‘The New Bourdieu’: The Public Intellectual in the Shared Interventions of Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida

This article presents a new account of the relationship between Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida. Often presented in opposition to one another, I argue that their work together in the 1990s challenges this orthodox view. This article draws on their shared political engagements against repressive migration laws in France, which included co-founding institutions, writing shared newspaper articles and appearing together on radio and television. I propose that both use this collaboration to theorize the public intellectual anew. In their account of the intellectual, we see three primary characteristics: intellectuals should act collectively; intellectuals are part of a larger media ecology; and intellectuals should refer to universal ideas. I argue that their collaboration is underpinned by a common conception of the universal as historically mediated, but nevertheless a critical reference point for academic and intellectual work. Ultimately, I argue that the intersection in their work points to a need to reconceive the dividing lines in our accounts of post-1960s French philosophy.