on being intellectual in public

sometimes you hear about the dearth of brilliant public intellectuals these days. where is our 21st-century Marshall McLuhan or Noam Chomsky or Susan Sontag? headlines like this one seem to resonate, recurr. how nostalgic and melancholy for us, that somehow the world's society is just too big and fractured now for anyone to uniformly celebrate and respect any public figure. everything and everyone is too much undermined by shadows of problematicalness.

but at the same time, it's easier now to be a intellectual in public with the internet. public doesn't just mean on mainstream television or at the top of the best bestseller lists or in the biggest newspapers anymore. you can be intellectual on twitter (like this historian who has a pet bunny), or on Twitch (like these climate scientists), or on your own little blog (like Sara Ahmed).

all of us on the internet are more or less in public, whenever we want to be and sometimes even when we don't want to be.

do I count this little blog as part of being a public intellectual? not really. it's not quite public enough. it's not always very academic either, despite its humble ivory tower origins.

but is academic the same as intellectual? not always. you can have one without the other. academic seems more of a form to be followed-- conventions and styles you expect scholars to use. intellectual feels more inward, more spiritual almost-- of the mind. regardless of outward form, we can be intellectual as long as we're sharing our understandings of things or exploring our thoughts and reasons.

this brings me back to Sara Ahmed. she's someone I'd vote for in the category of admirable public intellectual for this century. since 2016 she's worked as an independent scholar, which makes her an academic intellectual without a formal academy. that takes guts and clout and determination. very admirable.

I'm glad she does the work she does in public. someday, hopefully, I'll get a chance to hear her speak. until then, her writing is all over the internet, and in some books and articles, and I really should read more of it.

who gets your vote for coolest public intellectual? I feel like this post could've been much longer and ramblier, full of disjointed musings about other public figures who work with thoughts and ideas in front of large audiences. Neil deGrasse Tyson probably counts, though he says some wacko things about the arts and humanities from time to time. Gloria Steinem and Jane Goodall too, though they seem like figures from the core of the 20th-century even though they are surely still using their intellects today. do John Oliver and Trevor Noah count? Oprah? what about YouTube personalities like this lawyer or the Green brothers? are they all public enough? intellectual enough? I think they are, at least some of the time. let's not pretend we have to separate intellectualism from entertainment.

maybe anyone can be a public intellectual for at least 15 minutes. and hopefully those who get more lasting attention are those who really deserve it.