Negativity & Ideology: Prayer at Harvard Square

Earlier this month, the adhan - or, in the lingua franca, the 'Islamic call to prayer' - was proclaimed over Harvard Yard as part of the student-run Islam Awareness Week. A March 21 NYT piece covered the ensuing debate (in addition to segregated gym hours at Harvard), which was stoked by this Crimson op-ed condemning the broadcast. The three authors of that op-ed advanced the notion that the proselytizing nature of the adhan encroached upon the principles of mutual respect that they said were central to the university.

Professing adherence to a negativity - to the notion of secularism, which is predicated on an absence - does not place us outside of ideology. Quite the opposite in fact: The object of the concept of a secular space - of Harvard as a secular space - is the notion of the possibility of absence. That is, of the possibility of the 'existence' of some 'thing' lying at once at the center of our thought ('As a secular institution we are committed to a neutral, secular environment.') , but, finally, outside of our thought: It is not there. God is not there.

Or, rather, God is not supposed to be there. And yet, once again, that which we try to paper over, to expel, always has a way of resurfacing - in this case - in our absent center (that is, Harvard Yard emptied of God). How so? Well, suffice it to say that, as Bataille notes wonderfully throughout Erotism, a negative notion of God lies at the center of most forms of mysticism.

To profess to atheism or a belief in secularism is a more complex procedure (and for more than simply the obvious etymological reason - ism) than most of us are aware. I am an atheist. But there is an ordering signified in that sentence. As in physics, or in the case of Heidegger's vase (see, "The Thing"), there is never an emptying. Rather, there is a replacement (and even that remains a haunted replacement).

Let us be honest then and profess to our belief in the benefits of such a replacement. But we should be aware that it is a replacement - a reversal even - that can never be characterized as neutral.

As for the notion - advocated in the Crimson op-ed - that the inclusion (or exclusion) of elements of proselytization in expression should be the criterion on which we judge the acceptability of such public expression, I say the following: To truly exclude proselytization from speech in certain areas would require silence.