> Time to stand against hate crimes
> Hate crimes are driven by a seething brew of fascist
ideology: white supremacy, anti-Semitism, anti-communism,
and male supremacy... The struggle against hate crimes and
racism is not a secondary issue; it is the number one issue.
I'm teaching a course right now and the final assignment revolves around an examination of hate speech...
In the last few weeks of class, the students will be reading literature from Habermas (democracy as procedure), Castoriadis (democracy as regime), Butler (hate speech), Zizek (nationalism), Salecl (hate speech and human rights), Gates (free speech in universities), Mohanty (feminism and 'western' scholarship), and Gilroy (double consciousness)... most of the material circles around the contradictions of hate and freedom.
I'd appreciate any additional materials the might be helpful for either myself or students in regards to this issue. What is hate speech? What are the limits of freedom? What is justice?
I'm trying not to separate out discourse from institution here - but I'm not specifically looking for a legal analysis - my interests here lie with the dynamics of hate / love, freedom / domination (what it means to be free, what it means to hate) in (mostly) theoretical terms. The students will have already read the "western classics" (from Plato to Nietzsche) and modern theorists including Freud, Adorno and Horkheimer, Althusser, Arendt, Benhabib, Rawls, MacIntyre, Nozick, and others - so should be in a pretty good position with regards to the "western" political philosophy - and I see the readings on hate and freedom as a compliment / development to and out of this. Overall the course is about religion, law, and morality - and I chose hate speech, for better or worse, as a key intersection between the three. And issue that simply will not go away (one of the "fundamental antagonisms" that Zizek talks about). Again, I'm more interested here in hate speech than hate crimes (although I'm not ruling out, by any measure, a direct or indirect semblance).
I'd also appreciate on-line resources that might be appropriate to hand out to students...
thanks! ken