BElinda Cannone is a novelist and essayist, author of around thirty works including “Stupidity Improves” and “The Temptation of Penelope – A New Path for Feminism”. For several years, she has also written a monthly column in “Sud Ouest Dimanche”. Saturday November 23, she will debate with Sandrine Treiner, editor, former director of France Culture, and Olivier Postel-Vinay, journalist, essayist, founder of the magazine “Books”, for the Tribunes de la presse (at 10 a.m. at the TnBA) at Bordeaux. The main theme of the 14th edition is The Future of Progress.
Your intervention will focus on the theme “Fake news, cancel culture, politics… Is stupidity making progress? » What about it?
For example, my book published in 2007 was called “Stupidity Improves,” and, ultimately, that is at the heart of the subject of the round table. Is stupidity always similar to itself or does it take on new aspects over time? My idea is that in each era, something that was a good idea in a previous era degrades into stupidity, through different phenomena that I analyze in my book, which are conformism, reproduction, simplification …
Can you give a specific case?
Today, “cancel culture”, the tendency to prevent the expression of ideas that do not please a minority, is a form of stupidity. It is quite complex actually. Often, it is based on thinking that has been intelligent, like anti-racist thinking, for example. A good idea which was anti-racism degrades into stupidity because it becomes racialism where everything is analyzed based on race. Which in France doesn't make a lot of sense. We arrive at the idea that any expression which appears to be racism must be canceled, suppressed, prevented. Unfortunately, as soon as we prevent debate, we fall into a movement that is authoritarian, totalitarian, not at all libertarian.
Et les fake news ?
There is an absolutely new phenomenon, it is the development of social networks, which causes billions of pieces of information to circulate in the public space which can either be knowingly manipulated, which is what Russia is doing at the moment for example, or by political forces, or disclosed by people, small groups, for example conspirators, who cause false, that is to say inaccurate, information to circulate in the public space, or opinions which would not pass muster. test of the facts. But, on the other end of social networks, people take them at face value. This is a completely contemporary, extreme contemporary problem. There is also the question of cognitive bubbles.
Don't these new concepts push us to sharpen our critical sense and our necessary vigilance even more?
It's necessary. Descartes said this, in the 17the century, “let’s observe the facts, let’s verify them, and only then will we take them for granted.” Critical thinking and freedom of thought are as old as the world. We need to worry about the value of the thoughts we form and the information we receive. The only solution is critical thinking and vigilance.
Can we hope for the new generations born with social networks?
This new generation is, for me, the most fragile with regard to social networks. They have no critical spirit, they were born with that, and have always informed themselves that way. This generation reinforces the problem. She no longer reads any general press.
She can read it on social networks…
The only way out is to multiply the sources. Today we are in a globally tragic situation. For example, “La Vanguardia” and “The Guardian” unsubscribed from the social network [ils n’y postent plus de contenus, « Sud Ouest » a également pris cette décision, NDLR]. It's good. These are not sources of information, they are sources of manipulation. A responsible civic attitude today consists, for me, of crossing sources of information so as not to fall into cognitive bubbles, into militant failings which close my sight, which distort my vision.
The 14e Press stands, until November 23 in Bordeaux, free event with online registration. The day-by-day program is detailed on tribunesdelapresse.org
