Description
Book SynopsisWho exactly are the intellectuals'? This term is so widely used today that we forget that it is a recent invention, dating from the late nineteenth century.
In Birth of the Intellectuals, the renowned historian and sociologist Christophe Charle shows that the term intellectuals' first appeared at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, and the neologism originally signified a cultural and political vanguard who dared to challenge the status quo. Yet the word, expected to disappear once the political crisis had dissolved, has somehow endured. At times it describes a social group, and at others a way of seeing the social world from the perspective of universal values that challenges established hierarchies.
But why did intellectuals survive when the events that gave rise to this term had faded into the past? To answer this question, it is necessary to show how the crisis of the old representations, the unprecedented expansion of the intellectual professions and th
Trade Review
Christophe Charle's "Naissance des Intellectuels" has long been recognised as the most probing and rigorous analysis of the conditions which gave rise, in the course of the Dreyfus Affair, to the distinctively French conception of "l'intellectuel". Its exceptional combination of analytical command and sociological data provides a model for comparable studies, and so this English translation is to be warmly welcomed.
Stefan Collini, author of Absent Minds; Intellectuals in Britain
The term "intellectuals" has become so widely used since the time of the Dreyfus affair that we forget that until then, university faculty, artists and writers were nowhere typically a political and cultural avant-garde. Charle's work turns a sharp focus towards the creation of modern intellectuals, and brings out its worldwide cultural significance. This is a very welcome translation of an important book.
Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania
Table of ContentsPART ONE: INTELLECTUALS BEFORE THE INTELLECTUELS
Chapter One: The Intellectuel, a Historical and Social Genealogy
Chapter Two: Intellectuels or Elite?
PART TWO: INTELLECTUELS AND THE FIELD OF POWE
Chapter Three: The Emergence of the Party of the Intellectuals
Chapter Four: Intellectuals versus Elite: A Reading of the Dreyfus Affair
Chapter Five: Intellectuals of the Left and Intellectuals of the Right
Conclusion to the English Edition
