Between the Sublime and the Subliminal: Economic Modernity, Desire, and Political Fictions in Cameroon

Abstract

Dictatorial regimes come in many guises and operate throughout the globe across time, space, and culture. There are resemblances that flow across these dictatorial systems. The personalization of power with a minimal sense of ethics and honor, a lack of checks and balances, monopolies of violence, the privatization of state resources into a few hands, and symbolic forms of domination over people are means to rationalize and legitimize the dictator’s hegemony and absolute power. Political indoctrination institutionalizes the tyrant’s allegedly superior intellect and physical prowess, endowing him with the abilities and power to dictate to the people, who are considered beneath his stature. The direct consequence of this obvious display of socio-pathological narcissism is unequal access to politics and representation. It begins with the consideration that ordinary people are residual actors in a dictatorship, deprived of political and sociological recognition. They count as spectators of politics, not active participants. Indeed, dictatorship is predicated on the denial of the idea of republican egalitarianism and of the spirit that all people are created equal.