In the present article we approach different critical interpretations of the figure and the work of the intellectual. We start with Lyotard’s analysis of the decline of universalist parameters and the consequent disappearance of the figure of the classical intellectual. Next, we analyze the description of this figure made by Foucault and Blanchot, of which they defend its validity. These two authors explore the labour of the intellectual from a different perspective than the prescriptive, universalist and liberating discourses that characterized (...) it for a certain time. Proposing in this way a remarkable shift in the way of understanding the intellectual commitment, both bet on the affirmation of some practices without any programmatic theoretical anticipation, which will demand an exposure and alteration of the subject, where knowledge will no longer be safeguard, foundation or orientation. (shrink)