Seite - 146 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 2/2016

146 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 2 2o16 Peter Burke | Cultural displacements and intellectual moorings am writing, by accident I have been to interview Mikuláš Teich16, because he has had the good fortune to live to 97 and still to be very lucid. He used to teach history of science. He heard of my seminar “Exiles in the history of knowledge” and he wrote to me saying, could he see my script, because he couldn’t come to the talk, being unable to walk well anymore. He was a double exile: he left Slovakia in 1939 because he was Jewish. Then, he was a communist, he went back after 1945, he was close to Dubcek, so he was out again in 68 and he never went back except for a visit. It was fascinating to talk to him, but I never planned a set of interviews and it is really too late for oral history. It would have been a great thing to do in the sixties. So many highly articulate people, a few were persuaded to write an autobiographical essay, texts which I have been using, but asking particular questions would have led further. But it is too late. In France, for instance, “national” intellectuals (philosophers, anthropologists) have a stage when important political issues are up for debate. Charlie Hebdo and the November attacks are examples. Is there anything comparable in other countries? The intellectual has less status here and is less likely to be asked to give his own views on a public issue just because he is a well-known academic scholar. The danger of the French approach is that there is pressure on certain people to make public statements on subjects they don’t know about. That happens in Italy and Brazil a lot. In Brazil a historian like me gets asked by a journalist to make comments on who should be the next governor of São Paulo – I always avoid that kind of question. During Nine-eleven we were in Recife in North-east Brazil, working in an archive. The archivist came and said “you have got to come and look at the television”. The next day somebody from the newspaper interviewed me and asked “Is this a major turning point in history?”. But in England there is no chance of such an interview. Some people like Bertrand Russell give themselves this role of a public intellectual, but they have to work hard to do it. Where intellectuals have something to contribute – because they have special knowledge of something, like e.g. a specialist of the Middle East – that is good. But where there is pressure on somebody just because he is well known just for something, to talk about another thing, I am sceptical. My friend Carlo Gins- burg has this nice word, he says he doesn’t want to be a “tuttologo”17. Is there an idea that scholars could have a mission in supporting initiatives, a mission to fulfil in civil society in times like the present? Yes – and there is a whole group of historians, a bigger group than you might think in the case of the UK, who decides to specialise in the history of another country. For this, to start with you need to go to the other country to look in the archive. But then, you are living in that country for years, and to make good use of the archive you need to understand the culture. The first time I went to Italy I didn’t realise that when Italians say ‘no’ they don’t mean ‘no’ in the 16 Mikuláš Teich, Slovak science historian. See the autobiographical account by his wife, historian Alice Teichova (1920-2015), and him: Alice Teichova and Mikuláš Teich. Zwischen der kleinen und der großen Welt: Ein gemein- sames Leben im 20. Jahrhundert. Autobiografie, Damit es nicht verlorengeht, bearbeitet von Gert Dressel und Michaela Reischitz (Wien: Böhlau, 2005) 17 There is an ironical turn in the use of the word, considering un personaggio tuttologo, a pretended know-it-all.