Intellectuals and the quest for a new political culture

The contemporary “global society” (Habermas) shows evidences of a new historical paradigm with multifarious – economical, social, cultural and political – implications. This paper tries to dissect, throughout different axes of analysis, the contradictions and puzzling aspects inherent to the global techno-economic status quo and the growing instrumental rationality (Horkheimer & Adorno). It also attempts to scrutinize cultural-political alternatives to the current “res publica mundialis”, which has created a hybrid public sphere devoid of critical consciousness and “cultural-political imagery”. In this context, the figure of the intellectual contemplated as a “representative figure” (Saïd) with the “responsibility” to be engaged with the truth and sustain human liberty values, equality and participated democracy. Therefore, as autonomous and “attached/detached” social actors, the intellectuals face the challenge of resisting against commodity culture, to stimulate cultural dialogue between distinctive value clusters in our globalised society (Benhabib) and to alert the public and political spheres for the significance of a new “civilization leap” (Naïr, Morin). In a sense, this paper stresses the compromise of the intellectuals to think about new forms and the reforms of political culture and to promote a framework for political change concerning the crucial role of culture in the quest of a more pluralistic, but not hybrid and fragmented, “glocalized” democracy.