The spring of academic comparisons

The latest Eurozine carries a short essay by Seyla Benhabib titled “The Arab Spring: Religion, revolution and the public sphere". It is a rather predictable but not uninteresting take on the recent world-historical events unfolding in North Africa and West Asia. Well, it is not as though she's able to offer any illuminating insight into these events, but it is the mode of argumentation that I believe is telling.

The Yale professor begins her essay with a curious comparison. Redeploying perhaps the most classical of metaphors, she claims, “[...] new shoots of resistance are sprouting out of the frozen soil […]," while comparing the striking public sector workers in Wisconsin with those protesting for democracy continents away. But, the very next sentence points out some of the fundamental distinctions, undermining the very grounds of that comparison. The question then is: What prompts an influential academic like Benhabib to enter into such obviously tricky terrain of problematic and untenable comparisons?

Now, this reminds me of Detlev Claussen's insight into academia's relationship with politics (and I am not quoting him verbatim): It is often the least political of academicians who rehearse the most audacious gestures that merely mimic the form of the political.