THE CONCEPT 'INTELLECTUAL' IN THE POSTMODERN SOCIAL STRUCTURE: MICHEL FOUCAULT'S 'THE SPECIFIC INTELLECTUAL' AND ZYGMUNT BAUMAN'S 'INTERPRETERS'

The concept of the intellectual has been addressed by many authors, including Foucault and Bauman. Foucault challenges the universal concept of the intellectual, which has been widely accepted in Western thought, emphasizing the need for a new understanding of the intellectual subject within the postmodern social structure, which he refers to as the ‘specific intellectual’. According to Bauman, the modern perspective defines intellectuals as ‘lawgivers’, while postmodernism highlights the role of the ‘interpreter’. In this context, in the postmodern era, the ‘lawgiving’ feature of intellectuals has gradually disappeared, taking the form of the ‘interpreters’. This paper will analyze the contributions of Michel Foucault and Zygmunt Bauman, specifically Foucault’s ‘specific intellectual’, who does not place himself above the masses but works with them on concrete fronts of social/political struggle, and Bauman’s two paradigms of the intellectual: the lawgiver of modernity and the interpreters of postmodernity. Thus, the postmodern intellectual is a translator of challenging reality, without claiming access to absolute truths.