Algeria’s Elites and Intellectuals
Abstract
This chapter revisits the role and responsibility of the Algerian elites, intellectuals, and intelligentsias in the crises that Algeria has experienced. The chapter analyses the conditions of formation and socialisation of the elites, more broadly the conditions of their weak autonomisation as well as the conditions of the intellectual field. The inability of elites to emancipate themselves from a “Caesarist” type of “plebeian power” is not only a matter of cyclical conditions related to the role of the independent national state and the policies it has implemented, but also as far back in the history of the country.