Intellectual History vs. the Social History of Intellectuals

Intellectual history, as it is practised today, covers a broad spectrum of approaches to the past: discourse studies in the wake of the 'linguistic turn', close textual analysis, intellectual biography, history of books and reading, institutional histories of science and academic disciplines, the history of something called 'intellectual life', histories of ideologies and of political thought and language. Within this diversity can be found two broad schools of historical practice. What we are talking about when we talk about 'intellectual history' is either the history of thought, on the one hand, or the social history of intellectuals, on the other. This distinction often goes unrecognized, largely because it has been overshadowed by other historiographical issues. Much of the recent discussion of intellectual history has focused on 'poststructuralism', 'post-modernism' and the linguistic turn, but post-structuralist history is more talked about than practiced. With noted prominent exceptions, most historians, including intellectual historians, have not taken the linguistic turn, or taken it only partially.This paper examines the roots of the history of thought/social history of intellectuals distinction in the accommodation of intellectual history to the new social history. It aims to rethink the accommodation to social history, and to suggest a new departure for intellectual history: one that unites the older history of ideas tradition with post-modernism by looking to the historical relationship between ideas, texts and modes of thought, rather than the social identities and institutional lives of those who happen to be associated with those ideas, texts and modes of thought.