Michel Foucault, who had at one time despaired of ever encountering real intellectuals, said that the intellectual's duty is "to question over and over again what is postulated as self-evident, to disturb people's mental habits, the way they do and think things, to dissipate what is familiar and accepted, to reexamine rules and institutions and on the basis of this reproblematization (in which he carries out his specific task as an intellectual) to participate in the formation of a political will (in which he has his role as citizen to play)."[footnote: See Michel Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (New York: Routledge, 1988), 324, 265.]Such Nietzschean moves could be quite invigorating if master narratives of hope are maintained as guiding principles.
(ix of Anouwar Majid's Unveiling Traditions: Postcolonial Islam in a Polycentric World)
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