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PARTISAN REVIEW
their peripheries, but peripheries-on the basis of some elective affin–
ity-choose (and thus create) their centers. Clearly, well into the twen–
tieth century the United States was at the cultural periphery of Europe,
but its emergence into cultural self-sufficiency did not make Europe a
periphery of the United States, because Europe did not choose the
United States as its center.
The question "European/American Relations: Who Leads?" also
assumes the cultural uniformity of Europe. But Europe is not a cultural
unity. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the American literary
world was peripheral to the British one, but future American authors of
nonfiction turned for guidance to Germany. France replaced Italy as the
art center; American artists had to pass their apprenticeship in Paris.
And in
1917
Russia emerged as the ideological beacon by the light of
which American so-called "critical" intellectuals oriented themselves in
politics. All this time most European countries hardly existed on Amer–
ica's mental horizon. These two historically unwarranted assumptions,
however, are consistent with the idea of "globalization": if the world is
merging into one community, it is reasonable to presuppose that it
would have one center and a culturally uniform periphery.
Of greater importance, perhaps, is the assumption of the constant
and unproblematic meaning of the term "intellectual." Explicitly, the
term "intellectual" has been defined as a social category, as a synonym
of "literati," the relatively more educated sector of the population. Usu–
ally, however, largely by analogy to the Russian "intelligentsia," which
actually formed a coherent social group, or class, with a specific code of
behavior, style of life, and collective ethos, the term refers to a subgroup
of this population. Which subgroup among the educated classes it is
applied to is largely a matter of changing convention. At different times
in different places "intellectuals" were all those who earned their living
by mental work, excluding those who engaged in intellectual activities
in their spare time; all those who found intellectual activities engaging;
only those who engaged in secular mental activities, thus excluding
clergy and theologians; only those who engaged in humanistic mental
activities, excluding scientists and medics, and very often excluding per–
forming artists; only creative artists and scientists, excluding their audi–
ences; only the audiences, putting artists and scientists in a special
category; and finally only those with a particular ideological orienta–
tion, whether or not otherwise engaged in intellectual activity. Such was
the influential definition of "critical," later "revolutionary," intelli–
gentsia that emerged as dominant in Russia towards the end of the nine–
teenth century-the source of the American notion of "critical
