The Tragedy of Human Culture in the Age of Subtle Political Evil: From the Engineering of Submission to the Domestication of the Arab Elites

Abstract

This study explores the functional transformation of human culture within the contemporary Arab context, beginning with the revealing moment marked by the Gaza War following October 7, 2023. While culture has historically been associated with emancipatory and moral functions, current realities expose a critical deviation in its role, whereby it has increasingly become an instrument in the hands of power—producing subjugation, domesticating elites, and legitimizing political malevolence. The study proceeds from a central hypothesis: culture has not failed because it is absent, but because it is present in counterproductive roles; and elites have not merely been marginalized, but reconfigured within symbolic systems that perform a functional role in consolidating order. Drawing on discourse analysis, the theory of political malevolence, and the critical approach to symbolic domination, the study proposes a new understanding of the relationship between culture and power. It further calls for the reclamation of culture’s emancipatory function through the accountability of elites and the reconstruction of the nexus between meaning and freedom.