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Representations of the Intellectual in Representations of the Intellectual

In this essay, I offer a reading of Edward W. Said's intellectual politics and of his understanding of intellectualism. I begin by discussing the debate over the status and value of Said's most celebrated and influential book, Orientalism, situating this debate in the context both of the reassertion of imperial dominance that began in the 1970s and is still very much in train and—within the academy—of the rise of postcolonial studies. Said's politics were left-wing, liberationist, and nationalitarian; as such, they were always decidedly different from those of most of his postcolonialist readers and interlocutors. I explain why I regard Orientalism as atypical of Said's work as a whole, and move on to consider his various commentaries (most notably in Representations of the Intellectual), on the social role of intellectuals. These commentaries make abundantly clear that Said wrote from premises and on behalf of principles quite different from those generally prevailing in postcolonial studies. Particularly brilliant in Said's representation of the intellectual, I suggest, is his clear-sighted awareness of what might be specific to intellectual work, that is, his grasp of what it is that intellectuals do that might be both socially valuable and also not within the remit of any other group of social agents. In closing, I use Pierre Bourdieu (who has also written superbly on intellectual labor) to pinpoint some potential weaknesses in Said's account of intellectuals.