Where Have the Intellectuals Gone?
By Kelly Jane Torrance
The intellectual was once seen as a solitary, driven being, searching passionately and single-mindedly for the truth. But what happens when there is no truth? Or, at least, when nobody believes that there is any such thing as "one truth"?
The intellectual disappears. Or so a spate of books in recent years has it. One of the most famous--and controversial--of these was Richard Posner's biting Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, in which he explored why intellectuals have so little influence on public affairs these days. Posner's rankings of thinkers by media mentions and scholarly citations got more publicity than his ideas--another example of celebrity- and rankings-driven culture, perhaps.
American intellectuals are particularly good at navel-gazing. But the latest entry in this debate comes from across the pond. Frank Furedi's Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? Confronting 21st Century Philistinism (Continuum) is a short (barely more than 150 pages), sharp look at why thoughtful, serious men of letters have been replaced by well-groomed pundits who can only speak in sound bites.
Furedi easily makes the case that the reason intellectuals are a dying breed is that their traditional aspiration is no longer valued. Postmodernism, which became the dominant philosophy in the academy, holds that there is no such thing as truth. It is elitist to value one type of experience over any other--and what has been called "truth" over the years is just the white European male's idea of truth. The idea that there is a single reality that intellectuals aim to discover is outdated. Furedi furnishes example after outrageous example: "'A bit dodgy' is how Charles Clarke, the British Secretary of State for Education, has described the idea of education for its own sake, while asserting that his government has no interest in supporting 'the medieval concept of a community of scholars seeking truth.'"
One cannot even rely on the supposed guardians of culture to, well, guard it any longer. "There is a new breed of university managers, museum and gallery directors, and 'knowledge' entrepreneurs who regard the content of culture and ideas with indifference," Furedi notes. "Their concern is to use culture to achieve an objective that is quite separate from its inner content."
These managers do not value art for art's sake. Rather, they constantly ask what art can do for people. Will participating in culture make people more employable? Healthier? Raise self-esteem? Furedi says it may seem "mean-spirited" to write about what he calls "the rise of philistinism" when new cultural events are popping up everywhere in Britain and America. But these events are put on strictly to serve a purpose, and a rather mercenary one at that. Studying a language for the pure enjoyment of learning is suspect; learning, say, Japanese to be a better businessman is not. Capitalism and postmodernism only seem like enemies. They actually have worked together to promote the idea that knowledge is a mere instrument to other ends.
"The age-old tension between economic calculation, and a commitment to impersonal and non-instrumental values such as the advancement of knowledge and science, has meant that the intellectual and the artist were historically in a state of creative conflict with the rest of society," Furedi writes. How different things are now. Today's artists live in Hollywood and think of almost nothing but economic calculation. Movies, which have become our dominant art form, are mostly produced based on what executives believes the public wants, so as to make as much money as possible.
But capitalism is not the real enemy here, and that is one reason why Furedi's book, despite being repetitive and, at times, a rehash of ideas said many times by many people over the last couple of decades, is so refreshing. Furedi is a sociologist who helped found, in 1981, the Revolutionary Communist Party. He often quotes leftist darlings Edward Said and Pierre Bourdieu, and not in a bad way. So one is surprised that Furedi doesn't reflexively blame the market alone for the dumbing down of culture. In fact, he blames the movement against elitism, which is filled with sociologists who quote Edward Said.
Promoting the greater participation of the masses in education and culture "without the maintenance of standards represents a fraud inflicted on millions of people," he declares. It is a hollow culture that these leftists want more people to share when culture can be anything you like. And such a view is really rather self-serving: "Without meaning, knowledge becomes less the property of the public than of the specialist, the disciplinarian and the expert." It turns out the anti-elitists are the real elitists.
Who could have imagined a founder of a Communist party with an understanding of how those who claim to speak for the masses actually despise them? "Despite its populist rhetoric, the social exclusion agenda is deeply hostile to genuine popular culture," Furedi writes. "Genuine popular culture is self-generated rather than the product of policies that aim to engage the public. Social exclusion policies, by contrast, aim to shape public taste, standardize it and ultimately control it."
Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? has been hailed in Britain by thoughtful commentators of all stripes--Terry Eagleton on the left and Roger Scruton on the right. It was just published in this country and has just as much to say to us. (The book is also filled with plenty of American examples. A discussion of how dumbed down Presidential debates have become--Lincoln and Douglas spoke at about a twelfth-grade level, while Bush and Gore debated at a seventh-grade level--is just one of many. And he is clearly a Brit who understands America: "The view that the public is too stupid to grasp the high-minded and sophisticated ideals of American liberals expresses a profound sense of contempt for human beings.")
Furedi's call for a "culture war against the philistines" and a "project of developing society's intellectual and cultural life through the development of an educated public" may seem almost naive. But it is also inspiring.
*****
It is not only tough times for intellectuals, but also intellectual periodicals. How can they survive in the Age of Hollywood? So it was warming to read an e-mail from Powell's Books announcing an online auction to benefit the stalwart Paris Review, the 50-year-old journal formerly edited by George Plimpton.
"Literary auction for lunch at the Playboy Mansion, drinks and lively conversation with Harper's editor Lewis Lapham, sailing the Aegean Sea, watching a Knicks game with Jim Carroll, and much more," the e-mail was headlined. You could even win the "chance to attend to a table reading for the 'Simpsons.'"
It's too bad this is only an online auction. I'm rather curious to discover what people are fans of "the world's premier literary magazine," as well as the Playboy Mansion, The Simpsons, and the Knicks.
Kelly Jane Torrance is arts and culture editor of Brainwash. Her website on culture can be found at www.kellyjanetorrance.com.
