Julien Suaudeau and Mame-Fatou Niang, Universalism, collection “The word is weak”, Anamosa, 2022
https://anamosa.fr/livre/universalisme/
“Universalism, a white humanist concept powerfully questioned by a postcolonial consciousness”
https://www.rfi.fr/fr/podcasts/en-sol-majeur/20220313-mame-fatou-niang-pour-un-universalisme-postcolonial
Before considering the “man without a label” of the universalist ideal, we must examine the labeling process that European colonialism developed to establish its domination over the world. This analysis cannot ignore the racial question, as if we could simply dream of a post-racial society – as if the end of colonialism had marked the end of coloniality, this naturalization of hierarchies between colonizers and colonized, between Europeans and non-Europeans, between Whites and non-Whites. How have the constructions of the past shaped and still affect what is considered French, obviously, without ulterior motives, and what the French identity is questioned, being the object of multiple justifications, incessant controls and other identity verifications? In what way is this power to monitor, control, contain also a power to erase?
Excerpt from the introduction quoted by http://www.slate.fr/story/223083/bonnes-feuilles-universalisme-mame-fatou-niang-julien-suaudeau-anamosa
On universalism
"The concept of universalism has been perverted."
"We are seeing a project that has not been completed."
"Universalism is the object of a kidnapping by a certain caste which decrees that we are there, that the universalist project has reached its end."
"Universalism, since its birth, has always been an incomplete project and has suffered from exceptions in relation to the rights of women, certain minorities or even freedoms."
“Universalism is a project that must be cherished but which has its flaws.”
"We seek to deconstruct what is called pseudo-universalism: a whole system of dead ends, blind spots, the organization of forgetfulness and historical amnesia with regard to the history of French colonialism."
"There is a mythology and a pseudo-universalist ideology that fulfills three functions: 1- to conceal the crimes against humanity that were the slave trade and the slavery of blacks and the importance that these crimes had in the influence of France and in the rise of global capitalism (...). 2- To maintain control over the production of the national novel. And 3- To deny any form of current existence, of reality of French racism."
"We are talking about French universalism."
"France is a small province in a place called the world."
"It is extremely important for us to get out of French navel-gazing, of this centralization of a France which would become the center of the world, with an extension of its civilizing mission."
"We are taking a republican perspective because in our opinion the monopoly on the production of republican values is extremely problematic and is leading us straight towards a France that is not republican but rather post-republican."
"Our line of thought is rather to bring us back to France before considering anything else, that is to say, the knowledge, acceptance and facing of our colonial history."
"There are pages torn out and missing in this thing that is conveniently called the national novel (...). It is our responsibility to know these gray areas in order to finally accept ourselves as a post-colonial people."
"Once we have accomplished this work of historical recognition and acceptance - and this is neither a position of repentance nor of victim competition but rather a matter of responsibility and duty to remember - perhaps we will be able to consider something else, which is pluriversalism."
"We are not talking about victimization."
"We are witnessing today what we call coloniality, which are contemporary survivals of the forgotten history of slavery and colonization."
"To think that racism or anti-racism was imported by the United States is a sham."
"The way in which political and media power uses the recognition of a black woman in the Pantheon [Jospéhine Baker] as a kind of proof that racism has neither history nor current form in France is completely problematic."On post-colonialism, anti-colonialism and decolonialism
"We are in a logic of understanding and sharing. Of repair."
“We are trying to learn to say we.”
"We place ourselves in a perspective that seeks to tend towards a form of harmony, of dialogue and therefore we did not want to position ourselves in a logic of antagonism or counter. We do not like this logic of the two camps often presupposed by the pseudo-universalist camp."
"It is very urgent to get out of this logic of clash and this desire to have the last word at all costs."
"The universalism that we are trying to reinvent implies a renunciation of the idea of having the last word."
"We speak of post-colonial history because there are not two bodies. We speak of a situation of a body: France as a post-colonial element."
"We must stop seeing the other as other and understand how this other became black."
“Post-coloniality is the evidence of what France is.”
"The police treatment of French suburbs is exactly like the military treatment that was reserved in the 19th century for colonized countries in Africa or the Caribbean."
“Our universalist position is also anti-colonial.”
"Those who are called the rentiers of the Republic or who exercise a monopoly on the production of universalist discourse must be confronted with the inconsistencies and contradictions of their discourse, not to exclude them from the republican field but ultimately, to bring them there."
"The worst form of violence that I can often exert on people is to say that I don't agree. It echoes the virulence of some people to see women, or veiled women on a set."
"The we that we manage to produce naturally is of a violence far worse than a punch in the eye."
"The fact that we have been thinking together for three years is disturbing, problematic and exerts a form of violence on the pseudo-universalist influence of public space."
“By saying we or I, we act.”
"We tried to convey in our book a call to action - rather than a call to reaction."
"As Toni Morrison said, one of the primary functions of racism is to distract."On the urban planning issue
“You have to see the other as I do.”
"There is an extraordinary ignorance of the long history of the suburbs which began in the 19th century with Haussmann who drove a whole section of the Parisian population to the outskirts."
"There is a history that institutionalizes the periphery and the concentration of population resembling or conforming to the other side of the ring road."
"The city is the place par excellence where the us of today and tomorrow is invented: Paris in 1792, for example, is the place where the revolutionary us is invented."
"The city is a space like a book, an opera where an imagination is built and preserved. When we look at our cities, they only reflect a certain history through street names or statues."On the new Republican-anti-Republican divide
Excerpts quoted by http://www.regards.fr/la-midinale/article/reconsiderons-les-pages-arrachees-de-l-histoire-pour-nous-accepter-enfin-comme
"Speeches that would lead some people to assume the right to embody the Republican left, which excludes all those who do not agree with them, are totally unacceptable."
"We will not be able to repair our country by proceeding with anathemas and ostracisms."
"To be able to rise from its ashes, which are already cold, the left will have to look at its world and not just at the world of before: what are people asking for, get out of the anathemas, get out of the projections and the great history that is already in the museums and anchor itself in the reality of people's demands."
"Today there is a clear fracture line among those who call themselves left between the question of class and the question of race."
“The issue of race is central and always has been.”
"Things are so fragmented that talking about workers too often leads us to not talking about female workers, Maghrebi workers, poor workers from the suburbs."
"In the imagination of May 68, we only see white bodies."
"May 68 has become a blank story. But what about the importance of the 93 department in the start of these events? What about the movement between Maghrebi workers, sub-Saharan African workers and students?"
"To understand May 68, we must, for example, remember May 67 and the state massacre in Guadeloupe – and the social and political factors that led to it."
"There is also the problem of the artificial fracture between Republic and democracy in the ideology of this so-called new modern progressive left (...). Where does this desire to oppose the Republic in the etymological sense and the power of the people come from? It makes no sense."
"It is urgent for the left to invent a sustainable future for itself by not operating on this type of completely artificial antagonism."
