Abstract
Michael D. Kennedy on contributing to a culture of critical discourse.
I write more about public intellectuals than I perform the role, but in recent years, I’ve moved more into knowledge activism, from expressions of solidarity with Ukraine to commentaries on my congressional district’s elections. But that hardly captures public intellectuality’s many forms and themes, credentials and identifications, audiences and networks, contributions and contentions.
With this range, does it still make sense to speak of public intellectuals, especially in an era when intellectuality is so widely distributed and contested? Yes. It comes down to something that might sound quaint, but I still find it revolutionary.
We must consider the companion notion of “intellectual responsibility.” And doing so demands that we answer two questions: For whom is knowledge work done? And on what qualities of truthfulness does intellectuality depend?
Contexts is “public-facing,” but which publics count? When our predecessors would write about “knowledge for whom,” they may have questioned axes of social difference around class, race, gender, and sexuality, but less often publics beyond the United States. We may work globally, but public-facing work beyond the English vernacular is typically invisible.
There are, of course, global publics for whom English is no barrier. But the hegemonies in that work are apparent in its assumptions. For example, decolonizing discourses have become increasingly public when trans-oceanic empires are understood as the principal perpetrators of expropriation and extermination. While global recognition for the evil of that 21st-century blend of Russian racism and fascism evident in the portmanteau of paшuзм (rashism) grows, distant publics may still find it difficult to characterize its war on Ukraine in colonizing terms.
Recall public discussions of Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion. One story was about the remarkable global solidarity addressing their precarity, while another thread was woven with the color line in mind. Why were White Ukrainians received so hospitably when earlier flights of Syrians, Afghans, and even contemporary Africans studying in Ukrainian universities were met with doubts?
The contradictory layers of truthfulness around refugees to Europe from war, especially with this juxtaposition of the global color line and paшuзм both in mind, are not familiar fare for any public. Human rights professionals know this challenge, but when the fate of refugees becomes an element of war and geopolitical maneuvering, no expertise suffices in accounting for complexity. Among other places, Chad’s eastern border and the southern border of the United States today reinforce the point. And that leads us to matters of truthfulness.
The exercise of intellectual responsibility takes many forms. One of our greatest mantras in sociology is to “speak truth to power.” We can see that clearly when colleagues mobilize their cultural capital to challenge institutions, from academic administrations to judiciaries. Contributions are not always so public, however. Sometimes, the contest happens discreetly within the workplace; other times, the authors are not even seen, as when an amicus brief is buried in court proceedings. I would still name these exercises as expressions of public intellectuality because they go beyond professional obligation to marshal reason and evidence on behalf of the public good.
Many understand public intellectuals as those who mobilize their rhetorical and research skills on behalf of organizations seeking justice and of communities suffering harm. It’s hard to overlook the inspiration that folks from Gramsci to Grace Lee Boggs have provided, but their social, not intellectual, responsibility leads their legacy. To the extent their struggles for justice are realized through the terms of a “culture of critical discourse,” those contributions also express intellectual responsibility. But intellectuals can also be more political than scholarly, using their capacities to outwit opponents, if not always to deepen or extend truthfulness.
We should not consider the point of public intellectuals to be a name game. Instead, we might consider how any contest is informed by qualities of truthfulness that go beyond fact-checking.
Public intellectuals often deploy reason and evidence to illuminate hidden assumptions of a public act and elaborate its less evident consequences. They might go even further to consider which publics matter and whose well-being counts, especially when contradictions make any choice harmful.
In the end, the point of public intellectuals is to contribute to a culture of critical discourse that makes the world more just and sustainable. But do they? Do we? Is it enough?
Public intellectuals want to know!