The Making of the Present. Towards Utopias in Action
Felwine Sarr – Philippe Rey/Jimsaan – April 2026
Book review by Muhammad BA – May 2026
Felwine Sarr’s *La Fabrique du présent* stands out, on first reading, as a coherent continuation of *Afrotopia*. Whereas the latter opened up new horizons by calling on Africa to conceive of itself from within, this new essay focuses more on considering how to put this reimagining into practice. Whether the subject is the economy, culture, politics or one’s relationship with oneself, the book offers avenues for addressing the ‘question of the economy’, for ‘making one’s home one’s own’, but also to ‘heal oneself, name oneself’. In this sense, La Fabrique du présent does not break with Afrotopia; rather, it explores its practical, ethical and institutional implications. The central thesis of this note is that the image of the forge provides the key to understanding the essay as a whole.
One of the essay’s major strengths lies in its structure. It appears, in fact, to begin in reverse order. The final chapter, ‘Maama Lang’s forge’, sheds retrospective light on the book as a whole and provides the key to understanding it. In this respect, this final chapter echoes the poetic conclusion of Afrotopia, “The Dawn to Come”, as if the poetic style always returned at the moment of reopening the horizon of the conceivable. ‘Maama Lang’s Forge’ thus appears both as a synthesis and as a prologue: it encapsulates the work’s underlying logic whilst enabling the reader to revisit the preceding chapters as variations on the same endeavour to shape the present.
In this sense, La Fabrique du présent could be described as an essay on forges. The present that is being forged is one forged for dignity and peace. Without explicitly stating so, one might think that the forge is fuelled or breathed upon by ‘ presence to oneself : the true increment ’, which consists of ‘ first taking root in order to become older and thus newer ’ (p. 147).
This insight allows us to interpret the essay in terms of ‘forges’. Even though the author does not always explicitly refer to these spaces in this way, the image of the forge helps us to grasp the unity of the text. La Fabrique du présent “thus refers to a praxis, both intellectual and material, which unfolds in places of transformation where the conditions for a more dignified, peaceful and sovereign life are shaped”.
The forge embodies the space of foresight. It is the atopos of Africa heralded in Afrotopia. Following its formation in the mind and its conquest through ‘thought and imagination’, the forge is the space of the possible and its continuity with reality: ‘&Maama Lang went to the forge every day and, at his workbench, set about his tasks. Through endurance, meticulousness, imagination and obstinacy, at the end of the anvil and at the tip of the flame, new forms appeared to her—those dwellings that shelter infinite life. She eventually bound her vibration to the very clay of the world ”.
Five forges can be identified in La Fabrique du présent : the forge of dignity, the forge of the economy of life, the political forge, the epistemic forge and the forge of the imagination.
The forge of dignity is where political and economic forces are primarily at work. The proposal for a ‘political economy of dignity’ (a term borrowed from Telivel Diallo) gives this essay on the political-economic question practical relevance in relation to the content of Afrotopia. The forge of dignity is not merely described ; the tools are set out and the fundamental actions defined. The driving force behind this forge would be the capabilities approach, with public policies that promote and reinforce the factors of conversion, in order to ensure the efficient transformation of resources into real freedoms for the people. Dignity-oriented budgets are the breath that fans the flames of capabilities. This forge must put an end to dependency and compassionate governance; self-sufficiency, sovereignty over resources and the accountability of the elites are its tools. The functioning of this forge depends on a resolute commitment to combating structural violence against women, achieved through the deconstruction of mental and legal structures and through the recognition that collective prosperity cannot be realised without taking into account the most productive section of the population. The ultimate goal of this forge is not the teleology of orthodox economics – GDP growth – but multidimensional well-being, mirroring the multifaceted tools that emerge from Maama Lang’s forge.
The forge of the economy of life can be understood as the space situated upstream of the forge of dignity, where fuel no longer destroys the biotope but contributes to the maintenance of life. It aims to create a negentropic economy. The tools proposed for activating its hubs are the de-automation of economic activity and the revaluation of worth through care and the dignity of living beings. The promotion of the capabilities of living beings – biodiversity and regeneration – must guide public policy towards the preservation of the biosphere.
The political forge embodies proposals for institutional reinvention. It proposes a transition towards a ‘substantive’ democracy, where efforts are made to move beyond the formal organisation of elections in order to establish the fundamental elements of reality: a functioning system of checks and balances, deliberative spaces enabling the widest possible participation (by revisiting the ‘palabre’ paradigm), and a social contract based on the equitable sharing of prosperity. This workshop also explores the relevance of the nation-state model in the face of Africa’s ethnic diversity, and suggests drawing inspiration from plurinational states or medieval multi-ethnic empires. It is within this framework that the concepts of téranga, mbokk and àq form the foundation of an endogenous ‘ endogenous ‘ relational engineering ’ that structures the space of the ‘ en-commun ’ at a mesopolitical level.
The essay attaches particular importance to the epistemic forge. “ The education system, along with the multiple epistemic spaces that exist within societies, form the foundations of this forge. ” She proposes the tools that will bring about the intellectual revolution heralded in Afrotopia. To break free from the shadow of the father or bring about an epistemic decentring, the essay proposes a rethinking of the education system and the spaces where knowledge is produced. The cross-cutting education system should include “ all the epistemic centres of society and ensure the dissemination throughout society of knowledge, know-how and social skills that emancipate, that preserve worlds and ways of life threatened with extinction, and that restore, repair and heal ”. The ambition to create a trans-epistemic space where different types of knowledge interact and complement one another is not without considerable conceptual and methodological challenges. This forge is the workshop where the fire of redemption is given to Prometheus by humankind, rather than being stolen from the gods.
The forge of imaginaries, is, ultimately, the primary arena in which profound societal transformation takes place, based on the principle that no change is sustainable unless it is fully internalised by individual and collective mindsets. It relies on the construction of ‘ intangible infrastructures ’ within educational spaces, systems of representation and narratives, in order to transform mere moral sentiments into practical and civic attitudes. This process, driven by ‘ inspirers ’—artists, researchers and philosophers—requires a ‘cooling-off’ period; that is to say, a long and unavoidable period of maturation in the ‘ abysses of the social forge ’ so that change may occur when society is ready. By using the demand for dignity and the need for recognition as levers, this forge aims to produce an affirmative ‘utopian consciousness’ that enables people to free themselves from narratives of failure and to sovereignly reinvent the ways in which they engage with the world.
However, one should guard against reading the work sequentially as distinct ‘forges’, as this risks obscuring the feedback loops that enable an understanding of the systemic dynamics between the different spheres. It is more accurate to think of inter–forges. The ‘ àq ’ forged in the political forge can shed light on the tools of the forge of dignity, particularly regarding the issue of gender inequalities. Similarly, the ‘economy of life’ cannot lead to the abandonment of GDP as a measure of social progress without a narrative revolution driven by the forge of the imagination.
Beyond the concept of these ‘forges’, the essay can be regarded as a vademecum for action. Whilst critics had hailed Afrotopia as a revolutionary book on how to think about Africa, this essay proposes the mechanisms that enable action. The author, however, steers clear of the opposition between thought and action: both fall under the same sovereign praxis. Action must first be thought through in order to define its meaning, its aims and its ethics.
Shaping reality also means knowing when to refrain from acting. Action may consist of resisting negative dynamics or choosing voluntary inaction to allow social and educational processes to run their natural course. Action as an epistemic realm – that is, as a space for the production of knowledge, know-how and interpersonal skills – resonates with the latest version of the philosophy of action. In what the essay terms the ‘ecology of action’, there is the idea of accepting the pragmatic rationale of incompleteness as described by Sen: ‘ ‘To act is to embrace the element of the unpredictable, of chance and of complexity that results from interactions with the environment.’ Finally, it requires freeing oneself from the ‘temporality of urgency’ imposed by the outside world in order to embrace the rhythm of sowing and ripening specific to each society.