Challenging Binaries and Unfencing Fields: An Interview with Bryan Cheyette

Borrowing and Burrowing blog post

As Said writes in Representations of the Intellectual (1994), ‘the intellectual does not represent a statue-like icon, but an individual vocation, […] engaging as a committed and recognizable voice in language and in society with a whole slew of issues, all of them having to do with a combination of enlightenment [note lower case ‘e’] and emancipation or freedom’: from the road where all are free to unfenced fields of freedom. He instead advocates for a ‘space for individual and subjective intellectual representation, for asking questions’ (p. 61). Although he leans towards individualism here, asking questions is premised on dialogue and collaborative research. ‘Straying outside the accepted paradigms or limits’ is akin to Clare’s ‘walking where there was no path’ and the desire for a space of unfenced fields to air ideas and clear our heads: changer d’air.