How Intellectuals Perform: Meaning Making and Community in the Czechoslovak Philosophical Underground

Abstract

This article moves beyond the conventional strictures of the sociology of intellectuals, which is preoccupied with intellectuals’ texts, power struggles and institutional trajectories. Instead, I propose to focus on intellectuals’ situated performances as a way into analysis of the dynamics of their relations and mutual influences. Drawing on theoretical resources from the Strong Program in cultural sociology, I argue that their performances have both social and cultural impact through disseminating ideas, facilitating the emergence of social ties and the production of new social selves in intellectuals’ audiences. I demonstrate the importance of situated intellectual performances in the case of unofficial philosophy in socialist Czechoslovakia.