L'image sans le son: Le petit the´atre des intellectuels franc¸ais au XXe sie ¤ cle

Insofar as 'intellectuals' constitute a social grouping in France, they have given rise - and continue so to do - to a number of differing 'representations' in the public consciousness. This article examines the ways in which 'images' of intellectuals have developed in the French case, looking in particular at the ways in which certain personalities were represented at the time of the Dreyfus Affair (the 1890s), as well as at some more recent examples taken from the pages of the weekly Nouvel Observateur .