“we Must Go Beyond The Question Of Otherness In The Narrow Sense Of The Term”

Je write to you from another shore ”. It is a short letter addressed to the philosopher Hannah Arendt that the Franco-Tunisian historian Sophie Bessis publishes. A long meditation as written in the course of thought, pen and history addressed to a philosopher who knew how to think precisely human history to thwart the tragic.

Sophie Bessis and Hannah Arendt have points in common and areas of divergence. Both were born into Jewish families: German-speaking Ashkenazi then English for Arendt; Sephardic and of various languages ​​(French, Italian, Judeo-Arabic, Arabic) for Sophie Bessis. Both intellectuals, they are attached to thinking this story that men do but do not know how to do, according to Marx’s formula. Each worked to thwart the inevitability of it to detect in the din of the world the great driving forces, the stubborn lines, the part of man and of his will too.

But Sophie Bessis and Hannah Arendt also have different points of view, since precisely they were born through and through a sea that separates Europe from Africa. And that matters. To the obstinate European that Arendt was, Sophie Bessis opposes a decentered experience. Or refocused in Elsewhere, it depends. Being born and growing up during decolonization in an environment that is at the same time Jewish, Arab, French, Italian, African and Mediterranean shapes other than the fact of being born and growing up in a Jewish, European, German environment and knowing just as much Europe of the philosophical thought than the Europe of totalitarian barbarism.

From this inventory of the experience, Sophie Bessis questions. The global health crisis we are experiencing gives rise to a reflection on the state of the world, nationalisms, human finitude as well as the civilizational outcome in a crisis of modernity, otherness as a central question of politics. She questions herself just as much as she questions Arendt. Without ever taking her to task, she emphasizes that the stubborn European tropism of the German philosopher made her miss the history of the Arab Jews, whose almost oxymoric identity disturbs so many stories. It underlines just as much the flashes of the philosopher, her precise analysis of totalitarianism, her refusal of any confinement of identity. Her optimism also despite everything, she who saw in the very end the opportunity for a renewal, if not a revival. An Initium carrying an “Aurora”, as the end of this long letter concludes. Interview.

The Africa Point: Why did you choose this epistolary form and what did you want to approach in this format which perhaps lends itself more to the exercise of introspection than to the political question …

Sophie, Bess: This letter to Hannah Arendt is also a literary exercise. Most of my writings are essays or academic writings. But politics is still there because it is a central dimension of my thinking, whatever style I adopt. And if I have chosen a more personal tone in this text, it is because I think that there comes a moment in life when it is advisable to bring your personal experience into play to illustrate the political. If I wanted to speak to Hannah Arendt, whom I have read a lot without being an expert, it is because in her most immediately political writings, especially those of the 1940s and 1960s, I found a vision of nationalism and a vision of what was then called the Israeli-Arab conflict corresponding to my questions. These writings sparked in me the desire to explore these essential questions through a dialogue with her. First, the question of nationalisms, and more precisely of two nationalisms, Zionism and Arab nationalism, which somehow fed off each other. Then the question of otherness, which is central in my remarks. It is articulated with that of nationalisms which are all characterized by their absolute rejection of otherness. Finally, the last question concerns the Jews of the East, totally obscured by Arendt, whose European centrism I emphasize.

Your letter adopts a twilight tone, but not in the sense of desperation. Rather in the Gramscian sense of an uncertain in-between. Are we also in an uncertain in-between, as Arendt may have known?

Arendt experienced the height of European fascism, the rise of Nazism, the extermination of European Jews, totalitarianism. It was therefore at the heart of the “morbid phenomena” or “monsters” of which Gramsci spoke. The current period is not like Arendt’s, but what she wrote, especially on destruction, helps us understand our own. She has, among other things, perfectly analyzed the logics of totalitarianism, in particular this insane logic which is at the root of the genocidal process. She describes it as “unprecedented” not so much because of the scale of the massacres committed as of their uselessness for the killers. His writings can help us understand some contemporary horrors like the war in Syria.

If Arendt understood this European totalitarianism, did the same apply to colonialism? She found normal, for example, and you will recall it by the way, the mandates of the League of Nations imposed by European states on other peoples …

Arendt was an anti-colonialist, for her colonialism was a form of oppression on other peoples. She was very clear on this point. But besides that, she nevertheless believes that there is a hierarchy between civilizations and places that of the West at the top. This is one of the reasons for her disdain for the Eastern Jews that she discovers in Israel when she goes to cover the Eichman trial there. She was a child of Europe and carried the gaze of European Jews to Eastern Jews.

Did Arendt fail to grasp the eastern side of Judaism in order to better understand certain phenomena of his time?

Arendt was a Zionist in his youth. She had gone to Palestine, accompanying a Zionist organization. She did not dispute the legitimacy of the Jewish home in Palestine. But little by little, it went from Zionism to non-Zionism and then to anti-Zionism. Precisely by challenging the logic of nationalism. These logics, according to her, and in this I fully adhere to her analysis, all carry a fascist dimension. She writes that an oppressed people, if they fall into nationalist logic, can also sink into fascism. The fascist drift of the Israeli right and far right illustrates his point perfectly. And I try in my text to explain why the Eastern Jews formed the troops of these parties: despised by the Labor Ashkenazi, they went to the right and far right parties, including the national-populist discourse and anti-Arab matched their frustrations.

You speak in your book of your childhood as an Arab Jewess in Tunisia. How was the creation of Israel received by the Jews of North Africa?

The case of Algeria is separate because the Crémieux decree gave French nationality to Jews living in the three Algerian French departments. For Tunisian, Moroccan and Libyan Jews, some of them were sensitive to Zionism and voluntarily emigrated to Israel after its creation. For Tunisia, it is considered that this represented 20 to 25% of Tunisian Jews. But the majority of North African Jews emigrated after independence for reasons other than joining Zionism. Many have settled in France or in other Western countries.

You call yourself “Jewish Arab”, a portmanteau word without a hyphen. What does this identity carry?

I found that bringing the two identities together in one term suited me, thus reconciling two parts that we always want to oppose. The fact that I do not include a hyphen does not mean that I conceal the difficulties of this cohabitation, including internal ones. But I have always tried to make this cohabitation work.

You also mention Arab nationalism. How did it mirror itself with Jewish nationalism?

The Jews, in the Arab-Turkish-Persian world, were part of the monotheistic minorities called by Muslims “People of the Book”. They were not considered pagans because of their monotheism. They had lower status, but status nonetheless. They were discriminated against, like all minorities, in an environment that did not know equality. But although they have known serious episodes of persecution throughout history, they have been generally less massive and less systematic than in Europe. With the creation of the State of Israel, this relationship of domination was to some extent reversed: this State came to settle in the very heart of “Dar al Islam”, where the Jews who were once a minority and were dominated have become non-existent. only majority but also domineering. The problem with Arab anti-Zionism is that it is more the result of an immense sense of humiliation than of a political posture.

But you also mention the existence in the Arab world of a nostalgia for the Jewish world. You write that the Arab world is “deprived of its Jewish otherness” …

Historiography has presented in two contradictory ways the long Judeo-Arab cohabitation in Muslim lands. On the one hand, we have the golden legend, with the mythical example of Andalusia and its “conviviality”. On the other, we have the black legend which dramatically describes the condition of the Jews of the East. Both are wrong. All traditional societies are governed by community logics where minorities are marginalized. But that did not prevent cohabitation, cultural sharing. Culturally, an Arabic-speaking Iraqi Jew was closer to an Arab than to a Polish Jew. Fortunately, history is made up of encounters and mixtures. But the Israelis have refused their eastern part and the Arabs refuse their western part. Everyone must come to terms with this part in order to open up new avenues.

In this case, do you think that the agreements of Abraham participate in this inclusion of Israel in its eastern and Arab geographical environment?

These agreements have in common that they have forgotten the Palestinian question. For decades, the Arab states have exploited it. Now they forget about it. However, there can be no lasting peace without this issue being resolved, without the Palestinians regaining their rights. This standardization is therefore flawed. It was based on barter logic on the part of the Trump administration. It is not a question of being against normalization per se, but it must be done on the basis of the law.

You talk about the relationship to otherness which, according to Arendt, is also the basis of the political question. Is the crisis of otherness which may have led to totalitarian catastrophes also current? Can we not just as easily detect in the current conflicts other reasons which relate for example to the scarcity of natural resources?

Effectively. The rejection of otherness is also the rejection of what is not human. The refusal to cohabit with the non-human Other. This absolute will of the demiurge man to dominate the other, and not to cohabit with him, is the cause of the deplorable state of our planet. We must go beyond the question of otherness in the narrow sense of the term, from the Other to others in the broad sense.


You may also like