Foucault and Freemasonry

Margaret Kohn, Assistant Professor, Political Science, University of Florida, Gainesville

Heterotopias desiccate speech, stop words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar at its source; they dissolve our myths and sterilize the lyricism of our sentences. 1 Foucault first introduced the concept of heterotopias in his 1966 book The Order of Things. In this initial formulation, heterotopias figure disorder, the incongruity of linking things together which are inappropriate. They are made up of fragments of a large number of possible orders juxtaposed without law or dimension. In this first formulation, it is not clear whether the heterotopia is a discursive or spatial formation. Foucaults inspiration for the concept came from a fictional story by Borges which captured the fundamental disorder of language and the opacity of meaning. Yet the term heterotopia already had a distinctly spatial connotation. Foucault emphasized that the disturbing quality of social life results from the way disorder is embodied in space. Disparate elements are laid, placed and arranged in sites such that it is impossible to even imagine a shared principle of order. In other words, heterotopias do not merely disrupt the organization of a particular system of signification, they transgress the line dividing signifier and signified, abstract language and concrete space, words and things. I believe that this is what Foucault meant when he suggested that heterotopias not only shatter the syntax with which we construct sentences; they also disrupt the less apparent syntax which causes words and things to hold together. Not just an element of discourse, they can rupture or challenge a discursive framework. A year later in 1967, Foucault gave a lecture entitled of other spaces which explicitly used the concept of heterotopia to think about the relationship between architecture, politics, and theory. He emphasized the critical function of those sites which "have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect."2 He differentiated two types of such spaces: utopias and heterotopias. For Foucault, utopias are sites with no real place. They express the reversal or radical transformation of society but are essentially mental rather than spatial constructions. He defines heterotopia in the following way.

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), p. xviii. Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces," Diacritics, Spring 1986, 24.

There are probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places - places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. He employs the term heterotopia to express the radical contrast between these sites and the rest of society which they reflect and challenge. According to Foucault, heterotopias are distinguished by a breach of traditional time, juxtaposition of incompatible places, and mode of inclusion which conceals (sometimes tacit) exclusions. Foucault distinguished two types - crisis heterotopias and heterotopias of deviation. Crisis heterotopias are places like the boarding school, military service, the honeymoon trip - privileged or forbidden sites that serve to mark out or mask liminal stages in life. Heterotopias of deviance, places like the prison, psychiatric hospitals, and rest homes, are a way to embody and patrol the borderline between normality and abnormality. They are real spaces, counter-sites constructed to materialize an alternative reality. Yet they also make use of, imitate, and transform pre-existing sites or institutions. They are places of illusion which reveal the illusory nature of our most stable realities. They are real places where it is possible to live differently. Hetertopias are sites that nurture the dreams and nightmares that sustain the capacity for vitality, dissent, and variation. Now, in typical fashion, Foucault does not explicitly set up the heterotopia as a principle of political emancipation, a model of social transformation, or a normative groundwork for self-fashioning. He could not, however, resist a concluding warning: In civilizations where (heterotopia) is lacking, dreams dry up, adventure is replaced by espionage, and privateers by the police. We are left with the sense that the heterotopia is not just a space of otherness but the basis (or at least the inspiration) for struggle against existing forms of domination. Some of Foucaults followers have been more explicit about drawing this conclusion.3 As a real countersite which inverts and contests the conventions of the dominant society, the heterotopia could be an important locus of struggle against normalization. By dennaturalizing existing practices, such spaces could contribute to a broader project of social change. What utopia was for the modern period, from Moore to Marx and Bacon to Bellamy, heterotopia is for

Tom Dumm, Freedom and Space, in Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom, (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1996); K. Hetherington, The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and Social Ordering (London, 1997); Gianni Vattimo, From Utopia to Heterotopia, in Transparent Society, trans. David Webb, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 62-75.

the age of postmodernity.4 It substitutes contingency for necessity, danger for safety, variability for sameness and accepts these as the basis of politics. In his recent book, Spaces of Hope, David Harvey challenges this approach to theorizing the relationship between politics and place.5 He suggests that a position of alterity vis--vis the dominant social structure does not, by itself, nurture critique, let alone resistance. Heterotopic spaces can be the basis of guerilla struggles against normalization but they can also serve as tactical measures for achieving more nuanced forms of social control. This seems obvious when we consider that according to Foucaults definition, the paradigmatic heterotopias of contemporary America could include the shopping mall, gated communities, Disneyland, and militia camps. These are our are effectively enacted utopias. They are undoubtedly places where some of our cultures other real sites are represented, inverted, sanitized or demonized in order to highlight their mythic properties. Earlier forms of community and icons of history are torn from their time and place and presented for admiration and consumption. Some of the best recent work in cultural studies has demonstrated how theme parks, shopping malls, world fairs, and new urbanist communities employ architecture, symbols, and stimuli to sell an alternative reality, a place that is broadly accessible yet carefully protected from the outside.6 These counter-sites, however, employ their distinctiveness to perfect rather than dismantle dominant patterns of consumption and social relations. This seems to be the conclusion that Foucault himself reached in his subsequent work on the prison. In Discipline and Punish, heterotopias of deviance like the prison, insane asylum, and reform school mobilized their distinctive spatial practices to intensify and refine methods of normalization and, despite their otherness, they presented almost no potential to attenuate or disrupt the circulation of power. The purpose of this talk is to investigate the relationship between alternative spaces and dominant ideologies. It seems clear that spatial alterity can intensify as well as challenge domination. My argument is that the difference between the dominant ideology and its other spaces can strengthen the hegemony of the system. The very otherness which distinguishes a heterotopia can serve to mask the gap between an ideologys aspirations and its underlying effects. In order to explain how this
4

Judith N. Sklar, What is the Use of Utopia, in Hetertopia: Postmodern Utopia and the Body Politic, ed. Tobin Siebers, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). David Harvey, Spaces of Hope, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 182-189.

See particularly the essays in Michael Sorkins Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992); Keally McBride, Cosuming Community, forthcoming in Socialist Review; John Freie, Counterfeit Community: The Exploitation of Our Londing for Connectedness, (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998). See also the chapter Egypt at the Exhibition in Timothy Mitchells Colonising Egypt, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

tension or gap can serve to reinforce the dominant paradigm, I will look at the relationship between the enlightenment and its other spaces. The first step is genealogical. It involves uncovering the subjugated knowledges which were present but disguised within systematizing theory and recovering the fragmentary and hidden narratives that challenge the guiding self-understanding of a period.7 The enlightenment itself can have many contradictory meanings. For the purposes of this paper I am going to use one fairly prominent and clearly articulated version Jrgen Habermass analysis of the bourgeois public sphere. The public sphere is an analytic concept which links the liberal ideologies of the enlightenment to its constitutive social structures like the caf, salon, and bourgeois home. According to Habermas, the ideal of the public sphere originated in the theories of Kant and Mill, where it was imagined as a place where rational individuals could come together as equals to reach consensus on issues of common concern.8 The public sphere was the enlightenments public face and selfunderstanding. Freemasonry was its hidden underside. Freemasonry was a social world but also a kind of moral practice, which involved meditating upon and decoding a system of signs and symbols. Thus, Massonic knowledge was conveyed through a practice of interpretation. It followed the logic of hermeneutics, its laws were the laws of semiology. Massonry still preserved the pre-classical epistem that Foucault captured in The Order of Things. The architecture of the Masonic lodge was supposed to reflect the plan of the Temple of Solomon and the design of the universe. Microcosm was the ordering principle underlying Masonrys secrets. The world of the Masonic lodge, which flourished during the Enlightenment, was a heterotopia in the original sense of The Order of Things: the uncanny trace of a earlier epistem preserved in the present. In fact, Freemasons are what we might call heterotopians par excellence. Much of the traditional Massonic mythology and iconography evokes liminal places which symbolized ruptures in the social. As the name Masonry suggests, the movement had a longstanding connection to professions like stone work, architecture, and construction. Free-masonry originated in artisanal guilds of practicing stone masons, who built the great Cathedrals. These Masons had experience representing spiritual aspirations and social hierarchies in public space. These Master stone-workers were eventually joined by their noble patrons and members of the bourgeoisie who were drawn to mathematics, science, and engineering. The traditional interest in heterotopic spaces survived Masonrys transformation from
7

Michel Foucault, Two Lectures, Power/Knowledge, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980); Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, (New York: Pantheon Books). Juergen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), 36-37.

artisanal guild to bourgeois secret society. The fragments and symbols of mythical and historical spaces were considered privileged access points to forgotten secrets. According to one anonymous Massonic tract: Without a doubt, history knows the popular aspect of the Ancient spirit, but only the (Massonic) Tradition has conserved a complete memory of it. It was the tabernacle where all of the occult secrets of the past found refuge and were crystallized in symbols. Only there can one shed light on all of the ruins, revealing the secrets that drove men to the work of destruction.9 Given the constraints of time and the focus of the paper, I cannot elaborate on the significance of their symbolization of space. I just want to introduce three examples of Masonic iconography: Noahs arc. According to the Bible, Noahs arc was a microcosm which reflected, critiqued, and redeemed the disorder of earthly existence. According to the Massonic Constitutions (1723), Noahs arc was a Masonic project: an initiated Mason was commanded and directed by God in the construction of the arc, which was made according to the principles of geometry and according to the rules of Massonry. The Tower of Babel. According to the Bible, the Tower of Babel is seen as a symbol of sinful pride. God punishes the hubris of humanity by destroying the tower and cursing humans to speak to each other in mutually incomprehensible tongues. Interestingly, Masonic lore transforms and reappropriates this story. The Tower of Babel is presented as an amazing fete of engineering and construction. Anti-massonic literature took up the metaphor, accusing modern Masons of the hubris, vanity, cosmopolitanism, and ungodliness of the original builders. The Cave. The cave has two different allegorical reference points. First, the cave was an important religious site in Ancient Greek cults. It symbolized connection with the earth and its mysteries. In Platos famous dialogue, The Republic, it took on a different set of associations. The cave became a metaphor for prejudice, superstition and blindness. Enlightenment came from leaving the cave and its shadows. In Massonry the cave served as a kind of site of reflection, a symbol of birth, regeneration, and initiation. Before the initiation ritual, the apprentice spent time alone in a chamber of reflection which was meant to evoke the cave. The cave was a source of vitality, energy, and an opening point for accessing hidden secrets of the earth. The cave evoked the borderline between public and secret realms. All three of these examples show the ambivalent relationship between spatial difference and dominant power.

From M. Saunier, Les Francs-Maons, (1972); cited in ed. Marcello Fagiolo, Architettura e massoneria, (Firenze: Convivio, 1988). My translation from the Italian.

Part II: Freemasonry and the Other Enlightenment This investigation begins with the paradox that the ideals of the enlightenment truth, rationality, universality, equality, and publicity were diffused through secret societies famous for their ritual, hierarchy, and mysticism. Jrgen Habermas recognized the irony that the public sphere existed largely behind closed doors.10 He concluded, however, that the secret promulgation of enlightenment typical of lodgeshad a dialectical character.11 Initially, reason needed to be protected from publicity because it was a threat to existing relations of domination. When repression subsided, the importance of secret societies diminished. According to Habermass account, the capacity for reason was nurtured in secret, only to vanquish the forces of censorship and persecution, ultimately emerging in the light of public. The need for demonstrative fraternization ceremonies disappeared and a more rational, accessible, and enlightened form of sociability triumphed. If there was an evolutionary dynamic as Habermas suggests, then secret societies present no fundamental problem for his concept of the public sphere. If, however, the mystical, ritualistic, hierarchical, and hidden dimensions of societies like the Masons remained a crucial element of bourgeois sociability well into the nineteenth century, then we have reason to doubt the publicness, the universality, and the rationality of the public sphere. The historical record of secret societies in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe raises doubts about Habermass narrative of evolution from secrecy to publicity.12 Habermas quotes Lessings statement in Dialogues on Freemasonry (1778) that bourgeois society is the off-spring of Freemasonry. This statement, however, is taken out of context. Throughout the dialogues Lessing insists that Freemasonry is the inner nature of bourgeois society.13 What could Lessing have meant by such a

10

Jodi Dean makes this point in her essay Declarations of Independence, Paper presented at the American Political Science Association Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, September 1999. Habermas, The Structural Transformation, 35.

11

J.M. Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies, (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1972); Ira Wade, The Clandestine Organization and Diffusion of Philosophic Ideas in France From 1700 to 1750, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1938); Margaret Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans, (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981). Habermas, The Structural Transformation, 35. Lessing wrote, Ihrem Wesen nach ist die Freymurerey eben so alt, als die brgerliche Gesellschart. Beide konnten nicht anders als miteinander entstehen Wenn nicht gar die brgerliche Gesellschaft nur ein Sprssling der Freymurerey ist, denn die Flamme im Brennpunkte ist auch Ausfluss der SonneEs sei aber Mutter und Tochter, oder Schwester und Scwester; ihr beiderseitiges Schicksal hat immer wechselseitig in einander gewirkt. Wie sich die brgerliche Gesellschaft befand, befand sich aller Ortan auch die Freymurerey, und so umgekehrt.
13

12

provocative assertion? There are some obvious parallels between the ideology of Masonry and enlightenment principles, most notably an emphasis on religious toleration and social equality.14 Speculative Masonry arose in England in the late seventeenth century as a form of sociability which brought together men from different social classes and religious creeds.15 The activities of the lodges ranged from literary and scientific discussion to raucous feasting and drinking. According to the principles of the brotherhood, all members met as equals and it seems as if many lodges did have crossclass membership, uniting artisans and entrepreneurs, or the high bourgeoisie with the aristocracy.16 In a period where there were few informal opportunities for social mixing, the lodges provided unique occasions for aristocrats to seek business contacts and merchants to cultivate political protection. While Masonic charters rigorously forbade discussions of religion and politics, their basic organizational principles clearly reflected a liberal ethos. This ethos was also encoded in their Constitutions, which invoked natural (as opposed to revealed) religion.17 In some ways, the Masonic Lodge was the prototypical site of the bourgeois public sphere, a place where members of different social classes, committed to education, science, reason, commerce, friendship, religious toleration, social equality and public service could forge a new, more enlightened

(92) The interpretation of the relationship between bourgeois society and Freemasonry is complicated by the fact that the text is written in the form of a dialogue. The statements which we can plausibly attribute to Lessing are those of the character Falk, who plays the Socratic role in the dialogue. J.G. Findels edition of Die Gesprche ber Freimaurerei, Studie ber G.E. Lessing als Freimaurer, (Leipzig: Verlag von J.G. Findel, 1890) offers a more in-depth interpretation of Lessings views as articulated through the character of Falk.
14

When evaluating the historical evidence a few caveats are in order. First, it is notoriously different to locate credible documents on secret societies; they kept few written records and frequently used ambiguous codes and symbols. Second, the hysteria around secret societies in the late eighteenth century encouraged the production and dissemination of anonymous pamphlets. It is difficult to establish their authorship, authenticity, and credibility. Finally, secret societies were an incredibly diverse phenomenon. Even the Free-Masons had many orthodox and heterodox tendencies (for example the more mystical Scottish Masonry) and many lodges which maintained complete autonomy from the Grand Lodge in Britain. If you include just the most prominent and well-documented off-shoots such as the Italian Carbonari and the German Illuminati, the varieties of ideologies and ritual practices are enormous. I follow the convention of using the term speculative Masonry to distinguish the largely bourgeois/aristocratic lodges from their precursors, operative Masonic lodges which were essentially guilds of practicing artisans. This is not to say that Masonry aspired let alone succeeded in creating a genuinely cross-class organization. The Grand Lodge in London mandated that all affiliated organizations exclude servants and all of those without independent means. Membership dues were substantial and different lodges tended to concentrate informally members of a similar social status.

15

16

See for example the text of the Dedication to Grand Masters, Wardens and Brethren included the following statement: and whosoever lives up to it (Religion) can never perish eternally, for it is the Law of Nature, which is the Law of God, for God is Nature. In Andersons Masonic Constitutions of 1723. This document in reprinted in the Appendix of Margaret Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans, (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), 279301. Both Benedict XIV and Clement XII (1738 and 1751) issued Papal Bulls against Free-masonry, calling the secret society a challenge to revealed religion. For a more extensive discussion of religion and Freemasonry, see J.M. Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies, (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1972), 68-83.

17

politics. European Masonry, however, was an extremely complex phenomenon. Masonry was associated with both Newtonian physics and alchemy. It pared reason and science with mysticism and hermetics. It created a context for egalitarian encounters only to reassert hierarchy through its constantly expanding number of grades and titles. It emphasized the values of universalism and inclusivity while tenaciously guarding its privileges and secrecy. So perhaps Lessing was correct in calling Freemasonry the inner truth of bourgeois society. The post-structuralist truism that the character of the enlightenment is determined by its constitutive outside - its secretive, hierarchical, and exclusionary dark-side - is transparent in the phenomenon of Masonry. The paradox underlying European secret societies was that the ideal of universalism was realized through an adaptation of the model of the Guild, a typically feudal structure. Speculative Masonry was the progeny of operative Masonic lodges, artisanal guilds where practicing stone masons socialized, provided mutual aid, protected their interests, and sacralized the secrets of their craft. Masonry reflected the corporate logic,18 which was dominant in early modern Europe. Their purpose was to form a unified collectivity, in which distinct parts would work together for the same goal. The metaphor of the body also emphasized the indissolubility of human ties. According to the corporatist vision, collectivities rather than individuals were the basic components of society.19 Guilds, like the operative Masons, were formed to defend particular interests, most notably to limit access to a segment of the labor market; they were one component of the hierarchically ordered society of feudalism. Yet the network of Lodges of Speculative Freemasonry provided the social context for the diffusion of enlightenment principles. Another similar paradox at the heart of Masonry is why the movement strove to realize principles of equality through a hierarchical system of grades, titles, and levels. The distinctions between Apprentice, Master, Warden, Fellow, Grand-Master, and Grand-Warden seemed more appropriate to a conservative aristocratic society than to a liberal and reformist movement. The fundamental differentiation between Apprentice and Master was a remnant of the traditional nomenclature used in artisanal trades. But rather than minimizing this distinction over the course of time, the Masons multiplied the levels and titles to created a highly stratified society. Many lodges and sects had as many as seven or eight different grades. These symbolic distinctions often reproduced existing social hierarchies and regulated access to the orders ritual knowledge.
18

The Latin root corporare means to form into a body.

19

Mary Ann Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 38.

It is readily apparent that secrecy is opposed to publicity. But secrecy is also antithetical to universalism and inclusivity. Secrecy is primarily a mark of distinction. According to Sisela Bok, Secrecy presupposes a setting apart of the secret from the non-secret, and keepers of the secret from those excluded.20 The secret teachings of Masonry did not include any intrinsically valuable knowledge. While some outsiders believed that Masons had discovered the principles of alchemy, in fact, their sacred secrets consisted primarily in a system of symbolically rendering moral, spiritual, and political goals. So it was the social function of secrecy its ability to bond members to each other and distinguish them from outsiders that sustained secret societies. The ambivalent nature of Masonry is also manifest in their symbolic and ritual systems. In the ritual promoting Apprentice to Master, the Brothers all wore aprons, ceremonial garb evocative of the craftsman as hero ideal. As Masonry evolved, however, many orders replaced the artisanal symbols like the apron, compass, and measuring square with aristocratic images of knighthood such as swords and armor. Others adopted names such as Knights of . The so-called Scottish Masonry was particularly known for embracing mysticism and hermetics. Scottish Masonry was committed to avenging of the assassins of Hiram, architect to King Solomon, and traced its lineage through the Medieval Templars and the Crusaders. Their rituals involved drawn swords, skeletons, horrific oaths, and symbolic acts of vengeance. Orders of the grades of vengeance like the Chevalier Kadosh became extremely popular in France in the pre-revolutionary period.21 While the Grades of Vengeance might have been an extreme tendency, all Masonic orders elaborately ritualized and mystified even their worship of nature and reason. One possible explanation is for these tensions is that Masonry grafts two disparate branches: enlightenment ideals and archaic forms of social organization. But this seems unlikely given the bourgeois roots of secret societies. While it is true that Masonry did emerge out of the guild system, it fundamentally transformed the structure and function as well as social and economic bases of the original lodges. Despite the claims to antiquity, which are endlessly repeated in Masonic lore and

20

Sisela Bok, Secrets: On the ethics of secrecy and revelation, (New York: Pantheon, 1982), cited in Jodi Deans Publicitys Secret, Cornell University Press, forthcoming.

21

J.M. Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies, 99. Given that there was a quasi-hysterical literature denouncing the conspiracies of the Masons which started after the French Revolution and continued to flourish well into the twentieth century, it is necessary to proceed with caution when evaluating evidence about their more controversial literatures. The evidence from this book, however, is particularly credible because of its careful evaluation of sources and generally evenhanded approach. The purpose of the book is to refute the more exaggerated claims (by both proponents and critics) about secret societies.

10

mythology, Masonry was a modern phenomenon, which originated in the early eighteenth century.22 It flourished under the new economic and social circumstances of mercantile England and benefited from the gradual abolition of restrictions on secular sociability. While maintaining symbolic links to traditional identities and associations, Masonry was distinctly a product of the growth of urbanism, leisure, and cosmopolitanism.23 The world of secret societies provided glimpses of the future more than it revealed traces of a feudal past. The Masons characteristic hierarchy, secrecy, exclusiveness, power politics, and irrationality were at the heart of the newly emergent public sphere. The contradictions and tensions that are so apparent in the phenomenon of secret societies were also true of other sites, which made up the public sphere. The ideal of universalism was celebrated in exclusive clubs and salons which transgressed the boundary between noble and bourgeois only to reassert new, more refined divisions. Reason and objectivity and science were worshipped not just as modes of enlightenment but also as privileges and instruments of power. The paradoxical nature of the politics of the public sphere is most apparent in the history of the Carbonari, a secret society which flourished in Italy at the beginning of the 19th century. Like other variants of Masonry, the Carbonari espoused both liberal, egalitarian principles and secret teachings which were only accessible to members initiated into the higher ranks.24 Unlike earlier secret societies, however, the Carbonari developed a mass base rooted in its genuinely popular constituency. In Naples, the epicenter of the movement there were 340 lodges, called Vendite, meaning shop. A conservative estimate places the total membership between 50,000 to 60,000 in 1816.25 The Carbonari was also nationalist in character, reflecting its anti-Napoleonic origins.26
22

To be precise, the first clear reference to the expanded function of Masonry was in 1646 when Elias Ashmole was made a mason at Warrington; however, Masonry as a broader movement really emerged in 1716 when representatives of several Lodges met in London at the Apple Tree Tavern, Covent Garden in order to coordinate some activities.

23

One of the appeals of Masonry was its cosmopolitanism. In Lessings Die Gesprche ber Freimaurerei, he arges that the main purpose of Masonry is to counterbalance the divisive effects of nationalism and parochialism. This is also reflected in theMasonic documents, such as the Records of the Chapter-General of the Knights of Jubiliation at Gaillardin (1710). At the departure of a member, the secetary writes, membership in the society will continue for life, in whatever part of the world this departing brother may find himself. (from the appendix to Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment, 274) Masons did welcome brothers from other chapters and this was an important advantage for commercial travelers. There is some doubt about what actually constituted the higher teachings, since there is even less documentary evidence. John Rath argues that the higher levels included a vow to cooperate in the destruction of tyrants and despots rather than to uphold sentiments of virtue and respect for the law, as required of the Apprentices. (The Carbonari, 362). Memoirs of the Secret Societies of the South of Italy, Particularly the Carbonari, (London: John Murray, 1821), 69.

24

25

26

R. John Rath, The Carbonari: Their Origins, Initiation Rites and Aims, The American Historical Review LXIX No. 2 (January 1964), 353-356. See also the chapter called The Secret World in his The Provisional Austrian Regime in Lombardy-Venetia 1814-1815, (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1969), 190-242.

11

While rumors connecting secret societies to political upheaval have been widespread since the French Revolution, only one case has convinced historians. The Carbonari provided the political leadership and the mass support for the Neapolitan revolution of 1820.27 Throughout the preceding decade, the political program of the Carbonari called for the unity, liberty and independence of the Italian people. There were varying interpretations about how to further this agenda. Whereas some groups advocated constitutional monarchy, others called for a republican form of government. One document specifies the goal was to destroy tyrants and overthrow absolutist governments28; another clarified the organizations aim was to restore to the citizen that liberty and those rights which Nature bestowed on us29 Unlike previous secret societies, the Carbonari recruited heavily among the lower classes, including domestic servants, soldiers, and fishermen. Rituals included the provision that the initiate could make the sign of the cross if he could not sign his name. On the eve of the 1820 revolution, estimates of membership ran between 300,000 and 642,000 members.30 It would seem as the if the hut (baracca) and shop (vendita) of the Carbonari were the first sites of radical democratic practice in Italy. Overtly political and socially embedded, these places facilitated the formation of a cross-class alliance. Yet the terms of such an alliance were never openly negotiated. The secrecy protecting the oaths and principles of the higher grades institutionalized and intensified existing inequalities in the distribution of knowledge. The Carbonari created a widely shared myth of fraternalism and equality, which masked the actual dispersion of power. An 1821 account of the Carbonari, suggested that the main object (of different levels) was to secure a number of satellites, ready to obey invisible superiors and directions which they cannot understand.31 Although such an assessment initially sounds paranoid, it helps explain the puzzling reality of a secret society with half a million members. This only makes sense if the sensitive secrets were accessible to only a small percentage of the mass membership. In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas reaches the conclusion that secret societies were one component part of the public sphere; although secret societies were not explicitly committed to the ideal of transparency, they created a place between the family and the state
27

George T. Romani, The Neapolitan Revolution of 1820-1821, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1950). This statement comes from a document found in the Venetian archives, cited in Rath, The Cabonari, 367.

28

29

Document cited in Memoirs of the Secret Societies of the South of Italy, Particularly the Carbonari, (London: John Murray, 1821), 95. Rath, The Cabonari, 370. Memoirs of the Secret Societies of the South of Italy, Particularly the Carbonari, (London: John Murray, 1821), 54.

30

31

12

where it was possible to discuss topics of general concern. While it is true that the Masonic lodges did nurture bourgeois sociability, they did not necessarily foster the kind of reasoned, critical judgement which Habermas associates with the public sphere. The fundamental capacity for a Mason was not reason but faith. In Massonic ritual, Faith, Hope, and Charity are moral orientations which correspond to the three degrees of the Craft: Apprentice, Fellow, and Master. The moral orientation of the Apprentice is faith; he does not yet know the content of the doctrine to which he pledges. The Fellow feels hope, the desire for moral improvement and enlightenment and the Master is characterized by charity, the willingness to share his knowledge with others.32 Thus, freemasonry was not based on reason and rationality but rather faith, ritual, arcana, and mystery.33 If the characteristics of secrecy, hierarchy, and mysticism were unique to secret societies, then they would only be historical curiosities. But what if the practices of secret societies did reveal some general truths about the bourgeois public sphere? Groups like the Masons and the Carbonari emphasized a theoretical commitment to equality while relying on highly elaborate forms of hierarchy. Their unity was forged through mythic rendering of particular (usually class specific) interests as sacred, universal, transcendent truths. Finally, their lodges facilitated genuinely cross-class coalitions but such coalitions were structured to reinforce the hegemony the elite34 rather than to create a popular forum. There is no doubt that secret societies did play a role in challenging the Old Regime in Italy and France. But Massonry originated in England where it reinforced the new liberal ideals and commercial practices. Analyzing the bourgeois public sphere from the standpoint of the secret societies yields the conclusion that the public sphere could not realize its own aspirations to rationality, inclusiveness, and universality. Storytelling and solidarity not only science and reason gave birth to the Enlightenment.

III: Conclusion So what does this all tell us about heterotopias? It shows that the heterogeneity of space does not necessarily challenge dominant social processes. The secret societies were the other spaces of the enlightenment. They provided the mysticism, ritual, brotherhood, structure, privilege and identity that the bourgeoisie craved while integrating these with progressive principles like religious toleration and juridical equality. Far from disrupting or challenging enlightenment principles, they were a way of
32

W. Kirk MacNulty, Freemasonry: A Journey through Ritual and Symbol, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991). Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1988).

33

34

I use the vague term elite because the precise class composition of the elite varied in different national and historical contexts. In the case of the Carbonari, the elites seems to have been urban professional classes; in Britain Masonic leadership was drawn from the commercial bourgeoisie.

13

strengthening liberal hegemony by incorporating cherished symbols from the past. Secret societies provided a way to fulfill their members aristocratic longings and pre-modern nostalgia without disrupting the new political order. During the birth of a new commercial society, the Masons provided a cosmopolitan community which gave the newly isolated individual both social security and business contacts. Yet the concept of heterotopia has nevertheless proved extremely useful. It drew our attention to the other spaces of the enlightenment, the back rooms of the public sphere and their relationship to political power. Juxtaposing the practices of Masonry to the self-understanding of the public sphere is itself a gesture of critique. It reveals how the ideal of universality and rationality were sustained by exclusion and mythology. The elaboration of these universalistic ideals today relies on a repression of their dark side, the longing for stable identity, unquestioned truths, and comforting narratives. Rediscovering this counter-memory has important implications for liberal thought. First and foremost it tell a cautionary tale. Today, theorists of deliberative democracy argue that the solution to political conflict lies in the consensus generated through rational, public discussion. This deliberative model is largely an elaboration of the norms and procedures of the bourgeois public sphere. Yet the bourgeois public sphere was not as rational or inclusive as it appears to be through the lenses of intellectual history. This is not to say that the Masons or other secret societies were insidious subversives as argued in the anti-Masonic literature. The lesson is that publicity and even rationality are political strategies rather than objective standards for adjudicating conflict. Moreover, they are strategies, which usually benefit those already in power. In his Dialogues on Freemasonry, Lessing acknowledged that publicity is the privilege of power. Now that liberalism is hegemonic it demands that other ideologies enter into competition on a supposedly level playing field, forgetting that the critical voices, the outsiders, the unstable new coalitions are the political agents that sometimes need to use secrecy, ritual, and even strategic separatism in order to nurture alternative possibilities. But our discussion of Foucault and Freemasonry also has a certain cautionary lesson for poststructuralist theory. It reveals that the existence of alterity and the proliferation of heterotopias does not necessarily further a project of political transformation, much less something that we might call emancipation. The more benign heterotopias, the spatial practices created by subcultures like squats and co-housing developments can be easily assimilated into the bourgeois logic of toleration, choice, and self-expression. More troubling are the refined spatial practices heterotopias like the supermall, the gated community, the vacation village - which mystify power and dissipate potentially transformative longings. What does this mean for post-structuralist theory? It means and here I am echoing the words of Barbara Cruikshanks paper we need to link theory more closely to genealogy. This is one of

14

the overlooked lessons of Foucaults original lecture of other spaces. He made the point that a heterotopia plays a well-defined function in a given society and therefore, in another culture, can play a very different role. This implies that it is not the otherness of space itself which is significant but its particular relationship to dominant sources of power. Genealogical analysis can reveal the way a particular heterotopic space challenges, mocks, and reconfigures or intensifies, refines, and mystifies the dominant discourse. Our research must involve not only attentiveness to alterity but also careful analysis of the particular configuration of economic and social power.