Béatrice, director of the BONHEURS laboratory at the University of Cergy-Pontoise, today, for once, you are presenting us with an idea to move the world from your latest work?
It is a work published these days whose title is “We are not in democracy – plea for the drawing of lots”: it is a graphic novel which starts from the idea that the election does not guarantee that a government is at the service of the general interest.
Yes, we started from the observation of the disaffection of “professional politics”. The rise of abstentionism is obvious in representative democracies and in France in particular: we have just seen it!
And this is not a lack of interest in politics?
There are two categories of abstentionists: abstentionists “outside the political game” in populations with low qualifications and difficulties in social integration who are characterized by a withdrawal from politics, a certain apathy and a feeling of incompetence, and abstentionists “in the political game”, who are interested in politics and are often the bearers of a refusal and a contestation of society and for whom abstention is a real political choice.
Does this call representative democracy into question?
Yes, but “representation” is perhaps the opposite of democracy. wrote Jacques Rancière. It’s counter-intuitive. This is what the thinkers of the Enlightenment said: any representative system is aristocratic. The principle of the election of representatives implies a choice and therefore distinctions between citizens. It is therefore an idea of aristocratic origin which is opposed to the democratic idea of equal competence of everyone to take collective decisions.
Where does the drawing of lots as a democratic alternative come from?
Yes if we draw the elected officials? A utopia… another way of thinking about the Common Good. In this graphic novel, we are in 2027, the draw has replaced the election and Tom Daline our hero, a young architecture student is drawn as deputy… and he will have to deal with such an unprecedented situation… what if he doesn’t know anything about it? How will he resist the pressure groups. And then he will fall in love…
A political graphic novel that allows you to think “out of the box”. “We are not in democracy – plea for the draw” published on Amazon by Béatrice and Salomé MABILON, Instagram we are not in democracy (all attached).