Absent Minds. Intellectuals in Britain

Bibliographic Data

ID9799598
AuthorsD Stack (University of Reading, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume122
Issue499
Pages1468-1470
Publication date2007-12-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe English Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ehr/cem332
OpenAlexW2032423079
LanguageEN
Citations received97

In 2004 the sociologist Frank Furedi published a well-received monograph entitled Where have all the intellectuals gone? It is a question that has been asked repeatedly in Britain for more than a century, but following the publication of Collini's book it ought not to be asked again. His answer is that intellectuals—like the poor—are always with us. As too are the nay-sayers who lament the absence of an indigenous intelligentsia but who, in a poignant paradox, are themselves examples of the intellectual class whom they have identified as missing. What Collini calls the ‘absence thesis’ is a myth, and one that he delights in forensically examining and dismantling. His objective, as the reader is warned in an unapologetic Introduction, is not to write a comprehensive history, still less a survey, of intellectuals in British society. It is, rather, to examine ‘the question of intellectuals’. This is an important distinction

Art · Indigenous · Intelligentsia · Lament · Literature · Media studies · Mythology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Subtext · Classics · History · Law · Philosophy, History, and Historiography

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