에드워드 사이드의 아마추어 지식인론

Abstract

While the university has traditionally been the major site of the production of intellectual discourses, the disappearance of the intellectual is in parallel with the crisis of the university. This paper examines Edward Said's theory of the intellectual as presented in his Representations of the Intellectual. Said defines intellectuals as individuals with a faculty of representing a message and philosophy to, as well as for, a public. By this definition, Said distances himself from other theoreticians of the intellectual such as Gramsci, Gouldner, Foucault, and Spivak, and presents the role of the intellectual as a mediator between the intellectual himself/herself and the public. The intellectual criticizes and challenges the power for the public as well as for himself/herself. For this role, Said argues, the intellectual should do away with professionalism and take in amateurism because amateurism lets the intellectual pursue for criticism and knowledge with care and affection while professionalism restricts the freedom of the intellectual. Said himself was an amateur intellectual in that he had been trespassing the boundaries of literature professorship for the defence of the Palestine cause. Said's controversial activities had also been protected by the university authorities in the name of academic freedom. The university, when it properly functions, can be a safeguard of intellectuals. The university in Korea is in crisis and this crisis can be overcome when university professors regain the role of intellectuals because intellectual activities and the ideal of the university are mutually supportive.