Decryption and criticism of domination, with Sophie Bessis

Audio 03:51

Sophie Bessis is a historian and the author of fifteen books devoted to the study of North-South relations.

"I am writing to you from another shore: Letter to Hannah Arendt" is the last book she published at Elyzad editions.

© Editions Elyzad

By: Tirthankar Chanda Follow

11 mins

Specialist in the Middle East and Africa, the Franco-Tunisian Sophie Bessis is the author of some fifteen books on the history of Tunisia, as well as on the condition of Arab women or on the tragic North-South imbalance.

In her new book " 

I am writing to you from another shore:

Letter to Hannah Arendt

",

the historian revisits the subjects which obsess her in the light of the thought of the German Jewish philosopher to whom she feels close, but to whom she does not hesitate to point out the aporias and the insufficiencies.

Portrait of Sophie Bessis.

Publicity

Historian, political scientist, feminist, militant journalist, Franco-Tunisian Sophie Bessis is the author of a considerable and important work, composed mainly of historical essays and works of reflection. We owe him, among other things, an erudite and fascinating history of his native country,

Tunisia

, from antiquity to the present day (1), a portrait of President Bourguiba and essays between reports and analyzes on the evolution of the condition. female in the Arab world.

The themes that she addresses in her works of reflection are divided between the political economy of development in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that the writer has traveled through as a reporter, and the critique of Western hegemony deciphered through its paradoxes and its often tragic consequences.

"The guidelines for everything I have written

," says historian

, even if the books I have written may seem very different from each other, there is a fundamental guideline that we can vulgarly call North-South relations, but I have approached them in different ways, in the same way of political economy, in the manner of history, in the manner of narratives. So, for me it is something very structuring to try to understand the roots of what I call in one of my works, the “ 

culture of supremacy”

.

 "

 In her new opus, which has just been published by Elyzad editions, the historian returns to the themes that are dear to her such as the question of otherness, universalism, the East-West face-to-face or murderous logic. nationalisms, but placing them in the problematic context of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

I am writing to you from another side: Letter to Hannah Arendt

(2) is an atypical work in the bibliographical corpus of Sophie Bessis. It is brief, both literary and political, halfway between pamphlet, memory and questioning about our collective future. What is particularly innovative in this text is its epistolary form, through which the author challenges the German Jewish philosopher

Hannah Arendt

, on the questions that torment her.

Why Hannah Arendt?

Indeed, why Hannah Arendt?

Because the author has read a lot this icon of Western thought of the twentieth century, who died in 1975. She admired his insight, especially in his masterly works on modernity and totalitarianism.

"The criticism of totalitarianism formulated by the philosopher is a founding criticism of anti-totalitarian thought

," recalls Sophie Bessis.

For her new book, the latter started more precisely, as she confided, " 

from the more immediately political writings of Hannah Arendt, in particular those of the years 1940-1960, in which she delivers a reflection on the limits and deviations of the Jewish nationalism, corresponding to my questions

 ".

This is the starting point of this dialogue, as fruitful as it is fictional, that the historian has initiated with the eminent philosopher beyond death.

The starting point of this dialogue was also the realization by the author of 

I write to you from the other shore

of her convergences and her differences with Hannah Arendt.

Both are Jewish intellectuals, this is the first of the convergences.

One is Ashkenazi who fled Nazi Germany and escaped extermination by seeking refuge in the United States.

The other is Sephardi from Tunisia, who likes to call himself a

“ 

Jewish Arab

 ”

, even if the Bessis family

bore the brunt

of the rise of Arab nationalism after their country's independence in 1956.

“ 

As for me,

as the person concerned reminds us

, I say it from the title of this new text, that I am from the southern shore of the Mediterranean. I was born in an Arab country of which I have the nationality. Of course, I am one of the privileged since I have two nationalities, I claim to be from this south shore, I claim to be from this membership. I claim the plurality of my affiliations, but my Arab affiliation is a very essential belonging in the constitution not only of my personality, but of all that I have been able to write in my life.

 ".

This assertion is reminiscent of that of Arendt, who had always refused narrow identity injunctions so as not to highlight, as the only valid filiation, his belonging to “ 

the German philosophical tradition

 ”.

Finally, what unites the two women is their common distrust of nationalism.

After having been a Zionist in her youth, Hannah Arendt had turned to anti-Zionism, realizing how nationalist logics could be dead ends, inevitably leading to fascism.

A fear fully shared by Sophie Bessis, who underlines the clairvoyance of her elder, pointing the finger at the fascist drift of the right in contemporary Israel.

Discrepancies

Despite these correspondences as " 

deep 

" as " 

close

 " between the two intellectuals, their differences remain numerous, even essential. The main one of these divergences concerns the

undecrottable

” European-centrism

 of the German, which prevents her, according to the historian, from going to the end of the universalist logic. " 

Hannah Arendt is an archetype of the European intellectual. The Orient, it does not think of the cultures, the past, the history, of which it is the bearer. It makes this history begin in Europe, whereas history began long before and much further in the South. Somehow, for Hannah Arendt, the universal remains European, she cannot think of any universal other than the European universal. For my part, I am appropriating the heritage of the Enlightenment so that it becomes universal. For me, that is also one of the centers of what I mean by my writings. For it to become universal, we must provincialize Europe, that is to say stop believing that it is the monopoly of Europe. "

The

Letter to Hannah Arendt

does not end with this observation of difference, but with a promise of renewal, as suggested by “ 

Aurore

 ”, the last word of this long text.

It is perhaps not insignificant that the author borrowed this final word from a poet, in this case from Jean Giraudoux, undoubtedly to better draw attention to the equally poetic issues of his face-to-face. -face, carried out with that intellectual acuity which is the hallmark of Sophie Bessis' approach.

  • Sophie Bessis is the author of around fifteen books, the most recent of which are entitled History of Tunisia.

    From Carthage to the present day (Taillandier, 20219),

    Dedans, Dehors

    (Elyzad, 2010),

    The Valorous, five Tunisian women in history

    (Elyzad, 2017).

  •  I

    am writing to you from another shore: Letter to Hannah Arendt

    .

    Editions Elyzad, Tunis, 2021. 90 pages, 13.50 euros.

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