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Abstrak :
"Who exactly are the 'intellectuals'? This term is so widely used today that we forget that it is a recent invention, dating from the late nineteenth century. In Birth of the Intellectuals, the renowned historian and sociologist Christophe Charle shows that the term 'intellectuals' first appeared at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, and the neologism originally signified a cultural and political vanguard who dared to challenge the status quo. Yet the word, expected to disappear once the political crisis had dissolved, has somehow endured. At times it describes a social group, and at others a way of seeing the social world from the perspective of universal values that challenges established hierarchies. But why did intellectuals survive when the events that gave rise to this term had faded into the past? To answer this question, it is necessary to show how the crisis of the old representations, the unprecedented expansion of the intellectual professions and the vacuum left by the decline of the traditional ruling class created favourable conditions for the collective affirmation of 'intellectuals.' This also explains why the literary or academic avant garde traditionally reluctant to engage gradually reconciled themselves with political activists and developed new ways to intervene in the field of power outside of traditional political channels. Through a careful rereading of the petitions surrounding the Dreyfus Affair, Charle offers a radical reinterpretation of this crucial moment of European history and develops a new model for understanding the ways in which public intellectuals in France, Germany, Britain, and the United States have addressed politics ever since"--From publisher's website.

Abstrak :
Although the filmmaker Satyajit Ray is well known across the world, few outside Bengal know much about the diverse contributions of his forebears to printing technology, nationalism, childrens literature, feminism, advertising, entrepreneurialism, and religious reform. Indeed, even within Bengal, the earlier Rays are often very inadequately known and associated exclusively with childrens literature. The first study in English of the multifarious interests and accomplishments of the Ray family and its collateral branches, The Rays before Satyajit reconstructs the multidimensional Ray saga and interweaves it with the larger history of Indian modernity. While eager to learn from the West and rarely drawn to simple-minded nationalism, the Rays, at their best, shunned mere imitation and sought to create forms of the modern that were thoroughly Indian and enthusiastically cosmopolitan. Some of the outcomes of this quest, such as Upendrakishore Rays innovations in half-tone photography and block-making, were admired in the West, though the metropolitan careers of colonial innovators, the book shows, were inevitably constrained by forces beyond their control. Within India and Bengal, however, many of the Rays innovations were of enduring significance, and when situated in their contexts, they help us understand the tensions and contradictions of the pursuit of modernity in an economy that was neither capitalistic nor politically autonomous. Ranging across the history of religion, literature, science, technology, and entrepreneurial culture, The Rays before Satyajit is not only the first collective biography of an extraordinary family but also a book that illuminates the history of Indian modernity from a new perspective.