Suchergebnisse

There has never existed in the US an independent soc group calling themselves `intellectuals'; nevertheless they are the object of a hatred whose origins can be studied. America has not known the same evolution as Europe (where the bourgeoisie has absorbed & been impregnated with an aristocratic tradition). With the exception of New England, none of the 1st generations of immigrants contained elements which one could say were intellectual. The later advent of waves of Cath immigration did not change this fact, since these waves were composed of impoverished workers or peasants whose lack of intellectuality was inherent in the class structure from which they came. The consequences of this are still evident, & a Church dignitary having ideas as 'petty-bourgeois' as those of Cardinal Spellman would be unthinkable in Europe. US Catholicism is certainly less reactionary politically than European Cath'sm, but it is much more so in the cultural domain. It is not without reason that we have seen in the 'orthodox' US culture of today a capitalist version of 'socialist realism': an industrial culture hostile to intellectual life & the taste for disinterested reflection, & leading to the cult of psychiatry, as well as to the hostility toward 'intellectuals from Harvard' whom a McCarthy could easily accuse of betraying the American community, whether it be Alger Hiss, Dean Acheson or Stevenson. But the problem of the intellectual in the US is in fact much more serious: in this country, to be employed, even in the 'liberal' professions, implies surrender to bureaucratization, or at least to routine. If the US intellectual today, nourishes a conservative ideology, it is to justify his own integration into a pragmatist & anti-intellectualist society. (Translated by Z. Dana from IPSA).