-
Hazards of the Higher Debunkery
- Journal of the History of Ideas
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 68, Number 3, July 2007
- pp. 363-368
- 10.1353/jhi.2007.0021
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
In Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain, Stefan Collini deploys a fiercely skeptical wit against what he calls the "absence thesis": the cliché view of England as a land peculiarly lacking in intellectuals. The brio and aggression with which he demolishes this longstanding myth serve a paradoxical double function, marking his own claim to a place in the specifically English and male tradition of writing that he so effectively deconstructs.