Zones of Disengagement (Page 3)

A second peculiarity that is exposed by Collini's reference to French writers is the relative attention accorded to educational institutions. In France the École Normale Supérieure is very specifically associated with notions of the intelligentsia--the Dreyfusard campaign more or less started in the library of the ENS, and one of France's most prominent intellectuals, the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, actually lived in the school for almost all his adult life. Even more important than the ENS itself are the khâgneux (particularly at the elite Paris lycées), which prepare students for entry to the ENS. Even people who did not go to the ENS (Pierre Nora, Philippe Ariès, Roland Barthes) were heavily marked by the years they spent preparing for its entrance examination. Jacques Derrida began his obituary of Bourdieu by recalling how the two men met in hypokhâgne at Louis-le-Grand. Régis Debray's recent writings on the death of the intellectual contain touching recollections of his own time at Jeanson-de-Sailly. French work on intellectuals has a very strong institutional focus--Sirinelli's thèse d'état was about normaliens and khâgneux between the wars.

The English education system is less centralized and less explicitly elitist than the French one. Nonetheless, some institutions clearly play a larger role than others. When Collini refers to "Cambridge," he usually means just two of the university's thirty-one colleges (Trinity and King's). Trinity was the college of Lytton Strachey, Trevelyan, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Piero Sraffa. Its fellowship (about the size of the faculty at a very small liberal arts college) have won nearly as many Nobel Prizes as France.

Of course, it might be argued that the real feature of elite education in England was its anti-intellectualism. Public schools (by which the English mean expensive private schools) are often seen to be characterized by their disdain. Cyril Connolly wrote bitterly that Eton had taught him to hide his cleverness "as a good tailor hides a hump." Later Connolly was said to have been hurt when he overheard his fellow Etonian Alfred Ayer quoting Virginia Woolf: "I do not like that smarty boots Connolly." Of course, both of these remarks should be taken with a pinch of salt. If Eton aimed to teach either Ayer or Connolly to hide his cleverness, then it was singularly unsuccessful. In fact, Eton's role in the formation of the British intelligentsia is at least as important as that of Henri IV or Louis-le-Grand in forming the French intelligentsia. Aldous Huxley was a pupil and then a teacher at Eton; Keynes was an Etonian and, even in the middle of World War II, found time to act as a fellow of the school. Orwell was a contemporary of Connolly; the historian and New Left Review editor Perry Anderson must have been pretty much a contemporary of the sociologist Gary Runciman there--though Anderson, a great one for drawing attention to the normalien mafia in French intellectual life, did not mention this when he reviewed Runciman's book on forms of privilege and power.

Eton's role has become more important during the twentieth century. It has eclipsed both Harrow, which once enjoyed an almost equal degree of social prestige, and Winchester, which is more academically rigorous. This is linked partly to the school's peculiar nature. Most of its pupils are very rich. However, the school also has a number of scholarship boys concentrated in "College." Scholarship boys are rarely very poor--most seem to be drawn from what Orwell, referring to himself, described as the "lower upper middle class." However, the mingling of what Péguy referred to as héritiers and boursiers allows both to trade on a complicated mixture of social and cultural capital. Eton offers its pupils three particular advantages. First, the school imbues its students with the confidence to believe they can engage with big ideas--no one would suggest that Alec Douglas Home, who was a contemporary of Orwell and Connolly at Eton, was an intellectual, but it is illustrative of Etonian intellectual confidence that he is the only British prime minister ever to have read Das Kapital. Second, Etonians are imbued with the confidence that other people will be interested in their opinions. Third, Etonians have a network of contacts and advantages that smoothes entry into the New Left Review as easily as it smoothes entry into N.M. Rothschild.

Being an intellectual, Collini concludes by tying his academic expertise to some broad general statements. He urges his readers (composed in large part, one assumes, of British intellectuals) to accept that intellectuals have always been part of British national life. He is relatively optimistic about the current state of British intellectual life--pointing out that the LRB today reaches more readers than the Tribune and Horizon put together did when Orwell wrote for them. He advances some slightly worthy views on the virtues of long radio talks and articles in literary periodicals, along with stern warnings about the enemies of promise that lurk behind each invitation to write an 800-word book review. However, he is sometimes so keen to show that Britain is not unique in lacking an intelligentsia that he understates the ways in which the intelligentsia it does have differs from that of other countries. He is particularly prone to understate its more disagreeable features. There is a coziness and complacency about the British intellectual world. This is partly a matter of social background. The leading intellectuals are drawn together by common education and by mutual acquaintance. Apart from those (often the most left-wing) who have been tempted to well-endowed chairs in the United States, the majority of British intellectuals live and work within walking distance of King's Parade or Russell Square.

There is, however, more to it than that. In purely social terms, the French intelligentsia is more close-knit than the British one--the intellectual history of France is really the history of two Paris arrondissements. What makes France different from Britain is politics. The sharp political divisions of twentieth-century France meant that even old camarades de classe such as Sartre and Aron ended up criticizing each other. More important, French intellectuals take themselves seriously enough to regard their own mistakes as being significant. Ex-Communists such as Edgar Morin, ex-Maoists such as Olivier Rolin and ex-Maurrassians such as Raoul Girardet have written with great insight about their own youthful errors. You find little of this in England. British intellectuals have often changed their mind. Many of them changed their views on Soviet Communism after 1956. Many of them moved from Marxism to support for the attempt to launch a Social Democratic Party during the early 1980s. Many of them supported Tony Blair in 1997 and condemned him after 2003. All of these about-turns have been accompanied by much pontification on the faults of British politicians and sometimes by barely disguised disdain for the population that elected those politicians. Yet almost none of these about-turns have been accompanied by much sense that the intelligentsia itself might be at fault. One is reminded of the joke that they used to tell in the French Communist Party in the 1950s: "X has written his self-critique." "Oh, good. Against whom?"

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.