Our elite and the political discourse....!!

Elycheikh Ahmedtolba

It is not easy to pinpoint or underpin the intricate and elaborate nature of the discrepancy between the Mauritanian elite or intelligentsia and the prevailing political discourse. Discourse, which has been implemented within the military idealogical state apparatuses.

This intricacy of understanding this discourse gets more complicated, ambiguous and hazy when it is theoretically applied on the Mauritanian intellectuals and their perspectives of the political future.

It is noticeable that the relationship between our elite and the political discourse is a kind of exclusion and subjugation. This subjugation becomes more succinctly obvious when we attempt to draw an analogy between the traditional Mauritanian politicians (the old fashion elite) and the new excluded intellectuals. Then, we will see that the former are playing against the rules of the game in determent of the latter; they, the outdated elite, are motivated by their political ignorance.

This ignorance is the reason behind this huge gap between the two opposite generations, a gap which is the opportunity where the military regimes have been seizing successfully to exclude or marginalize the upcoming and challenging elite out of the political cycle. This exclusion is undoubtedly in favor of the ignorant elders who are personalizing the political practices.

Moreover, this political exclusion is an idealization or prohibition of the discourse as Michel Foucault in his "Order of Discourse" analyzed how knowledge is misused sometimes by the political power in order to eliminate the self through excluding the ‘other’. And these three elements: power, knowledge, and the self, are what characterize the political discourse in the light of Foucault’s genealogical archeology of knowledge of the humanistic discourse as a whole.

In this regard, we cannot but speculate when this political unfairness will go on. We have to ask ourselves why this excluding policies are always adopted by the so-called military elite, who have crept to the government either through a peaceful way or a violent one.

Seeing that we are a part of this dwindling society, witnessing the collapse of our social, economic as well as the political institutions, we have to urge ourselves and hold up the glow of changing to the better direction what I can call “the backward mentality”.

Thus, it is undeniable that we are with no trouble capable to relate all our social and political problems to this retrograde mentality with which Mauritanian elite are dealing with their political circumstances. This backwardness of our way of thinking either for the intellectuals or the common people is still far away from getting near to a self-realization and awareness. Simply for the fact that we cannot change if we are not conscious of our “circumstantial reality” and paradoxically enough we cannot be conscious unless we change.

For, it is indispensable for any society which is aspiring to improve itself by itself via profiting from the fresh ambitions of its elite to permit the elite to articulate their aspirations side by side with their fear of failure within a free and liberal space. Without this in- between space we cannot feel the sense of nationalism and our duty towards enhancing this politically upside-down society.