Launch of ALECA Program: A New Era for Intellectual, Philosophical, and Cultural Exchanges
The Alliance Française of Tunis has launched the ALECA program - Avenir: Liens, Échanges, Cultures et Académies, an international initiative dedicated to intellectual, philosophical, and cultural exchanges between Africa, the Mediterranean, and Europe. Coordinated from Tunisia, this program aims to put human beings at the center of contemporary reflections, mobilizing philosophers, researchers, and academics around a collective work that will be inscribed in the long term.
Presentation of the Project
The president of the Alliance Française of Tunis, Mohamed Aissaoui, emphasized the universal and ambitious nature of ALECA from the outset. According to him, the program was born out of an alarming observation: the world is going through a major crisis of human relationships. Beyond political or economic conflicts, it is humanism itself that is receding. Furthermore, young generations, faced with constant pressure to perform, isolation, and loss of bearings, struggle to project themselves and give meaning to their journey. In the face of the failure of traditional political, military, economic, or educational responses, the Alliance Française of Tunis has chosen to give the relay to philosophers and researchers, deemed capable of rethinking the very foundations of living together.
Intellectual Structuring of the Program
The intellectual structuring of the program was then presented by Ali Aissaoui, the originator of the ALECA concept. In his view, this project was born out of a feeling of ignorance and personal discomfort, linked to the almost total absence of African and Arab philosophies in the university education he received. However, this gap, according to him, is not marginal but widely shared, revealing a persistent underrepresentation of many intellectual traditions in the humanities. Therefore, thinking about humanity without these contributions is equivalent to producing an incomplete reflection.
Ambition and Axes of the Program
"Universalizing means thinking with the largest number of cultures, languages, and perspectives," Ali Aissaoui emphasized. To translate this ambition into concrete actions, the ALECA program is based on four axes combined under the acronym APC. The first concerns archives, with the collection and translation of African and Arab thoughts, ancient and contemporary, as well as stories and histories from dialects. The second axis focuses on publicity, understood as making these resources publicly available and visible in academic circles. The third is dedicated to exchanges between researchers and institutions, while the fourth aims for continuity, an essential condition for inscribing this work in the long term.
Debate: Demanding a Relational Humanism
Following these interventions, the launch ceremony gave rise to a dense and engaging debate, centered on the question "demanding a relational humanism." Moderated by Ahlem Ghayaza, this exchange brought together François Dosse, epistemologist and historian of ideas, Thiémélé Léon Boa, Ivorian philosopher and reference in African humanities, and Alain Godonou, historian and specialist in heritage policies.
Fragility of Human Relationships
The debate immediately questioned the fragility of human relationships in a world dominated by productivity, investment, and profitability logics. François Dosse framed the reflection in a global perspective, estimating that the current crisis does not concern a particular geographical space but the entire planet. He evoked a crisis of historicity marked by the inability to project oneself into the future. Contemporary societies, according to him, are trapped in a permanent present where the future is no longer a bearer of hope, and the past becomes a mere object of conservation, nourishing a form of collective melancholy. Therefore, he emphasized the urgency of rebuilding a horizon of expectation and a common project, indispensable to any individual or collective existence.
African Perspective and Reconstruction of the Past
Thiémélé Léon Boa brought a situated perspective from Africa. He recalled that the relationship with the past is deeply marked by colonial history, which has long separated African peoples from their own memory. For him, rebuilding the link to the past is an act of resistance and reappropriation. It is not about a fixed nostalgia but a work of knowledge and recognition that allows building the future from what one has been.
Concrete Engagement and Heritage
Alain Godonou, on the other hand, insisted on the concrete dimension of intellectual engagement. His career in the field of heritage, he explains, was born out of a fundamental need: to give young people bearings. Heritage is not an accumulation of objects but a tool for identity construction and collective projection. He reminded that institutions, as solid as they may be, only exist through the women and men who embody them. Without vision or human commitment, they lose their meaning.
