Representations of the Intellectual

My personal favorite of Said's books. For those who feel ambivalent about Said's specific political views, this book touches on them minimally. (Though, obviously, his thinking is informed by those views throughout.)The general question is: What is the role of a true thinker in our times? If you believe the "authorities" (i.e., the New York Times, or Charlie Rose, etc.) they are just scholars or thoughtful observers with a public voice. The upshot is that the intellectual is nothing more than an ambassador -- a mouthpiece -- for received opinion (that is, the orthodoxy). Intellectuals are nothing more, in this popular view, than a kind of secular clergy.Representations of the Intellectual skewers this notion, and beautifully. Said had a singular breadth of mind. In Representations, he draws on a expansive knowledge of disparate fields to offer a convincing picture of the intellectual as a reasoned, passionate dissenter.

In this slim, yet thought-proking volume, Edward said attempts to provide an outline of the function and duty of the intellectual in modern society. Implicitly, Edward Said goes about the task of challenging the increasingly cozy relationship between the so-called intellectual, i.e., academia, and the political/military power structure that has developed in the wake of McCarthyism and the subsequent paranoia of the Cold War. Case in point, do you know where Napalm was "invented", not in the bowls of the Pentagon, but at Harvard University, by scientists (intellectuals) with a duty to expand human understanding and knowledge, not to be used as a means to power and destruction. That, Said would contend, is precisely the problem with the role of the intelelctual today. Au Courant the climate of the "expert" reighns supreme and almost completely in the cause of war--in whatever manifestation it is found. Unfortunately, this is a problem that has been ignored for far too long, obscured with baseless, yet effective, claims of a leftist domination of academia to which Said's subtle analysis provides a vitally important counter.Using the example of intellectuals such as James Baldwin, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Viginia Woolf and Noam Chomsky as a model of intellectual vigor and concern for social justice, both in words and in action. In this vein Said offers a critically important meditation on the vital influence that such can have on public opinion and, more importantly, government policy. Thus, the intellectual in today's society, in Said's mind, has a duty and an obligation to be an agent of social and political justice--a radically dissident voice if need be--against the dictates of blind power.For those who admire critical thinking, moral courage and a helthy respect for honest debate Representations of the Intellectual is for you. There awill always be those who seem to believe that ad hominem attacks and smear campaigns can replace critical thinking and objective analysis, both of which are only a substitute for intellectual vigor. Yet, many of his critics seem to be perfectly content with a system in which the main function of an intellectual is as a petty propagandist of pragmatic ideology, providing justification for the continued imperial wars of aggression, right-wing insurgency, political assasination and even genocide, carried out by Western powers since WWII. Those who ignore these facts are either grossly naive or recklessly misguided by their own historico delusions.But, for those who want to get beyond the simplistic dualisms and vacuous black/white oppositions by all means, read Said's book--your view of the intellectual in Western society will never be the same.

Edward Said's definition of the intellectual as someone who "speaks the truth to power" is hardly an original notion. As any literate person will know, it recalls and derives from the Greek concept of the "parrhesiastes", the truth-teller. Crucially, not anyone who speaks the truth is a "parrhesiastes". A grammar teacher, for example, may tell the truth to the children he teaches, but he is not thereby a "parrhesiastes". However, when a philosopher addresses himself to a sovereign, to a tyrant and tells him that his tyranny is wrong, the philosopher not only voices the truth but also takes a risk. It is this element of risk and what we might call disinterested courage that defines a figure like Socrates but also a contemporary like Noam Chomsky. Of course, both the Greek notion and Said's concept, equally, exclude those who serve the status quo. Henry Kissinger is neither a "parrhesiastes" nor an intellectual. A merchant banker may utilise or produce "ideas" but he is too bound to the dominant system to be capable of truly critical thought. What this book addresses, though, is not so much the intellectuals themselves as the way they are perceived in different historical and social situations. What value does this figure of the truth teller, the risk taker, hold in different polities? In totalitarian societies he is paid the grotesque homage of censorship and state violence. In the U.S.A. and many Western democracies, by contrast, he is usually treated with contempt or barely concealed irritation. I have seldom seen "intellectual" used favourably in the British press. It is, all too frequently, prefixed with "pseudo-" or "trendy". What Said's book demonstrates is that the idea of the intellectual has an ancient and venerable history, and that power and truth are seldom comfortable bedfellows.

Said succinctly examines what constitutes an intellectual and what role he or she has in society. He represents the intellectual as someone who is an amateur, independent of special interests, and an activist willing to take on personal risk to speak the truth. But perhaps more important is the intellectual's reliance on reason and honesty as opposed to the constraints of dogma or ideology. This book is an important read for anyone whose work puts them in a position to affect policy or public opinion.

Edward Said is a distinguished professor of Literature at Columbia University. These are the Reith Lectures he delivered in 1993. He is a Palestinian Christian who has long been involved with issues of human rights there and around the world. Said deplores, here, the pressures and seductions of 'professionalism' on the intellectual in today's society. He describes these as coming from specialization, from of the cult of the certified expert as he calls it, from coopting by social, educational or political agendas, and, from commercialization, which sees all ideas as a product in a market, held to standards of economic viability rather than truth. The intellectual, he argues, must rigorously maintain objectivity and espouse activism. An attitude of being outside the conforming principles of associations, even those by which the individual is defining himself, is the impulse to conscience which is the key message of this thesis. The obligation of advocating for what is 'true' or 'just' is implicit with this. Authenticity and spontaneity in assessing these issues are instilled first by developing that moral sense, secular and flexible, and applying it in the context of broad learning. Those are compelling and challenging standards, which anyone who aspires to the intellectual, in character or understanding (and that should include all of us) must aspire. One can then differentiate this from the burgeoning 'intellectual industry' of today, traders in credibility, mercenaries for whatever paradigm happens to be ascendent and expedient. Said's own life attests to the influence one can have if honest to the concepts of universality, humility and integrity he discusses in these fine essays.