Achille Mbembe’s violent attack on Emmanuel Macron<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and the W.E.B. Dubois Research Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University has responded.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Africa’s \u00ab\u00a0civilisational\u00a0\u00bb challenge, its 7 to 8 children per woman, which does not allow the situation to be stabilised: Emmanuel Macron’s answer to a journalist asking him about a \u00ab\u00a0Marshall Plan\u00a0\u00bb for the African continent, on the occasion of the G20 in Hamburg, shocked. For Achille Mbembe, professor of history at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and at the W.E.B. Dubois Research Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University, the response was.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
There was the suit business: \u00ab\u00a0You don’t scare me with your T-shirts, the best way to afford a suit is to work.\u00a0\u00bb \u00ab\u00a0But I dream of working Mr Macron \u2026 All the unemployed want to work,\u00a0\u00bb the striker replied.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
An accident? That was before the election<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Shortly afterwards, this definition of a railway station came straight out of the managerialist catechism and its division of the world into two camps, that of those who have succeeded and that of those who, having failed, have only themselves to blame: \u00ab\u00a0A railway station is a place where you come across people who succeed and people who are nothing. Because it is a place where people pass by. Because it’s a place where you share.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
There is something about Africa that prevents restraint
But as we know, Africa is the ultimate revealer. There is something about Africa that prevents restraint and encourages us to give free rein to our darkest impulses: \u00ab\u00a0Oh no, the kwassa-kwassa is in Mayotte\u2026 But the kwassa-kwassa doesn’t fish much, it brings in Comorian fish, it’s different.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Or again: \u00ab\u00a0In countries where there are still seven children per woman, you can spend billions of euros, you won’t stabilise anything.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Words from a disciple of Paul Ricoeur? Unless we admit that the great thinker of history, memory and forgetting was a nanoracist.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
In Politiques de l’inimiti\u00e9*, nanoracism is defined as \u00ab\u00a0that narcotic form of colour prejudice which is expressed in the seemingly insignificant gestures of everyday life, in the bend of a seemingly unconscious word, a joke, an allusion or insinuation, a slip of the tongue, a joke, an innuendo and, it must be said, a deliberate malice, a deliberate trampling or tackle, an obscure desire to stigmatise, and above all to do violence, to hurt and humiliate, to defile the one we do not consider to be one of us\u00a0\u00bb (81-82).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Since Paul Ricoeur was never a nanoracist, what is the point of these statements? What explains why, when confronted with the African fact, even the best minds lose their minds so easily? Is there anything we could do together to ensure that, as far as relations between Africa and France are concerned, the small window opened by the election of Macron means something other than the repetition of the same old thing, in these times of brutality, numbness and flaccid paralysis?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\u00ab\u00a0Land of opportunity\u00a0\u00bb, for whom?
No, there is nothing to be done together if, for many, the Continent is nothing but a burden – a land of failed states, aborted democratic transitions, trafficking of all kinds (drugs, cultural goods, human beings and other rare species), irregular immigration, violent fundamentalism, terrorism, and uncontrolled demographic growth. The solution? More militarism.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
No, there is not much to do together if for others (and sometimes the same ones), Africa is seen only as a ‘land of opportunity’. Opportunity for whom, indeed?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Like most of his predecessors, Macron is trying to reconcile the two strategic orientations that have governed Franco-African relations since colonial times: militarism and mercantilism.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
He is impatient with those who question the existence of the franc zone: \u00ab\u00a0If we don’t feel happy in the franc zone, we leave it and create our own currency as Mauritania and Madagascar have done.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
He is right. But why do we always want to add a particle in front of these otherwise indecipherable signs: \u00ab\u00a0du Comorien\u00a0\u00bb, \u00ab\u00a0le Madagascar\u00a0\u00bb?
Getting out of the swamp of militarism and commercialism
We want to believe that things are complex. We want to believe that in the cases we have just mentioned, it is nothing more than verbal indiscipline. But it could also be that these remarks are symptomatic of the intellectual vacuity and cynicism that has governed France’s African policy since the end of the Second World War.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
We need to get out of the swamps of militarism and mercantilism if we want to relaunch a true Afro-French dialogue. The possibilities of this revival are there, outside the meanders of the Francophonie. As the work of the intellectuals gathered around the Dakar Workshops indicates, Africans are in the process of writing an Africa-World that is the antithesis of the clich\u00e9s on which the vision of French and African elites is based. In France itself, French intellectuals are rewriting the world history of a country whose cultural borders go far beyond its geographical boundaries.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
But such a dialogue needs one or two major concepts. The first is the reality of the planetarisation of the African question and the fact that, basically, part of the future of the planet is likely to be played out on this continent. The second is that humanity will only be able to truly face up to the new global challenges if it works together to bring about a civilisation of circulation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
If Macron were to speak in this language – rather than in the language of the billions of euros that should not be given to Africa because of \u00ab\u00a0countries that give birth to seven children per woman\u00a0\u00bb – he would be helping to open up new horizons for the whole world.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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Achille Mbembe’s violent attack on Emmanuel Macron University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and the W.E.B. Dubois Research Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University has responded.\u00a0 Africa’s \u00ab\u00a0civilisational\u00a0\u00bb challenge, its 7 to 8 children per woman, which does not allow the situation to be stabilised: Emmanuel Macron’s answer to a journalist asking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4656,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasa-africa.org\/ens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasa-africa.org\/ens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasa-africa.org\/ens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasa-africa.org\/ens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasa-africa.org\/ens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rasa-africa.org\/ens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4657,"href":"https:\/\/rasa-africa.org\/ens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions\/4657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasa-africa.org\/ens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasa-africa.org\/ens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasa-africa.org\/ens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasa-africa.org\/ens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}