Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain

by Stefan Collini

A richly textured work of history and a powerful contribution to contemporary cultural debate, Absent Minds provides the first full-length account of 'the question of intellectuals' in twentieth-century Britain - have such figures ever existed, have they always been more prominent or influential elsewhere, and are they on the point of becoming extinct today?

Recovering neglected or misunderstood traditions of reflection and debate from the late nineteenth century through to the present, Stefan Collini challenges the familiar cliche that there are no 'real' intellectuals in Britain. The book offers a persuasive analysis of the concept of 'the intellectual' and an extensive comparative account of how this question has been seen in the USA, France, and elsewhere in Europe. There are detailed discussions of influential or revealing figures such as Julien Benda, T. S. Eliot, George Orwell, and Edward Said, as well as trenchant critiques of current assumptions about the impact of specialization and celebrity. Throughout, attention is paid to the multiple senses of the term 'intellectuals' and to the great diversity of relevant genres and media through which they have communicated their ideas, from pamphlets and periodical essays to public lectures and radio talks.

Elegantly written and rigorously argued, Absent Minds is a major, long-awaited work by a leading intellectual historian and cultural commentator, ranging across the conventional divides between academic disciplines and combining insightful portraits of individuals with sharp-edged cultural analysis.

Genres: History, British Literature

540 pages, Hardcover

First published March 9, 2006

About the author

Stefan Collini is Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge University. After degrees at Cambridge and Yale, he taught at the University of Sussex before moving to a post in the Faculty of English at Cambridge in 1986. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a frequent contributor to The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Nation, and other periodicals, and an occasional broadcaster.

His research includes the relation between literature and intellectual history from the early 20th century to the present. Current research focusses on the cultural role of, and the historical assumptions expressed in, literary criticism in Britain from c.1920 to c.1970. Recent work has dealt with the question of intellectuals in 20th-century Britain, the relation between academic critics and 'men of letters', the role of cultural criticism, as well as individual essays on figures such as T.S. Eliot, F.R. Leavis, George Orwell, Raymond Williams, and Richard Hoggart. Also work on the history, and public debates about the role, of universities in Britain.

Reviews

[Kathleen Quaintance · Rating 1 out of 5]

Inclusion of women could actually bolster Collini’s goal to refute the absence thesis, so seems perplexing that he would neglect to do so. He does acknowledge, somewhat apologetically, that he does not include women, but he justifies this by claiming that he can only be concerned to include the voices that were most prominent in British intellectual history: ‘for that reason, few of the figures discussed are women, even fewer were anything but highly educated.’ But if Collini’s project is to reconsider the term ‘intellectual,’ in order to re-frame stereotypes about the intellectual achievements of England, it would be productive for him to consider the ways in which women presented an alternative form of intellectualism. Given a masculinist emphasis on ‘originality,’ women as intellectuals were not thought the inventors of ideas, but rather the ‘retailers’ of ideas. Daniel Levine’s biography of thinker and activist Jane Addams provides a blatant example of this problem:

"Jane Addams was not an original thinker of major importance. One can find predecessors for almost every one of her ideas in the writings of English Fabians, German political economists, American pragmatists. Her importance was not as a manufacturer of ideas, but as their retailer."

Might being ‘a retailer of ideas’ be a function of an intellectual? This re-definition, one of many
alternative conceptions of the function of intellectuality, would add valuable complexity to Collini’s project. For all of the energy he spends on building an elaborate taxonomy of the definition of the term ‘intellectual,’ Collini’s own definition is remarkably narrow. A Collini-style intellectual offers an expert view - he tells others how to think about an issue that he knows the most about. (This knowledge is, of course, measured in traditional academic achievements.) But many other functions of intellectuals exist, including a mode of intellectualism which, instead of telling others how to think about an issue, teaches others how to think about an issue. This attention to critical pedagogy shows up in some British intellectuals that Collini neglects, most notably Virginia Woolf. Collini claims to be interested in how universities are problematic, but cannot be bothered to thoroughly dissect Woolf’s sharp criticism of universities. Perhaps this omission occurs because Woolf intended to function as an intellectual in a different mode than the intellectual that Collini describes. Collini’s intellectual transmits their own views, while Woolf’s intellectualism was more attuned to teaching others how to think. Even though these functions are different, it is crucial to acknowledge these disparities, especially if part of Collini’s project is to define the intellectual. And in any case, Woolf wrote and spoke productively about the role of intellectuals in society at the peak of public debate about the problem in the interwar period, and it is thus perplexing that while Collini spends plenty of time on this debate, demonstrating its stakes and intricacies, he fails to position Woolf as a major player. Instead, Collini’s characterization of Woolf lapses into the stereotypical assumption that she was a snob - the very kind of stereotypical assumption about intellectuals that he purports to re-frame with his thesis. Melba Cuddy-Keane has shown how examining Virginia Woolf’s writings reveals that she was committed to engaging with the public, disseminating critical pedagogical tools for self-teaching (a practice women were accustomed to, given their exclusion from formal educational settings), and the idea, however tenuous, of ‘classless’ intellectuals.
However, Collini is curiously dubious about the ability of intellectuals to strive for this kind of successful social engagement. One gets the creeping sense that Collini would happily cut anyone down to size who dared point out his omission of women, mostly because he maintains that academic intellectuals are fooling themselves if they think that their work can provide any contribution to political goals like feminism. This puts women critics of his work in a bind- it is difficult to point out his exclusion of women, because he characterizes feminist scholars as narcisstic. Thus the very action of critiquing Collini for neglecting feminist definitions of intellectuals is dencounced as folly. It is a good thing that plenty of feminist criticism refuses to be deterred even when it is ridiculed.
Collini’s tone is razor sharp, but when it veers into mockery, it can become excessively acidic, especially because Collini’s desire to mock women and racially marginalized intellectuals parades as a critique of contemporary academia - a critique which is certainly necessary. As riddled with problems as this realm is, though, Collini does not provide productive alternatives. His pessimism about scholars whose work is tied to social issues sees no good resolution.
A section in Absent Minds regarding Black intellectuals reveals this tension, as Collini’s critique of fellow intellectual historians who happen to believe that their work is connected to political realities becomes concerning when it devolves into mocking Black American intellectuals. He singles out the Black academic Henry Louis Gates for tying his experiences to Black American oppression:

"Gates is quoted as saying ‘it is the birthright of the black writer that his experiences, however personal, are historical.’ Lurking here, as so often, is the romantic ideal of being the ‘voice of the oppressed.’ Strictly speaking, of course, no one’s experiences are any more ‘automatically historical’ than anyone else’s; at issue in such a case is the existence of a public willing to grant the truth of Gates’ doubtful premise."

Collini is missing Gates’ point: Gates is not arguing that his experiences are ‘more historical’ than others, but that simply by virtue of being born into a traumatic genealogy of being Black in America, one should be able to demonstrate how their experiences are connected to legacies of racism. This is not an absurd request - it seems that if Gates wants to claim as a birthright the right to connect one’s personal experiences to history that this right should certainly be granted - alongside additional reparations. Further, Collini claims that the blame for this supposed transgression should be placed upon a public that is foolish enough to believe Gates’ ‘doubtful premise.’ The issue of intellectual engagement with the public morphs when members of an oppressed group speak to others who are also members of this group. Collini’s position of exclusion from this engagement - as a white man who cannot be privy to the complicated epistemological reality of being Black in America - causes him to miss out on the intricacies of this relationship. Even if one disagrees with Gates’ proposition, or even if one does not believe Gates’ work is intellectually sound, it remains true that Gates contributed to the reprinting of the work of Black women intellectuals that would have otherwise been lost. None of Collini’s subjects risk being buried underneath the white sands of time.
In another passage, he critiques the notable public intellectual Edward Said by claiming that his foolish optimism and flowery language make him seem ridiculous: ‘the prose here slides perilously close to a cross between that of the agony aunt and that of the tabloid astrologer.’ It is curious that Collini chooses to embody asinine irrationality in the feminine figure of the ‘agony aunt.’ Even if mocking Said by feminizing him is not Collini’s intention, these cutting remarks get the job done. Of course, Said’s lectures do deserve critique, but the mocking tone that Collini employs is hardly necessary. Less necessary yet is his impulse to conflate foolishness with femininity by invoking the ‘agony aunt,’ particularly since both feminization and non-Westernness are conceptualised together through the derision of ‘irrational’ non-Western belief systems - some of the very problems that Said raises in his work on Orientalism.
He continues to advance this line of argument, which becomes increasingly tainted by doubtfulness and mockery, as he proceeds to a chapter titled ‘Outsider Studies: The Glamour of Dissent.’ The foundation of this chapter is a definition of the notion of an ‘outsider’ which would be baffling to anyone who has ever experienced the material consequences of being an ‘outsider’ - that is, anyone who is a member of a marginalized group. Instead, Collini’s definition of outsider is, comically, the stark opposite of the real experience of outsiderness: ‘there is no denying the satisfying thrill, the subtly self-flattering frisson of excitement, involved in thinking of oneself as an ‘outsider,’ he writes. How is it ‘thrilling’ to be excluded? Of course, here he is clearly critiquing people who do choose to be outsiders to selfishly move themselves toward self-importance, a move that is indeed worthy of derision. But he does not bother to differentiate between those who are self-styled outsiders and those who are forced onto the margins, because he refuses to pay attention to the latter. His definitions of outsider are comically neglectful of those who are forced out of the terms of the intellectual, those who are true ‘outsiders:’ ‘the immediate associations of the term,’ he notes, supposedly emulate ‘the bracing winds of freedom.’ In a particularly tone-deaf passage, he writes that ‘to be an outsider is at least to be one’s own master.’It is very true that often privileged ‘intellectuals’ claim an outsider identity in order to feel a sense of vindication. But their false claim to this status of outsider-ness can only be mocked as phony if there are true outsiders, whom Collini does not attend to. ‘Outsider’ has complicated connotations for those who have no choice but to position themselves within it, connotations which Collini might need to unpack in which intellectual prowess is combined with personal experience. Frustration mounts as one realizes that critiquing Collini’s tone-deafness would only further bolster his notion that social justice-oriented intellectuals only undertake the critical work that they do because they want to soothe their own guilt for being educationally advanced. There is no winning.
A critique of the nature of the contemporary university is very necessary. But Collini’s critiques come from a privileged standpoint. For him, working in a university can be ‘uncomfortably privileged.’ This is undoubtedly true for many, though the precarious academics who are charged with transmitting knowledge rather than producing it - or ‘retailing’ knowledge -(an apt description of this work, given the increasing marketization of universities) might disagree.
In one particularly baffling passage, Collini writes that:
to claim to take a stance against wherever ‘power’ resides in any society, institution, or relationship is simply to become irresponsible about outcomes.
He does not elaborate on what these ‘outcomes’ might be. What outcomes does he fear? Is it a fear that one day people like him will no longer be the authorities on defining and redefining what it means to be an ‘intellectual?’ Collini’s critiques epitomize the vulnerability of the “intellectual.”
If we change the ‘absence thesis’ from one of British self-consciousness to one of a feminist questioning of the very terms of ‘intellectual history,’ is plenty of room for a wider definition of ‘intellectual’ - indeed, in Gramsci’s tradition, there is no such thing as a ‘non-intellectual.’ Following this, some intellectual historians have advanced towards generative studies which widen and problematize terms that Collini prefers to taxonomize. Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women works in this register, explaining that “Black women’s intellectual histories can never be explained by way of a mere genealogy of ideas.” Instead, by virtue of their outsider status, many Black women had to distribute their intellectual activity outside of higher education and into the streets or the home. Indeed, developing a studies which also aim to disprove an absence thesis, but one which states that “there are no women intellectuals” rather than “there are no intellectuals in Britain”, is a very exciting and fruitful task for feminist intellectual historians. Some of Collini’s historical evidence could still be very useful - for example, the interwar period remains a remarkable time period for its public debates about the function of intellectuals in society. Walter Benjamin’s 1936 description of the “storyteller” perhaps provides one of many alternative definitions of intellectual activity. The role of the ‘storyteller’ constitutes a description of what, in Gramsci’s terms, an intellectual’s function in society could be: ‘In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.’ Benjamin proceeds to illuminate why the role of the intellectual has begun to falter or become meaningless: “If today ‘having counsel’ is beginning to have an old fashioned ring, this is because the communicability of experience is decreasing.’ This ‘communicability’ resides in the ability to ‘exchange experiences.’ Thus, a feminist emphasis on intellectual activity which takes into account personal experience, which is “passed on from mouth to mouth,” provides a useful alternative mode of intellectual work. Benjamin traces the devaluing of personal experience as intellectual activity to the aftermath of World War I, but its effects still show up today when thinkers like Collini limit their definition of who is an ‘intellectual.’
There are countless other modes of performing the role of intellectual, which, while neglected in studies like Collini’s, still remain crucial to so-called ‘outsiders.’ Even in manual labour, argues Gramsci, there can be ‘creative intellectual activity.’ As we turn towards a new function of the intellectual, Gramsci’s prescription suggests a productive definition which refuses Collini’s narrowness: ‘the mode of being a new intellectual can no longer consist in eloquence, which is an exterior and momentary mover of feelings and passions, but in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organiser, ‘permanent persuader’ and not just a simple orator…’Such a function is not unfamiliar to activists or feminists, and can form the new basis for deciding whose voices can feature in the amorphous category that is ‘intellectual history.’

[xhxhx · Rating 2 out of 5]

A loose pack of essays that never really hangs together. In his acknowledgements, Collini confesses his debts to those "institutions whose policies of enlightened patronage are still resistant to those crude forms of short-termism ... which require that support be confined to projects that will be completed during the underwritten period" (507). It is unfortunate that those institutions are still so resistant; if they had been crueler to Mr Collini, he might have written a better book.

The essays address intellectuals in twentieth-century British life. Collini's particular focus is on the question of 'absence', viz., that British intellectuals either do not exist or have not had any purchase on the public. France is the key point of contrast here, and Mr Collini gives the "peculiarities of the French" their own chapter (248ff), but Russia or America may substitute in a pinch.

There are five parts to the study. The first, 'The Terms of the Question', outlines the definition of 'intellectual'. The first chapter, 'The History of a Word', is a grueling slog through the attestations. It is the sort of thing only a lexicographer could love, but most lexicographers should find this hard going. Mr Collini is not a happy travel companion; he always has something unpleasant to say about the view. The second chapter gives a useful framework for understanding the concept, cleanly presented. It is the best chapter in the book. Mr Collini does not return to it.

The second part is a history of the concept in Britain: another slog through the attestations. The third part provides 'comparative perspectives', on France, on America, and across Continental Europe. One chapter is on Julien Benda's La Trahison des Clercs. Mr Collini takes the difficulties of translating the titular clercs as emblematic of the difficulties of situating the concept in an English context, and treats the self-contradictions of Benda's position—as an intellectual leading a public polemic against intellectuals who lead public polemics—as emblematic of the self-contradictions of the intellectual self-concept more broadly.

The fourth, and best, part is a set of studies on twentieth-century British intellectuals: T. S. Eliot, R. G. Collingwood, George Orwell, A. J. P. Taylor, and A. J. Ayer. The title is 'Some Versions of Denial', but not all so profiled (Collingwood, Taylor) denied themselves the name. Eliot and Orwell had complicated relationships with the concept. Mr Collini shows that all the men are intellectuals in some respect.

The fifth part: the conclusion. Mr Collini surveys episodes in the public lives of two self-declared 'outsiders', Colin Wilson and Edward Said. Mr Collini does not think much of 'opposition'. These two men made it a self-conscious project, with dubious results.

In the final chapters, Mr Collini tells us that we are not living in a dark age; ours is a golden age. He contrasts the circulations of 'serious' periodicals in the late 1940s with those of the London Review of Books (42,000 for the LRB, against 10,000 for the Partisan ReviewHorizon, and 3,000 to 4,000 for Polemic (487, 489, 498 n 28)). Mr Collini concludes with an appeal to the public to recognize the true status and potential of the intellectual.

Not recommended.