intellectuals, part 1

There are a lot of ways to be an intellectual. Gramsci seems to care more about the day laborers; and let me tell you, from personal experience, he’s mostly got it right. R comes home – usually late, because salaried non-profit employees work till the job is done – always dirty, always caked in dirt. It’s not that interesting. So I am here to hold it down for the intellectuals. Petty or not, at least we’re clean at the end of the day.

There are the intellectuals in movies who sleep with all of their students. There are the intellectuals who never finish their PhDs and live desperate lives of red wine and oft-quoted poetry. There are the intellectuals who never went to school, and the intellectuals who go to school for way to long. Intellectuals are not always academics. Academics are not always intellectuals. We are petty in love, petty in cash, petty in our knowledge of the “real world.” We quote Marx like we know him intimately. Most of us do.

But let me respond to those who claim that academia is an “ivory tower,” is elite, is the engine of elitism. They’re wrong. As a graduate student TA, I earn less than someone on unemployment. When I go on the job market in a few years, I will face a nation-wide hiring freeze in general, and a growing disdain for and down-sizing of the humanities in particular. Indeed, I think this the whole “ivory tower” trope is part of this trend away from the humanities … why, in a nation fueled by technological development and bio-research, would we need departments whose job is to research and think about the human condition? The consensus, more or less, is that we don't (see a great article by Mike Slouka on this … you might need to pay for it. Elite!). But I think we do. To have space to think – to really get into things, to crack them open, to bring to light, to put pressure on – is necessary work. With or without that glass of red wine.

So cheers to R, who gets-things-done every day, while I am stuck in the blackberry brambles of deconstructive theory. There is tangible and there is intangible. Too often these sides do not get to conversation. Welcome to our blog.