With the upcoming summer break and our current topic of ‘Language and Identity’ in mind, I got inspired to read more books. Books that revolve specifically around our main topic in a very varied way, but more on that in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!
“The Frighteners – Why we love monsters, ghosts, death & gore“, by Peter Laws, will start my little review series. And while the subtitle already gives away what the book is all about, the cover itself makes its own very direct statement: red gothic skulls, zombie hands and tombstones are thematically arranged around the title. If you’ve read my own article, ‘Torn between two cultures‘, this term, you might have already gathered that the macabre certainly is nothing I would ever back off from. Quite the contrary! I guess this is why a dear friend of mine gifted this book to me a few months back. How right she was in doing so…
I went in completely blind – nope, not even the blurb to what this book wants to tell me – and the more surprised I found myself after the first few pages. I hadn’t heard of Peter Laws before, just like most of you, I will assume, unless you’re an avid reader of “The Fortean Times – The World’s Weirdest News”. If so, you’ll also have probably come across his monthly column about horror movies. I assume that this is what sparked my own interest, and curiosity made me have a look at the blurb after all. This man certainly knows what he’s talking about, right? A quick google search of his other books mentioned tried to shock me with some mysterious and eerie-looking cover art to his novels “Purged” and “Unleashed”. Amazing! Someone that really revels in their fascination for the morbid. What else is there about him? Well, the usual. Apart from the books already mentioned, some podcasts on YouTube, and he’s an ordained reverend. Hold on a second. A man of God writing about the supernatural? I left my pitchfork rest in the closet just a moment longer and see what he really wants to convince me of before I call the Inquisition.
I’m glad I stuck with it. Peter Laws’ narrative style is fantastic. From the start, you’ll feel right there with him on his journey. A journey straight to the land of vampires, but also through time – to explore the development of horror culture – or straight into the depths of the human psyche. He really knows how to keep the reader engaged and how to convey his message, which is researched in great detail, with footnotes for the curious. As a student during exam time, I would usually throw a book with footnotes straight on the pyre with some of the witches Mr. Laws mentions. He introduces it so intuitively, though, that it didn’t bother me in the least. I guess that might be the famous priest rhetoric shining through here.
On the topic of priests: I can already hear all my fellow agnostic and atheist friends’ alarm bells ringing at once. And I’m not going to lie; I expected more preachy-ness after reading Mr. Laws’ biography. But this ‘fear’ is just rooted in more stereotypes that, either through his ingenuity or rhetoric, he manages to subvert completely. Frankly, he’s exactly the kind of person that would make me listen to a sermon once in a while again. That’s not to say that he doesn’t bring up his professional career here or there. But could you blame him as a man of God that is pondering whether God himself is just slowly getting more and more frustrated with having to protect a reverend all day long from all the “horror demons” trying to pull him to the dark side?
Last but not least, my personal favourite chapter was the one that’s inevitably linked to horror culture – death. Not because of a morbid fascination, but because, as he so rightly mentions in his book, too, it’s a topic that is never brought up in society nowadays. What could shed more insight on this taboo than a casual interview between a reverend and an undertaker? The transitions between these funny bed-time stories and the serious ones of two people talking about our (most likely) last moments on this planet happen so seamlessly, yet professionally. And right before you get lost in between the pages, Mr. Laws makes sure to take you right out of it, metaphorically speaking, by putting you on a chair next to him, and to straight up tell you “that he will understand if you want to put away the book for just a few moments to ponder your own life. He will be waiting right here”. I took one of those many moments in the book to do exactly that: put away the book, but instead of reflecting on my own decisions, I decided to start writing what you see on your screen right now.
If you’re curious about what else Peter Laws brought up in “The Frighteners”, make sure to pick it up and try to escape from everyday life. A journey I promise you won’t regret.
More history of more languages you’ll
never learn…
A fancy word that’s relatively easy to spell? Masochism. I guess you know what it means. And yet, here you are, ready for a second serving of random facts on language history, politics and orthography. You have (presumably) had a look at, maybe even finished, an article entitled “Playwright, conscience … fish?” in eMAG #34. Amazing details about Korean writing and the evolution of Modern Greek have been revealed to you. What’s next, you ask? More irrelevant facts! And prepare for puns, as well.
Hanoi’ing spelling habits? Thank the
French.
Remember how Koreans had to use Chinese characters before they developed their own alphabet? How, just to write down the most basic things, they were forced to learn the writing system of a completely unrelated language (I know they’re geographically close, but no relation between Korean and the Chinese languages has been proven so far)? Vietnamese speakers, whose language is equally unrelated to Chinese, and whose country is equally close to China, had similar problems. Unlike the Koreans, the Vietnamese had some success in adapting Chinese characters to Vietnamese, to a point where they were illegible even for Chinese speakers. This script, Chữ Nôm, was the first real Vietnamese writing system. It was used for administrative purposes at first, but later on, even poetry would be written in Chữ Nôm. But that doesn’t solve the problem that Chinese characters, a very reduced form of writing, can’t illustrate grammatically important changes within a word.
The most modern
form of Vietnamese writing came from a complete outsider, the Jesuit monk and
missionary Alexandre de Rhodes. De Rhodes, who came from the French-speaking
region of Avignon, created an adapted version of the Latin alphabet that could
reflect the pronunciation of Vietnamese words better than Chinese characters
could. He did take over a few rather inefficient French spelling habits, e.g.
<ph> to express the f-sound, so the system still contains some traces of
other languages. In general, however, it is a neat writing system that has
survived since the 16th century, throughout all kinds of political
regimes, occupations and the division of the country. For this reason, despite
his colonialist background, the Vietnamese still look somewhat fondly at de
Rhodes.
There’s
Norway around spelling rules.
Why don’t we
have a look at Norwegian next? We’ll see a language whose main writing system, Bokmål
(book tongue), is essentially Danish with slight changes. Danish and Norwegian
are very closely related and can be intercomprehensible, depending on what
dialect speakers use. The language similarities and parallels in writing come
in handy today, but they stem from the long Danish domination of Norway. The
two states were seen as one country well into the 19th century. For
this reason, Bokmål still is the dominant writing system, although Nynorsk
(New Norse, ironically the older writing system), fits Norwegian pronunciation
patterns better. The further you move west (away from Denmark), the more
popular Nynorsk gets.
Both varieties
are officially recognised by the Norwegian state, taught in the same schools
and used in public to various extents. Members of the administration are
expected to reply to mail in the same variety that was used in the request and
no province is allowed to use one variety to more than 75% in official areas.
Since Danish and Swedish are also allowed in official written correspondence,
the system can appear quite chaotic. And we’re not even counting in the more
antiquated varieties Riksmål (national language) and Høgnorsk
(High Norse). These former writing standards (with Riksmål being even closer to Danish
and Høgnorsk being even further
from it) have thankfully become rare, but there are people and organisations
willing to invest a lot of time, just to keep them somewhat alive. Is that a
lot to take in? It gets even weirder when you take into account that less than
six million people speak Norwegian at all.
In the area of
writing, Norway hasn’t distanced itself from Denmark as much as Korea or
Vietnam have from China. That’s because Danish rule over Norway ended very
late, both languages were related to begin with and the relations between both
nations are friendly today. The outcome, however, is kind of problematic:
people need to be fluent in both systems and people artificially switch between
two idioms just to fulfil a legal quota. However, no one is discriminated
against based on how they write, and that’s still a nice thing.
I Afri-can’t
spell that!
No list of inefficient writing systems
could be complete without the African continent. Most African languages simply
weren’t used in writing before European colonisation. When writing systems were
created, they were based on European languages, mostly English and French. They
also weren’t made up by linguists, but usually by missionaries trying to
translate the bible (who would just work with what they were used to). Now,
English and French are both kind of inefficient in their writing, since both
preserve a spelling that is out of sync with modern pronunciation. Just think
of fish = ghoti or the French city of Bordeaux using four letters to
express one o-sound. French uses <ou> (two letters) for a simple u-sound,
and the more efficient, single letter <u> for the somewhat fancy u-Umlaut
(<ü> in German or Turkish) – a sound few languages use at all. English,
on the other hand, simply doesn’t have a long e-sound. And of course, these
inefficiencies were taken over into new languages by means of their spelling.
Using the Latin alphabet for African
languages can only work out when it is a neutral form where the pronunciation
of certain letters is not tied to their pronunciation in one specific Western
language. On top of that, additional sounds should be expressed through accents
or additional characters, rather than ever-longer combination of letters. For
this reason, the German Ethnologist Diedrich Westermann developed the Africa
Alphabet and presented it (to colonialists, not Africans) in London in
1928. The alphabet has been adjusted to the linguistic situation in (Western)
Africa several times and now has close to sixty letters. That may sound like a
lot, but since you wouldn’t need all of these in every language, learning the
alphabet wouldn’t even be such a big deal.
The real problem
is that Africans aren’t using this alphabet to the extent that linguists have
been hoping for. That’s because many native African languages are used in more
private, oral settings. And when private communication is in written form, e.g.
when people are chatting, most African languages aren’t available (e.g. as
auto-correct on cellphones or as spell-checks on a PC). The ones that are
available, like isiZulu or Somaali, don’t use the Africa Alphabet as a starting
point. And even in handwriting, few people are aware of its existence, since
most African states don’t do a lot to promote a standardized use of native
languages – there are just too many, and most governments have different
priorities. Still, the alphabet is around and offers a good starting point to
any attempt of standardisation. Although it was established through
colonisation, it can be a means of self-empowerment that makes local African
languages and cultures more independent, giving them a stable, written
foundation.
So yeah, the struggle with spelling is real, for a lot of people. Languages influence each other, and they don’t always copy each other’s most positive aspects. If we all looked at languages neutrally, leaving aside history, customs and patriotism (like former Yugoslvia did, for instance), we could probably create a couple of pretty logical writing systems and solve a huge lot of problems. But how likely is that?
Now that the
sappy part of this essay is for the most part over, apologies for my
sentimental outpourings, I would like to move on. From the rather unfortunate
circumstances that English found me in, to where we are today.
With not much
more to do through my formative years than watching Doctor Who, Sherlock and
Downtown Abbey while imitating the oh-so-charming accents I heard in these
programmes, I would accumulate a rather large vocabulary, as well as a British
accent. These days, when people hear me speak, in a classroom setting or
elsewhere, they usually assume that my accent stems from a year abroad. And I won’t
hide the fact that it does inflate my ego just a little bit every time I get to
correct them and say that I am in truth self-taught (I leave out the traumatic
abandonment part of the story most of the time; it simply doesn’t have as nice
a ring to it, and, in my experience, tends to drag the mood down quite a bit).
The first time
I did visit an English-speaking country was after secondary school. It had been
my wish to visit London for years, and so finally at the age of fifteen, I
travelled there by myself (a decision that my mother was surprisingly on board
with). There had always been something about the city that had drawn me to it,
and the night I arrived, it took no more than a single sighting of the city
lights reflecting in the pitch-black Thames water for me to completely fall in
love. I really believe that on that trip I left a piece of my soul in the night
sky over London.
Since then I’ve
visited the city three more times and still it never fails to take my breath
away. So weirdly familiar, like I had always been there, or maybe meant to be
there – it’s a sense of home that doesn’t need a domicile to feel real. All
this accompanied by the fact that not standing out as a tourist, at least in my
mind, and being able to stroll around and pretend to belong there just gives me
the greatest feeling of accomplishment.
While in
London with my mum last year, she let me handle all the talking (as well as the
navigation on the underground, one of my guilty pleasures when in the city. What
a joy it is to know which way you’re going.). She was fascinated by me chatting
with a member of staff at the Camden Market tube station, mostly, she told me
afterwards, because I kept using ‘slang’ or simply colloquial language (I
suspect she meant I had developed a bit of a habit of using the greeting ‘hiya’
ever since I had briefly visited Huddersfield the year before). The pride in my
mother’s eyes at seeing, or rather hearing, her daughter confidently
communicate in a foreign language was not only the greatest reward for my
efforts thus far, but also the best motivation to keep pushing myself to be
better and to hopefully one day complete the perfection of my English.
Having received a certain certificate from some supposedly smart people better qualified to judge my abilities than me which says, black ink on white paper, that I am already a level C2 when it comes to English, both written and spoken, also boosts my confidence that my goal is really achievable in my life time. English is a huge part of my life. From writing my first poetry in sixth grade to unironically reading Shakespeare plays today, it has given me more than could ever fit on two pages. It may be words, words, mere words to some, but for me it’s a matter from the heart.
My first
contact with English must have occurred somewhere in kindergarden. As I was only four or five at the time, my
memories are admittedly hazy. But I remember a tiny children’s book, colourful
and made of cardboard, telling all the toddlers in attendance that some people
refer to a Katze as ‘cat’. Not that
we cared much – there were sandcastles to build and a whole world to be
discovered.
Growing up in
a small village in the south of Germany with both my parents native speakers of
German, my overall contact with other languages was limited. The only open
restaurant in town was owned by a Turkish family, so I learned the word ‘merhaba’
before even being aware of the existence of ‘hello’. So it wasn’t until primary
school that I started learning English formally. At that age – I was seven in
first grade – I really had priorities other than acquiring a second language. There
were letters to learn, trees to climb and, unfortunately, basic maths to wrestle
with.
All of this was
about to change, however, at secondary. Having developed a deeply-rooted hatred
of mathematics and any sort of natural science, I was already drawn to
languages and the humanities, but for the time being, my relationship with
English still hadn’t moved past the ‘at-least-I-can-do-this-instead-of-division’
stage. But life was about to hit me, and it was about to hit me hard. And, once
again, my priorities shifted. Where before there were friends to meet and fun
to be had, there was now fear to be felt and a childhood to be lost.
I won’t go
into the details about what happened when I was twelve, as my incredibly dramatic,
sad story isn’t the subject of this piece after all. The reason I’m bringing up
this stage of the journey at all is its significance for my relationship with
English. You see, it was at this moment when change became inevitable and I was
forced to suddenly grow up and function. When the outside world became chaotic,
I, god-like, chose to create a new world, a world inside my head, a world
filled with obsessions and hyper focus, just enough to keep me sane. When I
turned down invitations until I was simply not invited any more, when I was
alone – that’s when it found me. A language that allowed me to express through
writing what I could never say out loud, a language that let me run away with
the Doctor, a language that would bring me the songs that, after hours of
exhausting translation, would bring me the messages I needed to hear to
survive. A language that opened up an online community in which I felt a little
less alone, where others felt what I was feeling and where I could once again
escape it all, at least for a little while.
English found me in my darkest place and carried me through it.
Seeing how our issue this term is nearing its final production steps, there has been a lot of discussion on stereotypes within our team. And what better stereotypes are there than the ones revolving around gaming and gamers? Well, let me destroy the misconception of sweaty and unsocial gamers in the next few minutes as they destroy your favourite games in the meantime!
Gotta go fast!
First
of all, you might ask what I’m talking about. The “Games Done
Quick“ event takes place twice a year in America and is
livestreamed for free on a platform called „twitch.tv“. Gamers
from around the world met up this past week in Bloomington,
Minnesota, to showcase their skills in some of the most classic video
games out there but also a bunch of new releases. I already hear you
say “Pff, video games don’t take any skill. It’s just pressing a
bunch of buttons.“. I’ll have to pull a Trump on this one and tell
you you’re wrong.
Remember that time you got stuck on that one dungeon in “The Legend
of Zelda“ as a child and you just couldn’t figure out the solution?
How about just entering a series of button presses in the exact right
amount of time to launch yourself over the entire thing, maneuver
skilfully to the desired spot on the map in the dark – because
obviously the developers had not intended for you to take that route
– and just slay the boss of the level without having any of the
tools available you’d have access to if you took the normal way
around. This is what’s called a “speedrun“ in the community: the
abuse of ingame mechanics to beat a game within a fraction of the
time needed, compared to playing normally. Months of preparation go
into every single one of these runs that have been featured during
this past week. Even more impressing that the players don’t only show
off incredible tricks but also entertain the audience at the same
time and try to explain what they’re doing. So if you were worried
you wouldn’t understand what’s even happening on your screen, fear
not!
The good cause: Médecins Sans Frontières
There’s
a massive production team behind these events every year. Most of
them coming straight from the community themselves. And – to my
knowledge – all of them organising this on a voluntary basis,
though there are known sponsors and brands to help out. During the
stream, the audience can donate money which entirely goes to a good
cause. The winter production forwards it to cancer research and the
summer production to “Doctors Without Borders/Médecins
Sans Frontières (MSF)“; a
non- profitable international medical
humanitarian organization
created by doctors
and
journalists
in
France
in
1971. MSF gives emergency
aid
to people affected by wars,
epidemics,
famine,
natural
disasters and
man-made
disasters,
or areas where there is no health care available. It provides this
help to all people, regardless of their race, religion
or
political
beliefs.
(definition
taken from wikipedia.org). Noteworthy
as well that MSF have won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. They act on
a set of 5 fundamental medical rules: Impartiality, Independence,
Neutrality, Bearing witness, as well as being transparent and
accountable. An overall great cause to donate money for, right?
Something a few hundred thousand other people have thought, too, and
they’ve raised a whooping
$3,003,839.
So
not only have there been new time records set for some of these
memorable games, but also a new record in the charity’s history that
started in 2011.
With all that being said, I can only implore you to go check out this great exhibition if you’re interested in video games. There’s over 100 games being showcased so there should be something available for all tastes and ages. The livestream itself has ended yesterday, but all the runs have been recorded and uploaded to the „Awesome Games Done Quick“ YouTube channel. For legal reasons, I can’t link you directly. Go check it out and enjoy! Same goes for Doctors without Borders. Their homepage is incredibly informative. Go check that out, too!
Author: Tobias Lorenz
Disclaimer:
Neither the author nor anyone on the eMAG team is involved in
“Awesome Games Done Quick“. This is the author’s own opinion and
he has not been paid to promote the event.
Welcome
back. We know you’ve swallowed the entire first part of this interview within a
few minutes. Go get a drink and do some intellectual push-ups for warming up.
There’s more to come.
Katharina:
“You are not only a famous philosopher, but also a famous author. How do you connect
philosophy and business?”
Achille:
“You see, I wish the business part was mine, but unfortunately it’s not. The
business part is for the publishing companies. No, I’m joking. Frankly, I don’t
know how a book comes to be read by many people. What matters, as far as I am concerned,
is that you choose to do something and you do it the best you can. You find joy
in doing it. You don’t regret, once it’s done, that you could have done it this
way or another. And when you reach that state with work, with a book, with
writing, you let it go.”
“You let it
go because you have equipped it with the resources for it to travel by itself.
The moment you release it, there’s nothing you can do. It travels its own way,
it speaks to people or not, it will sell or not. These are decisions that are
beyond your control. What I am interested in, the moment I release my work, I
‘set it free’, is knowing full well I have done the best I could. And your
satisfaction comes from the knowledge and the conviction that you have done the
best. That is what matters to me. Questions of reputation or money are not really
the way I conceive of all of this.”
Niklas:
“You get paid in self-respect?”
Achille:
“Exactly. Your payment is the level of self-respect you think you have gathered
through your work, your dedication and the joy produced in the act of writing.
I think, if you do not find joy in what you’re doing, you shouldn’t do it, you
should abandon it. So in that sense, I think you have to find joy in what you
do, not caring about others. And you have to allow people to take your work in
directions you didn’t expect. That’s how it speaks to them. If it doesn’t speak
to them, it just means it’s not a successful piece of work. The process, on the
other hand, is about joy and freedom, if you ask me. In whatever one does, how
does one achieve or experience these two affects?”
Katharina:
“Do you think your books are received differently in the West than in Africa?”
Achille:
“Yes. And in fact, they are received differently in different places within the
West. For instance, the book called Critique of Black Reason was received very
positively in Germany and in a lukewarm manner in the Netherlands. They didn’t
like it. There are always different reactions. For example, On the Postcolony,
a book I published in 2010, was basically ignored in France, even though I
wrote in French. And then it had a magnificent reception in the US. And only
after that, the French public began to care. But the book has never really made
the kind of impact it had in the Anglophone in France or the francophone world.
I think, in the case of France and On the Postcolony, people in France didn’t
know what to do with it.”
“This was
partly because, in the academic world in France, people are still extremely
stuck within specific disciplines. If you are a historian, you act and write
like a historian. If you are a sociologist, you are only that. There is not
much interest in interdisciplinary research. And the book was very
interdisciplinary. So they did not know how to classify it. And I also think the
style of writing was not academic enough in their opinion, nor was it
considered to be just public writing. It was a hybrid form and the French did
not know what to make of it. But in America, then, it received respect from many
different directions.”
Niklas:
“What authors do you read? And I am not talking about research papers, but
books you read for entertainment.”
Achille: “I
read novels, mainly. Lots of novels. French contemporary novels, African
novels, Chinese and Japanese novels. A lot from Latin America, but not that
much from the US or England. The choice is huge already, but I think I should
probably still expand it…”
“I also
listen to lots of music, all kind of musical forms. I watch too much soccer,
I’m almost an addict. I also cook, which is very good for meditation. Cooking
is a fantastic exercise. Or running on the grass. I don’t go to the gym, I go
running and playing soccer, on the open air.”
Katharina:
“I’m sure you know Chimamanda Adichie. She talks about the concept of the single
story, and how, growing up in Africa, she used to read Western literature and
how it influenced people in negative ways, how it made people write novels that
were Westernized, rather than Africanized.”
Achille: “I
have a feeling that this might not be entirely true for all of us – an African
writer writing in French would not say it. This might be a very anglophone
problem. Writers such as Alain Mabanckou or Kossi Efoui wouldn’t say it,
because they would not have the same idea on what being ‘African’ is all about.
They would not see a clear-cut opposition between African things and Western
things, not in the same way as Chimamanda does.”
“In their
writing, there is much more fluidity between different spaces, much more playfulness
with, for instance, the French language, much more mixing of forms, much more –
to use the title of your magazine – respect for ‘misfits’. And this is what
makes their styles extremely fluorescent, extremely luxurious, extremely
playful, too. What is really interesting in this kind of work is the degree to
which they are willing to combine things we do not usually combine.”
Niklas:
“Talking about things that aren’t usually combined, you come from a country
that people like to refer to as a ‘third-world’ or ‘developing’ country. We are
from Germany. Few people would name our countries in the same sentence, one
directly after the other. So how do you think, generally speaking, cooperation
of richer and poorer countries could be improved, for mutual benefit?”
Achille: “I
think there is a difference between a ‘cooperation’, that is based on ignorance
and real cooperation that is based on the knowledge of each other. People who
do not know each other can hardly cooperate creatively or fruitfully. And it
seems to me that the big obstacle to cooperation between developed and
so-called undeveloped countries is wilful ignorance. So in order to improve
cooperation between these two entities, there is an absolute necessity to get
to know each other better.”
“Nowadays,
we have the means to know each other, to know Africa, its diverse and complex history;
we do have the means to know. The question is, why do we still need to invest
in prejudice, why this infatuation with ignorance and prejudice, when we do
have the means to know. I think that is the question we have to ask.”
“I think,
this investment in ignorance is so big because ignorance allows you to be irresponsible
and still act in good conscience, even if the results are catastrophic. It
seems to me that the West is invested wilfully in massive ignorance in regards
to the rest of the world. Because only wilful ignorance allows the West to act
irresponsibly. So if we want to change the system, we have to know a bit more.
And that is possible – the knowledge is there and it is accessible. There is no
reason why anyone, anywhere in the world, should be ignorant about others. Just
do the work.”
Katharina:
“When we talk about postcolonialism, we often mention how language divides people,
how the way we speak about Africa, for instance, is completely different from
the way we speak about Western countries. I’m going to be a teacher – how will
I teach my students not to be ignorant, not to divide the world through
language?”
Achille:
“You see the material is there. One of the beauties of the new technologies is
that they have helped the world to build new libraries, metaphorically
speaking. And these libraries are mobile, they are portable, they are
accessible. The Internet allows us access to a multiplicity of documents, of
data, of facts, that, if used, would probably unleash the making of entirely
new forms of knowledge – images, videos, sounds, documentaries, photographs…”
“So the
material is there. The key is to organize it and use it in a pedagogical
manner, so that it responds better to the expectations of our times. The
material exists, but our thresholds have increased because of the high exposure
to technology. So we need to pull people out of their own ignorance and unlock
their sense of critical reading of these materials.”
Niklas: “We
would like to thank you for the interview.”
Achille: “It
was my pleasure.”
(This text has been edited for clarity and length)
Have you heard of Achille Mbembe, the famous
Johannesburg-based philosopher from Cameroon, who graced our university with
his visit in summer 2018? If you haven’t, read on to find out what makes him
just the kind of person you want to quote at all the fancy cocktail parties we
know you’re attending on a weekly basis. And if you have, you already know what
you have to do: stay where you are to get the intellectual boost you so
desperately need during exam season.
Katharina and Niklas from eMAG got a chance to
interview Achille Mbembe in one of his few free hours. If you like the
interview, don’t forget to read the second part, which will be published
tomorrow.
Niklas:
“What role can philosophy play in times of populism, as well as political and
religious extremism?”
Achille: “I
think that we live in a time when the need for a critical understanding of
where our world is going is more urgent than ever before. And philosophy as the
key discipline that teaches us how to exercise our reason is absolutely
central, not only for training and education of students today, but also in
helping to sustain a democratic public sphere – one in which rational deliberation
is at the centre of exchange and communication among citizens. I believe that
we need to put philosophy as the critical exercise of reason at the heart of
what living together is all about, both nationally and globally.”
Niklas:
“When you write and publish your books, what sort of audience do you usually
have in mind? Whom do you expect to read your books?”
Achille:
“The audience is composed of people of good will, who are interested in the
types of questions the books address; people, who are interested in making our
world habitable and hospitable. I believe that the current moment, we are in,
is full of risks and dangers, and that the need to repair our planet is probably
the most urgent task humanity is facing. And I take writing as part of the
tools we use as we undertake the task of repair. And therefore, those I have in
mind when I write are those who would like to take part in that planetary
endeavour of repairing.”
Niklas:
“When you were still a student in Cameroon, you used to work for a Christian
student group. Would you say that your religious beliefs influence your work as
a philosopher?”
Achille:
“It is true that I grew up in a Catholic family, and I went through Catholic
educational institutions, secondary school in particular. I also was involved
with an organisation called the Young Catholic Students, which is an
international organisation and a huge part of my world view was shaped by
traditions of Christianity that had to do in particular with liberation
theology.”
“But I am
not a practitioner. I’m interested in Christianity as a set of ideas and in so
far as it offers life ethics, parts of which speak to what I consider to be key
problems of our time. So I have an interest in religion in general as a key
dimension of people’s existence, how they make sense of their lives, how they
relate to themselves and to others, as well as to the forces that are above
them. In that sense, my interest in religion is not limited to Catholicism or
Christianity. I’m just as interested in Jewish theology as in African
pre-colonial modes of religion.”
“That being
said, I still think I have taken a lot from Christianity, intellectually as
well as in my own life. And what is very striking in Christianity is the way in
which it puts at its centre the Other, with a capital O. In fact, in Christian
thought the Other is the Alpha and Omega of every act of faith. That means you
are not a believer if the Other is not at the centre of your thoughts. So that
preoccupation with the Other is something I consider to be the kernel of faith
itself – and of the practice of faith, if you want to speak in those terms.”
Niklas:
“Talking about the Other, both Germany and Britain – and, of course, France –
have a colonial past in Cameroon, and not exactly a glorious past. Does it feel
in any way strange to you to be talking to an English-speaking magazine while
in Germany? Is it hard for you to look over our shared past?”
Achille:
“Not really. I’ve spent my entire life dealing with this kind of situation. And
I need to speak many different languages. It’s true that the English language
is one of the dominant languages of our world, but I also believe that the
world that is coming will be a multilingual world, and that those who are the
best-positioned to harness the beauty of our world in any way are people who
can speak more than one language. Of course, translation is truly important,
but multilingualism, I believe, is the way of the future. And monolingualism is
the worst way to prepare oneself for what the future of the planet holds for
each of us. So I don’t see it at all as a problem.”
“In fact, I
think both English and French have become African languages. They have been
thoroughly Africanized, just as they have been Asianized to a large extent.
They are spoken by millions of people. They have been spoken by millions of
people over centuries, and that’s enough to qualify them as African or Asian
languages, I think.”
Katharina:
“What are your associations concerning the term misfits, last term’s main topic
for our paper magazine?”
Achille:
“That’s an interesting concept. That which does not fit, which is out of place,
and yet its very existence opens up a whole set of new possibilities. So, on
the one hand, I think that it’s an unfortunate concept when one applies it, for
instance, to those who are not us. Those who seem to not belong or those whose
presence we think is abnormal, those who do not look like us, who suffer from maladaptation.
We can tolerate them, but they don’t really fit with us, there is always a
gap.”
“So in that
sense, it’s an unfortunate concept, but on the other hand the beauty of the
concept is that a misfit always allows for unexpected possibilities to emerge.
I think there is a productive dimension to the concept, in the sense that it
allows for the emergence of the unexpected.”
“And in
that sense, for all that’s to it, it’s a paradoxical concept. It’s a
double-edged concept. If you have a misfit in your midst, you cannot predict
what will happen. It makes it impossible to predict what happens when you bring
in a foreign body, or something that shouldn’t be there. It’s a way of creating
a new form.”
Niklas:
“Talking about foreign bodies, both Cameroon and Germany are countries that
have accepted lots of refugees. Refugees from different conflicts maybe, but
refugees all the same. What are your thoughts on welcoming refugees, on how we
should live together?”
Achille:
“Let’s start by defining what a refugee is. Strictly speaking, a refugee is a
human person who has been forced to leave the place he or she used to inhabit,
his or her home country, as a result of a catastrophe. Whether a natural
catastrophe or a human-made catastrophe – war, famine – an event that has made
it impossible for that person to fully enjoy his or her existence in that
place. This is what a refugee is: A human being running away from danger and in
search of protection.”
“And
usually, in the strictest sense of the term, a refugee is a human being whose
life is in danger if he or she doesn’t leave. So the choice refugees have is
pretty simple: either you stay and run the risk of losing your life, or you go.
Most people don’t want to leave their home, the place where they were born.
This is what people would prefer, to conduct their lives in the place where
they were born. Refugees are people who have no choice but to go.”
“So the
question is, when they knock on our door, do we open the door or do we tell
them, ‘We’re not here, go somewhere else.’ I think that each society has to
make this decision and it’s a good thing that, in the midst of the dramatic
crises of the last few years, Germany has decided to open its doors to a number
of people who would have been in danger otherwise. And Germany has done much
more than many other European countries, both in terms of numbers and in terms
of creating the conditions for receiving people in a way that ensures their
dignity. But of course, as we know, everywhere this is a very complicated
issue. Of course, you have people who do not want to see refugees for all kinds
of reasons. The fact is that they don’t want them, they want to keep the doors
closed.”
“So,
Germany, Cameroon, other places like Turkey – these are choices those societies
have to make, they have to decide whether or not this is something they want to
do. I believe lots of people think that the German government made the right
choice. Now, of course that raises all kinds of issues. I guess that’s part of
the democratic debate. Society has to decide if it wants to live by a certain
set of values, including the value of hospitality and assistance to the part of
humanity that is in danger, or whether it simply wants to be indifferent to
what happens to human life elsewhere. Europe has to make that choice. Our
entire planet has to make a choice of how we deal with that part of our
humanity that is in danger.”
“But you
also have to look at the issues that are at stake. For instance, the West
cannot go on destroying entire countries and bomb them to the ground, like in
Syria, in Iraq, in Libya, in many other parts of the world, and expect people
to just stay there. Of course, people will want to run away from danger. So
it’s also a question of responsibility. We can’t go and destroy entire
environments, entire people’s histories, cultures, and then say, ‘No, no, you
stay there. Don’t come here.’ This is not responsible. So if we don’t want
people to come here, let’s make sure we do not aggravate the situation where
they are, we don’t render life in their homeland unsustainable. So I think
these are also dimensions that have to be brought into these kinds of
discussions. You cannot keep your door closed if you mess up with the little
they have.”
“This can
be done with a whole variety of means, with pillaging their natural resources,
their wealth, rendering the environment toxic, extract all we can, leave with
nothing behind. It can be done by selling weapons to dictators who do the
destruction indirectly. Responsibility is absolutely key; responsibility is
justice. A huge part of what sets people in motion is the weight of injustice.
So it’s a debate we have to have, and I hope that this year it will be
conducted beyond just hate and passion.”
Niklas:
“You mentioned home, and that most people would prefer to stay there. What does
that term mean to you, since you’ve been around more than most of us.“
Achille: “I
have no idea what my home is. I’ve spent my entire life moving from one place
to another. I guess if you spend your life like that, moving from one place to
another, what you end up doing is that you carry them with yourself, bits and
pieces of the many places you have inhabited. So they accompany you along the
way. You carry memories. Your home is memory, if you want. Memory becomes your
home. The memory of the many places you have been to find yourself. So home is
no longer just a physical space you enter or exit. It travels with you
throughout a life of movement.”
(This text has been edited for length and clarity.)
