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75-519: Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette ( French: [sidɔni ɡabʁijɛl kɔlɛt] ; 28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954), known mononymously as Colette , was a French author and woman of letters . She was also a mime , actress, and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her 1944 novella Gigi , which was the basis for the 1958 film and the 1973 stage production of the same name. Her short story collection The Tendrils of

150-493: A pseudo-scientific justification for the crimes of the state . In "An Interview with Milton Friedman" (1974), the American economist Milton Friedman said that businessmen and intellectuals are enemies of capitalism : most intellectuals believed in socialism while businessmen expected economic privileges. In his essay "Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?" (1998), the American libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick of

225-459: A much younger man. Chéri is the lover of Léa, a wealthy courtesan ; Léa is devastated when Chéri marries a girl his own age and delighted when he returns to her, but after one final night together, she sends him away again. Colette's marriage to Jouvenel ended in divorce in 1924, due partly to his infidelities and partly to her affair with her 16-year-old stepson, Bertrand de Jouvenel . In 1925, she met Maurice Goudeket, who became her final husband;

300-428: A pantomime entitled "Rêve d'Égypte" caused a near-riot, and as a result, they were no longer able to live together openly, although their relationship continued for another five years. In 1912, Colette married Henry de Jouvenel , the editor of Le Matin . A daughter, Colette de Jouvenel , nicknamed Bel-Gazou , was born to them in 1913. In 1920, Colette published Chéri , portraying love between an older woman and

375-715: A public school from the ages of 6 to 17. The family was initially well off, but poor financial management substantially reduced their income. In 1893, Colette married Henry Gauthier-Villars (1859–1931), an author and publisher who used the pen name "Willy". Her first four novels – the four Claudine stories : Claudine à l'école (1900), Claudine à Paris (1901), Claudine en ménage (1902), and Claudine s'en va (1903) – appeared under his name. (The four are published in English as Claudine at School , Claudine in Paris , Claudine Married , and Claudine and Annie .) The novels chart

450-474: A reporter: "You have to see and not invent, you have to touch, not imagine .. because, when you see the sheets [at a crime scene] drenched in fresh blood, they are a color you could never invent." In 1914, Colette was named Le Matin's literary editor. Colette's separation from Jouvenel in 1923 forced her to sever ties with Le Matin. Over the next three decades her articles appeared in over two dozen publications, including Vogue , Le Figaro , and Paris-Soir . During

525-518: A screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner and a score by Lerner and Frederick Loewe , won the Academy Award for Best Picture . In the postwar years, Colette became a famous public figure. She had become crippled by arthritis and was cared for by Goudeket, who supervised the preparation of her Œuvres Complètes (1948–1950). She continued to write during those years and published L'Etoile Vesper (1946) and Le Fanal Bleu (1949), in which she reflected on

600-403: A social class, Jean-Paul Sartre said that intellectuals are the moral conscience of their age; that their moral and ethical responsibilities are to observe the socio-political moment, and to freely speak to their society, in accordance with their consciences. The British historian Norman Stone said that the intellectual social class misunderstand the reality of society and so are doomed to

675-403: A status group they must be autonomous in order to be credible as intellectuals: It is relatively easy to demonstrate autonomy, if you come from a wealthy or [an] aristocratic background. You simply need to disown your status and champion the poor and [the] downtrodden [...]. [A]utonomy is much harder to demonstrate if you come from a poor or proletarian background [...], [thus] calls to join

750-534: A term which is sometimes applied today. The word intellectual is found in Indian scripture Mahabharata in the Bachelorette meeting (Swayamvara Sava) of Draupadi . Immediately after Arjuna and Raja-Maharaja (kings-emperors) came to the meeting, Nipuna Buddhijibina (perfect intellectuals) appeared at the meeting. In Imperial China in the period from 206 BC until AD 1912, the intellectuals were

825-774: A very young man, a situation reflecting her relationship with Bertrand de Jouvenel and with her third husband, Goudeket, who was 16 years her junior. La Naissance du Jour (1928) is her explicit criticism of the conventional lives of women, expressed through a meditation on age and the renunciation of love by the character of her mother, Sido. By this time Colette was frequently acclaimed as France's greatest woman writer. "It... has no plot, and yet tells of three lives all that should be known", wrote Janet Flanner of Sido  [ fr ] (1929). "Once again, and at greater length than usual, she has been hailed for her genius, humanities and perfect prose by those literary journals which years ago... lifted nothing at all in her direction except

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900-409: A wide variety of publications, gaining considerable renown for her articles covering social trends, theater, fashion, and film, as well as crime reporting. In December 1910, Colette agreed to write a regular column in the Paris daily, Le Matin —at first under a pseudonym, then as "Colette Willy." One of her editors was Henry de Jouvenel, whom she married in 1912. By 1912, Colette had taught herself to be

975-460: A worthy one. It was good enough to be praised and imitated in 18th century Europe. Nevertheless, it has given China a tremendous handicap in their transition from government by men to government by law, and personal considerations in Chinese government have been a curse. In Joseon Korea (1392–1910), the intellectuals were the literati , who knew how to read and write, and had been designated, as

1050-626: A writer if it had not been for Willy. Fourteen years older than his wife and one of the most notorious libertines in Paris, he introduced his wife into avant-garde intellectual and artistic circles and encouraged her lesbian dalliances. And it was he who chose the titillating subject matter of the Claudine novels: "the secondary myth of Sappho ... the girls' school or convent ruled by a seductive female teacher." Willy "locked her [Colette] in her room until she produced enough pages to suit him." Colette and Willy separated in 1906, although their divorce

1125-455: Is existentially -based", the intellectuals, who create and preserve knowledge, are "spokesmen for different social groups, and articulate particular social interests". That intellectuals occur in each social class and throughout the right-wing , the centre and the left-wing of the political spectrum and that as a social class the "intellectuals view themselves as autonomous from the ruling class " of their society. Addressing their role as

1200-517: Is associated with an ideology or with a philosophy . The Czech intellectual Václav Havel said that politics and intellectuals can be linked, but that moral responsibility for the intellectual's ideas, even when advocated by a politician, remains with the intellectual. Therefore, it is best to avoid utopian intellectuals who offer 'universal insights' to resolve the problems of political economy with public policies that might harm and that have harmed civil society; that intellectuals be mindful of

1275-528: Is attributed to Georges Clemenceau in 1898. Nevertheless, by 1930 the term "intellectual" passed from its earlier pejorative associations and restricted usages to a widely accepted term and it was because of the Dreyfus Affair that the term also acquired generally accepted use in English. In the 20th century, the term intellectual acquired positive connotations of social prestige , derived from possessing intellect and intelligence , especially when

1350-518: Is how Chilean intellectuals worked to reestablish democracy within the right-wing , neoliberal governments of the military dictatorship of 1973–1990 , the Pinochet régime allowed professional opportunities for some liberal and left-wing social scientists to work as politicians and as consultants in effort to realize the theoretical economics of the Chicago Boys , but their access to power

1425-564: Is one of the more significant phenomena of the social history of Germany in the 1830s". An intellectual class in Europe was socially important, especially to self-styled intellectuals, whose participation in society's arts, politics, journalism, and education—of either nationalist , internationalist , or ethnic sentiment—constitute "vocation of the intellectual". Moreover, some intellectuals were anti-academic, despite universities (the academy) being synonymous with intellectualism . In France,

1500-560: Is recalled in La Vagabonde (1910), which deals with women's independence in a male society, a theme to which she would regularly return in future works. During these years she embarked on a series of relationships with other women, notably with Natalie Clifford Barney and with Mathilde de Morny, the Marquise de Belbeuf ("Max"), with whom she sometimes shared the stage. On 3 January 1907, an onstage kiss between Max and Colette in

1575-403: Is to communicate the complex and specialized knowledge of the scientist to the general public. He argued that intellectuals were attracted to socialism or social democracy because the socialists offered "broad visions; the spacious comprehension of the social order, as a whole, which a planned system promises" and that such broad-vision philosophies "succeeded in inspiring the imagination of

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1650-533: The Scholar-officials ("Scholar-gentlemen"), who were civil servants appointed by the Emperor of China to perform the tasks of daily governance. Such civil servants earned academic degrees by means of imperial examination , and were often also skilled calligraphers or Confucian philosophers. Historian Wing-Tsit Chan concludes that: Generally speaking, the record of these scholar-gentlemen has been

1725-664: The Cato Institute argued that intellectuals become embittered leftists because their superior intellectual work, much rewarded at school and at university, are undervalued and underpaid in the capitalist market economy . Thus, intellectuals turn against capitalism despite enjoying more socioeconomic status than the average person. The economist Thomas Sowell wrote in his book Intellectuals and Society (2010) that intellectuals, who are producers of knowledge, not material goods, tend to speak outside their own areas of expertise, and yet expect social and professional benefits from

1800-551: The Dreyfus affair (1894–1906), an identity crisis of antisemitic nationalism for the French Third Republic (1870–1940), marked the full emergence of the "intellectual in public life", especially Émile Zola , Octave Mirbeau and Anatole France directly addressing the matter of French antisemitism to the public; thenceforward, "intellectual" became common, yet initially derogatory, usage; its French noun usage

1875-503: The German Occupation of France , Colette continued contributing to daily and weekly publications, a number of them collaborationist and pro-Nazi, including Le Petit Parisien , which became pro-Vichy after January 1941, and La Gerbe , a pro-Nazi weekly. Though her articles were not political in nature, Colette was sharply criticized at the time for lending her prestige to these publications and implicitly accommodating herself to

1950-645: The chungin (the "middle people"), in accordance with the Confucian system. Socially, they constituted the petite bourgeoisie , composed of scholar-bureaucrats (scholars, professionals, and technicians) who administered the dynastic rule of the Joseon dynasty. The term public intellectual describes the intellectual participating in the public-affairs discourse of society, in addition to an academic career. Regardless of their academic fields or professional expertise, public intellectuals address and respond to

2025-498: The essayist , the journalist , the critic , et al. Examples include Samuel Johnson , Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle . In the 20th century, such an approach was gradually superseded by the academic method, and the term "Man of Letters" became disused, replaced by the generic term "intellectual", describing the intellectual person. The archaic term is the basis of the names of several academic institutions which call themselves Colleges of Letters and Science . The earliest record of

2100-602: The halo effect derived from possessing professional expertise. In relation to other professions, public intellectuals are socially detached from the negative and unintended consequences of public policy derived from their ideas. Sowell gives the example of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), who advised the British government against national rearmament in the years before the Second World War . Henry de Jouvenel Too Many Requests If you report this error to

2175-403: The intelligentsia , a status class organised either by ideology (e.g., conservatism , fascism , socialism , liberalism , reactionary , revolutionary , democratic , communism ), or by nationality (American intellectuals, French intellectuals, Ibero–American intellectuals, et al. ). The term intelligentsiya originated from Tsarist Russia ( c.  1860s –1870s), where it denotes

2250-471: The normative problems of society, and, as such, are expected to be impartial critics who can "rise above the partial preoccupation of one's own profession—and engage with the global issues of truth , judgment, and taste of the time". In Representations of the Intellectual (1994), Edward Saïd said that the "true intellectual is, therefore, always an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on

2325-419: The reality of society, and who proposes solutions for its normative problems. Coming from the world of culture , either as a creator or as a mediator, the intellectual participates in politics, either to defend a concrete proposition or to denounce an injustice, usually by either rejecting, producing or extending an ideology , and by defending a system of values . The term "man of letters" derives from

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2400-546: The salon , a social institution, usually run by a hostess, meant for the edification, education, and cultural refinement of the participants. In the late 19th century, when literacy was relatively common in European countries such as the United Kingdom , the "Man of Letters" ( littérateur ) denotation broadened to mean "specialized", a man who earned his living writing intellectually (not creatively) about literature:

2475-534: The social stratum of those possessing intellectual formation (schooling, education), and who were Russian society's counterpart to the German Bildungsbürgertum and to the French bourgeoisie éclairée , the enlightened middle classes of those realms. In Marxist philosophy , the social class function of the intellectuals (the intelligentsia ) is to be the source of progressive ideas for

2550-417: The "Who?", the "How?" and the "Why?" of the social, economic and political status quo —the ideological totality of society—and its practical, revolutionary application to the transformation of their society. The Italian communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) developed Karl Marx 's conception of the intelligentsia to include political leadership in the public sphere. That because "all knowledge

2625-423: The "educated representatives of the propertied classes", of "revolutionary socialist intellectuals", such as were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . The Hungarian Marxist philosopher György Lukács (1885–1971) identified the intelligentsia as the privileged social class who provide revolutionary leadership. By means of intelligible and accessible interpretation, the intellectuals explain to the workers and peasants

2700-456: The 1991 film Becoming Colette , Colette is played by the French actress Mathilda May . In the 2018 film Colette , the title character is played by Keira Knightley . Both films focus on Colette's life in her twenties, her marriage to her first husband, and the publication of her first novels under his name. Source: Woman of letters An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking , research , and reflection about

2775-518: The Arts ( CalArts ) Feminist Art Program , and was the first public exhibition of art centered upon female empowerment. One of the rooms in it, Leah's Room by Karen LeCocq and Nancy Youdelman , was based on Colette’s Chéri . Karen and Nancy borrowed an antique dressing table and rug, made lace curtains and covered the bed with satin and lace to create the effect of a boudoir. They filled the closet with old-looking clothes and veiled hats, and wallpapered

2850-439: The English noun "intellectual" is found in the 19th century, where in 1813, Byron reports that 'I wish I may be well enough to listen to these intellectuals'. Over the course of the 19th century, other variants of the already established adjective 'intellectual' as a noun appeared in English and in French, where in the 1890s the noun ( intellectuels ) formed from the adjective intellectuel appeared with higher frequency in

2925-511: The French term belletrist or homme de lettres but is not synonymous with "an academic". A "man of letters" was a literate man, able to read and write, and thus highly valued in the upper strata of society in a time when literacy was rare. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the term Belletrist(s) came to be applied to the literati : the French participants in—sometimes referred to as "citizens" of—the Republic of Letters , which evolved into

3000-542: The Vichy regime. Her 26 November 1942 article, "Ma Bourgogne Pauvre" ("My Poor Burgundy"), has been singled out by some historians as tacitly accepting some ultra-nationalist goals that hardline Vichyist writers espoused. After 1945, her journalism was sporadic, and her final pieces were more personal essays than reported stories. Over the course of her writing career, Colette published over 1200 articles for newspapers, magazines, and journals. Upon her death, on 3 August 1954, she

3075-724: The Vine is also famous in France. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was born on 28 January 1873 in the village of Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in the department of Yonne , Burgundy . Her father, Captain Jules-Joseph Colette (1829–1905) was a war hero. He was a Zouave of the Saint-Cyr military school , who had lost a leg at Melegnano in the Second Italian War of Independence . He was awarded a post as tax collector in

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3150-421: The coming of age and young adulthood of their titular heroine, Claudine, from an unconventional 15-year old in a Burgundian village to a doyenne of the literary salons of turn-of-the-century Paris. The story they tell is semi-autobiographical, although Claudine, unlike Colette, is motherless. The marriage to Gauthier-Villars allowed Colette to devote her time to writing. She later said she would never have become

3225-600: The couple stayed together until her death. Colette was by then an established writer ( The Vagabond had received three votes for the prestigious Prix Goncourt ). The decades of the 1920s and 1930s were her most productive and innovative period. Set mostly in Burgundy or Paris during the Belle Époque , her work focused on married life and sexuality. It was frequently quasi-autobiographical: Chéri (1920) and Le Blé en Herbe (1923) both deal with love between an aging woman and

3300-471: The decades. Initially considered a limited if talented novelist (despite the outspoken admiration in her lifetime of figures such as André Gide and Henry de Montherlant ), she has been increasingly recognised as an important voice in women's writing. Before Colette's death, Katherine Anne Porter wrote in the New York Times that Colette "is the greatest living French writer of fiction; and that she

3375-471: The errors of logical fallacy , ideological stupidity, and poor planning hampered by ideology. In her memoirs, the Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher wrote that the anti-monarchical French Revolution (1789–1799) was "a utopian attempt to overthrow a traditional order [...] in the name of abstract ideas , formulated by vain intellectuals". The American academic Peter H. Smith describes

3450-663: The finger of scorn." During the 1920s she was associated with the Jewish-Algerian writer Elissa Rhaïs , who adopted a Muslim persona to market her novels. Colette was 67 years old when France was occupied by the Germans . She remained in Paris, in her apartment in the  Palais-Royal . Her husband Maurice Goudeket, who was Jewish, was arrested by the Gestapo in December ;1941, and although he

3525-767: The general public". This expresses a dichotomy, derived from Plato, between public knowledge and private knowledge, "civic culture" and "professional culture", the intellectual sphere of life and the life of ordinary people in society. In the United States, members of the intellectual status class have been demographically characterized as people who hold liberal -to- leftist political perspectives about guns-or-butter fiscal policy . In "The Intellectuals and Socialism" (1949), Friedrich Hayek wrote that "journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists, radio commentators, writers of fiction, cartoonists, and artists" form an intellectual social class whose function

3600-479: The gift, but “…when I protested that I couldn’t accept as a present something she so clearly adored, [she replied] 'My dear, really there is no point in giving a gift unless one also treasures it oneself.'” Womanhouse (January 30 – February 28, 1972) was a feminist art installation and performance space organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro , co-founders of the California Institute of

3675-405: The intellectual's activities exerted positive consequences in the public sphere and so increased the intellectual understanding of the public, by means of moral responsibility, altruism , and solidarity , without resorting to the manipulations of demagoguery , paternalism and incivility (condescension). The sociologist Frank Furedi said that "Intellectuals are not defined according to

3750-535: The intellectuals of Latin America as people from an identifiable social class, who have been conditioned by that common experience and thus are inclined to share a set of common assumptions (values and ethics); that ninety-four per cent of intellectuals come either from the middle class or from the upper class and that only six per cent come from the working class . Philosopher Steven Fuller said that because cultural capital confers power and social status as

3825-435: The intellectuals" to change and improve their societies. According to Hayek, intellectuals disproportionately support socialism for idealistic and utopian reasons that cannot be realized in practice. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre noted that "the Intellectual is someone who meddles in what does not concern them" ( L'intellectuel est quelqu'un qui se mêle de ce qui ne le regarde pas ). Noam Chomsky expressed

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3900-469: The jobs they do, but [by] the manner in which they act, the way they see themselves, and the [social and political] values that they uphold. According to Thomas Sowell , as a descriptive term of person, personality, and profession, the word intellectual identifies three traits: In Latin language , at least starting from the Carolingian Empire , intellectuals could be called litterati ,

3975-410: The literature. Collini writes about this time that "[a]mong this cluster of linguistic experiments there occurred ... the occasional usage of 'intellectuals' as a plural noun to refer, usually with a figurative or ironic intent, to a collection of people who might be identified in terms of their intellectual inclinations or pretensions." In early 19th-century Britain, Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined

4050-469: The margins of society". Public intellectuals usually arise from the educated élite of a society, although the North American usage of the term intellectual includes the university academics. The difference between intellectual and academic is participation in the realm of public affairs. Jürgen Habermas ' Structural Transformation of Public Sphere (1963) made significant contribution to

4125-414: The matters of public policy , the public intellectual connects scholarly research to the practical matters of solving societal problems. The British sociologist Michael Burawoy , an exponent of public sociology , said that professional sociology has failed by giving insufficient attention to resolving social problems, and that a dialogue between the academic and the layman would bridge the gap. An example

4200-410: The notion of public intellectual by historically and conceptually delineating the idea of private and public. Controversial, in the same year, was Ralf Dahrendorf 's definition: "As the court- jesters of modern society, all intellectuals have the duty to doubt everything that is obvious, to make relative all authority, to ask all those questions that no one else dares to ask". An intellectual usually

4275-570: The participation of academic public intellectuals in the public life of society is characterized by logically untidy and politically biased statements of the kind that would be unacceptable to academia. He concluded that there are few ideologically and politically independent public intellectuals, and disapproved public intellectuals who limit themselves to practical matters of public policy, and not with values or public philosophy , or public ethics , or public theology , nor with matters of moral and spiritual outrage. Socially, intellectuals constitute

4350-579: The problems of a writer whose inspiration is primarily autobiographical. She was nominated by Claude Farrère for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Colette's first pieces of journalism (1895–1900) were written in collaboration with her husband, Gauthier-Villars—music reviews for La Cocarde , a daily founded by Maurice Barres and a series of pieces for La Fronde . Following her divorce from Gauthier-Villars in 1910, she wrote independently for

4425-610: The public affairs of society. Consequently, being designated as a public intellectual is determined by the degree of influence of the designator's motivations , opinions, and options of action (social, political, ideological), and by affinity with the given thinker. After the failure of the large-scale May 68 movement in France, intellectuals within the country were often maligned for having specific areas of expertise while discussing general subjects like democracy. Intellectuals increasingly claimed to be within marginalized groups rather than their spokespeople, and centered their activism on

4500-413: The social and cultural ties created with their words, insights and ideas; and should be heard as social critics of politics and power . The determining factor for a "thinker" (historian, philosopher, scientist, writer, artist) to be considered a public intellectual is the degree to which the individual is implicated and engaged with the vital reality of the contemporary world, i.e. participation in

4575-592: The social problems relevant to their areas of expertise (such as gender relations in the case of psychologists). A similar shift occurred in China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre from the "universal intellectual" (who plans better futures from within academia) to minjian ("grassroots") intellectuals, the latter group represented by such figures as Wang Xiaobo , social scientist Yu Jianrong , and Yanhuang Chunqiu editor Ding Dong ( 丁東 ). In

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4650-495: The story of the 16-year-old Gilberte ("Gigi") Alvar. Born into a family of demimondaines , Gigi is trained as a courtesan to captivate a wealthy lover but defies the tradition by marrying him instead. In 1949 it was made into a French film starring Danièle Delorme and Gaby Morlay , then in 1951 adapted for the stage with the then-unknown Audrey Hepburn (picked by Colette personally) in the title role. The 1958 Hollywood musical movie, starring Leslie Caron and Louis Jourdan , with

4725-568: The term clerisy , the intellectual class responsible for upholding and maintaining the national culture, the secular equivalent of the Anglican clergy. Likewise, in Tsarist Russia, there arose the intelligentsia (1860s–1870s), who were the status class of white-collar workers. For Germany, the theologian Alister McGrath said that "the emergence of a socially alienated, theologically literate, antiestablishment lay intelligentsia

4800-399: The transformation of society: providing advice and counsel to the political leaders, interpreting the country's politics to the mass of the population (urban workers and peasants). In the pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1902), Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said that vanguard-party revolution required the participation of the intellectuals to explain the complexities of socialist ideology to

4875-469: The uneducated proletariat and the urban industrial workers in order to integrate them to the revolution because "the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness" and will settle for the limited, socio-economic gains so achieved. In Russia as in Continental Europe , socialist theory was the product of

4950-488: The universities of the U.S. are bureaucratic, private businesses, they "do not teach critical reasoning to the student", who then does not know "how to gauge what is going on in the general struggle for power in modern society". Likewise, Richard Rorty criticized the quality of participation of intellectuals in public discourse as an example of the "civic irresponsibility of intellect , especially academic intellect". The American legal scholar Richard Posner said that

5025-434: The view that "intellectuals are specialists in defamation , they are basically political commissars , they are the ideological administrators, the most threatened by dissidence ." In his 1967 article " The Responsibility of Intellectuals ", Chomsky analyzes the intellectual culture in the U.S., and argues that it is largely subservient to power . He is particularly critical of social scientists and technocrats, who provide

5100-662: The village of Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye where his children were born. His wife, Adèle Eugénie Sidonie, née Landoy (1835–1912) was nicknamed Sido . Colette's great-grandfather, Robert Landois, was a wealthy Martinican mulatto, who settled in Charleville in 1787. In an arranged first marriage to Jules Robineau Duclos, Colette's mother had two children: Juliette (1860–1908) and Achille (1863–1913). After she remarried Captain Colette, she had two other children: Leopold (1866–1940) and Sidonie-Gabrielle. Colette attended

5175-562: The walls to add a feeling of nostalgia. LeCocq sat at the dressing table dressed in a nineteenth-century-style costume as Léa, studiously applying make-up over and over and then removing it, replicating the character’s attempts to save her fading beauty. "Lucette Stranded on the Island" by Julia Holter , from her 2015 album Have You in My Wilderness , is based on a minor character from Colette's short story Chance Acquaintances . In

5250-476: The wealthy in common cause appear to betray one's class origins. The 19th-century U.S. Congregational theologian Edwards Amasa Park said: "We do wrong to our own minds, when we carry out scientific difficulties down to the arena of popular dissension". In his view, it was necessary for the sake of social, economic and political stability "to separate the serious, technical role of professionals from their responsibility [for] supplying usable philosophies for

5325-421: Was contingent upon political pragmatism , abandoning the political neutrality of the academic intellectual. In The Sociological Imagination (1959), C. Wright Mills said that academics had become ill-equipped for participating in public discourse, and that journalists usually are "more politically alert and knowledgeable than sociologists, economists, and especially ... political scientists". That, because

5400-482: Was not final until 1910. Colette had no access to the sizable earnings of the Claudine books – the copyright belonged to Willy – and until 1912 she conducted a stage career in music halls across France, sometimes playing Claudine in sketches from her own novels, earning barely enough to survive and often hungry and ill. To make ends meet, she turned more seriously to journalism in the 1910s. Around this time she also became an avid amateur photographer. This period of her life

5475-833: Was refused a religious funeral by the Catholic Church on account of her divorces , but given a state funeral , the first French woman of letters to be granted the honour, and interred in Père-Lachaise cemetery. Colette was elected to the Belgian Royal Academy (1935), the Académie Goncourt (1945, and President in 1949), and a Chevalier (1920) and Grand Officer (1953) of the Légion d'honneur . Colette's numerous biographers have proposed widely differing interpretations of her life and work over

5550-715: Was released after seven weeks through the intervention of the French wife of the German ambassador, Colette lived through the rest of the war years with the anxiety of a possible second arrest. During the Occupation she produced two volumes of memoirs, Journal à Rebours (1941) and De ma Fenêtre (1942); the two were issued in English in 1975 as Looking Backwards . She wrote lifestyle articles for several pro-Nazi newspapers. These, and her novel Julie de Carneilhan (1941), contain many anti-Semitic slurs. In 1944, Colette published what became her most famous work, Gigi , which tells

5625-412: Was while Gide and Proust still lived." Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash paid tribute to the writer in the song, "The Summer I Read Colette", on her 1996 album 10 Song Demo . Truman Capote wrote an essay in 1970 about meeting her, called "The White Rose". It tells how, when she saw him admiring a paperweight on a table (the "white rose" of the title), she insisted he take it; Capote initially refused

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