This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Ruth Lectures.

This lecture in the series Representation of the Intellectual,

given by Edward Said, was originally broadcast in 1993.

Every intellectual today has some certificate of nationality,

a native language, and a tradition.

But, reading Julian Bender's well-known book, the betrayal of the intellectuals,

one gets the impression that intellectuals exist in a sort of universal space,

bound neither by national boundaries nor by ethnic identity.

The book appeared in 1927, at a time when it clearly seemed to Benda, that being interested

in intellectuals meant being concerned only with Europeans, Jesus being the one non-European

he talks about approvingly.

Things have changed a great deal since then.

In the first place, Europe and the West are no longer the unchallenged standard-setters for the rest of the world.

The dismantling of the great colonial empires after World War II

diminished Europe's capacity for intellectually and politically irradiating what used to be called the dark places of the earth.

With the advent of the Cold War, the emergence of the third world, and the universal

emancipation implied, if not enacted, by the presence of the United Nations, non-European

nations and traditions now seemed worthy of serious attention. In the second place, the incredible

speeding up both of travel and communication has made

for a new awareness of what have been called difference and otherness.

To speak of intellectuals today is thus to speak specifically of national, religious, and

even continental variations on the topic, each one of which seems to require separate consideration.

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