The Problem of the Intellectuals

Abstract

The problem of the intellectuals has long occupied political philosophy and social theory and when asked to define “the intellectuals,” contemporary intellectuals will typically identify themselves as a politically autonomous stratum that pursues knowledge for its own sake, or if not for its own sake, then for some abstract public good. Most social and political theorists propose “the idea of the university” as the sociological basis for this epistemological claim, because the university ostensibly insulates intellectuals from “external” social and political pressures. Thus, as the university is increasingly corporatized, the problem of the intellectuals has become synonymous with the critique of the corporate university. This book will argue that the entrepreneurial intellectual is fundamentally incompatible with the corporate university and, in fact, is an internal threat to the power structure and logic of the corporate university.

No, ’tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door,

but ’tis enough, ’twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and

you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant,

for this world. A plague o’ both your houses!

—Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1