'Between two evils, I refuse to choose the lesser'

For French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the issue of the agency of intellectuals was paramount. Bourdieu maintained that intellectuals have a fearsome form of social responsibility. Having witnessed the 'institutional misuse of authority' common among academics, the 'canonized stupidity' that was part and parcel of the educational system, the faddishness of intellectual trends and the 'cult of "transgression"' that underwrote this faddishness, Bourdieu crafted an alternative position and practice that were to bear fruit in the context of the fight against neo-liberalism during the last two decades of the twentieth century. This essay provides an examination of Bourdieu's theory of the gap between theory and practice, how intellectuals shape and are influenced by this gap and what can and should be done to challenge it.