1) No one, in fact, has ever attempted a _theoretical_ analysis of what "anti-intellectualism" even means. It is a pretty empty swear word, avoiding matters of substance...
2) I asked first for a theoretical critique. If I were to define anti-intellectualism I would define as the belief that truth can be achieved through experience.
Carrol
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Are you familiar with Kant's epistomology, i.e matters of fact, matters of logic, matters of experience? Each employs a different critiria to evaluate their respective fields (and truth) of knowledge.
Well nevermind. Marx was trained in German philosophy as a student in the new Hegelians. He revolted because he understood that experience in the concrete and or material or actually existing world, or what we might call sociology showed him a different world. The world taught him the vast difference between theory and practice. He was one of the most important `intellectuals' of the 19thC. Back then intellectuals were considered the critical class of the bourgeoise. He joined a long tradition of such critics which included Kant, the first generation of the age of Hegel, some of the romantics like Victor Hugo (or less so Dickens) but certainly Zola, Baudelair,Whitman, Crane, Courbet, Manet, Van Gogh, and many different writers and artists---many from the lower ranks of the bourgeois orders...a few from the working class.
Okay so that is a rough sketch of the intellectual class and its social function, which is a endless critique of the way things are.
Now what is anti-intellectualism?
Basically, these (some combination of people and ideas) are composted of roughly the same socio-economic class who generate the enfabled mentality of the bourgeois who attempt to defend the justice and proper privilaged positions of their own order. It's a kind of intellectually degenerate apology something along the lines of Melton Freedman or Larry Summers who blather out the free market theories---all that has definitely been demostrated false by events, my man, events, events which I feel, see, hear, and understand after a lot of searching. That is to say, I've tried to bring all the parts of my education to bare on understanding the world. In other words, I am an intellectual---although a bloody poor one. So I can sense in my working class buddies, their fear and loathing of people like me---
So I hide that part of myself. I certainly don't talk about Thomas Mann or his famous children. I don't talk about the wonderful theme in Doktor Faustus...that knowledge can only be had through a bargin with Satanic forces of evil.
There is a lot to understand about the US working class and its anti-intellectualism, its distrust of their teachers and true mentors...guys like Mike Yates and Chris Hedges who both teach to prisoners. I would teach figure drawing, which in prison would be other inmates and not nude girls, since they are obviously not available.
A man's face and body, reflect his struggles and deform the physical body through its subjection under work. You can see it in statistics like the weight/height index which shows a decline from the 1790s to the 1860-70s at the height of industrialization. Or, you can see it in the arts and literature. You can also see slavery in the early photograps of small black men and women in dusty shacks and their grandchildren like big man Leadbelly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slpuGLXplEk
My mother-in-law, literally a coal miners daughter, was four foot, ten inches and died of lung disease. Her grandson is five eleven, maybe six foot. I fed him everything I could think of, and thankfully he had no vices.
Your problem Carrol is you can not see history ... or you deny its reality. I am a shrimp, barely five foot five or maybe a little more and there is a reason. My mother lived in alcoholism and near poverty. I was a normal sized kid in Mexico because most kids came from the same deprived circumstances. I am loosing my teeth the way old people do in the third world. It has its benefits. I can stand around with Mexican Americans and enjoy their attention because I resemble their grandparents. We have no cultural affinity, exception our mutual struggles and their recognitions. Well that isn't entirely correct because I liked Mexico of yore, the peasants, the music, the arts, the heart, the increditable beauty that was once upon a time...
CG