Intellectual status is defined by social relations, not by work’s intrinsic nature

Evidence

The most widespread error of method seems to me that of having looked for this criterion of distinction in the intrinsic nature of intellectual activities, rather than in the ensemble of the system of relations in which these activities (and therefore the intellectual groups who personify them) have their place within the general complex of social relations. Indeed the worker or proletarian, for example, is not specifically characterised by his manual or instrumental work, but by performing this work in specific conditions and in specific social relations (apart from the consideration that purely physical labour does not exist and that even Taylor’s phrase of “trained gorilla” 6 is a metaphor to indicate a limit in a certain direction: in any physical work, even the most degraded and mechanical, there exists a minimum of technical qualification, that is, a minimum of creative intellectual activity.) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 264

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core methodological move: intellectual activity is a matter of position within social relations, not intrinsic content — foundational for the toolkit.
• XREF: This is the scaffolding concept later Islamophobia readings of ‘who counts as a knowledge producer’ would build on — connects to Gramsci’s hegemony and the construction of the Other.