ABSTRACT

Since Julien Benda, ‘treason’ is the easily-flung and stinging curse whenever intellectuals are judged to fall below some resolute moral standard put up by their accusers—who are more often than not rival intellectuals. Since such standards normally diverge, the vocabulary of treason can be a vicious poison that easily spreads in all directions and creeps back into any hand that administers it. By forcing upon intellectuals (or deviants, or strangers) a sentiment of self-contradiction in the face of an imperious consensus, its work is to instil and exacerbate culpability; not simply by confronting designated sinners with this consensus’ outside social power but, more insiduously, by gaining a foothold on the moral inside and co-opting the forces of bad conscience. ‘Treason’ and ‘bad faith’ are words that police the dissident by transforming him into an utter alien.