In 1940s and 1950s, the Public Intellectuals were mainly “academics versed in ‘soft’ human sciences”, who used to take clear stands on important contemporary issues. Then they were replaced by ‘bloodless academicians’ with elitist jargon participating in de-grounded bombast. The engagement with actual persons with flesh and blood took the backseat. As a result, the discourse suffered at the hands of the very participants called ‘public intellectual’. This trend is now relegated to extremity by the ‘prime-time intellectuals’, our own supper companions.
Let us classify them into five broad categories for the purpose of our analysis:
A commercially successful novelist. He is playing the role of public intellectual till he discovers a plot for his new novel. He is more like the weaning star/singer judging a Reality Show to somehow float in relevance with an eye on a new offer.
The second category of our prime time intellectual is the PR man. He is employed by an interest groups either to attack or defend a case in hand. One cannot, of course, blame him as the job of this ‘middleman’ is to defend his clients. The only problem with this category is to call him a public intellectual and give a say in the national discourse.
The third slot is reserved for the journalists and editors of National dailies, who is ’employed’ to defend the establishment or her Excellency’s Loyal opposition., The critic of the current government but loyal to the system of establishment. Their arguments and stances are known in advance- so much so that the news channel knows whom to call for which side to spice up the debate. One can easily infer their credentials by watching two episodes. You call them by their master’s name and they are cut to the quick, and the discussion may have to be stopped for pathological reasons.
The fourth one is the social activist, who participates with the burden of a moral faith imposed on him by the viewers. His taking sides is often contingent on the individual personality and dwells amidst basically three points of establishment pendulum: semi-government engagements, prospective engagements and no-chance at all engagements. The single issue activist is then compelled to have a point of view on each and every issue under the sun so much so that anti-dam activist cannot recuse himself without having a view on anti-corruption bill. Your very existence as an activist shall be put to question unless you take sides.
As the wise man warns Zarathustra from descending to the market: “Full of chattering buffoon is the market place- and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour.
But the hour presseth them; so they press thee. And also from thee they want Yea or Nay. Alas! Thou wouldst set thy chair betwixt For and Against?”
So having pressed by the treacherous binary logic of journalistic formulations, this public intellectual losses its voice in the chattering success of the well prepared prime time intellectuals.
Last and not the least, public discourse is incomplete without the fifth dimension to it. It is the one to whom the anchor instigates piercing through the Fourth Wall: the audience. The audience is participating through the social media or SMS voting. Rather, the fact of him being there to watch the show is behind the business model of the show itself. This public intellectual is the most “indiscreet jewel” of all. Anonymity and democracy gives him tremendous power of speech. When “the audience” is abstracted, averaged and median-ed by the moderator of the prime time discussion, it gets the support of big corporate media house. Because of its very nature of being numerous, one and at the same time all, dwindling through the business interest of the channel, obligations of authentic journalism and ratings, which again depends on the trust and ‘jouissance’ of the same viewers, this category of the ‘public intellectual’ is more important than all above.
Then comes the public intellectual, who was called an economist in the first debate and now he is a film critic. In a politically expedient hour, he may become political analyst or a Bollywood expert or at least a film sociologist. If the script of the prime time discussion demands, an expert on international relations shares his gastronomic escapades or even his views on beauty and fitness in national televisions. National dailies dedicate columns on food by economist. But why not, these are the days of super-specialization in the sciences and inter-disciplinarity in humanities. But our public intellectuals seem to have taken this too seriously.
The discourse never gets carried forward. Nor it is meant to be carried forward. Its poor flight is ensured by the very participants, who but only facilitate the replacement of twindledee by twindledum. The chatter-box makes one to argue with his mirror-double and at the end of the debate the chatter-box ensures that nobody wins and nobody suffers a defeat. It is win win for all sans the discourse and the autonomy of the viewers.
This is what the public intellectuals give us. The artists or the poets do at least have a satisfaction of creation. As Nietzsche says,
“They at least fix an image of that which ought to be:
They are productive to the extent that they
Actually alter and transform, unlike men of knowledge
Who have everything as it.” (Thus Spake Zarathustra)
(Another category, party-spokesperson, do not claim to be public intellectual and therefore excluded)
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