The Institutionalisation of the Public Intellectual (original) (raw)
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The Academic as Public Intellectual: Examining Public Engagement in the Professionalised Academy
In this paper we critically consider the widely held conception that the public intellectual is in decline. We present a more sanguine fate of this figure, arguing that today we observe a flourishing of intellectuals. One such figure is the academic intellectual who has often been looked at with suspicion as a technical specialist. This conception suggests that university intellectuals are diluted versions of the historical conception of the ‘true’ public intellectual – that is, an ‘independent spirit’ that fearlessly challenges unjust power. In this paper, we contest this view, arguing that this historical conception, idealised as it may be, nevertheless can inform scholastic activities. By resituating the public intellectual as a kind of temperament rather than a title, we examine its pressing – but at the same time uneasy – relevance to contemporary academic life. Counter posing this with contemporary instrumental conceptions of research impact, we suggest that where possible the intellectual academic should aspire to go beyond academic institutional norms and requirements. Hence, the academic public intellectual refers to a temperament, which is in but not of the academic profession.
Beyond the ivory tower: the public role of the intellectual today
Phronimon, 2011
In this paper, I attempt to contextualise the question regarding the public role of the academic as intellectual in terms of the present, global, neo-liberal "govern-mentality". With the aid of thinkers such as Bourdieu, Foucault, Sennett, Arendt, but also social geographer, David Harvey, it becomes clear that neoliberalism radically attenuates the individual's capacity to enter the public sphere. This incapacitation leads to the inevitable depoliticisation of intellectual labour through the increasing individualisation of the self, on the one hand, and the rampant privatisation of the public, on the other hand. This is explained by laying bare the corrosive impact and pervasive nature of neoliberalism. Foucault and Bourdieu nevertheless believe in the possibility of resistance, which they locate in the individual and in his/her capacity as politicised intellectual. However, the repoliticisation of intellectuals and their role in the political sphere presupposes a more fundamental recovery of the public sphere. The tactical question regarding the possibilities of and means to resistance is therefore rooted in the ontological question regarding the freedom of the self that comes into being in the social space between the self and the other. In the final analysis, the thought of Levinas is used to argue that fidelity to the self is not realised through the pursuit of limitless freedom (although our freedom is undeniably at stake), but in the social dimension, which enables the self -via the other -to re-enter the public and eventually the political sphere.
A personal reflection of the influence of the public intellectual in neoliberal times
2019
This chapter offers a personal reflection and part narrative on the intellectual and academic influence of Ivor's work and thought. In a sense, this 'story' begins before we'd ever met, or I'd even heard of his work, yet reflects areas of commonality, trajectories and passions, which we are now as likely to discuss during personal interactions, as any academic concerns.
Introduction: a Special Issue on Public Intellectuals
International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 2012
This special issue is devoted to the contemporary phenomenon of the public intellectual. Since the 1980s, historians and social scientists have lamented the alleged decline of the public intellectual in the course of the twentieth century (e.g., Jacoby 2000), but more recent commentators rightly contend that there is little empirical evidence to support this "declinist" argument, at least in its rudimentary fashion (e.g., Collini 2006; Baert and Shipman 2012). Of course, compared to the era of Sartre or Russell, there is no longer as much scope for the authoritative public intellectual-that is, a generalist who speaks out with moral vigor about a wide range of disciplines and who is steeped in a high profile discipline like philosophy. However, it would be wrong to treat the decline of the authoritative intellectual as the fall of the public intellectual altogether (Baert and Shipman 2012). As some of the contributions in this issue argue, new possibilities for public engagement have emerged, thereby creating new relationships between intellectuals and their publics. Some of the contributions to this issue pay attention to the role of new institutions and new technologies in the motives and means by which intellectuals engage publicly. The papers by Peter Dahlgren and by Patrick Baert and Josh Booth both explore the effect of online media and blogging which have become prevalent especially in the last decade. Dahlgren explores the potential effects of the "digital age" for democratic institutions and the public sphere, whereas Baert and Booth analyze in detail the changing nature of the relationship between the public intellectual and his or her publics. Whilst both contributions acknowledge that the new technologies are rapidly evolving and can be used for different purposes (which makes the future an unknown quantity), they are also keen to emphasize the genuinely democratic or dialogical potential of online media and the extent to which this potential has been incompletely realized. These two papers also draw attention to the continuities with earlier periods: for instance, Baert and Booth show how deep-seated tensions within the notion of the public intellectual, which go back as far as the late nineteenth century, reappearperhaps with renewed force-in its current manifestations. Whereas those two papers analyze the new media, Barbara Misztal pays attention to novel institutional formations, in particular think tanks. As research centers devolved from
The Ethical Academic: Academics as Public Intellectuals
Online Submission, 2013
Twenty-five years ago, American sociologist Robert Bellah Bellah (Bellah, et al., 1986: 303) critiqued the growing isolation of intellectuals within universities and called for a return to "social science as public philosophy." Little seems to have changed. My thirty-seven year experience at the University of Alberta suggests that academics see self-isolation as key to career success. Today's academic seems to work alone, engage in esoteric researching or theorizing, and publish single-authored articles in high-impact journals. At the University of Alberta, and I assume at other tier one universities, working to engage a wide public does not rank highly on Faculty Evaluation Committee's (FEC) annual reviews of academic work. This paper asks whether university-based academics are becoming irrelevant to wider publics and whether our intellectual leadership is waning. Here, I trace the history and importance of public intellectuals and make a case that ethically university-based academic leaders must become public intellectuals who engage the larger public through writing, speaking, or acting. Rooted in both Renaissance and Enlightenment, a public intellectual is a learned person shining a light on a public sphere. Although our postmodern sense has eroded many Enlightenment myths, I make the case that active ethical academic leadership should not be thrown to that wreckage. Here, I discuss the tradition of public intellectuals-discussing who, where, how, and what they are. I review the tradition of some historic and more recent public intellectuals like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Said, Henry Giroux, and James K. A. Smith. I discuss why public intellectuals must speak fearlessly regardless of antiintellectual traditions that might position academics as targets for ridicule. I discuss public ACADEMICS AS PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS 3 intellectuals as both teachers and outline a number of practical and collaborative ways that academics might engage the public. This paper is framed on the beliefs that a university is (1) a place where academics work to protect and extend the best of a society's culture and knowledge, (2) can be a living witness to how knowledge can positively infuse a culture and a society, and that (3) academics are meant to serve the general good.
Critical Questions in Education, 2019
The figure of the public intellectual and the act of public pedagogy are fairly central to varieties of critical pedagogy. Public intellectuals have historically been those who speak truth to power and challenge dominant ways of thinking, and critical pedagogy argues that academics have to take up this call, leaving the ivory towers and entering the public sphere. Critical pedagogues are not alone in their concern about the retreat of intellectuals or academics from public life, yet to what extent are these notions of the public intellectual tied to a pre-digital age, and how might the digital age undermine these notions? In this paper, we argue that the digital has facilitated the death of the traditional public intellectual as the means of intellectual production have been dispersed throughout society. Turning to Paolo Virno's writing on potential and history, we examine the pedagogy of the public intellectual and present a new configuration of learning and studying that emphasizes the infinite potentiality of history and the present. Whereas most scholarship defines learning as the actualization of potential, we show that potential is never fully actualized. Such a configuration introduces the need to historically saturate political acts with meaning , which we argue is the new task of public intellectuals in the postdigital age. In order to do this, however, academics who wish to contribute to social movements must embed themselves and operate within social movements, joining the leadership of organic intellectuals and professional revolutionaries, and even viewing their own critical work not as the production of new knowledge but rather the amplification of existing knowledges generated through these struggles, shifting the educational register from epistemology to ontology, and the educational mode of operation from teaching to collective studying.
Situating Public Intellectuals
The concept of the public intellectual has always been a somewhat contested term. This article serves as both an introduction to the debates around what it constitutes and an entry point into how the new media environment is producing a different configuration of the public intellectual. Through key thinkers who have addressed the idea of the public intellectual internationally and those who have focused on the Australian context, this essay positions the arguments made by the authors in this special issue. Via a short case-study of TED, the conference and online idea-spreading phenomenon, it argues that the contemporary moment is producing and privileging a different constellation of experts as celebrities that match the exigencies of online attention economy. A shifted conception of the public intellectual is beginning to take shape that is differently constituted, used and situated, and this article helps to define the parameters for further discussion of these transformations. To cite: Marshall, P David and Atherton, Cassandra (2015), 'Situating public intellectuals', Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy, 156 (August), 69-78.
Public engagement professionals in a prestige economy: Ghosts in the machine
Studies in Higher Education
Over the last decade there has been significant investment made by a UK higher education policy and funding community in embedding 'public engagement' within British universities. While some public engagement is undertaken by university staff,-often on a voluntary and unpaid basis (Viewforth 2018)-much is carried out by public engagement professionals (PEPs), typically from within professional services divisions. Institutional leadership for this activity is liable to be complicated by interactions between academic and non-academic staff, although the nature of relationships between these and their impact on the success of engagement has been unclear. The following account, based upon a multi-site case study of institutional leadership for public engagement, accordingly considers, through a Bourdieusian lens, the challenges faced by PEPs as 'non-academics' working within the UK's university sector as a 'prestige economy' (Blackmore and Kandiko 2011). It reveals their struggle to gain a professional parity of esteem with academics, and how the discrediting of their expertise by the latter forms a challenge to their leadership and thus their displacement within universities as highly stratified organisations. Ergo, we find the evanescing of public engagement as a formal institutional commitment.