Mapping the aliran of the academic discipline of entrepreneurship: A ...

2.2.2.01 The intellectual has been described as a ‘somewhat elusive figure’ [Fuller, 2005,
p2]. Long an historical figure from the times of Plato’s Sophists [Fuller, 2005] the
intellectual offers a discursive counterpoint to the discipline that may not be provided by
the practitioner.
Academics have a long and tortured relationship with intellectuals. Although they
should be on the same side, if not the same people, academics and intellectuals
usually regard each ot her with mut ual suspicion. Each treats the ot her as an
interloper who floods the market with inferior products. Most of what passes for
‘criticism’ in academia strikes the true intellectual as little more than comfort
thinking; whereby criticism is cloaked in esoteric jargon that amuses one
colleagues but goes over the head of its putative target and hence merely succeeds
in comforting the converted [Fuller, 2005, p136].
2.2.2.02 The question arises as to whether intellectuals fall under the category of savoir
or connaissance knowledges. Foucault [2004] talks about savoir and connaissance
knowledges but is less than specific, and ambivalent. Sherida n Smith, the editor of
Foucault’s ‘The archaeology of knowledge’ comments:
Connaissance refers to a particular corpus of knowledge, a particular discipline –
biology or economics, for example. Savoir, which is usually defined as knowledge
in general, the totality of connaissance, is used by Foucault in an underlying, rather
than overall, way [in Foucault, 2004, p 16].
The general rule seems to be that savoir is a broader definition of knowledge, knowledge
of self (even with a spiritual content), whereas connaissance relates to bodies of
knowledge, intellectual knowledge and to where knowledge is a component of access to
truth [Foucault, 2005]. Intellectuals would, under the definition of intellectual knowledge,
fall into the classification of connaissance knowledges, yet they do not ha ve the epistemic
justification with regards knowledge as a compo nent of access to truth. Their knowledge is
also broader based than that available under the epistemological constraints in the
discipline. Accordingly I have, without any undue dissonance, created a third category of
discursive knowledge that places intellectuals in a middle position in my mode l. Some
intellectuals may be academics, but not all academics are intellectuals.
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