“Do not disturb”: Why we need to be awake
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3517
Risposta ai commenti di George Baca, Christian Giordano, Giacomo Loperfido e Piero Vereni su Jonathan Friedman, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come regime, a cura di Piero Zanini, traduzione di Francesca Nicola e Piero Zanini, Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348
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“Do not disturb”: Why we need to be awake
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Book forum: Jonathan Friedman – Politicamente corretto
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Jonathan Friedman
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“Do not disturb”: Why we need to be awake
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                                       2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 255-263




                                                                       BOOK FORUM

“Do not disturb”
Why we need to be awake

Jonathan FRIEDMAN
University of California, San Diego / École des hautes études en sciences sociales


Response to comments by George BACA, Christian GIORDANO, Giacomo LOPERFIDO
and Piero VERENI on Jonathan FRIEDMAN, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo mor-
ale come regime, edited by Piero Zanini, translation by Francesca Nicola and Piero
Zanini, Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348.



   First, and briefly, I would like to thank the reviewers for reading and criti-
cizing my book. After so many years it is a real pleasure to have the issues
discussed. And I, of course, greatly welcome all your attacks. Open discus-
sion is best weapon against PC.
   Vereni definitely has an ax to grind, which, although he accuses me of the
same tactics as those whom I criticize, is not the case at all (see below). But
he may make whatever assumptions he likes. The picture he paints is one in
which I am the angry old man, leftist nationalist or rather sovereignist as he
seems to presume. The best way for me to deal with his critique given the li-
mited amount of space allowed is simple outline:
   1. It is interesting that there is a debate in Italy on whether or not the left
can embrace the national or whether it should be cosmopolitan. This is an
old debate in the left, which I do discuss in the book, one that divided the
early communist movement between national Bolsheviks and international-
ists. Now the internationalism of the workers movement is not really the
same as the cosmopolitan ideology of today even if there is a certain overlap.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Jonathan Friedman
“Do not disturb”: Why we need to be awake
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 255-263.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3517
256                                                           JONATHAN FRIEDMAN


George Soros and Trotsky do not have a lot in common other than what
might be called a global intentionality. This is the difference between the
International and what in France was referred to many years ago as «l’inter-
nationale du capital» (Dockes 1975).
   2. Vereni states that PC is dead; that we have gone beyond all that; and
that nowadays it’s about being “reliable” rather than PC. It is true that some
of the manuscript of the book dates from the first years of 2000 and two of
the chapters are based on articles written in the late 1990s. I wondered my-
self over the years whether it was all still relevant. However circumstances
have proved to me that the relevance has increased if anything. In my con-
clusion I do say that we have gone beyond PC, not to a more normal state of
openness, but to one of open warfare. To say that PC is extinct is to be out of
touch with what is happening in the US and in large parts of Europe, from
“trigger warnings”, to the new UN migration pact in which it will become
more or less illegal to criticize immigration, to the expelling of employees
who say the wrong things, all of which I refer to in the Postscript. The con-
tent of PC is the same but it is clearly more militarized, as in the current
conflict between the “new populists” and the so-called traditional party
complexes.
   3. Is my argument of the same type as those whom I criticize? Do I make
use of the same dichotomies as those whom I criticize? Am I out to kill the
cosmopolitans? Is it wrong to make the connection between the new multi-
cultural/hybrid discourses and the elites that I document have fabricated
them? Where are the “undocumented, preposterous moral dichotomies”
that he claims I make use of? This sounds like a very angry and vicious PC
advocate, the kind who has applauded much of the so-called anti-fascist vio-
lence that is clearly on the rise. I do make a serious effort to document my
arguments. I could have written a chapter on the history of elites, but I did-
n’t think it was necessary in such a book, seeing that there are shelfloads of
publications on the subject. Is there a real polarization in Western societies?
All the increasing fear talk, not least in university organized conferences
about the rise of populism is ample proof that this is real enough, to say
nothing of the real politics of parties to the “gilets jaunes”.
   4. With reference to my use of the notion of “indexicality” to relate PC
language to situations of instability, I am not sure that the critique is seri-
ous, even from the reviewer’s perspective. Is the contrast between normal
situations and situations of instability so counter-intuitive? After all I also
illustrate the contrast.



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“DO NOT DISTURB”: WHY WE NEED TO BE AWAKE                                           257


   5. In the remarks on the fact that Kajsa Ekholm Friedman (KEF in follow-
ing references) and I have been writing about a global systemic anthropology
for so long he finds it paradoxical that we can be so critical of globalists. I
find this quite absurd and assume that the reader didn’t do a careful job.
First, trying to locate globalization within global systemic processes has
been one of our priorities and has nothing to do with taking sides. Nowhere
is Hannerz accused of leading a globalist movement. That would be absurd!
On the contrary, he is described as more of an academic “wannabe”... not the
same thing. This is just as false as the accusation that I say that PC is «root-
ed in multicultural ideology». What I do say and exemplify is that academics
and other “intellectuals” have produced much of the ideological texts for the
new elites.
   6. Have I ever stated that cultural homogeneity is a “natural” phenome-
non? Certainly not in this book. I have always discussed all identities as the
product of practices and always in the process of production as such. The
presentation offered here is a mere parody. If I live in a rental apartment, the
history of its tenants does not eliminate my feeling of being home in it. This
is typical globalist rhetoric, like accusing anyone who likes his home for be-
ing a racist. We are all nomads now!
   7. Can it be maintained – as Vereni states – that «Inequality of opportuni-
ties, ignorance and utter poverty» is the real problem of multicultural soci-
ety? It is a common explanation among liberals and leftists, i.e. it’s all about
class. Of course there is a connection which I have taken up many times, be-
tween marginalization of immigrants, poverty and criminality. This is, in
fact, a principle argument of some populist parties for stopping mass immi-
gration. They refer to the formation of a new underclass, not least where the
labor market cannot absorb the newcomers. But this does not change the
fact of ethnicization which occurs in such situations, one in which violence
is often directed at the “other” group. And this is a generalized problem and
not a product of the racism of the host society, something that has also been
well documented. If it were otherwise, all poor people would be automatical-
ly redefined as culturally foreign.
   8. I take it that my critic does not like my use of graphic representations. I
apologize if there are some missing captions or numbers for some of the
graphics (I think these are corrected in the longer American version of this
book). I can only say that I have not been criticized for precisely these things
before. He spends most of his argument on figure 8 in which I try to repre-
sent the inverse relation between processes of political-economic hegemo-
nization and processes of cultural integration. First, these are two curves not
sinusoid curves. And why is it that cultural integration and political-eco-

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258                                                             JONATHAN FRIEDMAN


nomic hegemony cannot vary inversely to one another? I wrote an entire
book about this in 1994 (Friedman 1994) and no one has ever informed me
that this relation is impossible, especially in graphic form. Cultural fragmen-
tation that is rampant in the West today but which began in the 1980s is, in
my argument, closely related to the declining hegemony of the West, a
process that is quite the opposite of what occurred in the period of increas-
ing Western hegemony, something that I have been documenting for the
past four decades. From the increasing regionalism in the 1980s, then the
ethnic politics of immigration, indigenous politics, all have become increas-
ingly salient, not least the shift in Europe to Islamic based immigration (see
Tibi 2002 [1998], 2008) with serious consequences related to ethno-religious
violence. This should not seem surprising for those who are not entirely re-
pressed.
   9. As for non-nation state social orders, I have been clear that the nation
state is a recent phenomenon and in discussing the model to which the
graphic refers I state that cultural homogeneity is common in the national
order but ethnic hierarchy is the more general pattern of integration in the
longer history of state orders. Both of these forms of integration break down
in periods of hegemonic crisis. In fact the very proliferation of the nation
state in the late 19th century is directly related to the crisis of, for example,
the Habsburg Empire. Nationalism here was a product of the fragmentation
of empire. The same might even be said for the emergence of nation states in
Europe more generally. It has even been ventured that the French Revolu-
tion was essentially a nationalist project, pitting the “people” against a cos-
mopolitan aristocracy (Dubost, Sahlins 2000).
   10. Vereni claims that I use a naturalistic rather than historical approach
to issues of expansion and contraction of hegemony and that this is all an at-
tempt to sound scientific. If there is anything that sounds “scientific” or
natural it is the discovery that this “shit” has happened before, which could
give reason to be a little suspicious about the functioning of the world or
global system. Perhaps, as he says, he has read too much of the “Po-Mo” lit-
erature, especially if he thinks that using graphs is some kind of fake science.
   George Baca’s discussion of the book is, of course, more to my liking and
his criticism is thoroughly argued and I agree with much of his argument.
However his focus on the issue of multiculturalism as a facet of the nation
state is contrary to my own understanding of developments in Sweden as in
other nation states in the West at least. There are a number of issues here.
First, let me try to specify more clearly the nature of the argument concern-
ing multiculturalism and immigration, not least because it is related to the


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“DO NOT DISTURB”: WHY WE NEED TO BE AWAKE                                           259


global systemic model that Baca seems to be in agreement with. Mass migra-
tion of populations with so-called different cultures, leads at first to a situ-
ation of cultural segregation and even enclavization, but this is dissolved
when the host society is expanding so that immigrant groups are included in
the national economy along with the host population. There are variations
on this process, from the strongly assimilationist republican model of France
to the more pluralist model of England and the even more complex model of
the United States. So it is clear that the nation state has always absorbed
new populations. But no one presumably would deny that there are serious
contradictions involved that are distributed along a scale of increasing/de-
creasing integration. However the argument in the book is basically that
global elite formation since the 1980s has been characterized by an identific-
ation of the latter out of the nation. In previous eras this was not an issue
since aristocracies were not rooted in local territorial entities (although even
that varied historically). Elites who have splendid residences all over the
world and are married globally have been discussed before (Wagner 1999,
Pinçon and Pinçon-Charlot 1996, Friedman 2012). Their discourses define
themselves as global citizens and their opposites are referred to as, e.g. “ter-
riens”, terrestrials who inhabit limited spaces to which they are strongly at-
tached (Wagner 1999: 204). This kind of discourse has been adapted by the
new elites as well. I do try and demonstrate the extent to which some politi-
cians identify out of the nation, and the section of the Swedish constitution
which I quote recategorizes Swedes as an ethnic group among others and
claims that we need a new way or forging unity in the new multi-ethnic
world. Now one might well argue that this is still about the nation, but its
content is greatly transformed in a way that turns political elites into a
group positioned above the population over which it rules. The “will of the
people” (now associated with Nazism) is transformed into the “wills of the
peoples”. This political change is accompanied by a blade-runner like lower
class formation that does not act as a subject but is divided into multiple
groups with different cultural and even social orders that are maintained by
multicultural decree as well as local circumstances, where criminality, ag-
gression and violence increase and where no unity is achieved except within
the local groups themselves. Could a national unity be forged out of this as
occurred to some extent in the US as a result of WWII? That could only be
realized in a world of nationalistic states and there is evidence that this is
not the case although there are clear nationalist tendencies today, usually
classified as populism.



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260                                                           JONATHAN FRIEDMAN


   The model of the EU is, to my mind, an excellent expression of this post-
national elite tendency. Macron is its foremost symbol, combining his desire
to be at Versailles with his attack on nationalism as opposed to “patriotism”
whatever that is supposed to mean. Perhaps he means “for king and country”
but his country seems to be the EU and he is intent on giving it its own army.
The argument I think I made explicit was that there is a critical difference
between a multicultural state and a nation state which resides in the dynam-
ics of identification with the larger political unit and with its cultural con-
tent. Of course in countries such as the US the national culture is thin com-
pared with Europe although there is a repertoire of attitudes, behaviors, and
even forms of sociality that are quite distinct. Americans do recognize one
another when they travel the world. The ethnicization of the country may
have changed this significantly so that what was formerly American is now
understood as white. In both the US and Europe, the contemporary multicul-
tural trend has led in the direction of pluralism in the sense of segregation,
enclavization and even cultural warfare. The new cosmopolitan elites, more
visible in Europe, perhaps, are the main bastion of multicultural politics.
While the latter is included geographically within the same state, I would not
call this a mere variation on the nation state as such. The nation state pro-
ject was also elite and did not emanate from some pre-defined “people”, of
course, but the content of the project was quite different. As Benedict An-
derson wrote «there is no tomb of the unknown Marxist» (1983: 10); the na-
tion works in cultural terms but not the plural society. The Korean case is
very interesting in this context because it is an example of an expansive or-
der able to integrate foreigners into the workforce, which is the opposite of
the Swedish situation as in other European countries. I wonder if the Korean
state uses immigrants as a symbol of the good as opposed to Korean ethnics.
Does this push me into the arms of cultural conservatives? Absolutely! But
my point is to get the description right not to take sides. Lenin was a real
cultural conservative... typical of Marxists once upon a time. As for Swedish
elites and their politics, it’s true that they made a major change in the 1950s
as they tried to become the world’s good guy, a position that they have tried
to maintain, but this had nothing to do with multiculturalism and the in-
ternal restructuring of the country that occurred in the late 1970s and 1980s.
As for my anguish… well maybe at the time but this is very much “anguish at
a distance”. Was Kajsa the leader of an anti-immigrant group? Well they im-
plied in the newspaper that she was leader of PWMI 1 and I would add that
this was not so important since the group disappeared within a year or so. It

1. PWMI stands for the People's Will and Mass Immigration (Folkviljan och
massinvandring).


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was more of an event than a movement. As for the exploitation of Third
World migrants in Sweden, my point was explicitly that this was not the case
since this was in no way labor migration but rather welfare migration and it
was quite explicit at the time. There is even a Ph.D thesis about how papers
were prepared in West Africa for entry into different European countries de-
pending on the scale from work to welfare.
   Both Loperfido and Baca indicate that I seem to have been emotionally in-
volved with this subject. It is true that I would have never indulged in this
subject matter out of a purely intellectual interest even if I think I would
have been wrong not to have done so. Perhaps I was lucky in having been
thrown into this situation which was quite an ordeal. On the other hand both
my wife and I have a history of being apparently provocative to those in
power, first from issues of Marxism in the late 1960s and 1970s, then global
systems and now this! What a pain in the ass. Being a provocative person
seems to come naturally to some, I suppose, but this is no explanation. Per-
haps it’s hubris, but I do think that science and political correctness are
totally incompatible.
   This book was not meant as an ethnography in the normal sense, but an
anthropological analysis of a situation. I should clearly have developed the
issue of method in the book but I suppose I was too engaged in my argument
to really care enough about the methodology. I think that some of these is-
sues are resolved in the longer English version of this book where I have
dealt more explicitly with some of the anthropological problems involved in
this research. As for the question of elites, who they are and where they
come from, this is also dealt with in more detail in the English version. The
argument is basically that there is a transformation of elite identities in the
period following the 1980s in which the latter begin increasingly to identify
out of the nation state. This is not only Swedish, of course, and there are
plenty of examples of the phenomenon that I describe. The context of this is
what I refer to as double polarization, a simultaneous fragmentation of cul-
tural identities and a polarization between elites and people and even
between new upper classes and former working classes who are downwardly
mobile in this period. I do mention the fact that Sweden in the post-World
War II period was known for its very egalitarian political order in which the
political class was hardly existent as an autonomous actor, where their
wages were low compared to other social goups and where they were access-
ible to all citizens. This changed rapidly after the 1980s as the country as a
whole became significantly more stratified. It is this change that I discuss at
some length in the book. And where does PC come into it all. It is not
merely a tool of the rising elites. Stalin’s PC is not the equivalent of today’s
PC. The former is an expression of raw power, the latter is built into a mech-

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262                                                              JONATHAN FRIEDMAN


anism of shaming which works within the forms of sociality that already ex-
ist in a particular society which accounts the differences between the places
in which it occurs. It doesn’t appear as a top-down phenomenon although it
may well be orchestrated in such terms. Rather it occurs in relatively “egalit-
arian and cooperative” milieu such as the contemporary academy. What is
significant here is the conjunction of a major ideological shift that is linked
to the rise of new elites. That shift is crucial; one that takes us from the rise
of cultural identities in the late 1970s to the ethnicization of the social or-
der, so that cultural identity eclipses class identity. The globalization of
elites entails their encompassment of the cultural fragmentation over which
they preside. This takes the form of multiculturalism, the celebration of di-
versity, especially in symbolic terms, in the accumulation of cultural spe-
cificity in art objects, artefacts, home furnishing all of which is a logical sub-
category of cultural cosmopolitanism. PC comes into play in situations
where ideologies are vying for dominance, in this case the new cosmopolitan
multiculturalism. Those who identify with such ideologies are often academ-
ics, cultural personalities, artists, media “intellectuals” who are not elites in
themselves but identified with the latter. It implies a moralization of the so-
cial field and the use of techniques of exclusion to secure dominance. All this
is necessary since both the ideology and the social positions implied in the
latter are not clearly institutionalized but, on the contrary, quite fragile. So
to answer Loperfido’s question as to who is being defended by PC, it is both
the elites and the set of cultural representations with which they have iden-
tified. This is about the attempt to turn a particular cultural identity into a
dominant ideology.
    Giordano’s review, which is perhaps too flattering, but I enjoy it of course,
concentrates on what he calls «anthropological correctness» and which he
locates in the emergence in the 1980s of the self-critical tendency of the “re-
flexive turn” associated with Marcus and Clifford (1986). The thrust of this,
which he sees as positive for the field, was the critique of anthropological
authority, the third person defined description of the “Other” as something
different although not lower unless we are willing to forget the pervasive re-
lativism of much of the history of anthropology. Even Geertz is attacked, al-
though, especially in the case of Marcus it is not a substantial criticism. In
my understanding Geertz is the real problem here since he insisted on the
complete authority of the anthropologist and the entire project of writing
culture is really the Geertzian mission. No multivocalism is welcome here no
matter how literary the style. Part of this development included something
more, not just the reflexive turn but the post-colonial globalist turn which
came later and which Geertz, of course, was quite against. I cannot but agree


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with his discussion of anthropological correctness which is the form that it
took in our discipline; all about terminology and what can be said. I recall of
course, that Sami did and often today also insist that they are Laps and not
Sami which is a language label only. And I remember seeing the same kind of
comments from the San who preferred to be called Bushmen. It is quite a
story, this, quite absurd and shameful as well. When KEF and I worked in
Hawaii we had issues with the white members of the movement who wanted
us not to discuss matters close to the lives of people in the village where we
worked on the grounds that it was akin to racism. The villagers were furious
about this. So yes, the “do-goodery” populism invoked by Giordano is a seri-
ous threat to research, but I would caution against calling this populism,
since it is very much limited to academics and I would say academic elites
even if the latter term has been deemed incorrect by some. Popular among
some even if it is based on a culture of fear, it is not the same as the classic
notion of populism, even if I do understand what the reviewer has in mind.
The populism that is scaring the crap out of the new elites is one that has its
roots in movements like the famous American movement of that name,
which from the late Nineteenth century was composed of workers and farm-
ers and opposed both the capitalist and political classes.

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