Secular Vocations Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture

by Robbins, Bruce

• ISBN13: 9780860914303
• ISBN10: 0860914305
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-07-17
• Publisher: VERSO
• More Book Details
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Summary

During the 1980s, university-based intellectuals came under heavy fire from both radicals and conservatives. They were accused by the former of betraying their public duty as general critics of society, and by the latter of promulgating radical ideologies and corrupting the young. In this work, the author counters both left and right, arguing that the professionalization of literary study was inevitable and fortuitous. Robbins undertakes close studies of such figures as Edward Said, Fredric Jameson and Raymond Williams, while considering the major trends in contemporary cultural studies and giving significant attention to relevant developments in such disciplines as ethnology and sociology. Secular Vocations ranges over materials from Britain, France and the US, knitting them together in a synthesis that places, in bold relief, many of the major controversies in contemporary intellectual life. It concludes with a plea for what Robbins calls “comparative cosmopolitanism” to displace the more militantly particularist projects that have come to dominate the human sciences.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction. From Luftmensh to "Cultural Elite": Intellectuals in the New York Times Magazine	p. 1
The Ambiguities of The Professionals	p. 29
"A few daring men, specialists..."
"Code of the profession?"
Sixguns and Technocracy
Women and Experts
Culture and Distance: On the Professionalizing of Literary Criticism	p. 57
"Distance"
The Origin of Criticism: Modernist Histories
The Rise of the Specialist, the Fall from the Public
Theory
The Insistence of the Public in Postmodern Criticism	p. 84
Scenes of Legitimation
Rhetoric in Public
Poststructuralist Populism
The Rhetoric of Rhetoric
Enchanted Enclaves, Family Romance	p. 118
"A contradiction of which he himself is the resolution": Fredric Jameson on Max Weber
Espionage as Vocation: Raymond Williams's Loyalties
"From a high place"
"Half my right of speech": James Agee
The East is a Career: Edward Said	p. 152
Representation and Theory
On the Career of Claude Levi-Strauss
Michel Foucault: "The professionalism of intellectuals... can be envisaged in a new way"
Communities of Method
Comparative Cosmopolitanisms	p. 180
Belonging, Being Situated, Being Specific
Discrepant Cosmopolitanisms: James Clifford
The Composition of Cultural Capital: Gayatri Spivak and Pierre Bourdieu
Conclusion. Aesthetics and Social Work	p. 212
Notes	p. 225
Index	p. 255
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