist terrorism is committed on French soil, the country is thrown anew into a global debate about laïcité, and whether it is the answer to or the source of the problem.
The first article of the French constitution explicitly states that the republic shall be “indivisible, laïque, democratic and social.” Difficult to translate, the word laïque refers to the French creed of laïcité, a form of secularism that is central to the country’s history and identity, but much misunderstood elsewhere. It is neither a form of state atheism, nor the outlawing of religion. Rather laïcité enshrines in law the right to believe, or not to believe, while at the same time keeping religion out of public affairs.
No French president, for instance, could ever be sworn in on a holy book. No French state school could hold a nativity play. No French marriage is legal if celebrated only in a place of worship.”
SOURCE #5
No meaningful discussion of the Burkini controversy is possible without addressing the historical import of laïcité, which is inextricable from French national identity and, amongst other things, requires that public spaces be free of religion. Students should listen to the BBC World Service podcast, Has French secularism gone too far? The podcast lasts 23 minutes; so it is able to move beyond soundbites and provide multiple perspectives. It is part of a series called The Inquiry, where each episode has “one question four experts and an answer.”
WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT
At this juncture students are prepared for the following written assignment:
In his famous 1762 work The Social Contract, French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau declares that citizens must obey the law and, are “forced to be free.” Discuss this apparent contradiction with reference to:
(a) the Burkini
(b) a nation-state imposed law of your own choosing.
[Suggested word count: First draft 500-600; second draft: 900]
CODA:
ISAIAH BERLIN ON PLURALISM
Students should read on their own time, the following perspective from Russian/British political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin (1909-2005). Berlin witnessed the Russian revolution as a young child and his prolific academic writing often critiqued the ravages of 20th Century totalitarianism. Isaiah Berlin on pluralism is a part of the very last essay written by Isaiah Berlin, published in the New York Review of Books, Vol. XLV, Number 8 (1998).
Isaiah Berlin. Photo: Sophie Bassouls/Sygma/Corbis
Ancient Greek poet, Archilochus declared: "a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog one important thing." This inspired Isaiah Berlin's famous essay: The Hedgehog and the Fox. Photo: Robert E. Hunter