It’s by rereading the classic What is the Enlightenment? published in 1784 by Kant that we can truly understand what is happening these days to Boualem Sansal.
In this short but powerful text, the German philosopher defines the spirit ofenlightenment (“Dare to think for oneself, and not under the tutelage of another”) but above all – and this is what interests us here – it sets the conditions which can lead to the intellectual emancipation of an entire people, and no longer of a few individuals: that the latter can make use public of reason.
Indeed, writes Kant, “we will always find a few men who think for themselves”, who have been able to free themselves from the priest, from dogma or from tradition, but as long as they cannot express it on the public, they remain harmless in the eyes of those who want to keep the people in their ‘minority’, that is to say in their incapacity to think for themselves.
Back to Sansal. He published his first book, The Oath of the Barbarians, in 1999, when my third novel was coming out: suffice to say that we often met each other in literary salons, radio shows, debates, etc. We sometimes disagreed – his contempt for Arabness irked me, his propensity to confuse, in the same hatred, Islam and Islamism too -, but all this remained within the framework of a courteous, even cordial, dialogue.
I found him courageous to criticize the Algerian regime so harshly while continuing to live in Boumerdès. In his third novel, Tell me heavenhe denounced corruption, the incompetence of successive rulers since Boumediene (yes, he dared to attack the statue of the Commander), the sinking of education after Arabization too quickly and too poorly carried out, etc. In Harraga (2005), the Algerian authorities also took it for granted – it goes without saying. The German Village (2008) was censored in Algeria, but Sansal was not worried.
“When he told the media Borders that “when France colonized Algeria, the west was part of Morocco”, Boualem Sansal did what Kant considered necessary to emancipate a people: a use public of his reason.”
During a train trip between Nancy and Paris – we were returning from a literary event, ‘the Salon sur la Place’ -, I asked him if he knew why the ‘decision-makers’ of Algiers left him in peace. He answered me, basically, that, on the one hand, his fight against Islamism did not bother them and that, on the other hand, they wrote off the harsh criticisms he addressed to them since they allowed us to affirm that freedom of expression was respected in Algeria.
But there was a limit and that’s why these same ‘decision makers’ threw him in jail last week. When he told the media Borders that “when France colonized Algeria, the west – Tlemcen, Oran and up to Mascara – was part of the Kingdom of Morocco”, he did what Kant considered necessary to emancipate a people: a use public of his reason.
Now if there is one point on which the intellectual emancipation of the Algerian people scares its leaders, it is the question of borders. Without questioning the fact that Tlemcen or Oran are today definitively Algerian, the simple fact of understanding that it was not always like this, that there is a History, that Morocco was carved up by Spanish colonialism and French, can encourage every Algerian to start ‘thinking for himself’. Thus, he could understand that it is absurd to want to amputate Morocco of its southern provinces and that it is criminal to finance, shelter and support a separatist movement created, in his time, by the late mad Gaddafi.
The Sansal case is revealing: one can, in Algeria, proclaim oneself an atheist and attack Islam and Arabism, but one cannot state a simple historical truth. And above all – and this is Boualem’s unforgivable crime – one cannot make public use of one’s reason when it is unreason who is in power and intends to monopolize public space.
