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. 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. 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'.