Intellectuals’ self-image as autonomous stems from their historical esprit de corps

Evidence

Since these various categories of traditional intellectuals experience through an “esprit de corps ” their uninterrupted historical continuity and their special qualification, they thus put themselves forward as autonomous and independent of the dominant social group. This self-assessment is not without consequences in the ideological and political field, consequences of wide-ranging import. The whole of idealist philosophy can easily be connected with this position assumed by the social complex of intellectuals and can be defined as the expression of that social Utopia by which the intellectuals think of themselves as “independent”, autonomous, endowed with a character of their own, etc. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 261

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the mechanism by which traditional intellectuals come to see themselves as independent of ruling groups — a core Gramscian concept.
• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s account of how idealist philosophy serves as ideological cover for intellectual autonomy, and to later theory on how knowledge producers naturalize their own position.