Une généalogie de l’intellectuel spécifique

Abstract

The sage or the poet is an ancient figure of the protest against the power in the name of justice, long before the noun « intellectualist » has been invented in the context of the Alfred Dreyfus Affair. Since this inaugural point, it becomes an object of unceasing struggle to determine to wich category of intellectualist belong people who voice in the public area in accordance with their specific knowledges. The reflection of Michel Foucault who highlights the specialised intellectualist is of a great importance in a period of disparagement of intellectualists. Without taking Foucault’s category too seriously, we have to pay attention to his insistence of connecting the function to a politics of the subject and of taking responsability for the establishment of a link to the truth necessary to the democracy.

Keywords

• Alfred Dreyfus Affair
• universal intellectualist
• specialised intellectualist
• struggle for categorization
• truth
• parrêsia