Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

228 Language Diversity in the Classroomversion of John Stuart Mill’s ‘harm principle’ the familiar notion, thatis, that freedom should extend up to the point at which its exerciseimpinges upon the freedom of someone else. Does the fact that the victimin the Miewes case was a consenting partner in the bizarre act mean thatthis principle remained unviolated? Some might say that the barbarity ofthe deed implies mental illness, which, in turn, would invalidate any realfreedom here. But, when we consider that Miewes was [and is] anapparently sane and rational man, the argument that he is mentallydisturbed because he did something that must be evidence of psychologicalinstability is begging the question. He was described by aneighbor, at his first trial, as ‘friendly and sensitive’ and more to thepoint [perhaps] a psychiatrist testified that Miewes was not mentallyill, although he did lack ‘warm and tender feelings’ for others, andseemed ‘smug and self-assured’. That would describe a great manypeople, including virtually all rich and successful businessmen [forexample]: they may be figurative cannibals, but few are literal ones. Foodfor thought...?)On the other hand, Fish argues, there is a ‘strong’ multiculturalism, inwhich tolerance and ‘deep respect’ for different cultures trump bothrationality and universalism. As many others have found out, however,a thoroughgoing tolerance meets its match when its object is intolerant.(At the political level, the corollary is this: should democratic regimestolerate movements and attitudes whose raison d’être is the overthrow ofdemocratic principle?) If one’s tolerance did extend so far as to embracean intolerant ‘other’, then, as Fish points out, it would no longer betolerance. On the other hand, if the tolerant and liberal-minded find thatthere is, indeed, a sand-line beyond which they will not go (Fishmentions the Islamic fatwa on Salman Rushdie, but there are many othercultural practices female circumcision, child slavery and so on thatare often cited), then they have given up respecting that other culture ‘atthe point where its distinctiveness is most obviously at stake’ (Fish, 1998:73). Fish continues:Typically, the strong multiculturalist will grab the second handle ofthis dilemma (usually in the name of some supracultural universalnow seen to have been hiding up his sleeve from the beginning) andthereby reveal himself not to be a strong multiculturalist at all.Indeed, it turns out that strong multiculturalism is not a distinctposition, but a somewhat deeper instance of the shallow category ofboutique multiculturalism. (Fish, 1998: 7374)