Milli mála - 26.04.2009, Page 256

Due to the lack of democratic exchange within the society par-
ticular groups tend to shut themselves away, in order to defend the
remains of their own identity or even diversity. Thus the society
becomes less and less democratic. Among those groups, Lasch iden-
tifies a category of intellectuals, specifically scholars, who, in hid-
ing themselves behind an apparent liberalism, take an active part
in the general involution of the present. Lasch believes that the
apparent liberalism of a certain kind of American scholar actually
coincides with its opposite, that is racism.9 On this matter, it is
interesting to notice Pasolini’s point of view on intellectuals and
culture twenty years earlier:
We intellectuals always tend to identify ‘culture’ with our own
culture; moral with our own moral and ideology with our own ide-
ology. This means that: 1) we do not use the word ‘culture’ in a sci-
entific way; 2) we express a certain insuppressible racism towards
those who live, precisely, a different culture.10
Pasolini’s passage about the racist tendencies of Italian intellectuals
is related to the one exposed by Christopher Lasch, when he
describes the position of liberal American intellectuals as regards
the two major fears which – according to Lasch – paralyze our soci-
ety: fanaticism and racial warfare. Lasch claims that “those who
worry overmuch about ideological fanaticism often fall into a com-
placency of their own, which we see especially in liberal intellec -
tuals. […] They see themselves, these devoutly open-minded intel-
lectuals, as a civilized minority in a sea of fanaticism.”11 In this
way, that is by shutting themselves up in an ivory tower of eman-
cipation, this kind of intellectuals, far from having overcome preju -
dices operates a culturally racist divide between themselves and the
rest of the society.
INTELLECTUALS BETWEEN DISSOCIATION AND DISSENTING
256
9 Ibid, p. 184.
10 Pier Paolo Pasolini, Scritti corsari, p. 56.
11 Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites, pp. 89–90.
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