The essays in this volume re-examine the controversy over the role of the intellectual in society. Placing intellectuals in a specific historical context, they evaluate their real and potential role in the circumstances that define public life, including the media, government and social movements.

Part 1 Theory: on intellectuals, Stanley Aronowitz; toward an effective intellectual - Foucault or Gramsci?, R.Radhakrishanan; defenders of the faith and the new class, Andrew Ross. Part 2 Interviews: American intellectuals and Middle East politics, Edward W.Said; criticism, feminism, and the institution, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; women, academics, and the professional-managerial class, Barbara Ehrenreich. Part 3 Historical cases: peculiarities of the English in metanarratives of knowledge and power, Jonathan Arac; the old right and the new Jerusalem - Elizabeth Barrett Browning's intellectual practice, Deidre David; from political dissent to to scholarly integration - the Frankfurt school in American government 1942-1949, Alfons Sollner; new brooms at Fawlty towers - Colin MacCabe and Cambridge English, David Simpson; espionage as vocation - Raymond Williams' loyalties, Bruce Robbins; the scholar-warrior versus the children of Mao - Conor Cruise O'Brien in South Africa, John Higgins; making the difference - Paul de Man, fascism, and deconstruction, Christopher Prendergast; the spectacle of intellect in a media age - cultural representations and the David Abraham, Paul de Man, and Victor Farias cases, Dana Polan.