ABSTRACT
Questions which seek to locate the sources of American conduct in the intellectual structures and power relations of American society are covered by the general attitude to such inquiries throughout the West: they are unwelcome because they run the risk of disclosing just how essential the intelligentsia is to political power. In the formulation of Regis Debray: ‘the sociology of real capitalism ignores (or marginalises) the intelligentsia in order to conceal it as an active political force and to perpetuate the illusion that it does not exist.’1 That illusion, successfully established and maintained is, moreover, dangerous because it allows space and legitimacy to the notion that ideas associated with ‘the intelligentsia’ are either basically irrelevant to the common people and the everyday life of a nation, or relevant only to the extent that they are the common-sense response to the challenges and provocations of an anarchic world. Just how dangerous is the refusal to uncover these ideas is clear once the consequences of actually pursuing a manifold line of inquiry into what might be called American intelligence and American knowing.
