{"id":6522,"date":"2018-11-14T16:09:55","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T21:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/?p=6522"},"modified":"2019-06-08T17:55:46","modified_gmt":"2019-06-08T21:55:46","slug":"christophe-charle-birth-of-the-intellectuals-1880-1900","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/2018\/11\/14\/christophe-charle-birth-of-the-intellectuals-1880-1900","title":{"rendered":"Christophe Charle, Birth of the Intellectuals: 1880-1900"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christophe Charle, Birth of the Intellectuals: 1880-1900<\/em>, David Fernbach and G.M. Goshgarian trs. Cambridge: Polity, 2015; 280 pp. ISBN: 978-0745690353.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Christina Rawls, Roger Williams University.<\/em><\/p>\n

J\u2019accuse! The 2015 English translation of Christophe Charle\u2019s modern French classic is well overdue. (It was first published in 1990.) In this book, Charle traces the decades before and after the Dreyfus Affair (which began with Albert Dreyfus\u2019 conviction for treason in 1894), particularly the birth and drastic change involved in the category \u201cintellectual,\u201d and the division of intellectuals into the left and the right. The book is organized into two parts: Part One is titled \u201cIntellectuals before the Intellectuels,\u201d<\/em> and Part Two, \u201cIntellectuels<\/em> and the Field of Power.\u201d It ends with a helpful group of relevant charts and statistical data, as well as a separate, \u201cConclusion to the English Edition.\u201d This work is indispensable for anyone interested in the history of the title and practice of being an \u201cintellectual,\u201d especially for those interested in the \u201cleading class\u201d of the 1870s up through the \u201celites\u201d of the 1890s.<\/p>\n

The Dreyfus Affair was a highly publicized court hearing and involved a social debate about the role and extent of the State and French Army in social rule. Charle brilliantly traces the recent invention of the concept of \u201cintellectuals,\u201d that arose during these two decades in France. As Charle writes, \u201cHistories of the Dreyfus Affair usually affirm, following contemporaries, that it was, above all, a debate internal to the intellectual field or dominant social groups. Without gainsaying this self-evident truth, the analyses proposed here show that these appearances concealed a more complex combat, in which larger social stakes found a new translation.\u201d (183) Charle\u2019s extensive research on the interconnections and changing social strata between knowledge, societal values, military rule, religious doctrine, and political revolution in late 19th<\/sup> Century France is of critical importance. One can see the effects of these societal shifts pervade history thereafter (for example, in the revolutions of May 1968). Charle writes, \u201cThe crisis represented by the Dreyfus Affair holds a place apart in the historiography of the Third Republic.\u201d On Charles’ view, due to its wide-ranging influence, the Dreyfus Affair is comparable with the changes that occurred during the French Revolution. (112)<\/p>\n

As society became more and more modernized, the French army began to change. Wars were at hand, and the social order and public opinions were shifting. Knowledge was no longer the privilege of the few and \u201cmen of letters,\u201d no longer the only intellectuels<\/em> (with an \u2018e\u2019), even if they were all male. (24-25) Doctors, publicists, politicians, and some professors were already known as specialists in their fields, as elites, or \u201cthe best.\u201d Yet, growing numbers of authors and artists (including poets and literary historians) heeded the call of the American writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson to challenge the \u201cscholars\u201d and create new ways of thinking<\/em>, new ideas and expanding knowledge, all in the name of freedom of thought and choice. Charle writes, \u201cThe expansion in teaching personnel and the effort at building up education that followed the republican reforms opened up new outlets for authors of textbooks and manuals.\u201d (32) It also included the use of signed petitions of support in either direction. With democracy and literacy on the rise, the political and social climates vied for various factions of power. \u201cThe function of the term \u2018elite\u2019 was to replace the term \u2018bourgeoisie\u2026\u2019\u201d (56) Where some saw the opportunity to engage in higher education as specialists, others formed groups of intellectuals who had strength and power in numbers. The social significance and meaning of what it is to be learned, to be an artist, a teacher, an author and all related designations was drastically changing, yet in France in particular the authority of the scientist and literary elite was held up with respect. In addition to the growing quasi-Marxist ideal (compared to the old intellectuels<\/em>), who \u201cused ideas to keep the people in thrall,\u201d the neologism intellectuel<\/em> gained a social category all its own. Prior, the concept and term had been used mostly in literary magazines to establish dominance of a more humanitarian understanding over power hungry politicians and religious leaders. As Charle reports, \u201cThe first significant use in a collective sense is to be found in Le D\u00e9sesp\u00e9r\u00e9<\/em> by Leon Bloy.\u201d The term soon changed its \u2018e\u2019 to an \u2018a\u2019 to designate a group instead of an individual: \u201cBloy referred here to an ideological community organized around certain aesthetic slogans or principles\u2026forming an avant-guard readership.\u201d (40) Nonetheless, the initiation of the term was in France and concerned changing social norms, freedom of thought and the rise in numbers of students in higher education, the use of the military, an increase in the printing of journals and newspapers, and rising public concern and interest in their ability to effect social change.<\/p>\n

The spread of Marxism was understandable, but it didn\u2019t last long without a significant challenge from diverging political factions (and the Church). \u201cIntellectuels<\/em>\u201d now designated a group with a more sociological meaning. The growing sentiment between the access to knowledge and a university education with experts, elites, intellectuals (that is, professors, mostly all male) and the reorganization of disciplines or fields of specialization and the massive shifts in politics and what it meant to be a good politician were obviously split by the 1880s, as evidenced by Antonin Dubost, a future republican minister quoted by Charle:<\/p>\n

I know petty bourgeois and even modest craftsmen, whom a lack of university degrees or their own poverty keeps far from any sort of leading class, but who would nevertheless, from a social standpoint, put many a duke, astronomer, Academician or poet to shame. The fact is that, in order to discover a capacity for politics, one has to plunge into the mass of society and examine its desires and needs in order then to find the best combinations to satisfy them. (51)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is striking about such sentiments is that an attitude was growing, one separating the increasing number of those who wanted an education and to become more learned from the power and desire to control a region or one\u2019s country\u2014as if the two were wholly unrelated. As well, the false accusation that the learned were (or are) not aware of the \u201cdesires and needs\u201d of the masses around them is nothing new. This misperception is a charge against philosophers, for example, often projected in ignorant ways\u2014yet another reason Charle\u2019s book is relevant to the growing tensions in our global and local political climates today. In the time where there existed only small numbers of \u201cmen of letters,\u201d one might understand this attitude, but in a time of increasing literacy and general education for more citizens, the need was growing for others who did not want to attend universities or study in great depth but instead maintain control of the polis<\/em> through political, military, and\/or religious force. Religious influence had always been present, but science and positivist thinking was now on the rise as well. \u201cScience, spread by a renovated university system, would remake the elite and overcome ideological divisions by enlarging the pool from which elites were drawn\u2026\u201d (52) This helped, and the authority of scientists and literary writers was respected in France earlier than in other developed countries. At the end of the two decades leading into the 20th<\/sup> Century, Charle writes, \u201cThus, by the end of 1898, the Dreyfusard intellectuels<\/em> had won their bet\u2026 A transition had clearly been made from \u2018Intellectuels<\/em>\u2019, with all the initial scornful connotations, to intellectuels<\/em> without the capital I \u2013 men of the mind who were champions of a political tendency.\u201d (130)<\/p>\n

So it is clear, whereas Dreyfusism was born and bred among the intellectual communities and new disciplines of research with rising numbers of students attending institutes of higher education, anti-Dreyfusism relied on its \u201cmodel of hierarchical recruitment\u2026\u201d and the State. (159) In addition, Charle writes that the \u201crejection of the anti-Semitism animating many anti-Dreyfusards was an extension of their centuries-old struggle for religious equality.\u201d (161) The foundation and professional habits of Dreyfusard intellectuals relied on the ideal of the universality of reason (and they read their Plato, Leibniz, and Kant too), whereas the authority of the anti-Dreyfusard positions relied on the Church, the State, the army, and what was written in the newspapers. Yet, whereas you will find the most Dreyfusards within the fields of history and philosophy, it appears there were many anti-Dreyfusards within those two areas of study as well. Hence, the debate between the ancients and the moderns, between the traditional ideals and the new, more democratic ideals ensued. In the 1880s the debate raged between the men-of-letters and those in charge of the French army versus the new literary writers, artists, and publicists who could reach and interact with public opinion regarding changing social norms. By the 1890s, more individuals were attending college, and the term and idea of the \u201cintellectual\u201d itself became the debate. Thus, a division between the validity and importance of an educated man\u2019s knowledge and an uneducated but nonetheless knowledgeable man widened. Intellectuals became known as \u201celites\u201d with a lack of practical wisdom and pragmatic experience. The negative connotations grew and, sadly, still hold today. When will we learn that there are many different forms of valuable knowledge and experiences, and that no one man or woman can hold it all? We are social beings.<\/p>\n

Charle writes, \u201c\u2019Intellectual\u2019, for the professors, was a gratifying title that allowed them to transcend the limitations associated with being a scholar or scientist, whereas, in the literary field, thanks to the alchemy of the collective, this new role partially closed the gap\u2026between unknown and famous writers\u2026\u201d (168) The levels of freedom and anti-militaristic sentiments and actions of the writer or the academic, of public opinion and its publication, or of one\u2019s choice of religion or lack-there-of, etc. were the issues underlying all of these massive social shifts. Even more interesting, perhaps, is that the neologism \u201cintellectual\u201d and its superficial stereotypes, \u201ccrystallized, as a new, uprooted social group and as possible fomenters of trouble,\u201d who did not hold any type of well-known occupational status. Nonetheless, \u2018J\u2019accuse!\u2019 turned out to mean \u2018I accuse the left-wing intellectuels<\/em>!\u2019\u201d (179) Charle concludes, \u201cThus this opposition between the two types of dominant intellectuals around whom the battle of the Dreyfus Affair was organized in fact already existed; yet, without the affair, it would never have become a division traversing the whole intellectual field.\u201d (180)<\/p>\n

But all this meant, according to Charle, was that certain political powers felt they could better control those who were not considered \u201cthe best\u201d in their fields of expertise. In other words, the above became a strategic way to divide society into those who valued learning and continued education in various academic disciplines and those who could not get into or did not want to attend any formal institution for higher education. In an odd way, capitalism thrived with such a split, and those with political power knew it. The number of people on each side of the division grew. Both sides of the argument (for and against the Dreyfus Affair and all related) were able to gain support through petitions, elected officials, the church, the working man, the artists, the scholars, those who were in or who wanted to be in college, and others besides. All sides were able to find support for their assessments, and a cultural and social war broke out as a result. \u201cWhat a factor of order, of stability, of security is this elite made up of workers steadily arriving to swell the excessively thin ranks\u2026\u201d (58) But not everyone can be an expert. That\u2019s no reason to try and eliminate them and begin the all-too-current and dangerous, growing sentiment we still experience today of anti-intellectualism and laziness in the desire to read, write, and think critically. Things would change yet again once the term \u201cintellectual\u201d was not restricted to Dreyfusards alone. Anarchism was on the rise. (131) (Anarchists could be either intellectuals or anti-intellectuals, educated or uneducated, just as they are today in varying extremes.)<\/p>\n

As we enter the ordeal of the decades long Dreyfus Affair (a crisis of a rapidly changing society), a theme is established: the intellectuels<\/em> versus the bourgeoisie\u2014or as we might still know it today, the capitalist, income-driven individualist versus the collective oriented, humanitarian scholar, teacher, or artist. The only problem with Charle\u2019s research at this point is the lack of attention to who dominated both<\/em> sides of this story: the white man. Women and people of color are all generally left out of the analysis, although there are a few solid references to France\u2019s immigration policies. Thus, we see how psychological and actual racism was on the rise during the Dreyfus Affair, when those with social capital and power started to lose their power and control over society around 1880. Charle writes, \u201cThis ad hominem<\/em> polemic turned the procedure of extrapolating to a whole social group back on the Dreyfusards. Enlightened opinion was accordingly demoted to the level of a compendium of great men\u2019s quirks. The intellectuels<\/em> are an \u2018obscure elite\u2019 because their rank and file are embittered souls\u2026\u201d (127) Of course, this was and is not the case, but it was the reaction to the increase in power afforded to those who studied and taught the increasing numbers of college students, as well as an increase in literacy. Historically speaking and, relevant to contemporary times indeed, these shifts are critical. Professors and their students (academics!) could now be publicly viewed on the same expert level, for better or worse, as the men-of-letters, the scientists, the military, and the Church.<\/p>\n

The final chapters of this work are also exhaustive and historically important. They discuss in great detail the growing sentiments and actions of the now acceptable intellectual (with an \u2018a\u2019) Left and Right. For the Left, it was a question of defending Truth and Justice, not only the freedom to write and think any longer (as that was established). For the Right, it became the defense of the Fatherland and its army, \u201csocial institutions considered to be above everything else.\u201d (149) As academics were typically excluded from other forms of social power, intervening with public opinion, with students, and with the conclusions and research of scholarly experts were the route to achieving more Truth and Justice. (153) And again, it was \u00c9mile Durkheim in Bordeaux who established the first courses in social science, in a place where Charle notes the \u201cCatholic institutions were massively anti-Dreyfusard.\u201d (154) Engagement in the debate now became the role of public intellectuals (academics) and abstention the choice of \u201cnotables implanted in local society.\u201d The signing (or lack-there-of) of infamous and influential petitions demonstrates this phenomenon. Charle continues, \u201cOpposite this traditionalist legal pole stood the most Dreyfusard Parisian institutions: they were the most engaged and, at the same time, the ones that most nearly approximated the ideal of the research university inspired by Germany. Among them were the Ecole des chartes, the EPHE, and the Ecole normale sup\u00e9rieure.\u201d (156)<\/p>\n

A solid critique of Christophe Charle\u2019s work is that he does not address the rather large and obvious gender disparity in who was viewed as an expert or intellectual and the important roles women played in such a large social movement, where \u201cliterary writers are concerned only secondarily with sociology\u2026\u201d Enter the \u201cRadicals\u201d and the true separation of church and state at the start of the 20th<\/sup> Century, where many female intellectuals can be found, and for whom credit can be given. What we find from 1900 onward is the increasing ideal of equality among human beings and the intellectuals (with an \u2018a\u2019), which means (and meant) to be a professional<\/em>; that is, to be true to one\u2019s craft, talents, and timeless humanitarian spirit. You\u2019ll find radicals today, in our teaching and in our actions in general\u2014and not necessarily in our publications or lack-there-of. You\u2019ll find us at the ballot box and in the classroom, as well as on the streets. We continue to challenge the status quo and authority of the state through art, teaching, voting, writing and continued understanding with the scales of intersectional justice and liberty leading the way. Charle\u2019s scholarly research on the changes in the French social, political, military, and educational systems in the late 19th<\/sup> Century are vital to our continued understanding of the left-right dichotomy and the place of intellectuals in society, as his insights can be applied directly to why we are where we are today (including in the U.S.), and how such revolutionary changes, for better and worse, take place. J\u2019accuse!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christophe Charle, Birth of the Intellectuals: 1880-1900, David Fernbach and G.M. Goshgarian trs. Cambridge: Polity, 2015; 280 pp. ISBN: 978-0745690353. Reviewed by Christina Rawls, Roger Williams University. J\u2019accuse! The 2015 English translation of Christophe Charle\u2019s modern French classic is well overdue. (It was first published in 1990.) In this book, Charle traces the decades before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[120,13,45],"class_list":["post-6522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-philosophy-of-history","tag-politics","tag-social-philosophy","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 03:49:44","action":"Draft","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6522"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6905,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6522\/revisions\/6905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}