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Economist, writer, thinker, musician, Senegalese Felwine Sarr, author of the book Afrotopia , co-author of the report on the restitution of African works, is a lover of poetry. At the festival of Francophonies, which closes this Saturday, October 5 with a Francophone Night, he went on stage to " live the world poetically ". Interview.
A moment of grace. On the occasion of the festival of Francophonies, The Autumn Zebra, in Limoges, France, Felwine Sarr presented with Burkinabe actor Étienne Minoungou and Burkinabe musician Simon Winsé a show on the political force of poetry and poetry. 'a political thought to make the world' differently '.
RFI : You titled this show Living the world poetically . Poetry, what place does it occupy in your life ?
Felwine Sarr : Poetry is fundamental. She fed me when I was a young teenager. I have frequented the texts we have interpreted today [ the poetry of René Char and Aimé Césaire , Ed ]. They helped me grow. They built my sensitivity. And I came to economics and other disciplines much later, through the university. I find that poems are keys and companions that accompany you in your wanderings and, at some point, you look out, you look at reality and make you feel deep and existential dimensions.
I have always found the answers in poetry texts. I always found some clarification. It is a quest that - through the space of language - seeks to touch something that is fundamental, which is sometimes difficult to predict, but which constitutes us. I grew up frequenting these texts and a lot of authors. There was a dialogue between René Char and Aimé Césaire, two of my great masters, but I have several, like Djalâl ad-DînRûmi [ great mystic mystic poet of the thirteenth century, Ed ], with whom I dialogued in a diachronic time all these last years.
You are known for your essay Afrotopia , an African utopia trying to reposition Africa. What is the role of the Francophonie in this repositioning ? Is it rather a tool of cultural domination or a workshop of thought for you ?
The language should be a space for dialogue, exchange and fruitful mutuality. There are currently more than 200 million speakers of French in the world, with a majority of Africans. It is a language that has arrived with the colonial history and violence of colonial history. But, I say to myself, a century and a half later, we should take it as one of our languages. It must become one of the languages of Africa, it is not an African language of origin. And as Aimé Césaire says, languages and words are miraculous weapons. The more we have, the more we have worlds and universes.
The criticism that I would make of a certain idea of the Francophonie is this idea of center and periphery, this idea of cultural domination. Let language be understood as a place of conquest and an instrument of cultural hegemony. Whereas we could make of it an instrument of horizontality and a space of meetings. And it is perhaps this imaginary that we must leave. An imaginary of the conquest and subjugation towards an imaginary of horizontality and the meeting in the space of the language.
The report on the restitution of African works that you wrote with Bénédicte Savoy and handed over a year ago to the French president Macron, provoked a lot of reactions. What is for you, until today, the most important element among these repercussions ?
There were several and it was interesting. Some were for. And I noticed that they were young. That there was probably a generational divide. Many young people were progressive on the issue. They understood that we had to do "the world" differently. And this "otherwise" was to articulate another relational ethics. One can inherit a way of doing things - objects were mostly stolen - but one can decide oneself to build a different story in the present. To say: " Here, I enter into a sharing report of this inheritance which was yours, which we took by the violence and the force, but we, we can decide to articulate another economy of the exchange . That I found in a lot of young people.
I also found people who were completely against and at whom I read a rejection of questioning a story, a colonial story. A refusal to leave an unconscious that has been forged by an asymmetrical relationship. I realized that the work to decolonize mentalities and imaginaries still remained to be done in some. This story of restitution has raised a number of ... It's like raising a lead screed and the presuppositions are there, consciously or unconsciously. I heard some amazing things, which were based on these assumptions that found the way we looked at others. There was a space to treat and treat, in the true clinical sense of the term.
The report has been read in several geographies of the world. And I have the feeling that something is going on that is calling for a re-articulation of the relationship, redefining relationships, moving towards more equity, more reciprocity, getting those objects in other geographies, to reconsider their history and to do justice and rebalance.
With Bénédicte Savoy, we were in several places. It is this feeling that dominates. In Africa, of course, they were very happy to start such a process. Even if they know that things will be long and difficult.
► Living the world poetically , from and with Felwine Sarr, Etienne Minoungou and Simon Winsé, presented at the Limoges Opera, as part of the Autumn Zebra, at the Francophonie Festival.
► On the night of Saturday, October 5 to Sunday, October 6, the Francophonies organize the first Francophone Night to close the festival in style.