On the Periphery: Some suggestions for defining the political role of intellectuals

Abstract

Using examples from the Euro-American imperial project in Afghanistan, this paper aims at presenting methodological principles that could be useful to intellectuals in confronting contemporary social problems. The four methodological principles are as follows: (i.) capillarity (intellectual research must locate power at the extremes of its area of exercise, in those areas where it becomes illegal); (ii.) the identification of subordinated subjects (power relations must be analysed “from below”, which means that priority should be given to analysing the ways in which various power techniques affect subordinated subjects); (iii.) deconstruction of the system of knowledge (intellectuals must focus on the system of knowledge which is being produced by power to legitimate its aims); (iv.) the formulation of a model of power (starting “from below”, from the analysis of subordinated subjects and the power techniques used on them, it is necessary to formulate a more general definition of the model of power).