Summary
Irene Tucker’s term for the logic she attributes both to John Locke’s theory of toleration and to Judith Butler’s Parting Ways: beliefs are the inalienable self-expression of individual subjects, so that a belief’s value and limits follow from the identity of whoever holds or expresses it (A Brief Genealogy of Jewish Republicanism: Parting Ways with Judith Butler, PDF p.20, p.23, p.45).
Details
- In Locke, belief is the ideal form of self-expression because, unlike property produced by labour, it cannot be stolen or appropriated; its content is beside the point beside the fact that a given subject expresses it (PDF p.43-45).
- In Butler, the same logic lets a description of identity — “Jewish resources” — function by itself as evidence limiting the beliefs that can be held: a position critical of Israel cannot be anti-Jewish because it is expressed by Jews (PDF p.45). Tucker argues Parting Ways accordingly rests on its frame — that its assembled writers are Jewish — rather than on their arguments (PDF p.18-19, p.26-27).
- The model also structures, Tucker argues, the default US understanding of secularism: “religion” as a set of ideas an individual holds in his or her head, toward whose contents a properly secular government remains studiously neutral (PDF p.23).
- Its opposite, in Tucker’s genealogy, is the Jewish practice centred on Ceremonial law, in which Jewishness is predicated not on the content of beliefs but on a subject’s willingness to follow established public laws and rituals (PDF p.28, footnote 11).
Related pages
A Brief Genealogy of Jewish Republicanism: Parting Ways with Judith Butler, Judith Butler, John Locke, Secularism, Ceremonial law