For Leo: public sphere, intellectuals

[Ralph Dumain <rdumain@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>I -- for one -- would be most interested in a thread which
>took up your interest in the 'public sphere' and intellectuals.

Leo, I'd gladly accommodate you if I knew exactly what you meant.
You juxtapose 'public sphere' and 'intellectuals' as if they were
one topic, as in 'public intellectuals'.  Not being a
_professional_ circus performer, I can't say much about the
requirements of acting as a public intellectual.  It is pretty
impossible to become a superstar without becoming corrupt, in the
manner of, for example, superfriend Michael Dyson as commentator
on the BET OJ interview, which had me in stitches the whole way
through.  If you want to be an honest person, you can forget about
stardom.

By public sphere I mean the public domain and government policy,
as opposed to private corporations, letting business do its thing
as Gingrich and Farrakhan advocate.  To be sure, the
disillusionment with statism, which includes social democracy as
well as state "socialism" in the hatred of government in general,
could be a salubrious historical development were it possible to
make the leap to a non-state socialism, direct democracy, workers
councils, the whole shebang.  But that is not happening.  Instead
there is a retreat into the war of each against all.  The
cornerstone of the public sphere now is the ultimate in the logic
of privatization, the building of prisons, three strikes and yer
out.  To understand what fascism is in 1996 is to understand
privatization. i.e. why it is not the "national socialism" in
vogue 60 years ago.

I don't have much to say about public intellectuals, unless you
want to hear why Cornel West is a has-been now that a real
slickster like preacher-academic-media maven Michael Dyson is on
the scene.  Perhaps you mean the role of the intellectual in
society.  Or the relation between intellectual work and
revolution.  Or on interpreting the world and changing it.

My advice: get on with your work and be honest.


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