The Significance of Theory, Terry Eagleton includes an essay "Criticism, Ideology and Fiction," wherein he clarifies the difference between academics (who may or may not be intellectuals) and intellectuals. If one looks at the traditional Western understanding of the intellectual, then it seems to me to be characterized by at least two distinct questions. At intellectual is not simply somebody who trades in ideas. I have many colleagues who trade in ideas whom I'd be extremely reluctant to call intellectuals. An intellectual is somebody who trades in ideas by transgressing discursive frontiers, because he or she sees the need to do that. Secondly, an intellectual is somebody who trades in ideas in their vital bearing on a wider political culture. Eagleton's distinction rests of the assumption of a quality of critical openness that enables transgression. Clearly, he considers it essential that intellectuals be creative thinkers, explorers in the realm of ideas who are able to push to the limits and beyond, following ideas in whatever direction they might take.
-bell hooks, "Black Women Intellectuals" in Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Lifeby bell hooks and Cornel West, pg. 152
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