Formulation of the claim
When power dominates the intellectual field, it weakens its critical movement and pushes it toward stagnation.
Explanation
In this sense, ideas are no longer formed within an open space for questioning and reconsideration, but within a field in which the possibilities of expression narrow and what has settled into habit becomes dominant. Stagnation, therefore, does not signify mere mental lassitude, but rather the direct effect of a domination that limits the movement of thought.
The claim is understood in Arkoun as a description of a troubled relationship between knowledge and power. The stronger power’s grip on the intellectual field becomes, the more this field loses its capacity to produce new questions or to reconsider assumptions, and the more it becomes closer to repetition than to opening.
Its place in the book’s argument
This atom is consistent with the book’s overall line of argument, which links the formation of knowledge to the historical, social, and political conditions surrounding it. The book does not treat ideas as isolated givens; rather, it places them within a network of forces that either allow them to emerge or hinder them. From here, this idea appears as part of Arkoun’s critique of structures of closure that surround thought and limit the possibility of renewal.
Limits of the claim
This atom should not be understood as denying the existence of thought or intellectual production in every context in which power dominates, nor as reducing the causes of stagnation to a single factor alone. It points to a general tendency: that the domination of power weakens the intellectual field and narrows its horizon.