what is the role of an intellectual?
From Edward Said, who argues for, in a way, a conflation of the public writer and the public intellectual:
“[D]uring the last years of the twentieth century, the writer has taken on more and more of the intellectual’s adversarial attributes in such activities as speaking the truth to power, being a witness to persecution and suffering, and supplying a dissenting voice in conflicts with authority“ (127).
“While it is true and even discouraging that all the main outlets are, however, controlled by the most powerful interests and consequently by the very antagonists one resists or attacks, it is also true that a relatively mobile intellectual energy can take advantage of and, in effect, multiple the kinds of platforms available for use. [...] Think of the impressive range of opportunities offered by the lecture platform, the pamphlet, radio, alternative journals, occasional papers, the interview, the rally, the church pulpit, and the Internet, to name only a few.“ (132)
“The intellectual’s role is dialectically, oppositionally to uncover and elucidate the contest I referred to earlier, to challenge and defeat both an imposed silence and the normalized quiet of unseen power wherever and whenever possible. For there is a social and intellectual equivalence between this mass of overbearing collective interests and the discourse used to justify, ignore, or mystify its working while also preventing objections or challenges to it.“ (135)
“Part of what we do as intellectuals is not only to define the situation, but also to discern the possibilities for active intervention, whether we then perform them ourselves or acknowledge them in others who have either gone before or are already at work, the intellectual as lookout“ (140).
“I conclude with the thought that the intellectual’s provisional home is the domain of an exigent, resistant, intransigent art into which, alas, one can neither retreat nor search for solutions. But only in that precarious exilic realm can one first truly grasp the difficulty of what cannot be grasped and then go forth to try again“ (144).
From Herbert Marcuse, one of my favorite critical theorists:
The intelligentsia are “those who, by virtue of their privileged position, can pierce the ideological and material veil of mass communication and indoctrination” (284). The intelligentsia is not a revolutionary class, but instead “has a decisive preparatory function.” They may be “the pet beneficiaries of the established system” (and this should not be forgotten), “But they are also at the very source of the glaring contradictions between the liberating capacity of science and its repressive and enslaving use. To activate the repressed and manipulated contradiction, to make it operate as a catalyst of change, that is one of the main tasks of the opposition today” (285). “[E]ducation today,” he writes, “is more than discussion, more than teaching and learning and writing. Unless and until it goes beyond the classroom, until and unless it goes beyond the college, the school, the university, it will remain powerless” (285).
Marcuse states that the intelligentsia’s role isn’t to organize others or communities as it has tried in the past (285), but rather to “confront indoctrination in servitude with indoctrination in freedom. We must each of us generate in ourselves, and try to generate in others, the instinctual need for a life without fear, without brutality, and without stupidity. And we must see that we can generate the instinctual and intellectual revulsion against the values of an affluence which spreads aggressiveness and suppression throughout the world” (286).
When I read that the work of an intellectual spreads to outside of the schools, I think of the need to help develop public spheres where others can speak and talk. The intellectual’s role (at least in the humanities), as I see it, then, is not only to offer counterdiscourse, but to help foster public arenas where others can speak — not to organize others, but to help foster democratic public spheres for marginalized or silenced folks.
Marcuse, Herbert. “Liberation from the Affluent Society.” Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. Ed. Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner. New York: Routledge, 1989. 276-287.
Said, Edward W. “The Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals.“ Humanism and Democratic Criticism. New York: Columbia UP, 2004. 119-144.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Found your post via a del.icio.us link. I’ve been thinking about the role of the public intellectual/public writer for some time now. I think you’re right about the need to “foster public spheres,” and it’s something I’ve been trying to incorporate into my own work and teaching. I think that one of the biggest challenges of blogging is to use our (limited) cultural capital to champion these alternative voices. Great collection of quotes, btw.
I think your reading is interesting. I was reading more Said today–go figure–and part of his discourse touched upon the loss of the commons. Where you write about opening up more spaces, not just engaging in counter-discourse, touches on that very same concern. I don’t believe there has been enough discussion or attention to the loss of commons.
Part of this may also be that so many individuals who could be intellectuals do not identify or ally themselves with groups, and one result is that they allow/ privilege themselves with outsider/ disassociated status: life as a critic. From what I can tell, being an intellectual means being engaged and doing work that benefits the community. Answering to that community, being held accountable, is a critical part of the work–and it helps us keep our ethics and morals.
The above commenter has a point, and I do think blogs are an important way to bring out voices. As intellectuals working in universities, we have access to resources that many other people do not have. I think it is important that we work harder to open up these very spaces, to “leverage” them as it were, for the public good.
Yes, I have this stuff on the brain. I think what is more important than any specific question about being an intellectual or what our role is as an intellectual, is that we do actual work, communication, and interaction with people in order to express and test our theories and ideas. We need to not just perform; our performances need to intervene in corporeality and have impacts.
Thanks for the Tag Cloud link. I jacked it!
Role of the Intellectual Property Unit
The Intellectual Property Unit is responsible for the development of intellectual property policy, the preparation of legislation and the provision of an intellectual property regime which reflects the international law environment and best practice.
The Unit also acts as a liaison section between the Department and the Patents Office on policy and legislative matters.
The Patents Office (Address: Government Buildings, Hebron Road, Kilkenny; Telephone: 056 7720111) is responsible for the granting of patents; the registration of industrial designs and trade marks; the provision of information on patents, designs and trade marks; and has certain limited functions under the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 in relation to Copyright disputes.