2023-08-22 00:31:00
I am delighted with Felwine Sarr’s text even if I do not at all share the political ideology he defends by advancing hidden behind an academic posture. Felwine’s outings show that in the political division of labor, the ex-Pastef recognizes the defeat of the gladiators with their Molotov cocktails and throws his intellectual thugs into battle. Too bad such a great mind like Felwine degenerated into an intellectual thug; but ideas are always preferable to Molotov cocktails. Throwing a Molotov cocktail at a full bus is not an idea, it’s a crime. In any case, the press saved its honor and the honor of our democracy by unanimously condemning this barbaric crime.
I hope that Felwine Sarr will regain his capacity for indignation to condemn the Yarakh attack. So the gladiators having put away the sword of the Molotov cocktails in the sheath, the intellectual thugs entering the scene. Felwine’s text, like the previous ones, has two intellectual flaws: it is fundamentally partisan and it is excessive. All that is excessive is insignificant tells us Talleyrand, known for his great restraint and his great reserve, two qualities that Felwine has lacked since he became an intellectual thug. In his classic The Scientist and the Politician, Max Weber wisely tells us that by “taking a political position, one ceases to be a scholar” because in doing so, one moves away from what he calls the “axiological neutrality” which must be consubstantial with the approach of the intellectual or the scientist.
Felwine Sarr is no longer in science, he is in politics. Unfortunately, by entering the slippery slope of politics, he moves away from the “brotherhood of the awakened” on the level of science. And for him to remain awake in politics as he is in economics, he, like Sonko, needs to have more political culture to avoid his quick and pithy judgments on our democracy. Both he and Sonko should urgently read Christine Desouches’ classic, The PDS, a legal opposition in Africa, to understand how Wade made our democracy evolve with a legal opposition by becoming in fact the second lung of the Senegalese exception alongside Senghor who never yielded to the sirens of the single party.
Professor Sarr’s statements reveal his resentment but above all his political lack of culture. Every week he uses “this freedom of expression that we were so envied” to quote him and I would add that we are still envied. A few days ago, he used this freedom of expression with his associate colleagues, which he combines with the imperfect, as petitioners often do. Thought and speech are free in Senegal with its 339 political parties, its dozens of newspapers, radios, televisions and its hundreds of websites, but no democracy can tolerate throwing Molotov cocktails at buses, public property or private either a form or a freedom of expression.
Ah! So far Felwine has not yet condemned the burning of the university and especially of its library because as the German thinker Henrich Heine said “Where you burn books, you end up burning people”. Therefore when we do not condemn those who burn books, we do not condemn those who burn humans. So the deafening silence of Felwine and of a certain civil society is understandable. “We went to the polls, voted in peace and chose our representatives,” Felwine said.
The use of the imperfect is far from being fortuitous because it combines our democracy with the past, while with the spring of coups d’etat blowing in West Africa, Senegal remains more than ever the democratic exception. In six months we will go to the polls, vote in peace and choose our representatives contrary to the claims of Felwine’s guru who says it will be him or chaos.
Our democracy is not associated with the imperfect but with the present and the future. The horizon of our democracy has never been so open because in Senegal the election is a mechanism for bringing power into play, not a simple mechanism for relegitimizing power as is the case elsewhere. And the Presidential of 2024 will be one of the most open with for the first time an outgoing President who does not represent himself. “In what democracy, do we formally eliminate the most representative party game of the moment?” asks Felwine. It is appropriate to remind him that in a democracy, representativeness is measured by elections, and this invalidates his thesis. In addition to the United States, Trump, even if he is one of the favorites of the next presidential election, is facing justice for several cases and no one has heard Felwine be indignant. I am even convinced that Felwine; teacher in North Carolina, would never dare to defend a politician or an academic accused of rape in the United States. If we follow Felwine’s logic, politicians must be above the law and be lawless zones.
Thus Sonko can call for the murder of the Head of State and ask young people to treat him like Samuel Doe, insult the magistrates, threaten the judges with impunity simply because he is represented. “Democracy is justice” says Felwine. What a contradiction. Does Adji Sarr not have the right to justice because she is hit with the double penalty of social precariousness and of being nobody’s daughter. Doesn’t Mame Mbaye Niang have the right to defend his honor simply because he is a minister?
Ministers cannot be above the law but also below, just like opponents. Ideology and partisan instinct make people blind intellectually and make you see things as you would like them to be. This is why Felwine tells us that “the party which has just been banned is the one whose message commands the support of the majority of the youth, the working classes and the silent masses”. Here we are closer to Soviet propaganda, or that of Enver Hoxha than to science. We want to ask him what he is basing himself on. His guru, who had bet on wanting to evade justice, to defy the State, has been under arrest for almost a month and the young people enjoy the holidays, and the silent mass rediscovers the virtues of order, freedom and of the tranquility guaranteed by the State. Henry Kissinger teaches us in his book Diplomacy: “When an academic is wrong it is just an assumption that has not worked, but for a statesman it is a disaster for the present and for the future. We quickly see the difference between an intellectual who wanders into politics and statesmen who have on their shoulders the responsibility of ensuring the stability of a country.
For Martin Heidegger betting on the Nazis was only a working hypothesis which will not prevent him from continuing to make other hypotheses following the fall of the Nazis, on the other hand the judgment of history has been implacable for those responsible. of the Weimar Republic which through weakness allowed the Nazis to take power. It must be repeated, Felwine can make the same mistake as Heidegger but the State of Senegal will not make the same mistake as the Weimar Republic and that whatever the manipulations of a certain degenerated civil society and the activism of thugs intellectuals.
Felwine’s problem is basically simple. He had bet everything on the hypothesis of a possible 3rd term like his guru, of which it was also the alibi, the shield, the life insurance but with the opposite foot worthy of the President’s Messi, they are at four supports politically and intellectually. Intellectual and scientific honesty begins with the humility to recognize that one was wrong and that one’s working hypothesis did not work.
Awakening to relativism, nuance and self-criticism is a good reflex to stay awake in science as well as in politics. The return to the debate of ideas marks the end of the interlude of the “banality of evil” that Pastef wanted to impose with Molotov cocktails.
DR Yoro Dia
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#Intellectual #common #sense #reduced #simplest #expression
