Birth of the Intellectuals

Who exactly are the ‘intellectuals’? This term is so widely used today that we forget that it is a recent invention, dating from the late nineteenth century. In Birth of the Intellectuals , the renowned historian and sociologist Christophe Charle shows that the term ‘intellectuals’ first appeared at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, and the neologism originally signified a cultural and political vanguard who dared to challenge the status quo. Yet the word, expected to disappear once the political