Woke, racist, sweet dreamer or “privileged”. For several years now, the names of birds have been raining down on public debate. Positions clash, and words are stripped of their meaning.
“When our debates become battles, they descend into moralism, agitation and intoxication,” writes philosopher and essayist Alain Deneault in a new essay titled manners. From the cannibal left to the vandal right. A rich book, both posed and combative.
The space of doubt and nuance seems to him to shrink. A space that is nevertheless necessary for any complex thought. A place where everyone would not be called upon to choose sides between two extremes, while the urgency looms to really act in the face of issues that are much more crucial for the planet and for humanity.
Against sweeping generalizations and the dialogue of the deaf, the essayist tries to break down the masks that are worn as much on the right as on the left, and to give words back their meaning and their power. A courageous act, as speaking out on these issues seems to have become difficult to take.
“A book very often starts from a malaise”, explains Alain Deneault, joined to his office at the Shippagan campus of the Université de Moncton, in New Brunswick, where he is a professor of philosophy and sociology. “An uneasiness about practices, he continues, speeches, methods, attitudes which were those of people belonging to my social class. And I tried to do justice to the complexity of certain problems that we tended to simplify a lot in considerations that were both strident and blindly polemical. »
The essayist, known for his critical thinking on capitalism, tax havens and mining companies, this time sought to give us tools to understand contemporary mores. He wanted, he says, to take into account all the difficulty there is in being self-critical on the left, “without giving ammunition to the far right or the radical right which is rampant today”. A real balancing act.
Common reasons
It is that on the left, recalls the author of mediocracy and of band of settlers (Lux editor, 2015 and 2020), where the “intersectional movement” seems to have taken over the traditional progressive currents, are especially heard “certain drunken positions of their speech”. Many activists have found a comfortable refuge there for their indignation – very often legitimate, he admits – as well as for poorly assimilated ideas. The essayist, born in Gatineau in 1970, gives as an example the question of “unconscious biases”, that of systemic racism or even the whole discourse on “privileges”, which risks making us “lose even the sense of social causes “.
“We who still believe in a principle of reason and who try from the point of view of mores to highlight the complexity of issues also through the principle of common causes, founder of left-wing movements, continues Alain Deneault, we feel our space shrink to a trickle. We are in a way summoned to choose our camp. And to think ourselves by amalgams. »
“But at the same time, he adds, between what I call the cannibal left and the vandal right, there is an incredible call for air, a thirst for really balanced proposals. Not the weighting of the extreme center, which is an advertising and artificial weighting, but an art of thinking about the reality of mores, as was already done in the first treatises on ethics, that is to say in function circumstances. In this respect, Aristotle’s thought, of an incredible and almost contemporary vivacity, seems to him to be a particularly interesting “compass”.
And while the right hides under new clothes (“centrist, rational, balanced, responsible, normal, driven by common sense”, he summarizes), on the left, the progressive forces continue their fragmentation, their ” scattering”.
Has the left become the enemy of the left? “If the left moves away from the principle of common causes, it harms itself. If, without denying the historical specificities and the particular handicaps, the Haitians of Montreal-North and the generational social assistance recipients of Hochelaga are unable to unite in common causes, the left is lost, ”he decides.
Language abuse
Alain Deneault says he has sought, through this book, to distinguish between excessive discourse which, he thinks, harms feminism, anti-racism and struggles against all kinds of discrimination – all causes of which of course he does not question the merits.
While at the same time, opposite, the radical right will try on the contrary to assimilate all these sometimes disheveled speeches. “She’s going to hype up excessive or caricatural proposals, and unfortunately the cannibal left offers a number of them, making sure they rub off on all the other causes before concluding that there is no problem as to the feminism, racism or discrimination. All this, of course, for the benefit of a status quo.
“And this status quo consists, on a social, ideological or ethnic level, in locking people in jars as if they were pickles”, he is indignant.
While the “little people” serve as scapegoats, he believes, that “identity left and conservative right know how to hold on by the goatee”, the planet’s climate continues to deteriorate, inequalities are widening and the discreet tenors of neoliberal economics continue to dominate the world.
Evoking the abuse of language, of which the left of course does not have a monopoly, he also scrutinizes the concept of “sustainable development” (which is not particularly sustainable) recovered by companies and by our governments. He also denounces the “resignation of the media” which he witnessed during the pandemic crisis – for which the capitalist system is, according to him, partly responsible. Media which have sometimes blindly relayed the word of power and which have not hesitated, on occasion, to rebuff certain critical words which echoed the debates which legitimately shook the medical and scientific community.
Faced with all these issues, which are by no means simple, it is true, the co-author of Noir Canada: Looting, Corruption and Crime in Africa (Écosociété, 2008) pleads the need as much as the urgency of “broadening the framework”. “If we were capable of rigorous discussions collectively, it is currently the very evolution of our way of life – this unthought of the capitalist system – which we would be debating. »
Like so many others, he calls for the need for radical change, especially in the face of the climate emergency. Calmly consider the decline and limitation of human activity. “Our Earth system can no longer bear the consequences of this regime, believes Alain Deneault. It’s howled now by scientists, however cerebral and cold, who see that despite the indicators that hit the red all the time, we are on a false flat, we continue to grow exponentially, running at our own collective loss. »
In his eyes, the situation is clearer than ever: “The meme is the deepening of the abyss in which we lock ourselves up. »