Places of Knowledge, Places of Power : The Cognitive and Ideological in the School Textbook

The issue of elites in Algeria and the Maghreb has been the subject of diverse studies, both in theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches, and continues to attract growing attention in the social and human sciences. This research orientation undoubtedly contributes to multiplying the processes of scientific accumulation in this field and allows the scholarly gaze to open further to the dual dimensions of synthesis and “paradigmatic” classification, on the basis of which epistemic structures and their cognitive and ideological manifestations are defined.

We refer to the previous project*, giving it a new problematic perspective. The aim is to capitalize on the previous research work and exploit it within a framework that explores possible pathways to specifically examine the crisis of elites, which oscillates between places of knowledge and places of power (power here understood in Foucault’s sense*).

Within this background, our central research question is: what systems and trajectories govern the relationship between elites, power, knowledge, and ideology in Algeria and the Maghreb?

The hypothesis we work with is that the crisis of elites is due (in part) to the dominance of ideological power over cognitive power.

Our project moves within five knowledge domains: philosophical knowledge, historical knowledge, artistic and literary knowledge (novel and theater), political knowledge, and religious knowledge; carried by actors such as philosophy professors, historians, novelists, playwrights, journalists, political intellectuals, and religious figures. Although these fields vary in terms of specialization – an intentional choice – we are interested in the overall unifying logic that governs them. We seek the framework logic of these heterogeneous cognitive constructions in order to identify the facets of the crisis of intellectual elites in Algeria.

*Project “Places of Knowledge, Places of Power.” It focused on addressing a set of questions regarding “the production of knowledge in the field of human sciences: history, philosophy, law, and their relationship with institutions and society in Algeria.”

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