sre., 24. jul., 19:00

Paul Reynolds: The 'Radical Intellectual' - Three Tropes and a Sketch

Any superficial survey of ‘radical’ intellectual activity might argue that the 21st Century - through the expansion of academic institutions in the 20th Century, the development of ICT’s and the development of intellectual/radical organisations and networks in continuous communicative engagement – is replete with radical intellectuals and their products. Literal forests of paper and Yottabytes of data both review past intellectual production and provide new articulations of knowledge – progressively ‘onion slicing’ new studies to maximise output. Here one might consider Marx’s famous caution about the ‘transmutation of quality into quantity’ in Chapter 1 of Capital. It is also worth considering how far that translates into informed radical action, or clear connections between thought and action – praxis or practice – or how far these ideas have meaningfully made any impact of even limited form through centre-left governance (and perhaps this is inevitably disappointing) or radical counter-hegemonic resistance.

This talk will explore what radical intellectual means in the practices of those who wholly or partially self-identify as radical intellectuals. It will necessarily take a provocative approach to directly challenge and prompt reflection on what a radical intellectual might be. It argues there are three dominant tropes that I regard as singularly unhelpful:

1. The eliding of intellectual with academic, where claims of Intellectualism are tied to corporate institutions of media and learning that might allow some possibilities for subversion, but within overarching corporatised function, product, and behaviour. Here, the forms of exclusion, hierarchical order, and selective ideological treatment implicit in media production and academic publishing (and to a degree in general public discourse) and their forms of dissemination prescribe a dominant cultural style – where quality is measured by commodity value or by orthodox prescription, and the dispossessed can always find voices to speak for them, through lofty claims or intrinsic pathological presentation. The ‘academic’ system invariably produces more product to satisfy its metrics, self-regulates on quality, and measures impact through the precepts of governance regulation. The media conform to stereotypes and orthodoxies in their projection of ‘knowledge’ and ‘dissidence’.

2. The assumption of an essential radicalism or criticality to the philosophical tradition as exemplified in the orthodox history of philosophy. From the great gadfly Socrates to the Foucauldian parrhesiastes, the philosophical enterprise is to seek truth beyond interest, convention, and orthodoxy, at whatever price that might accrue. This might recommend past theoretical traditions – left or right and tangential – or depart from them. The individual philosopher, contemporaneously buttressed largely by inhabiting the academic milieu, makes their way in the world – largely intellectual and more recently academic – with its hierarchical rewards and status. Yet whilst context matters, the individuated construction of philosophy itself in its activity and focus is problematic.

3. The construction of intellectual production – who produces it, in what forms, with what distribution and recognition – is inherently imperial, where the global south becomes ‘spoken for’, incorporated, and located within an order that is inherently fixed and appropriative. Whilst inevitably there are degrees of intellectual produce and engagement that do stimulate some interesting radical insights – any relationships between these three tropes and radical ideas and practice are limited and not the central focus of these three dimensions of conformity. So, what is radical intellectualism?

I will suggest we draw from Antonio Gramsci, Raymond Williams, Daniel Bensaid amongst others and political-cultural theory to identify radical intellectualism as: collective; discursive; concerned with form and substantive; always already provisional and incomplete in its representations; yet willing to make definite interventions in the world but incisively critical (and self-critical); always with a continuous dialectical relationship of thought and action in materialist practice; always reflexive; always counter-hegemonic in a hegemonic world, and always concerned with discipling the abstraction of ideas with the concrete experience of everyday life.

Paul Reynolds is Reader in Sociology and Social Philosophy at Edge Hill University in the UK. His research interests and publications lie in the areas of Marxism and radical philosophy/social theory with special reference to: sexuality and sexual politics, ethics and difference; class and political critique; and the role and responsibilities of intellectuals. He is currently developing critical work on sexual consent, literacy and well-being and the power of cultural materialism. He is co-convenor of the International Network for Sexual Ethics and Politics (INSEP – http://www.insep.ugent.be/) and editor of its Journal and also co-convenors the Historical Materialism Sexuality and Political Economy Network. He is Co-Director of the Cultural Difference and Social Solidarity (CDSS – http://www.differenceandsolidarity.org/).

The lecture will take place at 19.00 at Participativna ljubljanska avtonomna cona (PLAC). The video of the lecture will be published later on ILS YouTube channel.

The event is organized in cooperation with Transform!europe. Transform!europe is partially financed through a subsidy from the European Parliament. Sole liability rests with the author(s) and the European Parliament is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.