Public Intellectuals
Public Intellectuals

Author: Richard A. Posner

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0674042271

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In this timely book, the first comprehensive study of the modern American public intellectual--that individual who speaks to the public on issues of political or ideological moment--Richard Posner charts the decline of a venerable institution that included worthies from Socrates to John Dewey. With the rapid growth of the media in recent years, highly visible forums for discussion have multiplied, while greater academic specialization has yielded a growing number of narrowly trained scholars. Posner tracks these two trends to their inevitable intersection: a proliferation of modern academics commenting on topics outside their ken. The resulting scene--one of off-the-cuff pronouncements, erroneous predictions, and ignorant policy proposals--compares poorly with the performance of earlier public intellectuals, largely nonacademics whose erudition and breadth of knowledge were well suited to public discourse. Leveling a balanced attack on liberal and conservative pundits alike, Posner describes the styles and genres, constraints and incentives, of the activity of public intellectuals. He identifies a market for this activity--one with recognizable patterns and conventions but an absence of quality controls. And he offers modest proposals for improving the performance of this market--and the quality of public discussion in America today. This paperback edition contains a new preface and and a new epilogue.

The Public Intellectual
The Public Intellectual

Author: Richard M. Zinman

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2004-09-01

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0585463220

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Whether intellectuals are counter-cultural escapists corrupting the young or secular prophets leading us to prosperity, they are a fixture of modern political life. In The Public Intellectual: Between Philosophy and Politics, Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman bring together a wide variety of noted scholars to discuss the characteristics, nature, and role of public thinkers. By looking at scholarly life in the West, this work explores the relationship between thought and action, ideas and events, reason and history.

The Public Intellectual
The Public Intellectual

Author: Helen Small

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2008-04-15

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0470776730

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New essays by prestigious thinkers such as Edward Said, Bruce Robbins, Jacqueline Rose, and Stefan Collini on the public role of writers and intellectuals.

Public Intellectual
Public Intellectual

Author: Richard Falk

Publisher: SCB Distributors

Published: 2021-02-01

Total Pages: 586

ISBN-13: 1949762335

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"This intimate and penetrating account of a remarkable life is rich in insights about topics ranging from the academic world to global affairs to prospects for a livable society. A gripping story, with many lessons for a troubled world." NOAM CHOMSKY "Whether you are a peace activist or researcher, or you care about the earth and fellow human beings, Public Intellectual will enrich you intellectually and politically." DR. VANDANA SHIVA "Richard Falk is one of the few great public intellectuals and citizen pilgrims who has preserved his integrity and consistency in our dark and decadent times. This wise and powerful memoir is a gift that bestows us with a tear-soaked truth and blood-stained hope". DR. CORNEL WEST “Richard Falk recounts a life well spent trying to bend the arc of international law toward global justice. A Don Quixote tilting nobly at real dragons. His culminating vision of a better or even livable future—a ‘necessary utopia’—evokes with current urgency the slogan of Paris, May 1968: ‘Be realistic: demand the impossible.’”DANIEL ELLSBERG This political memoir reveals how Richard Falk became prominent in America and internationally as both a public intellectual and citizen pilgrim. Falk built a life of progressive commitment, highlighted by visits to North Vietnam where he met PM Pham Von Dong, to Iran during the Islamic Revolution after meeting Khomeini in Paris, to South Africa where he met with Nelson Mandela at the height of the struggle against apartheid, and frequently to Palestine and Israel. His memoir is studded with encounters with well-known public figures in law, academia, political activism and even Hollywood. Falk mentored the thesis of Robert Mueller, taught David Petraeus. His publications and activism describe various encounters with embedded American militarism, especially as expressed by governmental resistance to responsible efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons, and his United Nations efforts on behalf of the rights of the Palestinian people. In 2010 he was named Outstanding Public Scholar in Political Economy by the International Studies Association. He has been nominated annually for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2009

J.M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual
J.M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual

Author: Jane Poyner

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0821416863

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J. M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual addresses the contribution Coetzee has made to contemporary literature, not least for the contentious forays his work makes into South African political discourse and the field of postcolonial studies.

Edward Said
Edward Said

Author: Debjani Ganguly

Publisher: Academic Monographs

Published: 2015-03-25

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0522853579

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This collection is an enterprise of discovery and critical inquiry into the legacy of one of late modernity's greatest public intellectuals, Edward Said. Noted contributors, including Bill Ashcroft, John Docker, Lisa Lowe, Hsu-ming Teo and Patrick Wolfe, address an array of intellectual, political and cultural issues in their engagement with Said's oeuvre. Exciting new scholarship highlights the ways in which humanities in the twenty-first century can engage with Said's legacy, which includes his imbrications of culture and imperialism, his cosmopolitan critique of the idea of 'clash of civilisations', and his belief that the intellectual needs to maintain 'intellectual performances' on many fronts. The individual chapters achieve a sense of balance between the two poles of Said's persona: the brilliant and intimidating literary and music critic who invested deeply in an inclusive and democratic vision of humanism and the outspoken public intellectual who kept alive the truth of Palestine and the dangers of a settler colonial ethos.

The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope
The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope

Author: Joel Faflak

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2013-12-11

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1442665750

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The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope brings together a number of winners of the Polanyi Prize in Literature – a group whose research constitutes a diversity of methodological approaches to the study of culture – to examine the rich but often troubled association between the concepts of the public, the intellectual (both the person and the condition), culture, and hope. The contributors probe the influence of intellectual life on the public sphere by reflecting on, analyzing, and re-imagining social and cultural identity. The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope reflects on the challenging and often vexed work of intellectualism within the public sphere by exploring how cultural materials – from foundational Enlightenment writings to contemporary, populist media spectacles – frame intellectual debates within the clear and ever-present gaze of the public writ large. These serve to illuminate how past cultures can shed light on present and future issues, as well as how current debates can reframe our approaches to older subjects.

The Existentialist Moment
The Existentialist Moment

Author: Patrick Baert

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-08-20

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0745685439

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Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2015 Jean-Paul Sartre is often seen as the quintessential public intellectual, but this was not always the case. Until the mid-1940s he was not so well-known, even in France. Then suddenly, in a very short period of time, Sartre became an intellectual celebrity. How can we explain this remarkable transformation? The Existentialist Moment retraces Sartre's career and provides a compelling new explanation of his meteoric rise to fame. Baert takes the reader back to the confusing and traumatic period of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath and shows how the unique political and intellectual landscape in France at this time helped to propel Sartre and existentialist philosophy to the fore. The book also explores why, from the early 1960s onwards, in France and elsewhere, the interest in Sartre and existentialism eventually waned. The Existentialist Moment ends with a bold new theory for the study of intellectuals and a provocative challenge to the widespread belief that the public intellectual is a species now on the brink of extinction.

Public Intellectuals and Their Discontents
Public Intellectuals and Their Discontents

Author: Yadullah Shahibzadeh

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-09-30

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 3030565882

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This book addresses the ways in which the figure of the intellectuals and their relationship to the public has been theorized through the conceptualizations of bureaucracy, democracy, and communism as universal processes from the 19th century to the present. Starting with Hegel and Marx, the author looks at the rise of the figure of the universal intellectual in various forms, before turning to what is presented as a transformation of the figure of the intellectual into ‘the public intellectual’ advanced by the New Philosophies and the critical response offered by Edward Said. The study presents two comparative case studies: the Iranian Revolution and the public intellectuals in Europe, specifically in Norway, before concluding with a focus on the decay of the figure of the intellectuals and highlighting Ranciere’s critique of the intellectual/masses distinction.

New Public Spheres
New Public Spheres

Author: Dr Christiane Timmerman

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-12-28

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1472407725

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The public sphere provides a domain of social life in which public opinion is expressed by means of rational discourse and debate. Habermas linked its historical development to the coffee houses and journals in England, Parisian salons and German reading clubs. He described it as a bourgeois public sphere, where private people come together and where they turn from a politically disempowered bourgeoisie into an effective political agent - the public intellectual. With communication networks being diversified and expanded over time, the worldwide web has put pressure on traditional public spheres. These new informal and horizontal networks shaped by the internet create new contexts in which an anonymous and dispersed public may gather in political e-communities to reflect critically on societal issues. These de-centered modes of communication and influence-seeking change the role of the (traditional) public intellectual and - at first sight - seem to make their contributions less influential. What processes, therefore, influence changes within public spheres and how can intellectuals assert authority within them? Should we speak of different types of intellectuals, according to the different modes of public intellectual engagement? This ground-breaking volume gives a multi-disciplinary account of the way in which public intellectuals have constructed their role and position in the public sphere in the past, and how they try to voice public concerns and achieve authority again within those fragmented public spheres today.