Who 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 the vacuum left by the
decline of the traditional ruling class created favourable conditions
for the collective affirmation of 'intellectuals'. This also explains
why the literary or academic avant garde traditionally reluctant to
engage gradually reconciled themselves with political activists and
developed new ways to intervene in the field of power outside of
traditional political channels.
Through a careful rereading of the petitions surrounding the Dreyfus
Affair, Charle offers a radical reinterpretation of this crucial moment
of European history and develops a new model for understanding the ways
in which public intellectuals in France, Germany, Britain, and the
United States have addressed politics ever since.
