Intellectuals and Power

[T]he masses know perfectly well what's going on, it is perfectly clear to them, they even know better than the intellectuals do, and they say so convincingly enough. But a system of power exists to bar, prohibit, invalidate their discourse and their knowledge - a power located not only in the upper echelons of censorship, but which deeply and subtly permeates the whole network of society. The intellectuals are themselves part of this system of power, as is the idea that intellectuals are the agents of "consciousness" and discourse. The role of the intellectual is no longer to situate himself "slightly ahead" or "slightly to one side" so he may speak the silent truth of each and all; it is rather to struggle against those forms of power where he is both instrument and object: in the order of "knowledge," "truth," "consciousness," and "discourse."

 (by Michel Foucault, in conversation with Deleuze... from Desert Islands and other Texts 1953-1974, p.207)