In order to find whether or not Public Intellectuals are extinct in American society, one must ask if intellectualism is antithetical to technology? The answer is seemingly, No. If anything, technology allows an intellectual to be more productive, to comment on more topics, to research continuously and to interact with other intellectuals in a public forum, outside the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post.
That is to say, intellectualism is alive and thriving then, if technology supports mental Ping-Pong and not inhibits it. Even so, one must not neglect holes in the “productivity breeds mental ingenuity” thesis. A recent New York Times Room for Debate article on education highlights the increasing “pre-professionalism” of the American university system. Higher education in the United States looks more like a European technocratic academy than the inheritor of the Greek educational tradition (of learning for its own sake). This contrasts with the “American Dream breeds intellectualism” thesis as argued by Stephen Mack. However, on the surface, this should not be a problem with reference to finding the “lost” Public Intellectuals, but a future problem to be dealt by academics and educators, alike.
The important thing then is not if Public Intellectuals are still in existence and carry influence, but where they are. And one of the problems people will undoubtedly have is finding these Public Intellectuals in the Blog sections for The Nation, Salon or Vanity Fair, considering the negative perceptions people have of new mediums of communication.
Daniel Drezner, a professor at Tufts University, elaborates on these mediums:
The growth of online publication venues has stimulated rather than retarded the quality and diversity of public intellectuals.[1] The criticisms levied against these new forms of publishing seem to mirror the flaws that plague the more general critique of current public intellectuals: hindsight bias and conceptual fuzziness. Rather, the growth of blogs and other forms of online writing have partially reversed a trend that many have lamented – what Russell Jacoby labeled the “professionalization and academization” of public intellectuals. In particular, the growth of the blogosphere breaks down – or at least lowers – the barriers erected by a professionalized academy.
I think Drezner’s last statement demonstrates why Russell Jacoby believes in the “Death of the Public Intellectual,” because not only are all the “great thinkers” dead, but the barriers to entry into the “club” of intellectuals is lower. Hence, technology has made intellectualism democratic and the only requisites to becoming a Public Intellectual are that there are none.
Sure, one must be educated, one must be well written and one might even be intelligent, but certainly in the past one did not have to be a Ph.D. As it where, “the market” dictates who is and who is not a Public Intellectual. And as along as a market exists in American society for intellectualism, one can easily assume that Public Intellectuals will continue to exist and bare some influence whether ancillary or not.
So, who are these Public Intellectuals? This question is more difficult to answer than one would imagine. Drezner offers a scatterbrained list. Foreign Policy and Prospect Magazine have several lists as well. Hey, Christopher Hitchens even has a take on it. Resonating, Drezner’s earlier argument concerning the democratization of intellectualism, I think the answer to the question is open for debate for many candidates, however there are some human beings who stand out immediately.
One of these people is Noam Chomsky. Say what you will about his politics, but one cannot deny that the man, a linguist by training and activist by intrigue, embodies the spirit of Public Intellectualism in America as set out by Thoreau. The most important reason why Noam Chomsky is a Public Intellectual is that he is ever critical on what he writes and speaks. Chomsky makes it easier to judge his motives since he does not suffer from the “academization” of public intellectuals. In other words, he answers to no institution, since Politics and International Relations are not his disciplines, in other words he embodies "Intellectualism with Transparency."
In an interview for UC Berkeley’s Conversations with History, Chomsky articulates best why ideology, like intellectualism, need not be an elite effort. He describes a group of textile workers from Massachusetts who came up with Marxian thoughts on wage slavery, without knowing of Marx and Engels. And in this way, he resonates Stephen Mack by demonstrating that intellectualism need not be an elitist affair.
Ultimately, what is most important for any intellectual not just a public intellectual is to resonate Antonio Gramsci and to be a “pessimist in the intellect and an optimist in the will.” But, what is dually important to note, especially when reading through these lists of Public Intellectuals, is to ask if intellectualism is truly needed for influence? Hopefully.
[1] For a prior argument in this vein, see Susan Kates, “Emerging Technologies and the Public Intellectual,” Literature Interpretation Theory 16 (October 2005): 381-388.
