Does Britain have intellectuals?

The imperialism of the English language imprisons its speakers

Let us be clear: there may be intellectuals in Britain, but there are no British intellectuals8230; Intellectuals, born in every milieu, are society8217;s conscience. They don8217;t belong to a particular class. They can only flourish in an environment in which the pursuit of ideas, public debate and cultural matters is paramount, a world in which the school gives citizens the tools, curiosity and taste to engage in the Cite8217;s debate without any inhibitions. In that world, all citizens are potential intellectuals, only of different calibre.

In Britain, this notion triggers sneers. People feel they must apologise if they want to say something intelligent. When foreign journalists like me look for intellectuals to comment on an event or sociocultural trend, to offer a synthesis and bridge domains of knowledge, we hit a wall. All we find are self-confessed specialists, reluctant to engage in a larger debate and, above all, averse to dissent. These specialists are more like accountants than intellectuals.

But there are intellectuals in Britain. They get honours everywhere but their home country. The French exulted when Harold Pinter received the Nobel; Tony Blair didn8217;t even grab his phone to offer congratulations 8212; perhaps precisely because Pinter is an intellectual, who speaks the truth and never bows.

You will recognise these intellectuals easily; like Pinter, they never apologise before opening their mouth, they are not afraid of abstraction, they don8217;t refuse to dissent and, lastly, they don8217;t naively think that all intellectuals speak one language: namely, English8230;

Think Europe has no more intellectuals simply because you can8217;t find their books? Think again. Guess how many books in British bookshops are translations? Just 3 per cent 8212; meaning the bulk of the world8217;s intellectual output never gets read or discussed in Britain. If Camus, Borges, Calvino, Bourdieu, Foucault, Grass and Havel were young intellectuals today, they would not get translated into English. And if you8217;ve had enough of Levy besides the fact that he is too handsome to be true, it8217;s only because he is one of the few French intellectuals alive available in an English edition. One tires of always eating the same fruit.

The rampant imperialism of the English language contributes to the building of an ivory tower invisible to its inhabitants.

Excerpted from an article by Agnes Poirier in 8216;The Guardian8217;, May 2