Conversation of The World - Valentin Y. Mudimbe and Boaventura de Sousa Santos

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] we are starting this project which is the Alis project and uh this project with this name uh I think resonates with your work in a sense because I know that you you're teaching and you're writing Al in the Wonderland has been a Presence what do you think should we be doing with a project titled Alice in reference to Luis Carol what would it mean to be Alice in Wonderland as a title of project what well I think it says exactly what you might wish to consider there is the possibility of

following the history of Alice and extension of that history in terms of receptions cultural reception mhm and then uh uh a second AIS may be uh to focus on the thematics which in Al might Exist and they are there and that would allow you uh to focus to to choose element on which to focus and organize education and the argument of the seminar you are referring to is a very systematic but in actual it goes from theories into the Practical situations and to death finally and there is the last line which is that of Ali

propositions and we tend to smile because they seem to come from that Child who is not child he is a very good teacher of our yeah that's that's what intrigued me from from the very beginning is that Ellis conveys two ideas which I think are quite important for us in this project one is uh the idea of surprise I mean surprise Vision Surprise angle uh the change of scales and also the question of mirror you take you consider for example the idea of am it means the love that God has for me but it means

also it Might mean also the love that I have for God MH this from these models with the entry concerning that particular moment we can look at Ali's reactions subjective and objective that's right through the dative or the genitive and uh the lesson can lead to a number of consideration uh the west and yeah the West passion the West uh programs the West uh historical Experience the West uh uh colonizations of the World We There we are creating uh genitives and the genitives uh yes may be objective or subjective but this idea that that this

true ENT may be in a sense subject and subjective and objective at the same time are you know in a sense scandalous as you were saying scandalous proposition so to say and in in my view the the very project that we are trying to uh to to do at this stage is really Very scandalous in instead in in to the extent that starts from two premises uh that I would like to see your reaction about because they are purposefully scandalous that is to say Europe has not much to teach to the world today uh it

has thought a lot in the past but probably is exhausted and uh the tragic thing is that uh it cannot learn or it's very difficult for Europe to learn from the experience of the world because colonialism has Incapacitated it from from learning in a kind of an horizontal way from from the experiences of others this is quite scandalous uh for some people of course not for me otherwise I would be and for the my team but maybe some scandalous for some people that say well you know Europe has Tau and will continue to tou and

to teach and this such a uh complex tradition that how can you say that is very little that this tradition can teach to the world in a kind of a future Oriented manner in a kind of missor what do you think of this two proposition uh it is possible to continue the process of atries through the genitive of the dativ by finding by finding a paradigm why do we do that we do that because we are considering human livs or we do that because we are uh the ones who have been alienated and who are

reflecting exactly the way you have been Reflecting and trying to name uh the issues now you are reflecting on something mhm that's the object and then there is something else it is the you reflecting and now let's focus on the you reflecting because you are reflecting as the subject of a a project or about the project but you are also reflecting as yeah considering yourself as let's say an object involved now The reflection process is something uh which is linked to the way you are positing the reflection uh uh is a way of uh uh

it's a key to your own say identity to the question who you are and in this context and the the problems you are facing the first response would be I come from and I went through this and that experience which can account for my way of looking at no no no no no no I stop you there Because uh it's an easis you are standing outside of yourself and inventing your history in which Europe played a role but I'm stopping there because I'm saying yeah you see what you are doing you are choosing elements and

putting them and organizing them in order to say this is what happened and this is what I am temporalizing yourself as a way of inventing the past and there I can say you see you are not facing really the complexity of your own History you are recreating something else then you can say you can say to me you can say no no no no I am I said please try to tell me exactly what you are doing in your mind mhm and you say I am reflecting that's wonderful because you are the subject reflecting and

the object reflected you p and there again like in temporalization well about Europe this time it is you who become you become the issue and uh you are simultaneously the Reflecting subject and the reflected that's right subject facing Europe and the history do you think that you were in the same position when you were writing the invention of Africa you African you are object and subject yes simultan your reflection is a self-reflection simultaneously not only that because there is a third ecstasis and the third easis is yeah I am positing myself as the uh uh

reflecting subject and discovering Through the process the very process of reflection that I am a being for others and that all my involvement and my uh reflection is accounted for the fact that from documentation from the context and from the very issue of the reflection I am being for others if I ask this question or if I say this statement as a kind of an hypothesis that is to say Europe has not much to teach I'm I'm saying is an hypothesis Right let's let's pursue it uh in human rights in conceptions of democracy in conceptions

of the human being of Nature and so on let's pursue that is this assumption or these hypothesis to be dealt with differently if it is uh dealt with by an European as myself or by you as an African what difference does it make to be African and European in this process does the question change or is the answer that changes both no it is the condition of the question we are Positing ourselves uh well in a language the language we are using and in a now and the now that we are using we are reflecting

on is within the experience of living well in a given context mhm and this context leads us to a geography and it is a city in which we are living theoretically it is a city and the city in which we are living is the European Western City and the model uh we are facing in order to understand It and justify the interest the explication that our reflection can produce but that's a question of experience because after all look at you know in your case and my case I was born in Europe but then most of

my life has been in fact conducted and lived in Latin America in the states in Africa and so on you also most of your life or part of your life has been living outside Africa so what makes you an African uh and why is it so different my Perspective or might be very different my perspective on Europe from your experience is a question of origin or of a question of experience according to the the libraries we are Consulting it is a question of how we have been represented and named outside our own EXP experience mhm

now if you take seriously the three easis mhm and in the three easis the first one we temporize ourselves within a context a culture and a language and the second one uh we come To understand that we are simultaneously subject and uh and uh object and finally that we are also being for others but the Tre easis you know what we have done we have exactly reproduced the system of reproduction of an octop octopus mhm that's exactly the it is through C parities that an octopus reproduces itself just one individuality and now our process our

Process of reflecting about Europe first it involves ourselves and we come to apprehend ourselves as subject and object and the mind in fact is proceeding through C parities and at a given moment Vis Europe I am a being yeah being for others mhm who invented me but is reflecting on that invention and at the same time apprehending in the very process a subjective way of reading the fact that One is subject and one is object and then we write the history of Europe and we write the history through the model of one self temporalization this

you are in involed I am involved and the problem is to check the measure of objectivity in rendering what we are seeing and what we have learned well in my in my own terms I think what you were saying which is I fully agree with that is that in order to ask these questions in fact we are Not just a question of self-reflection of context and so on but also question of epistemologist and history and and these histories in fact have to be reformulated cannnot be the universal history of of Hegel and I think that

the reason why I ask about the scandalous nature of these hypothesis that Europe has very little to teach to the world is that suppose that we compare to hegel's philosophy of history and then when heel says that Africa is not even part of History and therefore cannot possibly teach anything to the world while it does then you know that Europe in fact is teaching everywhere everyone at all times because in fact history has been moving from east to the west and as you know and and ends up in the Prussian state so you go you

go too fast you go too fast because we begin by defining a space which is highly limited our conversation now that Conversation on the one hand and on the other hand uh this expansion through which heel for example comes in uh yes are reflecting a way your way our way of existing within this particular space which is represented by a model and the European model the judeo Christian model which is there from which we have raising these issues and from the Viewpoint of alienation a subject thinking about Alienation well it's a Greek model mhm it's

a Greek model that is giving us in actuality reasons of uh yeah reasons of revolting reasons of making statements about about so the city in which we are living and the language in which we are functioning and now that more uh yesterday uh during uh a discussion with uh one of uh your uh young [Music] colleagues comes to my mind the fact That in order to understand the city in which we are functioning we can use two reflectors back and back in time in Greeks MH simones police and we are back to that it is

the police that teaches Andra ah man mhm he had the option between an and Andra and anthropos he chose an so there is there an affirmation of Inequality it is already there the Genesis of the model in which we are functioning yeah and from which we can Revolt looking at the history of Europe or we can think in terms of yeah what's revolt is important but to find an alternative yeah but there is an alternative I am Focus on something that is of interest in your reasoning which is inequality and Revol abely now what do

we have to oppose to that model of simonides at the Genesis of the Greek Experience the definition of a good citizen in a democracy and we think of pent correct right the most explicit legal definition of the good citizen of Earth the free man who can think the way you are thinking and we are thinking against the very experience of the city is perceived as well are what is defined by a metaphor represented by three propositions that Citizen is to be def from the Viewpoint of women the good woman of at she is she is

the daughter of a citizen she is the spouse of a citizen and she is the mother of a citizen so we see the definition the mostess is defining Who You Are Who We Are from the definition of what is a good woman of of atance and now oppose the Poli and of simones to the definition of a good citizen uh in the Democracy that we conceive when we begin thinking about That comes to mind I mean all the the feminist classicists like Melton and so on they have been claiming that point yeah I I it's

not only the feminist because the citizen have defined there and the two spaces are finded you have the oos where the good woman is going to live and then the political in which you are going to be functioning if you are the child of the good woman and then you have got the slave and the bar Those who are outside but I I see your you know I have no no question what and you are going back all the time to the Greek experience even though I have some problems with what that means because as

you know and we were discussing about Martin Bernal the black Athena and then the African Athena it's a very complex configuration of knowledges that occur in aland Alexandria in the Middle East and so on and then from 19th century onwards becomes Greek and only Greek as A rupture from the rest of the world I'm not going to question that what I'm saying is yeah but do you see that we are indeed by using that model we are thinking about I'm trying I'm trying out of that model yes so is it possible to think of Europe

without that model that's my question we have to change the language we are using and the refences it is possible it should be possible but at the same time we'll be thinking in terms of Concepts and uh the knowledge We have inherited from this know I know well let's say instead of calling it Greek why don't we call it the Mediterranean Mediterranean I would be more comfortable with that and I know that in your work it's so important for you all African Christians theologians I would say in the first and second century of Christianity Jud

Christian Jude or Christian idea it is from judeo Christian Concepts in etics which is Jud Christian that you are analyzing and raising these questions and this going back to the Mediterranean that's right even though the Mediterranean then with Islam makes it even more complex and that through the Arab authors that we get the the the Greek tradition here in Toledo here in in Spain through the translation that they were doing so what I'm saying is that suppose that this hypothesis Europe has very little to learn is as scandalous as it would be For an African

I'm trying to position myself it's difficult an hypothesis as an African in the 185 I think that that's where the philosophy of History came out you know reading that passage Africa is out of history and therefore there's nothing to teach the world what would an African think would be SC SC as it is scandalous now from a power position to ask you have very little to teach so my position is the reverse of eagle in a sense as Scandalous but the problem is that I cannot answer this question on the base of the same model

I have to go to the Europe of 1492 which is also an important date for you in which you know this European corner here was an Islamic corner of the Euro Asian continent the Iberian Peninsula was very small and very marginal to the Ottoman Empire to the khalifat and so onine that's fine there are at least two ways of facing your issue by reflecting on uh that Passage from EOL situating in the biography of eel's books we know exactly when he was uh writing uh what and one of the thing we know which has been

reconstructed is that Hegel was extremely attentive to everything that was happening outside of the European experience using the French model as yesd example now for heel who was following literally week after week what Was happening in hati MH that was a big event you had a bunch of black guys who defeated the French army MH no now that's a problem that Hegel was facing it's not an invention and it is possible for this colleague aristocratic colleague from the University of Berlin yeah yes to hpo this size what's happening there what happened is not logical at

all because it goes against the experience of history and then we you situate these black people They come from where you exclude them from history because what they represent is scandalous what happened in aidi a bunch of former slaves revolting and defeating the best organized army in the world mhm and for Hegel we have got written text the future of Europe it was Bor apart yeah that's right was that great Liberation uh Li idea we have got a key that key can lead us to say let's distinguish what seems historically exotic from what Heel represent

in history of ideas and there you face yeah we had an experience heel camps and so on and Africa and when we take that position it is possible to find a different a different manner of reading that and I am reading it as an African born I posed the C Spinosa can't heg there is a continuity and what heel says is not really scandalous when we compare to C anthropology for example so it is a narrative which is inscribed in the very history of the West so it it Looks like that if you want in

fact to uh reinvent Europe because of the colonial and cap capitalist past and present we have to reinvent as well the other continents and the other cultures because after all what we mean by Europe today is very much part of an imperial project that it's not a very old one but a very powerful one particular from the mid 19th century onwards and therefore in order to ask these questions we have to ask other questions that is to say For instance what is that Africa can teach to the world today how do I ask what is

theological stand for this question that is to say first I rais the question and I don't answer it which is a question but I have to POS it an entity called Africa then I have to POS another entity and the process or procedure which the idea of teaching which means that there is knowledge there and that knowledge can be transmitted so if that knowledge is can Be transmitted I I bound to think that whatever Africa has to teach to the world is based after all in the original sin of colonialism is eurocentric in itself even

if it is against eurocentric is it possible to have a non-eurocentric view yes I think it is possible uh to begin by the very process of your perception Africa from the conversation yeah we have to take into account uh canc anology heel position And so on this Africa is well the abnormality which is out there Vis the normality represented by the achievement of Europe now we have got good Concepts coming from someone who was educated as a philosopher yes he is an AG philosophy and a contemporary of je noral and who after his philosophical education

went to do medicine and presented in medicine in early 1940 doctoral dissertation on the normal And the pathological we have got in the French tradition the work ofor Kang that allows us to think the tension between the normal and the pathological from a philosophical Viewpoint and also with the accuracy of what medicine uh Natural Sciences can allow us now if you check the American version of the normal the last one the normal endopath Lal there is to the the book a preface by Mich fuk mhm Indicating that if you want to understand the movement that

allowed the type of thinking you are presenting that is just before 1968 and just after 1968 there is no way of negating the discrete and the powerful presence of J K it means that we have got the concept and the concept that we can use will be to oppose a number of sets of of tension defining in fact Europe in the negative that is by positing what is abnormal and you can so is Europe the Pathological and the rest of the world the norm well uh in principle you take the position you want you take

the position you want and can use a three to follow in this case I am following M you take life for biology and representation of your scholar for example it's a question of power you can declare what is normal and what is pathological yes there is there is a way you take life you take work labor and you take language mhm and then For the three you try to see the function as it is presented VAV a nor you are using and you consider labor and you oppose it to the rule how labor is functioning

and then you look at the signification and you look at you oppos it to the system if you decide this is Mission Fus project you decide to give a privilege to to the first set over the second you create automatically two systems of knowledge one which is negative that is defining everything in Yes this is normal that's abnormal if but you see the the of that if you take the other way around and which is what you are doing you try to give a prev Village to to the system to uh the r to the

nor everything anything can be respected and approached as a system in his own rights and then that's the revolution you are suggesting and the problem becomes how do we handle that because anything becomes yes a system in its own right and there is no Way of distinguishing what is normal and what is abnormal there is probably a way and this way is Intercultural translation that is to say I I I see these totalities but not at close totalities uh I can see that there is the possibility if you subvert the power relation then and you

imagine an horizontal relationship and also you see the trappings of all these distinctions that You are because the Europe you are giving privilege to the synchronic which is transcultural and I am trying to understand uh the origin of your perception through the very history that gives you the concepts for the project of analysis which is synchronic mhm then there is a second point you said translation what about the possibility of things that we don't and we cannot translate definitely The UN translatability of yes cultur yeah well and there is this tendency that whenever you have

these cultural differences it is impossible to translate and then the question of Rel ISM that's what you are asking basically but I don't think so I think that the alternative is either an imperial position that determines the norm and the rest is either pathological or marginal or AB normal or whatever except for those that declare the norm Because those that declare the norm are considered exceptional that is to say look at this idea of Europe's normality and the rest is pathological and then look at the adoro European universalism there is say the exceptionalism or Max

VI the exceptionalism of Europe say whatever is a norm is also exceptional there is say is uniqueness of the West and this trap in my view is is is produced by power relation real you know sheer power relation so if I am do that Through a struggle then I am with a problem of course I expand thisness of the world I see many other experiences many different kinds of plurality of truths which wasse by the way uh is very for very many discourses of Truth to say not only that you can use marks also and

what you have doing is to uh invoke a model that gives privilege and to uh how uh we can analyze yeah the tension existing uh between uh organization of production and the social relations of Productions and from that economic model yes then you move to the cultural and you oppose the W to your good to the rest of thish my position is not of it's just the opposite of that that is I'm not opposing what I'm trying is to produce a reading of the West that allows for others to be self represented in ways which

are not objectifying not derivative are not Western Centrics so what is in the North And the South South that does not depend on dichotomy what is in man and woman that not does not depend on this polarity what is in Africa and Europe that is not based on this polarization that's correct that's Utopia probably but that's uh yes you are going a bit too fast because the question you are raising is already there in km the normal and the pathological you can take the two entries one justifying the Imperial model and uh illustration Of the

West and the other model making possible the fact that any system could be approached from its own coherence its own rules and knows which is your model in fact it is the model you are invoking it's an open model it's an open an open model but I am absolutely yes with you but you and we should face the issue that if we allow to understand that expression in its own meaning we have created something new which is Potentially which potentially can destroy the the culture could it yes because any system any being any Behavior becomes

an organized structure with its own norms and its own rules there is no abnormality there is no disease there is no aberation there is no disorganization anything anyone any Behavior I problem have no problems with with normativity with normality and with so on provide that the methodology by which we Arrive at those criteria are democratic that is to say if there is a kind of a IR radical Democratic way of defining what is normal and pathological I would be against the problems that we have never had in history such a situation normality is always you

know we we in our society always is always defined against someone which is submitted to our power basically that's correct the pathological cannot say the pa the pathological is you are the Norm and I'm the pathological no the pathological is what allows to posit the norm yeah absolutely and we are right and the problem we are raising the it is a problem of method how do we move from understanding this to an understanding uh yes the possibility of dialogue and so on and comes to my mind this statement of modesty by Mich we speak always

from a locality and within a conceptual field And this back to the question you you were raising which brings in a beautiful passage of Michel puku in relation to Hegel we are revolting against or appr propo the model that gives us the very Concepts we are using against it but you see that's my disagreement with f yeah but my disagreement with fuk comes precisely from that is that it's trapped in a kind Of a totality in which resistance becomes a form of power itself that is to say if I'm revolting on your model but I'm

using the instruments that your model had made available to me then I'm trapped in your model and I cannot think outside and it's intering that you focus on fuk which I think May teach us something today for understanding the world but not much quite frankly I I think that Fuko is one of the most eurocentric think much more than sard Which is another one absolutely is the only one he recognizes that in it's quite explicit that when he's writing his books and and it was just after the publication ofo he's quite conscious that yes my

geography he says yes is European and if you look carefully it is French he is conscious of that and then you write in opposition to yeah s the the problem Is that that they they recognize that abas also recognizes that but the people that read them in Latin America in Africa take them as universal theories yes says well my theory the language it is the language they are using and imperialism is not is not an epistemology that is worth of us because it's really a very Imperial epistemology well it is a in fact it is

a question of power relations and the power relations we want to continue we look at economics And thanks to the economics that is the relationship in terms of power we get a relationship in terms of politics and in terms of knowledge no and then you have got a different dimension which is that of the history of disciplines and we have to go into the system to understand why Mich might seem to be a very important compared to the people who are quoted in my syllabus on theories of difference of heel in Africa we have got

Africans Writing books now on heel yeah that's a challenge that's a [Music] challenge Professor so we have been discussing the possibilities of getting out of eurocentrism in a sense because of the models that we use to understand and to criticize those very models so um the alternative to uh uh eurocentrism or ethnocentrism and so on has been the concept of universalism and uh this is another uh trap I would say of normality And of Norm because in the western tradition the veral is always superior to the local so is the norm versus the pathological in

a sense in a different version right so sometimes I wonder whether the universalism is a good starting point for a conversation it looks like that is a a much better starting point for conversion and in fact it was historically more for conversion than for conversation but then if you abandon the concept of Universalism it looks like that we are back into that problem that you ra and dutly you very well Ed before that if you have all these different systems and and they don't speak to each other and probably there are problems in Translation then

so what so what is the kind of the world is a more embed in cultural terms or is more destructive I mean I think we have to confront it uh or are there other kinds of universalism bottom up absolutely absolutely you're Right the issue you are raising is again immense and uh my suggestion would be can we find uh models thanks to which we can think uh that universalism you are yes interested in we are interested in and I would suggest again in order to control exactly the rer of the analysis we are doing to

consider uh three models one cl vistos was a philosopher who converted to Anthropology CL Leist The Savage mind and the all the old project of Cl vistos and number two to consider a second model represented by Pierre B and with Pierre B to look at the symbolic and real violence on how the education system is reproducing itself and oppose two types of criteria one a prophetic Criterion or illustration and another one the Priestly the sacerdotal function th the proph People want to change everything and then Visa those who are in charge and my position would

be well I am on the sacerdotal model of those who try to understand the system as it is functioning in its own right and then make sure that we can situate ourselves VAV the prophetic exploration s like yours and then we move to a last Model is there within this tradition a model that can allow us to move uh according to the requirement of Disciplines and to consider other Traditions I say yes po recur now concretely if I go back to CL vist what I am getting is simply the conjunction the possibility of facing uh

the conjunction of the sociological practice and the anthropological practice at a given moment in this reflection which is theoretical made with conceptuality from the Western Tradition at a given moment yes the Reflecting uh uh subject is there assuming uh two ways of speaking about his or own culture or any other culture that is moving from the conscious documentation to a reflection on the unconscious that can be read within any tradition and at the same time the same person would be in principle capable of facing an anthropologist supposedly do it of facing the unconscious of a

cultural Experience and then translate translate it if we can say it is a translation into the written the conscious this that's first model which is the Levis Le let me let me interject there uh because I think that uh you know there are claims that you are making and listos makes which I I think in my view are in a sense exaggerated that is to say if we start from the point of view that our knowledge and we were discussing that earlier uh is always based on our Standpoint and context what allows me to believe

that leish going to Brazil to the Indian tribes gets out of its of his context and analyzes in absolute AB objectivity and neutrality the lives and the conceptual nature of the Savage how can I do that on this assumption is in fact transposing to to them you know conceptual analysis and conceptual configurations of knowledge and understand that are very European in a sense yes indeed so they are not we are For we what Leist is trying to do is a a to oppose two types of Sciences and he is quite explicit about that in opposing

the science of the concrete and the science of the abstract and this the conjunction of the idea of history that exist in any culture to the idea of an anthropology of any culture and this it is possible to do to try to reflect or to be critical about this model within the the European space and elsewhere then in doing that we are eating an idea Of pi b the reproduction of the system the education we are transmitting are violent ways of approaching anything this is what we are teaching in fact and some of us well

there is the tradition of the eurocentric form of formal education which starts in the 19th century in fact in the ways it it it was because and it is now very formalized very separated of the of the lives of the people and at my University here where we are now here I mean people In the Middle Ages would come and go to classes without any schedule without any time the professor would be there the people would live when whenever they were tired was a very more informal and probably more plural type of knowledge when you

think and that's again my my my criticism of book here we take education as the EUR eurocentric education look popular education people have always been educated in Africa it is exactly the the point I am trying to Make also but by trying to be uh systematic and let's use let's bring in a third model that Paul Rec and POS it POS it the possibility of creating a conflict of interpretation through a an approach that would distinguish in any culture foundational sagas and their expressions and number two a second level of everyday life uh philosophy that

is the way we interact and explain and transmit our knowledge and then comes in uh a yes A third level of what we call disciplines and we have in mind the European model the Western model and it is possible from that model to raise the question of how something else might be functioning out there and that comes in what we can say is a philosophical level thanks to which we can oppose a semiological approach to a hermeneutical one with a polaric we have created an hypothesis that can be in principle transplanted and used in uh

any culture That's a way of creating a trans cultural project and speaking together the same language and trying to recreate uh yes the tension suggested by Levis for example the tension between a science of the concrete and a science of the abstract but but you see you know let's pursue that because I I think that's very interesting you know they conceived of the science of the concrete and you know Leist of the abstract try to look at That from other perspective a different perspective yes how can we conceive of the western science as abstract of

the science of abstract where in fact it was the most intrusive forms of Science in the lives of people in the lives of nature in the life of natives in lives of people in the name of science we destroyed populations committed genocides within the Holocaust you are very much aware and you criticize that so it was very concrete the problem is That for levish is abstract whatever is rendered conceptually in a sense something that is independent of the context in which it is developed yes what they saying is is just marvelous you are proving right

and understanding that can be served can be be defined simply the cart says our predicament is that we have been children we have been trained we have been conditioned and we have been given a method by which we can try to Understand who we are but also how other people are but with the model of pauler we create conflict of interpretations and that we become students of any culture trying to understand that the foundational Saga of any culture any civilization and how there is well everyday life practice which is functioning also as a system of

knowledge transmitted from generation to generation and then something like we call it philosophy if You wish no we call it disciplines in the plural and in the west we have got a model in uh another culture we can have another model and in actuality there we are positing the possibility of a practice which might be Universal that is on the one hand the inspiration of hisory and on the other hand the inspiration of anthropology they can be transplanted and we have created an Approach to any culture which possibly can be actualized from inside can be

actualized and can be probably transcended that is to say I I think that this idea that you and you have been very critical of the this disciplines also because you have been involved in the open to social science project and so on so to focus too much on the disciplines as they are and and particularly look at at the colonial library and the role of anthropology I Think that you are granting too much uh leverage to anthropology I'm not talking about philosophical anthropology but anthropology I am very critical of anthropology but think that this part

that that is it possible you know to think outside the box of the disciplines because you know I I just give you the example yeah I have got a good example yeah which is the following because I lived it with Rober bet and G noar we Face the question we wanted to know is It possible to prove to all the big bosses the big people of the American universities and all all the the president of universities and the foundations and the people who have money we need money for our research in in Kenya or in

Guatemala and in Africa and then the big boss says to us could you tell me what's the contribution of Africa to Science so here we are goobar a specialist of women studies bet a political scientist and myself we said what can we do in order to create an event and to make anyone go silent we could have chosen botal zoology paleoanthropology MH and we could have chosen very very easy disciplines like that in a which in fact since the 19th century a huge contribution comes from African experiences no we chose the most Difficult disciplines History

Literature philosophy and we wrote that book it was more than 10 years ago with the contribution of colleagues we say could you prove to us what is the contribution of Africa to history of Art and to his to literature to philosophy and the book is there circulating and making a difference what you are demanding might be yeah is it possible to have done that from inside a different culture that is from the African culture itself in yeah Why not but but in your work for instance you distinguish very well or very often between philosophy and

African systems of thought correct uh as if you know the adjectives African philosophy banto philosophy even though sometimes you say I have nothing against those adjectives and so on but for you there is a thing called philosophy and that is Greek yes it is a Greek yeah we can say that there is something thing called mathematics you have adjectives There because it's Greek philosophy then well mathematics why Universal mathematics is universal but the the inscription in the history of mathematics in the case of today's practice it goes back to the Greeks I have nothing necessarily

yeah philos inv zero who invented zero Arabs no no no not Arabs it comes from India it comes from India of course now the issue is different the issue is to distinguish The genealogy of the Sciences from the genealogies of uh systems of knowledge if we choose that method we can make the distinctions in any culture and so far when we speak of Sciences astronomy or biology mathematics philosophy we are speaking or discourses if you wish whose history goes back to the Greeks in the west like In any other system we have systems of knowledge

and in a number of African cultures we have about herbs or about knowledge of animals or knowledge of stars the do for example yes they've got very complex system of knowledge of stars but it is not astronomy it is not astronomy it is a respectable and a respected system of knowledge mhm it can be translated it has been translated by by Scholars and now we can read it we are reading it with glasses Of the western tradition I grant that but but but but but I grant at the same time the fact that the reason

why they are not astronomy is because we have conceptualized as astronomy forms of science which in fact the azex in in Mexico add much earlier and much before or the Chinese civilization hand and we never call them astronomy if you look at Joseph NM science and civilization in China you can see that many of things that we say about the Western science And astronomy has been there for thousand of years so I think there is an eurocentric narrative about uniqueness and universality which is very contradictory to me because is both unique and Universal wouldn't it

be better to broaden the experience that's why I come back to the idea of interculturality to the possibility not threshing the the Western tradition in any way even though we should acknowledge the complexity internal Complexity and you were discussing this why you know I I do not put the same foot a pascal with with all the 19th century people and or Mont or or whatever there are differences and Spinosa and so on you know de you know this conception of of God would never be a good conception for the missionaries in in in Americas and

in in Africa so there were different conceptions in the western tradition but if you now try with these more humble in Fact more humble idea that there are different ways of expressing so I would have no problem in conceiving of sagacity or oras philosophy as philosophy I you say well philosophy is Greek no why philosophy is Greek in terms of tradition in terms of conceptuality and in terms of ways of transmitting it that's one thing and in different cultures nonwestern cultures we have also systems of knowledge if we decide to call them yeah The V

K in Africa or Latin America yes they are organized and often systematic systems of knowledge and we can translate them into French or into English and teach those uh systems of knowledge within a class of philosophy because we are submitted to the tradition that tells us what is astronomy by the method of uh doing astronomy the same for physics and the same for philosophy now nothing absolutely nothing prevents us from Accepting the idea we use every day there is a philosophy of MDS in let's say the United States which is different from the German there

is a philosophy of let's say younger people living in the desert of Africa in Sahara there is a highly remarkable series of books which called classic African African Classics yes it is presented systematically with the Notations very demanding with a translation and if we want to call that philosophy I have absolutely nothing yeah to to say and I can go so far as to say please consider the present day tradition of the practice of the discipline we have got this tension which when you reflect about that it makes you smile analytical philosophy which is anglosaxon

quote unquote and then Continental philosophy which is which is yeah European MH now when personally I hear someone speak of French philosophy German philosophy I say there is something ridiculous there because it doesn't make sense at all I don't imagine Plateau one morning I don't imagine je Paul one morning I don't imagine Hegel getting up one morning and stating I am going to write something which is German philosophy what they did was to get up and to decide to solve Concrete or theoretical problems according to a method we yes we call philosophy and then it

is only a posterior that we come in and we say yeah reading je Paul we have the feeling that there is something French which is different from H although is very close to ha which is more German and is something different let's say in what you are saying in fact which might be more Portuguese than Italian my point Professor is that the adjective French Or German or Greek is an adjective that qualifies something a pooser okay and I grant that and if that's so I would like to to see what would in 50 years be

considered African about your way of thinking because you say that you don't wake up in the morning and say I'm going to write African philosophy of course not but someone in the future will probably tell us or tell the our our our descendants that what mud was doing was African philosophy or what bentur was Doing was Portuguese philos what in your case would you think would make your way of thinking an African philosophy well I don't think the question is pertinent because living in this world we are sharing today with the system of communication and

interacting almost every day and so on well I think that all these adjectives we are using post Colonial nomadic and on will be revised and I can say this for example the adjective African Doesn't make sense when you reflect that uh God knows why we have divided the continent there is North Africa we don't imply anything there but there is a racial component in the expression there is Suba Africa the same there is there is a South Africa doesn't make sense there is a a second dimension also to AC the point in Africa what is

an African we have got white people who were born in in the Congo or in Sagal educated there and then today they are living in Germany or in England but uh their memories their education they they were born in Africa the connotation black and Africa strictly speaking is a a a notation with racial implications and then we are facing a question about what is it and what is there is something else about Africa no I age afria is yes conceived from the relationship existing historical between yes Europe north and Africa Europe is precisely the same

mean Harmonize we create a monolithic of Europe well in fact there has been you know historically speaking many europees there was racism inside Europe from the north versus the South that were centers and pry throughout European history and therefore today we have all the immigrants and people that were born to three generations they are Europeans and they are not considered as such so I think that's the same that's why the question I I I I agree With you but what I sense in your analys is that because of this the construction uh of the of

these continental divides and the adjectives and so on which I I fully share with you you make a move which I don't make that is to say my move is to interculturality that is to say expand the diversity of the world and try to make comparisons contrasts and for instance in my work I I do for instance the conceptions of human dignity that Come from Human Rights uh compared with the concept of Dharma in Hinduism or concept of um in Islam different conceptions of human dignity all of them problematic in one way or the other

and so on but I don't make the move toward transculturality and I think that you do that move and I'd like to learn from you why it is easy for you to be sometimes critical of inter culturality but you make the move of transculturality very easily which in my View is a z is uh you are home sick of of universality basically that's what I'm trying to suggest there is a a very simple way of reformulating your interrogation it would be an expression that comes very frequently in your writing to eradicate eroc centrism and about

that I do I would say this one and if we could clarify the uniqueness of this generous concept that we call eurocentrism and to accept also What is obvious that you anyone European non-european would fit this expression of the late Michelle dto no one speaks from nowhere and this what we call eurocentrism is not a disease it is the condition of speaking from a locality and number two why should we POS it in a prior about the practice of a discipline and and and this promote controversial expression French Philosophy or German philosophy or even Greek

philosophy they don't exist they are conceptu no yeah these are denominations we conceived a posterior in order to qualify a cultural difference we can see in the uh renderings and this a radical otherness another one of your expression might be sleeper sleeper concept because it is fundamentally political and we know that when the Political uh begins to be the only reference in a discipline it is very dangerous why is it dangerous uh my question is uh uh uh the following in your in your thinking is is very clear that the Western tradition is imperialism and

you grant that very but you see there the seed Z of emancipation corre which is comes very close to what I'm also been thinking that Western modernity is social regulation on one side and social Emancipation on the other side my problem has been and I don't know if you are facing this is how to develop a kind of emancipatory practice or thinking that does not get prey of the perversity of becoming a new regulation that is to say a new authoritarianism a new political provision and this despotism in a sense and in a sense sometimes

even the concept of you know I'm being very self-critical here even though emancipation is uh is quite Important for me uh all of a sudden I I see many different narratives of emancipation peoples that groups that refuse to use the concept because emancipation was for the slaves and slaves have been emancipated and we should not be talking about that and they speak instead of dignity and sometimes not even human dignity is a dignity that involves and encompasses nature as well yes so are there different language is this is what I Call Intercultural translation but never

reaches the point of trans culturality because I I agree with serto if there is impossibility of speaking from nowhere transculturality is also from somewhere and if it's somewhere is not trans okay it's inter in fact and in a brief what you are saying is this it is possible U theoretically it is possible to consider anything concerning life anything concerning labor anything concerning language it is possible uh to Consider that as being in its own right a system with its internal uh uh rules and indeed with its proper Norms MH this means in actuality I am

referring to Michelle fuk this time this means in actuality that we have by uh following you we have decided that the tension existing between normality and abnormality doesn't exist any longer now I would say yes theoretically we can go That far but then let just bring back the basic conceptuality that led you into this wonderful position we speak about life we speak about Labor about life we have people we are whose behavior is problematic or we have got physiological problems that make them different and yesterday I was with a friend monov visual we have said

that there is nothing there is no tension between yes regular normal Vis abnormal and we move to Labor okay with your principle everything is fine but what is in terms of commonality the comparison between a slave labor and labor of people in the car Africans or not and we add the issue about language conceptuality which is language and from your position the same any language is a system in its own right with yeah the problem is please look at the Implications by bringing these three conceptu life labor and language and you can I'll give you

I give you my response is terrifying no uh uh it is not uh well first of all you in a sense uh distort you know friendly my position by saying that they are systems I don't consider that system is the only way of conceptualizing an entity it is of course in our tradition that whenever you see something that reveals some kind of homogenity and coherence we call it System and from there to call it a closed system like Nicholas lman and so on it is very easy I don't think that we need those systems then

in your French tradition I would say I would be more in favor of romatic type of thinking using the L then Pro probably the system secondly I don't think that my position is the norm versus pathological I don't I I I question that because because I question power relations but my my key concept here is the just and the unjust That is to say there are ethical values that have to be constructed interculturality and what you are telling me is that the Intercultural uh construction of a value system is impossible and that is terrifying because

if it is not possible to be the unjust for instance for Life yeah of course I mean what is the norm I have no problems you and homosexual for me is as normal as heterosexual even for some it's pathological as as as now in Brazil In the commission of human rights in Brazil in the Congress which is quite terrifying for me it's not the question is the question of I consider that on an ethical base that improves the aspiration of human to be human Humanity humankind as an aspiration not as a reality because in our

Western conception Humanity always got together with subhumanity women were subhuman slaves were subhuman indigenous had a soul only after 1537 after the bu of the Pope Paul III that is to say we have always conceived forms of exclusion I'm real revolting against that and I'm trying to have a broader sense of reciprocity and this is Justice cognitive Justice and Justice but interculturally constructive so it's not terrifying in the sense that I'm closing I'm creating closed systems and I cannot do an ethical evaluation of these systems and they cannot communicate this is Very I see a

very Western form of Imperial uh cornering the others but can we use a mathematical let's say uh a formal no can we use a reference let's say to relationship between totalities that's neutral it's in logic and the and we can imagine uh two totalities interfering and the space of interference well we can name it as a testing Actualizing a partial relations of inclusion or we can also say it reveals a partial relation of exclusion and that's objective it's purely logical and mathematic MH now if we move that model to the context of culture by the

way my language everyday language is not English it is Spanish and then it's schol I speak English and with a number of French uh well I my children I speak French now this is a concrete I would say Illustration of a Liv existence which linguistically moves always into relations of partial inclusion that can be said part IAL exclusion also and this we are back do we really need to promote the negative that is a partial exclusion instead of yeah naming the difference by emphasizing difference too strongly we are uh in fact uh promoting the idea

of Uh a kind of untranslatability of human experiences and communication of systems of knowledge and so on and recent five centuries if we look at them no we can say yes almost let's say we go back to the 15th century the end of the 15th century the geographical expansion of European culture and then we follow Century after Century that expansion through economics the exploitation of the world MH number two colon Colonization of Americas and African contacts and evangelization and politics of christianization invention of Christian communities then one says no something happened it is a pical

it is visible people have been converting and people yeah it means that we might for a change decide to emphasize that capacity of contact and communication and the it's not a mystery the African Christian is a Christian period and you find Conservative and the people who are revolutionary like both and so on in in Africa but we are there we are in agreement there I want this communality what I'm very concerned is about the ways in which we build that communality and for the power relations because there are different ways when we go back and

I I hope that today we'll be discussing the the concept of and we can go back to that and of course There is forms of hybridization that are not just the the rape of black women by white colonizers or by as we did in Portuguese colonialism very much there is other kinds of hybridization based on love on horizontal relationships so what I'm trying to says this commonality fine but on Whose terms and under which conditions so therefore emphasizing difference for me is the first step to build new commonalities is there any way In which we

can search for commonality on more respect for diversity no it's it's it's a huge question and the response would be yeah we have got disciplines the social sciences for example and then we have got disciplines which are completely different mathematics for example or physics their application is the same in fact the condition of application can be modified and try and adapted and so on this there is a Necessary Prudence uh which would distinguish disciplines that seem to be universally applicable everywhere seems I say seem that's right uh and number two then disciplines which are very

young disciplines for example sociology and even anthropology these are very young disciplines they have no history really they have no history not yet but you write you write the theoretical position about the south also is to be Perceived as a as a geograph free but why do we have to oppose it to the West can you imagine we are opposing the South to the West in the language and sometime yes it is and secondly sometimes we say that it is identical to the tension between the South and the north this the West is a simultaneously

the North and it is the north which is the West well doesn't make sense but the fact that we do that and very easily Even in our scientific Publications indicates the conceptual confusion with which we are doing Intercultural studies the way of thinking sounds to me very very Christian and for for you know historical reasons and biographical reasons and so on even though you consider yourself today agnostic as you say in one text agnostic ism is an intellectual position and the intellectual position is one of suspending judgment and being critical Of One's Own spiritual tradition

yeah but I I grant that I feel myself very much coming from a Christian tradition and having been Catholic uh and practicing Catholic until my when I was 17 years of age or 20 years of age and a very serious one I can understand that I can understand and I and I share your view in that what what I don't see is that why you are so afraid of acknowledging the diversity of the world when such diversity is there In front of our eyes and why is it so threatening to consider it because we need

some extra thing well there has been always extra things sometimes they are Dron sometimes military uh power the military power has often decided many conflicts of diversity you know so there not only that the diversity principle which is highly respectable because it has got a motivation and about which uh there is no Discussion whatsoever we accept that uh human digity is nonnegotiable MH and then in the name of human dignity we go on promoting diversity sections about gender about sexual orientations about yes cultures I am black African I'm going to live in a home with

the black black Africa and so on and progressively these diversities cells are reproducing something that uh makes one Remember of the diversity of races and classification of races and then automatically some of the implications and they are functioning already we cease to be racist and we become racist because it's a scientific racism which is an effect of the diversity principle and we have to read the tension between let's say genders and the diversity ex existing between let's Say what I call the community of women we have to read that in terms of what the only

conceptu we have got they come from Natural History the same between the so-called racist and we have already I am absolutely sure of that we have created a new type of racism it is scientific and it is invisible and it is possible to manipulate the diversity principles for political reasons or in universities for the promotion of invisible inequalities we are fully There I I I I agree with that I you know I have no problems with that but what I think that the the perversion of diversity exists also in its opposite that is to say

in the negation of diversity because the negation of diversity have been used very often to suppress differences which are honorable I mean the recognition of difference that that women have been claiming was a very positive recognition me they are men and women they are equal and they Are different uh the indigenous people they have been first they were not human then they were subhuman now they are fully human and they have their own culture and their Cosmo Visions so the recognition of difference is not bad in itself the manipulation of difference and diversity is but

the same people that now are manipulating diversity were the ones that were manipulating universalism yes the the the monism the monolithic cultures Whatever is not European is Savage whatever is not Christian is Barbarian you know the manipulation is there and and why is there because there are power relations so it's not diversity that is wrong it's the power relations that may be underlying these diversity so for me no there is there is an inter relation you posit the diversity principles you create a new type of leaders and that new type of leaders are going to

be uh In conflictual situation what is your situation well if you criticize diversity as you are saying and you are doing a very radical critique of diversity in the name of what yeah in the name of a tradition uh in the name of a tradition and that accept nothing without reflecting on the implications that is it's a paradox by being critical of diversity I can uh name uh what I call a scientific racism which is not visible but which is Functional and by being anti-racist I can also name a right to an alter which could

be qualified in the name of diversity is there a distinction many people today make that and myself and uh when I work with several communities particularly in Latin America the distinction between religion and spirituality you may be agnostic vis a methodologically agnostic methodological agnostic but recognizing the concept of spirituality what is the difference Between religion and spirituality if any I sometimes I ethologically religion you can think of religion as something linked I am thinking of theology yes from B Li what bring people together you can also think of religion as having the concept of Lex

that is what is represent a law or a norm or a regulation but it is possible to conceive religion at least from my viewpoint from a strictly agnostic view Point I should insist throughout of these years I have people accompanying me who are ran Catholic priest who are very close and who know what I am doing and according to them yes it is a very good experiment in something about about the truth the truth uh in this sense and we are back to a political commitment which is not a violent and engagement which is not

uh uh uh being a member of a party which is Simply a disposition about what is the truth why do there is a definition and spirituality we have not addressed the concept of spirituality is it differ brother the truth and the spirituality are interconnected here is a definition that I can use which is very simple it comes I believe from Melle fuku there is a truth which is the truth of of an empirical experience of the senses by Using my hand against this this chair I am feeling it it is true there is a truth

of that nature uh there is a second type of Truth uh which seems like uh a kind of uh imaginary uh invention something like uh an illusion and spirituality is that type of Truth it is like an illusion and it is something modifying itself according to the expectation of the individuals or according to the personal Dispositions and this but then is is as truthful as a dream it is not a dream it is something which is individual and which is real people believe in the Holy Trinity for example uh they are strong believer in one

God and three persons and so on these are highly difficult Concepts to explain yet for a number of people it is true and there is no reason to doubt that they are believers as a teachers of philosophy I suspend judgment uh when I find I face the truth Which is like an illusion profound respect but at the same time a critical attitude and that that is doesn't contradict the fact that every day I am going to submit to hours to the recitation of the braier that is the apprehension of a text about an illusion no

it's a but but but but this is a good habit of course some people you know drink Scotch uh otherly the bre the barium bravium or whatever I mean we need some routines that hker Has you know according to the cultures a walk in the afternoon yes inde for example going to the for but there is something else transcending these two types of Truth uh I do believe that there is a dimension of the truth that cannot be disputed it truth is too strong why don't you just stay with the belief because truth particularly if

you refer to to fukko for whom there is no truth there is discourses of Truth there are Discourses of Truth well this is the trivial one I mean accept the one you accept also the truth as an illusion and then there is one that all of us we are going to accept a proposition can be true or false it is a pure it is purely logical and that's philosophic for the Chinese not for the Chinese both well we are in the Aristotelian tradition and a proposition can be true or Force we cannot Escape eurocentrism finally

we might come back To that we may come back to but but you know I I think that I want to take this because spirituality for instance uh one of the examples that people uh sometimes give to me for me spirituality is the belief it's not a I don't have to to work with concept of Truth one of my favorite authors is shopau and he has a very in par he has a very interesting text on apparitions on ghosts on dreams what kind of Truth is in there and or gaset a Great Spanish philosopher distinguished

between the science the belief absolutely so let's have the belief so the for instance the indigenous people or or in Africa the ancestors the idea that there is something beyond the material the Transcendence the immaterial the the the the fact that for instance you are in a community and the people the the the Chiefs tell us well in this circle our ancestors are with us and then come the people from the Government and tell them you are crazy your ancestors are dead so they cannot be here and the shifts the Titans as they are called

in some communities in thean say no they are here with us so there is this Transcendence this spiritual Transcendence which I think you find it also in Africa this is not a question of truth it's a question uh of belief is of of transcending the material the material life and all cultures I think have that element and Spirituality can unite us religion divides us sometimes I think uh yes indeed you are indeed making me U think of Paul rer and the idea of two legs a philosophical one and a theological one then I guess the

theological one is concerned with the truth I have got just two legs and the two legs are of a human being who believes that the task the important task these days is a methodological agnosticism in a culture in which Christianity is promoting or things like exorcism and then kids are in impossible situations and women have got problems about cery and all these irrational in fact strictly speaking things and the only way of facing a situation like that is against the Traditions to be critical enough so that we can access ways of dialogue at least through

three ways to Transcendence to Exist in this world and to to think the limitations in this world to speak about that ways of existing as individual as a member of a community or as this or that a person and to believe that through the process of conversion a conversion in a purely logical manner that is the subject who can become a predicate and the predicate becoming the subject in a a radical agnosticism prevents the possibility of conversion because you cannot convert anyone not not logically What does that mean logical the task of a teacher is

not to convert anyone my task is to introduce students whatever their gender their race their age to introduce them to a way of thinking clearly and in a solid manner so that they are open-minded and they can speak now about the experience of being this particular woman that particular African or this particular agnostic or a Believer some people sometimes criticize you or at Least comment that you are much more comfortable with the postmodern eurocentric type of authors then with postcolonial studies and you were very critical of negritude and of pan-africanism and I would even say

that the same with Foo let's take one by one I mean negritude what was wrong with negritude as a project for Africa first of all are you sure that wrong is the correct adjective I would say there is something which is problematic Not with negritude but with the thematization of negritude and its understanding because the first young people writing things about the experience of being different as black it is when uh late 1920s and you find a woman organizing those parties and then uh by the early mid 30s they are publishing poetry mhm good poetry

and after the war s conceives this antology and invited s Je Paul to write a preface and that black orus black orus has a number of Distinction one who is thematizing the experience the uniqueness of the experience of being black after the slave thread colonization and the necessary Revolt a white philosopher MH number two s is going to use a dialectic in order to show the foundation of nitude and the which dialectic the aelan dialectic number three in processing such was not Stupid so something else which is not visible to most people that is you

have got a thesis which is the affirmation of a racist white supremacy mhm you have got a negation that is an antithesis which is an anti racist position which is thematized by black people and now what's next and that's the problem witho I am coming back too he stole something he deprived us of something Foo didn't get it s saw exactly what was there and he didn't Write it because he couldn't decently write it but he back let me go back you take the feminist C you have the affirmation of the the male patriarchy you

have the negation the the anti position and then you have what next you take the experience of the Jew and anti-Semitism again a book by S on feminism I was referring to sim The Second Sex what do you have there is the Anti-Semitism and then the anti anti semitism and that s and then after that what I'm going to tell you what the problem there with s question because s understood this the thesis of negritude is an antithesis yeah that is you have got racism of the white supremacy and you have got the anti-ac argument

that s present I am sorry logic anti-racism is racism okay so you look For a basically in very simple terms you look for a synthesis what is the synthesis there is no synthesis because you are facing a huge contradic Against Racism you are opposing racism yet doesn't make sense in terms of Ethics MH if I am Against Racism I have no reason logically are the two racisms on equal foot it doesn't matter racism one the strong person it is an attitude that can be seen in in language in desire in indifference whatever attitude but can

You understand in not as a philosopher problem but as a sociologist I you understand negritude as a kind of an expected reaction of people that have been so demonized because of the color of their skin as it was constructed from 19 no that's not the reason that's not the reason you don't don't yes you don't oppose a negation whether yeah to another negation no that's dangerous negation and negation that gives a positive but you don't uh Oppose something uh uh ugly and to something ugly as a way of accessing how do we formulate something above

and beyond as a synthesis between the two okay Humanity humankind a very humanistic Christian conception of humankind all of us are equal and then uh because we are human because we have the divine grace upon us okay there what you are saying goes in the sense of reaction to f f reacted f is MD and thinks like that he's going to react to S and he reacts to S he goes on promoting violence as a response to colonialism what is your take on that yes that's my takeen this promotion of the violence has been called

therapeutic and has been called holy again I am sorry there is no violence which is therapeutic it is sickness there is no violence which is holy because it's not theological mhm sorry mhm it is simply a lack of a spirit of consequence Fano was a good I guess Psychologist or psychiatrist is should have stay doing that type of business and not philosophy and the philosophy inviting violence but he did a very important job in The Liberation movements even though some of them were criticized in Algeria and so on so you dismiss the Fon role in

The Liberation of Africa altogether in a sense no that's not the point I am criticizing only philosophical propositions and now let's go back to f And let's go back to negritude uh the first week of June something happened in Paris two young scholars AG Philosophy from the e normal Superior with the backing of the Department of philosophy of the econ normal Superior I was there organized a colloquium on negritude and philosophy now this is serious business younger generation well educated and inviting uh all this Scholars I was there to speak and to converse with them

About negritude and philosophy how to think this alterity which is called negritude in the world today by taking into account the count the legacy of the past one thing and few days later there was the new s in the world s s the philosopher the activist the literary and so on and we add a panel on SRA the African yes by doing that my paper was on sou the African my paper was in fact raising something else who is and who is not African and start by committing himself to negritude by inscribing himself in that

marginal movement and by positing himself against the dominant system is African the way I might might not be a good African he is certainly a good African pres to finish I think that in our conversation one of the topics that we start with was uh if there are any lessons for the World At Large that come from different tradition and from different historical experiences and one Would say would think that Africa as an historical experience both before colonialism and after colonialism and the colonial experience you say in one of your books that both Western modernity

and slave trade are part of the African Heritage of course they are but and I agree with you but what would be a contribution well if there is a lesson or or the the question doesn't make any sense to ask for a lesson of this historical Trajectory of Africa for the world today what what could Africa say to the world that is different from what Europe has been saying and from The World At Large has been saying something that could be specifically African since we have been using also the objective African is there any lesson

uh is there any learning specific learning that we can uh you know entertain in our age uh or not or just you know there is this very sentimental uh concept which was Launched by it is not by Ley by a book just before leaky in which you find we all come from Africa M you know it's very romantic but but you romantic is not with you now you are not a romanting in any way and I I'm sure that you you don't agree with the philosophy and Ling sh and yup's first book of 1955 nation

and yeah it might be time to have a number of people reward that yeah Okay wonderful thank you very much yeah finished our conversation it was wonderful thank you you thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]