Original text in arabic : https://cnt-ait.info/2025/05/05/peuple-ar

The idea of ​ « the people » is not a fixed entity or a homogeneous essence, but rather an imaginary construct that emerges every time power, revolution, nation, or justice are invoked. On the surface, it suggests simplicity: a unified group with a will, a voice, and an interest. But underneath, it is a complex of contradictions, a collection of dissonant voices, a decentralized complex of forces, incapable of being reduced to a single word.

« The people » is not a tree with a single root (origin, identity, history), but a network of roots that grow horizontally, connect, separate, return, and intertwine without a center, without a beginning, without an end. There is no single point at which it can be said, « Here the people begin » or « Here the people speak. »

In political discourse, « the people » is used as a rhetorical facade to conceal class struggle, inequality, and symbolic violence. The diverse, conflicting, and marginalized « people » are transformed into a single, illusory entity, serving specific purposes:

The state speaks in the name of the people to justify repression.

The opposition speaks in the name of the people to justify revolution.

The right and the left dispute over « who is the real people? »

But who really is the people? Is it the hungry on the margins? Is it the bourgeoisie disguised as a popular group? Is it the worker, the refugee, the prisoner, the student, the intellectual? Or do all of these belong to overlapping classes and movements that cannot be combined into a single container without negating their characteristics and conflicts?

This analysis does not seek the « essence of the people, » but rather asks: How is this concept created? Who formulates it? Who uses it? Against whom? And for what purpose?

It is an analysis that rejects the focus on « national identity » or « common interest, » focusing instead on deconstructing the relationship between power, language, and the political imagination.

The result?

« The people » is not real. It is a practical political myth, a myth with a function. Its function may be to unify, mobilize, or justify. But, at its core, it is a discourse device that produces power as much as it claims to represent the powerless.

N.C. (Tunisia)

In arabic : https://cnt-ait.info/2025/05/05/peuple-ar

In English : https://cnt-ait.info/2025/05/05/people-en

En français : https://cnt-ait.info/2025/05/05/peuple-fr

En español : https://cnt-ait.info/2025/05/05/people-es

En Esperanto : https://informabulteno.wordpress.com/2025/05/05/popolo-ne-estas-realaj