Freest intellectuals stopped writing for an imagined future audience

Evidence

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Orientalists wrote for one another, but in the twentieth century and particularly after the Second World War this changed as experts on the Arabs and Islam were invited to write general books for a lay public as well as to contribute to newspapers, literary journals and programmes on radio and television. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 463 (#complicates, via linked claim)

It is important to recall here that Rushdie was not, until his recent and macabre sentencing by the Ayatollah Khomeini, an exile but a self-exile. Writers-in-exile often write primarily for readerships which are materially absent from the immediate conditions of their production, present only in the country from which the writer has been forcibly exiled, hence all the more vividly and excruciatingly present in the writer’s imagination because their actuality is deeply intertwined with the existential suffering of exile and with the act of writing as such. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 222 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Implicit in West’s insight is the assumption that the disappearance of political intellectuals in higher education corresponds to the passing of critical politics in public life. The effacement of progressive politics from public life is forcefully demonstrated in the response of many liberals and conservatives to the rise of a group of black public intellectuals who have challenged the notion that dominant public spheres such as the university can be called race-neutral or race-transcendent. Many black academics have raised the volume of the debate on the public intellectual by reasserting the notion of racial justice into public discourse while simultaneously redefining notions of social commitment, politics, and equality. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2632 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Twentieth-century Orientalists shifted from writing for peers to writing for a lay public — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists…, 463; The decline of political intellectuals tracks the decline of critical politics — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2632; Forced exiles write to an imagined home readership absent materially — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 222

Broader Connections

• Twentieth-century Orientalists shifted from writing for peers to writing for a lay public #complicates (0.80) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 463
• Forced exiles write to an imagined home readership absent materially #qualifies (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 222
• The decline of political intellectuals tracks the decline of critical politics #corroborates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2632