French Intellectual Nobility: Institutional and Symbolic Transformations in the Post-Sartrian Era (S U N Y Series in the Sociology of Culture)

The book is of particular interest to American audiences because it illuminates the specific aspects of French intellectual culture that help to explain the emergence and popularity of structuralism and why French culture has retained its trademark as a high-status cultural good. Kauppi shows the symbolic boundaries of the post-Sartrian French intellectual nobility and indicates how its definitions of what constitutes intellectual excellence differ from its opposition.