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faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a
view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a
public” (1996: 11). This “vocation for the art of representing”
characterizes the intellectual, who “raise[s] embarrassing
questions,” “confront[s] orthodoxy and dogma,” and “break[s]
down the stereotypes and reductive categories” which are
“limiting to human thought and communication” (13, 11, xi).
Nonconformity, in a word, features in Said’s delineation of the
intellectual, a disturber of the status quo rejecting formulas,
clichés, or confirmations of what the powerful and
conventional say and do (23). Averse to being co-opted by
power, this nonconformist sides with the weak and
unrepresented, and delineates their suffering (22, 44). Said’s
intellectual, in short, is a representative figure with a
standpoint of her/his own; this independent figure performs a
public role as the conscience of society and “speak[s] the truth
to power” (xvi).
Said’s idea of the intellectual is in some respects similar to
Julien Benda’s in the classic
La Trahison des clercs
, in which
Benda laments the politicization of intellectuals in the early
twentieth century. Benda’s terminology of “clerc,” in the
medieval sense, means “scribe”
—
“someone we would now call
a member of the intelligentsia” (Kimball, 2009: ix). The
“clerks” are set apart from the “laymen,” those who crave after
“the pursuit of material interests,” whereas the clerks seek joy
“in the possession of non-material advantages” (Benda, 2009:
43). Benda’s “clerks,” in other words, are endowed with moral,
religious, and spiritual ideals; they take no interest in material
profits and say no to power
—
a portrait similar to Said’s,
despite the latter scholar’s more positive attitude toward the
intellectual’s involvement in public affairs. Like Said, Benda
also sees the clerks as the conscience of the people: thanks to
them, “humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honored
good” (2009: 44). At the end of the nineteenth century,