(Facebook-conversations - in an answer to Jelle Versieren)
I'm not
against science per-se, else I would not be a scientist myself. However, science
is used within a certain kind of social context and has a certain kind of
historical evolution; it is NEVER Neutral. The first thing a critical scientist
should due is to acknowledge this subjective use of science. This is even the
case in "hard sciences" such as physics, where the use of
relativistic theory could both be applied for nuclear bombs, as well as nuclear
medical technology.
Science is
an important ideological pillar of capitalism/liberalism/modernism; more even
in the late-capitalist/neoliberal discourse (see Fairclough). It is
particularly used in post-political, depoliticizing and also in neo-colonial
racist discourses; eg the use of economic science in the policies of the BW
institutions to legitimize SAP's, foreign exploitation, imperialism, etc... It
is exactly the same in the question of the prohibition of the headscarf in
Public office. Where the "illumination"-discourse is used to
reproduce the oppression and exclusion of muslim women and to impose a
patriarchical, racist moral.
The use of science all depends on the
context. What were once founding and emancipatory ideological weapons of a
progressive bourgeois class, in a late-capitalist society, science, ratio and
modernism are primary weapons of the ruling elites
to oppress exploited people. One should never take the class-character of these
instruments and uses out of the picture, nor the social conflict, or you are
being an idealist.
It is clear
that the context of the headscarf debate today is different than the struggle
against clerical oppression in modern Europe. If we are speaking of today's
Europe atheism/christianity are the dominant ideological forms, islam is
certainly not the primary barrier for emancipation. On the contrary; it is the
dominant positivist approach to religion which today plays the role of
christianity at the time of Marx. Science as the opiate of the masses; the
reconforting belief in some neutral objective truthfull positivist uncritical
science which justifies all existing unequalities and shows some utopian, idealistic
way out.
I will not
go so far postmodernist who totally reject the universal character of science,
and place it on the same level as other forms of knowledge systems, such as
theology, tradition, etc. (Such as the ecology of knowledge approach of B.
Santos). From my point of view this approach is too
particularistic/individualist, and therefore it depoliticizes and loses its
emancipatory possibilities. As such it is as influenced by the dominant
neoliberal post-political thought-frames as the modernist scientific discourse.
In order to
be critical, a scientist always has to search for the social conflict behind
the use of science. The scientist has to search for the oppression within the
conflict, and have an emancipatory role by choosing the side of the oppressed,
as everyone should acknowledge that science is never objective. Only in this
sence can science have a progressive role in contemporary neoliberal society.
