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.

What I care about as an intellectual is what I say before an audience or to a constituency.

And what my representations are about is not only how I articulate them,

but what I represent, as someone whose main concern is to try to advance the cause of freedom

and justice. I say or write these things, because after much reflection, they are what I believe,

and I also want to persuade others of this view.

There's therefore this quite complicated mix between the private and the public worlds,

my own history, values, writings and positions, as they derive from my experiences on the one hand,

and on the other hand, how these enter into the social world where people debate issues,

care about policies such as war, peace, human freedoms, and justice, and make decisions.

There's no such thing as a private intellectual,

since the moment you set down words and then publish them, you have entered the public world.

Nor is there only a public intellectual, someone who exists just as a figurehead or spokesperson or symbol of a cause, movement or position.

There's always the personal inflection and the private sensibility, and those give meaning to what is being said or written.

Least of all should an intellectual be there to make his or her audiences feel good.

The whole point is to be his or her audiences feel good. The whole point

is to be embarrassing, contrary, even unpleasant. Are intellectuals a very large or an extremely

small and highly selective group of people? Two of the most famous 20th century descriptions

of intellectuals are fundamentally opposed in that point.

Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, activist, journalist, and brilliant political philosopher who was imprisoned by Mussolini between 1926 and 1937, wrote in his prison notebooks that all

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