A coffee with… Alain Deneault | This left that devours each other

Alain Deneault is courageous, but he is not a masochist. Reluctantly, the Université de Moncton philosophy professor gave up teaching the essay Critique of Negro reason by Achille Mbembe.

Following the affair of the “word beginning with an N” at the University of Ottawa, it had become too risky. His students were unable to discuss in class this book which nevertheless denounces colonialism and capitalism, and which is written by a Cameroonian. “Who comes out on top? Absolutely no one,” says Mr. Deneault.

A prolific essayist, the philosopher was in Montreal in November to talk about his most recent essay, Mores – from the cannibal left to the vandal right.

Freedom of speech, he has already paid the price.

In 2008 he published Noir Canada: plunder, corruption and criminality in Africa, a survey of Canadian mining companies. Barrick Gold and Banro sued him for libel. The case was settled out of court.

Subsequently, the philosopher was unable to find work at the university. “The subject is delicate”, he admits to me in a café.

He weighs his words before continuing. “Every time I applied, there were irregularities… It’s as if the door always closes…”

For personal reasons, he moved to Acadie. Once installed, the Université de Moncton offered him to teach on its campus in Shippagan.

There, instead of undergoing censorship, he had to impose it on himself. The story features in his new essay, which is as thought-provoking as the previous ones.

Deneault is carrying out three projects in parallel: case studies on the powerful (Total, Irving, tax havens), a series on the economy seen outside of capitalism as well as short books on “the ideology of the time”, such as the extreme centre, the relationship with the First Nations and the reign of the mediocre.

manners is the newest addition to this series. It hits where you least expect it. For the first time, he is attacking both the right and the left. “To a left, in fact,” he says.

The term “woke” will not come out of his mouth during our interview. He chooses his words carefully, and this one is not part of his vocabulary. We understand that he is attacking a current of the identity left.

Before going any further, Deneault makes a point: racism exists, both in individual and systemic versions, 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 if you’re gay, ”he recalls.

But for him, thought and action must go together. He wants to advance this fight without condoning inconsistencies, shortcuts or sophisms.

According to him, our debates too often boil down to trench warfare. “We attach labels to judge the other in advance, regardless of the context, before having heard it. It is a Manichaean and stupid logic. »

The left must dare to make this observation itself, he insists. Otherwise, those suffocated by this moralism will only read criticism from the right. And it is to this camp that they will rally.

“It happened during the pandemic,” he says. Any questioning of sanitary measures became suspect. The media slandered not only dissenters, but also moderate skeptics. Inevitably, some went elsewhere. »

Since the publication of his essay, Deneault has been delighted to feel among his readers a “huge appetite for nuance”. A form of oxygen for thought.

But beware: this spirit of moderation should not be confused with a centrist position. That would be misunderstanding Deneault.

The term “radical” does not frighten him. He judges that in ecology, in particular, radical ideas are the most reasonable. In Politics of the Far Center, published in 2016, he denounced the cult of “pragmatism” and “common sense”. He sees in it an ideology which is unaware of itself. Our economic and political system is not neutral. By accepting it as a natural, even desirable state, and by reducing politics to the management of this model, we kill the possibility of a debate.

In manners, he is interested in ethics. He denounces binary confrontations. Rather, he advocates thinking according to the circumstances. His compass is Aristotle. “For him, ethics is a matter of degrees. It does not offer a mathematical formula to say 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 pleasure of asserting his freedom of expression. He knows the weight of words. But the fact that a person is insulted is not a sufficient argument. It is an unmanageable criterion. Because we can’t predict the feeling, and we can’t debate it either. “The affects taken for themselves only oppose each other. We only debate it if we inquire about the raison emotions,” he says.

He is also worried that ignorance will become an argument, as with the now sulphurous book by Pierre Vallières. Without necessarily subscribing to Vallières’ theses, Deneault recognizes great merit in him. “It was an intersectional before its time. He wanted to support the specific causes of the most oppressed, while uniting them to advance common struggles at the same time. »

This is what the philosopher wants for the left: to defend sexual, religious and cultural minorities, but in a logic of addition and not of subtraction. By bringing people together instead of locking them into identity boxes and paralyzing the debate with taboos.

Otherwise, the left will be divided. And also recovered. Because Deneault reminds us that the powerful have no problem handling identity symbols.

For example, at the start of press conferences, elected officials have become accustomed to recognizing that they are on unceded indigenous territory. This can be seen as a gesture of reparation. But that’s hypocritical. The proof: New Brunswick has asked its ministers to no longer make such statements, for fear that First Nations will cite them in court to claim the territories…

Deneault also cites the case of Lockheed Martin, which provides its employees with training on racist biases and prejudices. He is not formally opposed to it. But he notices above all that the company gives itself a good 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, will we be more advanced?

Deneault is aware that this discourse is contested within the left. He himself was attacked.

During a discussion on the abuses of mining companies in Africa, a person asked him to be quiet. As a white man, he wouldn’t have the legitimacy to talk about it.

He is right. By denouncing these multinationals at home, Deneault on the contrary shines the spotlight on people who are often forgotten.

Throughout his career, the philosopher denounced the “vandal right”. He never had the illusion that this fight would be easy. But victory would be less unlikely were it not for his political family’s morbid attraction to mutiny.