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A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick Permanent WRAP URL: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/110901 Copyright and reuse: This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications THE BRITISH LIBRARY BRITISH THESIS SERVICE COPYRIGHT Reproduction of this thesis, other than as permitted under the United Kingdom Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under specific agreement with the copyright holder, is prohibited. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. REPRODUCTION QUALITY NOTICE The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the original thesis. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the highest quality of reproduction, some pages which contain small or poor printing may not reproduce well. Previously copyrighted material (journal articles, published texts etc.) is not reproduced. THIS THESIS HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED Between Identity and Practice: The Narratives of the Intellectual in the Twentieth-Century by Stephen Palmer BA, MSc A Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in the University of Warwick. Institute of Education September, 1998. Contents Prologue: The Dialectics of Intellectual Practice i Chapter One: From the Realm of the Spirit to the ‘laboratory of actual life’: Karl Mannheim’s Changing Intellectual 1 Chapter Two: The Intellectual in Extremis: Critical Theory, Pessimism and the Loss of Agency 48 Chapter Three: Ideas in Action: Gramsci and the Creation of Conviction 90 Chapter Four: ‘A School of Awkwardness’: the Uses of Experience in E.P.Thompson and C.Wright Mills 130 Chapter Five: ‘Living in Truth’: the Intellectual as Existential Praxis 168 Chapter Six: Symbolic Exchanges? The Intellectual in Everyday Life 214 Bibliography 260 Acknowledgement I would like to acknowledge the support and encouragement of my doctoral supervisor, Professor Fred Inglis of the Division of Education in the University of Sheffield, whose extensive expertise in steering research students to successful completion has been tested to the full in my own case Professor Inglis has been unstinting in his time and enthusiasm throughout the last four years, and for that I am truly grateful. The last word, however, should go to my partner, Jo Lamper, whose sympathy and affection kept me going when I felt like stopping, and to whom this thesis is dedicated Thanks, Jo Summary This thesis is a text-based analysis o f conceptions o f the intellectual in relation to the political sphere. The specific instances studied relate, positively and negatively, to the socialist tradition in politics and culture. They are drawn from a variety of academic disciplinary contexts and also from the contexts of political organisations and social movements. One o f the principal dilemmas faced by the intellectual in this century, as this thesis sets out to make clear, has been that o f trying to bridge the divide between these two spheres. This investigation is centred upon statements made by intellectuals reflecting upon the typical role or function of the intellectual within society and politics. My contention is that such self-reflection is a necessary condition of the intellectual's coming into being. Intellectuals are realised in specific identities, in a process o f self-identification. The force o f intellectual practice is dependent upon elements o f personal commitment, moral or political, and the enactment of an experiential dimension. But, at the same time, as a practice that has a transcendent orientation, the intellectual seeks to go beyond the subjective in pursuit o f the objective, the extra-personal, the unsituated. My thesis offers itself as an identification o f a tradition, as the relation of a narrative of the intellectual, which also recognises its own particularity. As such, it is not a work o f synthesis, but a reflexive narrative. Narrative is an appropriate concept with regards to the intellectual; it may thus be seen as a creative process drawing upon particular events and characters. Such a view, involving both commitment to and distance from the intellectual, is not common within prevailing accounts, which have tended to be either sociological-objective or normative-subjective. I have tried to see the intellectual as reflexively situated between these positions, as between an interested identity and disinterested practice, and not just in a purely “objective "fashion but acknowledging my own involvement within such a view. ‘And now the tempter whispers ‘But you also Have the slave-owner’s mind, Would like to sleep on a mattress of easy profits, To snap your fingers or a whip and find Servants or houris ready to wince and flatter And build with their degradation your self-esteem; What you want is not a world of the free in function But a niche at the top, the skimmings of the cream.’ And I answer that this is largely so for habit makes me Think victory for one implies another’s defeat, That freedom means the power to order, and that in order To preserve the values dear to the élite The élite must remain a few It is so hard to imagine A world where the many would have their chance without A fall in the standard of intellectual living And nothing that the highbrow cared about Which fears must be suppressed There is no reason for thinking That, if you give a chance to people to think or live, The arts of thought or life will suffer and become rougher And not return more than you could ever give. ’ Louis Macneice, Autumn Journal III Prologue: The Dialectics of Intellectual Practice ‘[IIn approaching the question of the intellectuals one is confronted not just with alternative definitions or theories, or even bodies o f empirical evidence, but with alternative historical narratives with profound political resonances. ’ (Nicholas Garnham, 1995: 365) Problems of a Definition Conventionally studies of the intellectual begin with a definition. In accordance with sound academic practice, the object of analysis is, first, identified, and then, proposals offered and conclusions drawn as to the exact nature of that object both in relation to specific empirical phenomena and to a set of statements which already define it. To the extent that the coherence of a piece of research is dependent upon the identification of a discrete object upon which a methodological and conceptual apparatus may be brought to bear, it may be said that I, too, follow conventional practice. However, at the same time, I would argue that it is necessary to assert the special character of the intellectual with regard to the question of a definition. For the intellectual necessarily exhibits a high degree of self-reflexivity, and central to intellectual practice is the act of self-definition One may say, indeed, that talking about what it means to be an intellectual is not the same as being one, but, this being acknowledged, an essential part of being an intellectual is to talk about what it means to be one. To embark upon a study of the intellectual is to enter into a discourse that demands participation, in the sense of requiring the researcher to participate in a contradictory relationship between his or her scholarly practice and the identity within which that practice is realised. To reflect in a any serious and extended way upon the nature of the intellectual requires one, at least, to register the dialectic of universality and particularity which has been key to its successive conceptions. As such, it is to recognise that the practice of knowledge has both an inward and an outward orientation, is constitutive of both subject and object, which stand in a contradictory relation with one another The intellectual is the name given to that reflexive moment within knowledge where it realises itself in a particular identity and simultaneously attempts to overcome the specificity of that manifestation. The intellectual, as Sartre stated, is that which uncovers the tension between the limitless promise of rational knowledge and its cramped and limited realisation in specific individual and collective forms. My own discussion of the intellectual, then, is marked by a contradiction: it is driven by the imperative to define its object, to find a universal, disinterested and permanent definition of the intellectual, while being aware that no such object exists, only its manifestation in particular intellectuals existing in specific situations. However, those intellectuals through acts of self-definition themselves have attempted to identify just such an “objective” entity as part of their function as intellectuals, while at the same time acknowledging the limits and contradictory character of that endeavour. The contradiction that characterises this thesis thus constitutes an extension of that contradiction between subject and object, universality and particularity, commitment and distance that has, by turns, been repressed, regretted and celebrated in succeeding conceptions of the intellectual but which may be said to be at its heart Narratives As such, therefore, this thesis does not purport to give an impartial overview of the intellectual, nor does it seek to offer an encompassing synthesis that u enables the observer to go away with a comprehensive taxonomy of “types”. It constitutes, rather, something more indeterminate in character: an attempt to elaborate a narrative of the intellectual which makes no claims to objective truth but instead is an active making of a tradition that is also a recognition of that tradition’s heterogeneous and self-contradictory nature.