Alain Deneault is brave, but he is not a masochist. The Université de Moncton philosophy professor reluctantly gave up teaching Achille Mbembe’s essay Critique de la raison nègre.
Posted at 5:00 am
After the “word that starts with an N” affair at the University of Ottawa, it had become too risky. His students could not discuss this book in class, which nonetheless denounces colonialism and capitalism and was written by a Cameroonian. “Who wins? Absolutely nobody,” says Mr. Deneault.
A prolific essayist, the philosopher was in Montreal in November to discuss his most recent essay, Moeurs – de la gauche cannibale à la droit vandal.
Freedom of speech, he’s already paid the price.
In 2008 he published Black Canada: Plunder, Corruption and Crime in Africa, a study of Canadian mining companies. Barrick Gold and Banro sued him for defamation. The case was settled out of court.
As a result, the philosopher did not find a job at the university. “It’s a touchy subject,” he admits in a café.
He weighs his words before continuing. “Every time I applied, there were irregularities… It’s like the door keeps slamming…”
He moved to Acadia for personal reasons. After his installation, the Université de Moncton offered him to teach at their Shippagan campus.
There, instead of being subjected to censorship, he had to self-impose it. The story features in his new essay, which is just as thought-provoking as the previous ones.
Deneault is running three parallel projects: case studies on the powerful (Total, Irving, tax havens), a series on economics outside of capitalism, and short books on “the ideology of the time,” such as the extreme center, and relationships with First Nations and the rule of the mediocre.
Manners is the latest addition to this series. It hits where you least expect it. For the first time, he attacks on both the right and left. “Actually to the left,” he says.
The term “woke up” will not cross his lips during our interview. He chooses his words carefully and this is not part of his vocabulary. We understand that he is attacking a current of left-wing identity.
Before continuing, Deneault states: racism exists, both in individual and systemic forms, and intersectional struggles are just. “If you are a woman, you are more likely to be discriminated against. And it’s even more true if you’re black and gay,” he recalls.
But for him, thinking and acting have to go together. He wants to advance this fight without tolerating inconsistencies, shortcuts or sophistry.
Denying racism is a grave mistake, but seeing racism everywhere is also a form of excess.
Alain Deneault, Professor of Philosophy
According to him, our debates all too often degenerate into trench warfare. “We put labels on to judge the other in advance, regardless of context, before we’ve heard them. It’s a Manichaean and stupid logic. »
The left must dare to make this statement itself, he demands. Otherwise, those who choke on this moralism will only read criticism from the right. And to this camp they will gather.
“It happened during the pandemic,” he says. Any questioning of hygiene measures became suspicious. The media slandered not only dissenters, but also moderate skeptics. Some inevitably went elsewhere. »
Since publishing his essay, Deneault has been pleased to sense a “huge appetite for nuance” in his readers. A form of oxygen for thinking.
But beware: this spirit of moderation must not be confused with a centrist position. That would be a misunderstanding by Deneault.
The term “radical” does not deter him. In ecology in particular, he thinks radical ideas make the most sense. In Politics of the Extreme Center, published in 2016, he denounced the cult of “pragmatism” and “common sense”. He sees in it an ideology that is not aware of itself. Our economic and political system is not neutral. By accepting it as a natural, even desirable state, and reducing politics to the administration of that model, we kill the possibility of debate.
In Mœurs he is interested in ethics. He denounces binary confrontations. Rather, he pleads for thinking according to the circumstances. His compass is Aristotle. “For him, ethics is a matter of degrees. It doesn’t provide a mathematical formula to tell how to decide each question in advance. Ethics is not 2 + 2 = 4.
We come back to Mbembe’s book.
Alain Deneault is not the type to upset people for the joy of asserting his freedom of speech. He knows the weight of words. But the fact that a person is offended is not a sufficient argument. It is an unmanageable criterion. Because we can’t predict the feeling, nor can we discuss it. “The affects taken by themselves only stand in opposition to one another. We only debate when we ask about the reason for the emotions,” he summarizes.
He also worries that ignorance will become an argument, as in the now sulfurous book by Pierre Vallières. Without necessarily subscribing to Vallières’ theses, Deneault recognizes great merits in him. “It was an intersection ahead of its time. He wanted to support the specific causes of the most oppressed while uniting them to advance common struggles. »
This is what the philosopher wants for the left: the defense of sexual, religious and cultural minorities, but in a logic of addition and not of subtraction. By bringing people together instead of locking them in identity boxes and paralyzing debate with taboos.
Otherwise the left will be divided. And also recovered. For Deneault reminds us that the powerful have no problem dealing with symbols of identity.
For example, at the start of press conferences, elected officials have become accustomed to acknowledging that they are on unceded indigenous territory. This can be seen as a gesture of reparation. But that’s hypocritical. The evidence: New Brunswick has asked its ministers to stop making such statements for fear First Nations might use them in court to claim the lands…
Deneault also cites the case of Lockheed Martin training its employees on racial prejudice and prejudice. He doesn’t formally oppose it. Above all, however, he notices that the company has a clear conscience and takes care of its image. However, it is still an arms dealer! And anyway, if a gay Senegalese sells tanks to Saudi Arabia, are we further along?
Deneault is aware that this discourse is contentious within the left. He himself was attacked.
During a discussion about the abuse of mining companies in Africa, one person asked him to be quiet. As a white man, he would not have the legitimacy to speak about it.
When a westerner uses poverty in Africa to brag, I totally understand the uneasiness. I also recognize that local people don’t have enough say. But when I stop talking, the Congolese are not immediately heard.
Alain Deneault, Professor of Philosophy
He’s right. On the contrary, by denouncing these multinationals at home, Deneault puts the spotlight on people who are often forgotten.
Throughout his career, the philosopher denounced “vandalism”. He never had any illusions that this fight would be easy. But victory would be less likely were it not for his political family’s morbid propensity for mutiny.
Questionnaire without filters
coffee and me : Black. Firmly. Double. I keep telling myself it might be the last, soon the last. Or almost. The social and environmental conditions of growing coffee cannot forever be such that we can sustain it in abundance as we do today.
My last book read : The End of the Red Man, by Svetlana Alexievitch, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, who thought of the antipodes of writing about the…
A book that everyone should read : Ethics, by Spinoza.
A person who inspires me : Journalist Marie-Monique Robin. Psychoanalyst Marie-Laure Susini. The novelist Eric Vuillard.
A historic event that I would have liked to have attended : the February Revolution, in Paris 1848.
Who is Alain Deneault?
- Born in Outaouais
- Doctorate in philosophy from the University of Paris VIII under the supervision of Jacques Rancière
- Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at the Shippagan Campus of the Université de Moncton
- Author of almost 20 essays published notably by Écosociété and Lux Éditeur