Priyamvada Gopal: ‘What are intellectuals for? Edward Said and the Question of Representation’

This talk--or rather, a set of provocations for discussion in relation to the question of praxis-- revisits the case made by Edward Said in his Reith Lectures for the intellectual (who can never be 'private') as a "curmudgeonly' voice of opposition whose place it is 'to publicly to raise embarassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma…to be someone who cannot be co-opted by governments or corporations, and who raison d’etre is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug (11). His insistence that the intellectual had a vocation and that that vocation was to represent the forgotten—both histories and peoples-- was intrinsically tied up with his advocacy. often glossed over in readings of his work--of a 'critical humanism.' I'll ask us what the implications of this model of 'democratic criticism' are for the question of the relationship between critical theory and political practice while also examining some of the limitations of Said's conceptualisation of the 'exilic' and, via Adorno, 'homelessness'.