“Belief in your merit is neither good for you nor for others”

Interview by Victorine de Oliveira.

You assert that talent is a fiction: what story does it tell us?

Samah Karaki: To think your achievements are connected to a certain potential, hard work, or psychological dispositions might seem reassuring, because it suggests a form of freedom and agency over our life path. We like this illusion because it carries the promise of self-emancipation. When we tell this story of our trajectory, we don’t give much mention to the favourable circumstances which might have helped us. Even when we mention the things we had to overcome, we leave out a whole invisible bag of advantages and privileges which can explain how we got to where we are. The same goes for stories of failure: we connect it to something supposedly internal to the author, to psychological dispositions, a certain ability to work hard. All this rests on the idea that something within us, in our biology, in our genes and our brain, absolutely determines what we are, regardless of any context.

‘Biological determinism allows us to justify inequalities in access to power by identifying problems in individuals rather than in structures’

—Samah Karaki

Why is this fiction so successful?

It’s convenient, because it allows us to justify inequalities in access to power by identifying problems in individuals rather than in structures. We continue to favour access to positions of power for certain groups of people, using the pretext that they have the right physical and psychological constitution to get there and stay there. It’s an argument used to justify inequalities in access to certain professions, between men and women: the latter are said to be naturally predisposed to care work, because they’re genetically “wired” to look after people rather than give orders and organise. The same goes for disparities between rich and poor or black people and white people. And yet no biological argument can justify this. Some scientists have even gone so far as to claim that our ability to persevere and make an effort is genetically determined too. But I maintain that these dispositions, whether they are related to work, effort, or state of mind, are shaped by factors external to us. And we would gain from recognising them, in order to have some control over them.

‘IQ tests end up measuring traits that characterise the dominant’

—Samah Karaki

Is the decision to value talent as much as merit not a way to reactivate an almost aristocratic system of exceptional provisions?

For a functioning meritocratic society, the starting principle is that there aren’t enough positions for everyone and that resources are limited. So it then becomes logical to think that places …