My intention in this article is to read Nazlı Eray's works in terms of her revision of the role and function of the Turkish intellectual. Eray's revision also serves as a critique of the Western notions of the intellectual, not only because Turkish definitions are influenced by Western debates, but also because she deliberately situates her writing in an international and cosmopolitan context. This article falls into three parts. The first part presents a general sketch of the tendency to particularize the universalist definitions of the intellectual in the West. From the 1920's to the present, the Western conception of the intellectual has moved towards a demystification and deprivileging of the intellectual's function and contribution to society. His image is reduced from an idealist and selfless leader who thinks in terms of the whole to a highly specialized expert in a limited field. In the second part, I show that the dynamics of defining the role of the intellectual in the Turkish context works conversely. From the 1920's to the present, the intellectual has been the spokesperson and implementor of specific ideologies, party or class politics. As embodied in İlhan and Batur's discussions of the intellectual, this is viewed as a problem in the Turkish context. The answer they propose to the supposedly blind and self-interested particularity of the Turkish intellectual is to push him toward a more universalist vision. I focus in this section on Atilla İlhan and Enis Batur because they have been vocal in the recent discussions of the role of the intellectual in Turkey. They are also symptomatic of the Turkish tendency to elevate the place of the intellectual. In other words, they are representative of the position undermined in Nazlı Eray's works. The last part of the article focuses on the ways in which Nazlı Eray deconstructs both the Turkish and Western narratives of the intellectual in order to reconcile a universalism of wide human definitions with the particularity of specific contexts and actions.
