Thread by @lfatsis

🧵 on Left intellectuals (hold tight!)

A lively & thoughtful debate has unfolded here recently on Left intellectuals- and one that I have followed with keen interest, albeit as a latecomer (sorry!)

In the spirit of de/anti-colonial thinking & politics, which has served as a

necessary corrective to white supremacist & heteropatriarchal conceptions of intellectuals, however, I wonder how adequate our approach to intellectuals and intellectual life actually is.

I fear that much of it replicates dominant, Eurocentric conceptions of who is/can be an

intellectual and what counts as public intellectual life, that rarely go beyond the 'sage on the stage' imagery - and remain confined to the narrow space of print/visual culture, conveyed through a sense that 'the intellectual' is (=ought to be?) someone who speaks to/writes for

a quiet, seated 'public' that passively listens and/or consumes such wisdom in silence/isolation.

I am exaggerating/oversimplifying of course, mainly for dramatic effect, but I am nevertheless puzzled by our reluctance to look elsewhere for mode(l)s of public intellectual life

that make nonsense of mythologising 'the intellectual' as a lone, gifted, prophetic figure who speaks truth(s) to power.

What if we were to attune ourselves to different conceptions of 'the intellectual' and different mode(l)s of public intellectual life that are

heady rather than merely 'intellectual' and involve the body, the senses and indeed other people in the production of public life - in an active/participatory manner, rather than in the quiet, contemplative mode that is often assumed?

I know, of course, that many would counter

that the anti-colonial cast-list of intellectuals that is offered are also organisers/revolutionaries that speak to (=with?) publics in public spaces. Yet even this approach implies/involves a one-directional/one-dimensional conception of who speaks, who listens and how/where

such activity takes place.

Having grappled with such questions since my PhD years, I want to suggest what I see as a different approach that involves a more 'public' and less 'intellectualist' view of public intellectual life.

What I have in mind here is figures like West African griots (singer-storytellers), West Indian calypsonians, soundsystem operators, MCs, DJs, rappers - as well as graffiti writers, (break)dancers and skateboarders: whose activities take place in public space in ways that involve

others as more than an audience that is acted on; as active subjects/participants, rather than objects/receptacles of 'the intellectual's' discourse.

The aim here is to identify people, activities & spaces where intellectual life can/does happen- in a more open, embodied, lived

sensuous and participatory manner compared to the dominant Eurocentric mode(l)s we seem to think with - even as we recruit anti-colonial figures as our intellectuals of choice.

The kinds of public intellectual life that I am thinking about, therefore,

are drawn from Afro-diasporic intellectual, cultural and political traditions, especially music, where boundaries distinguishing speaker/singer from audience, call from response and thought from action are fluid, permeable and difficult to sustain - without doing violence to

the collective, communal and participatory manner in which Afro-diasporic musics are made and performed.

Just to be clear, this is not to impose essentialist distinctions by arguing that: “emotion is Negro, just like reason is Hellenic” as Léopold Senghor put it

What is argued instead is that the embodied, sensuous and participatory character of Afro-diasporic music(s) *is* a body of thought, an intellectual tradition and a source of ideas that is unappreciated as such in our search for intellectuals.

Reggae soundsystems, hip hop ciphers, jazz jam sessions, batucada drumming practice, or playing the irons in a steel band are sources and instruments of thinking, knowledge and public life too!

It’s just that the white cultural mainstream lacks the conceptual language and imagination to think of them in this way.

Examples of such arguments are beautifully explored in the work of scholars of colour like Sylvia Wynter (in Black Metamorphosis), Patricia

Hill Collins (in Black Feminist Thought), Hortense Spillers (in Black, White, and in Color) Nancy Guevara and Tricia Rose (esp. in Eric Perkins' essential Droppin' Science).

But I would prefer to see us engage (with) the music itself!

For what it's worth, some of my very own 'take(s)' on this, for what it's worth, can be found in the following academic publications:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13…

endrapontrial.org/wp-content/upl…

liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.38…

Or, preferably, in the form of a 'sociological playlist' for @TheSocReview

thesociologicalreview.org/magazine/july-…

and a 'lecture in sound' for @AASchool

Might be of interest to @alanalentin @Jairo_I_Funez and @aaronzwinter in whose timelines I found good critiques of @AaronBastani's original tweet on Left intellectuals?