Privileged Nomads

This article explores some aspects of the long-standing metaphoric conjunction between the images of the intellectual and that of the stranger in the history of social thought (cf. Simmel's portrayal of the stranger as intellectual and Mannheim's picture of the freischwebende Intelligenz as collectively estranged). Recently, this conjunction has re-emerged in the self-complimentary image of the `exilic' or `nomadic' intellectual, who is torn between identities and transgresses cultural and linguistic traditions (Foucault, Deleuze, Saïd, Braidotti). The article offers a critical appraisal of the intellectualist presumption lurking behind such self-identifications, and raises the issue of intellectual spokespersonship in the novel conditions of a postmodern `society of strangers'.