ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the “brief” history of intellectuals in left theories in order to map its permutations from modernist to postmodernist iterations, roughly speaking. It analyzes university life, where many intellectuals are assumed to reside and have a longstanding relationship to academic forms of free speech, which makes the modern university an instructive case in point for the study of the intellectual. In the traditional sense, intellectuals are leaders of leftist movements, whose expertise and authority the movement relies on for long-term strategies. The postmodern turn in cultural studies of the intellectual begins the long road of reconstructing evidence of downright hostility, toward the idea of intellectuals as representing or leading other people. The individualistic orientation of neoliberalism affects the intellectual’s behavior, activities, and ethical commitments. Russell Jacoby seems to agree when he documents the slow but certain turn away from the bohemian character of the intellectual to its professionalization and isolation from the public.
