Edward Said's Representations of the Intellectual

Dr. David M. Peña-Guzmán consider's Said's reflections upon the figure of the intellectual. What does it mean to be an intellectual? When did the intellectual emerge in history as a socially legible and distinct character? In what sense is "re-presenting" the central business of intellectuals? And what are the dangers that contemporary intellectuals should look out for?

[vp]

My first encounter with Edward Said was on TV. He was a frequent guest on various TV shows during the first Gulf War. I had never heard or known of him before that. To me he was the only person making any sense at all. So I jotted his name down to ask around. Everyone had great things to say about him, but one comment by a Harvard Philosophy prof sticks out. The prof called him a mensch.

[BillyMcBride]

Thank you David for this wonderful gift again. I enjoyed hearing you on Said’s representation of the intellectual. I owned a copy of Said’s book, =Beginnings= a long time ago, and I want to reread it now to learn more about his thoughts.

[VBASK]

Thank you. Very helpful as I’m reading this book at the moment.

[mitrikoudsi]

Loved this video! Thank you for introducing this subject 🙏

[mabaker]

Very interesting. Please do more of these vignettes on American / UK political thought. Thank you.

[J_Z]

This was fantastic. This sort of reminds me of something John McWhorter might say.

[bajes]

I would say that he's sort of saying that an amateur has a better spirit _because_ he knows less and those who know much should imitate that. Picasso said that it took him years to learn how to paint like a child.

[greghunt]

I'll order the book. An intellectual should be someone who both thinks and talks, who both works on some intellectual project and who talks about it. When it becomes possible to reject ones own intellectual project, the end of thought is in the distant past because, for example, abandoning a left perspective is to say that one was wrong right at the beginning of thought, and had not noticed that wrongness any time since which is a failure in rigour. We need a definition for noisy people who do not genuinely think: if an intellectual is defined just in terms of some moral process, then thought is optional and then we have to wonder how much intellect is involved in their being an intellectual.

[doylesaylor]

I find Said’s reference to the role of an intellectual as requiring an ironic stance extremely problematic. The left roots itself in reality, which does evolve and develop in whole societies. A shift from Newtonian mechanics to relativity is not a switch between ‘beliefs’. One does not as Einstein approach the work of the theory as an irony of relating to Newton, rather the sense of contradiction reality shows needs addressing. To believe Newton’s mechanics as a belief is basically anti-scientific. An anti-realism stance. Or course some philosophers will say science largely practices scientism, or science as a belief, but the reality of the work requires knowing well what is there. Kuhn claims science is ruled by common paradigms that compel belief which entails a sort of political revolution to overcome. Rather it is quite difficult in the system to establish commonalities of a shared paradigm. The reason being is not belief restricting the scope of thought, but constructing a commonality rests upon generalizations that are quite hard to construct.