To be or not to be an Intellectual
I find this question itself to be very interesting. Interpreting it a couple of ways the thought is: Are you either an intellectual or not one and then can you turn this “intellect” off and on as you deem fit? Also, what is even the purpose of having intellect or intellectuals and why is it coveted? Who determines this? I think these questions are especially important to ask when you are a part of an institution who’s supposed goal is to educate you about social inequalities and injustices and how those in the past used their own intellect to further the cause of equity particularly in the United States.
In Dr.Tressie McMillan Cottom’s piece, Thick, she writes about her struggles as an intellectual trying to express herself and her way of sharing her knowledge with others. I think this piece is important to consider because it talks about timing and presentation of knowledge as well as self-perception and the perception of others. People like to say that words don’t really matter when they come from someone else but that seems to come from a place of privilege where you don’t have to worry if that someone else can do something that can affect your future. Cottom wrote, “… but this conference stands out for the moment when a senior academic, a black woman, marched over to me and said without preamble, ‘You need to stop writing so much. They’re just using you.’” (Cottom 2019, pg. 8) It took a long time to realize that to some people graduate students are intellectuals not in the sense of being individuals but rather as assistants used as a means to an end. To do the things you don’t have time to do yourself like little worker bees moving along for the Queen and the Hive, with the Queen and Hive being the University. Maybe in Ethnic studies or Cultural studies it’s a little bit different but for other fields that students are flooding into at this moment, that’s the way it seems to be. Using her own physical ailments, Cottom also explains her life in academia and how she always has to “Fix her feet”. She said, “Fixing my feet is so deeply ingrained in my psyche that to dislodge it I would have to fundamentally change who I am and how I interact with the world. Fixing my feet is about accepting the complex reality of black life in the twenty first century.” (Cottom 2019, pg. 24) Like she said in this way, people in the “other” group have to work twice as hard and then some in order to recognized. It seems like they are already deemed not an intellectual so they must prove to others that they are. This idea of validation was also mentioned in the class discussion. It is very interesting to see how different areas of peoples lives automatically label them as intellectuals or not and then how people have to fight to turn that switch on and seen as an intellectual themselves.
This leads onto Dr. Linda Smiths book, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. In her book, Smith challenges the ideas of where knowledge can come from. Most academic knowledge seen in places like Higher Education come from colonized viewpoints. Those that do not are controversial or unaccredited. Dr. Cottom also brings this up a bit when talking about people in minoritized groups speaking about their personal experience who then become representatives for those groups as a whole even if their experiences are not the same. She says, “We were writing personal essays because as far as authoritative voices go, the self was the only subject men and white people would cede to us. (Cottom 2019, pg. 23) There is hardly any place for those voices in Academia. Knowledge and intellect have always been a way to control people. Knowledge is power in all sorts of ways. In Smiths book she says, “Colonial education was also used as a mechanism for creating new indigenous elites. …talented students were then sent off for more advanced education.” (Smith 2012, pg. 127) The original indigenous languages and cultures were then destroyed in order to force them to assimilate with colonized society. Their knowledge was not considered valid in the eyes of dominate society and thus that voice was taken away from them. There is a come back though. There are small surges of people fighting to get what was taken away and those that learned are teaching others to become the intellectuals of their own society with their own knowledge rather than a colonized one. In Fanons third phase of the reclamation of intellect he says, “…the intellectuals seek to awaken the people, to realign themselves with the people and to produce a revolutionary and national literature.” (Smith 2012, pg.137) Acknowledging that being an intellectual can really be anyone is important. There is a sense that they are these haughty groups of people that are above society and their superior knowledge with no time to associate themselves with common society. Out of this blooms those like Fanon mentioned. This is where (in my mind at least) like Chicana Feminist theory or Critical Race theory comes from. Deviation from the norm should not be punished like it was before even though it still is today. In the book Black Heretics Black Prophets, by Anthony Bogues, he looks at this through a different lens than what dominant society is used to.
Western society is not used to being challenged but what these individuals do is not only produce knowledge but challenge what has already been said. Challenging the norm is essential in Black Radical intellectual tradition. (Bogues 2003, pg.13) The covert (sometimes) pattern of colonialism seems to be that there is knowledge (a western point of view) and then the “other”. This goes along with the saying about history being written from the side of the “winner”. Edward Said, like in Smiths piece, addresses not only what an intellectual is but also what they can do. Said goes deeper with the challenging question of who? Being an intellectual seems to be a way of othering yourself too. He says, “There is a danger that the figure or image of the intellectual …might become only another professional or figure in a social trend. …but I also want to insist that the intellectual is an individual with a specific public role in society that cannot be simply reduced to being a faceless professional…” (Said 2012, pg. 11) As an intellectual a job must be performed to pass on information. In this day, more and more of the “others” are teaching those in minoritized groups (and dominant ones for that matter) that there is more to history than just the colonizers. That Black Radical Truth, that way of awaking the people is starting.
I don’t know if I would consider myself an intellectual because I feel like I just don’t know enough. I don’t even know if I have a “people” to awaken. But I will do my best to disrupt the dominant narrative. Said was right to say that so many stories are forgotten. They should be brought back to light. He said, “all human beings are entitled to expect decent standards of behavior concerning freedom and justice from worldly powers or nations, and that deliberate or inadvertent violations of these standards need to be testified and fought against courageously.” (Said 2012, pg. 11-12) and those are words I can get behind.
Works Cited
Bogues, A., (2003). Opening chant The full has never been told: Heresy, prophecy, praxis, and the Black radical political intellectual
Cottom, T. (2019). Thick. In T. Cottom, Thick : And other essays. New York: The New Press.
Said, E. (2012). Representations of the intellectual. London: Vintage.
Smith, L. (2012). Colonizing knowledges. In L. Smith, Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). London: Zed Books.