Suchergebnisse

A review essay on: Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims (New York: Oxford U Press, 1981); Regis Debray's Teachers, Writers, Celebrities (London: New Left Books, 1981); & Alvin Gouldner's The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (see IRPS No. 8/81c00020, & see listings in IRPS No. 34). Hollander's work is judged an important study of Western intellectuals who have visited & then written favorably on Communist nations. The work is seriously flawed by Hollander's neoconservative bias & antipathy for the Left, feminism, & 1960s counterculture. Debray's work, however, is a theoretically sophisticated study of the way French intellectuals function within the national cultural-production system. He views recent intellectual life as falling into three major degenerative cycles -- the U (1880-1930), publishing (1920-1960), & media (1968-present) cycles -- & offers a "conservative-radical defense of the integrity of autonomous human thought & undistorted communication." Gouldner's work is a debate-provoking analysis of the morally ambiguous nature of knowledge (ie, both liberating & socially determined), in the context of the theory that a new opinion-shaping SC is emerging in advanced industrial society. However, it is cautioned that the study of intellectuals & cultural capital is an inherently limited way to treat power & belief. R. Wright