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Singularity and ethics in post-development thought: interpreting Serge Latouche's L'autre Afrique: entre don et marché

Journal of International Relations and Development volume 12, pages 31–57 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

This article examines a work of the French post-development thinker Serge Latouche, L'autre Afrique: entre don et marché (AA) (1998), in order to illustrate the normativity of post-development thought. The discussion is divided into two parts. Firstly, the article clarifies the general framework of Latouche's post-development thought by mapping his work in the currents of French social and political thought, especially the Anti-Utilitarian Movement in Social Sciences. Secondly, the article scrutinizes the underlying themes of several normative arguments in AA. I will show that, for Latouche, singularity is a fundamental category in exploring a post-development society. In particular, the article discusses the manner in which Latouche infers normative principles from his reflections on the singularity of the excluded people in African societies. In analyzing his normative claims such as ‘the self-limitation of developed societies’ and ‘the recognition of the other Africa as an authentic partner’, I will demonstrate that the normativity of his post-development thought is grounded on the Aristotelian ethics of phronesis, Illich's ethics of conviviality and Lévinas’ ethics of responsibility. The article concludes that Latouche's post-development thought paves the way for a post-Heideggerian ethics of coexistence.

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Notes

  1. France (Serge Latouche, Francois Partant, Francois de Ravignan, Cristian Comeliau), Switzerland (Gilbert Rist, Marie Dominique-Perrot, Pierre Senarclens), Belgium (Edith Sizoo), Germany (Ivan Illich, Wolfgang Sachs), Spain/Catalonia (Raimon Pannikar), Iran (Majid Rahnema), Senegal (Emmanuel N'Dione), Mali (Aminata Traoré), Bolivia (David Tuchshuneider), Colombia (Arturo Escobar), USA (James Ferguson, Frederique Apffel-Marglin, Marie Macdonald), Canada (Robert Vachon), Mexico (Gustavo Esteva), India (Claude Alvares, Ashis Nandy, Vandana Shiva, Visvanathan Shiva) and Japan (Douglas Lummis). I made this list by adding my research to that of Nederveen Pieterse (2000).

  2. The other two are mainstream French economics (Walras, Fraçois Perroux, the Regulation School, the Convention theory) and the Post-Keynesian school.

  3. On this point, refer Nakano (2007).

  4. Although I rely on Agamben in clarifying the definition of singularity, I have some reservations with regards to his political philosophy. He tends to maintain the purity of singularity and does not elaborate how to negotiate singularity with universality. It is my contention that post-Heideggerian ethics, especially that which illuminates the dimension of intersubjective social exchange, helps us to understand how the autonomy of singularity effects the process of social bonding. I cannot elaborate this point further due to length constraints for articles.

  5. For a critical analysis and evaluation of this book, refer Nakano (2007).

  6. In Latouche's thought, ‘society’ does not refer to a positive entity but to a terrain that exists outside the prevailing economic reality. It is equivalent to what Heidegger calls the ‘complete crossing’ of ontology. On this point, refer Pietro Montanari (2001: 182).

  7. The translation cited from Feyerabend (1987: 305).

  8. In Justice sans limites (2003), Latouche refers to Lévinas' article ‘Moi et Totalité’ (Entre Nous 1991, Paris: Grasset) which explains that, while money exercises the quantification of human beings, a new call for justice emerges from within the very effect of quantification (Lévinas, 1991: 50–2). Drawing on this insight of Lévinas, Latouche argues that the economy is just if money, the common measurement in the economic system, comes to represent the values of non-economic social relations without reducing them to the logic of quantification.

  9. See particularly Latouche's critique of the Kantian moral philosophy of Hans Jonas (Latouche 2003: 124–8).

  10. See W.E. Connolly, Pluralism (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005), especially pp. 41–3 for his distinction between cultural relativism and pluralism. For further discussion on the new pluralism, see various articles in D. Campbell and M. Schoolman (eds.), The New Pluralism: William Connolly and the Contemporary Global Condition (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008).

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  1. Yamaguchi Prefecture, 3-2-11 Murozumi, Hikari-City, 743-0007, Japan

    Yoshihiro Nakano

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Nakano, Y. Singularity and ethics in post-development thought: interpreting Serge Latouche's L'autre Afrique: entre don et marché. J Int Relat Dev 12, 31–57 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2008.25

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