Intellectuals in America part 8

Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor at New Republic, and at first I thought his entry for the Dissent symposium would be overly literary, and in some ways the perspective is informed by literature, rather than political concerns. But I've come to feel that this is an important perspective, at least, since literature tends to be more humane than politics. Wieseltier only makes one major error in my opinion.

Let us begin with the error so that we can concentrate on what is worthwhile. The major gaffe is to flub the question about the academy - does it further or retard the engagement of intellectuals with American society? To which Wieseltier asks to take an incomplete for the intellectually dishonest reason that his "rant . . . might wound some people I admire and even adore." If intellectuals are to be truth-tellers, silence for the sake of propriety is hardly acceptable.

Overall, however, I find Wieseltier's take valuable, and largely in line with my own ideas. For instance, he slams American mass culture "for its transformation of a citizenry into an audience" among other things (perhaps the most entertaining line of the rant is: "for its grotesque sexualization of an entire society, which has the effect not least of degrading sex, even dirty sex").

But Wieseltier believes intellectuals can have it both ways, to be objective analysts as well as subjective participants. This isn't the only answer that Wieseltier proposes that refuses to take sides, but I think his suggestion of how to enjoy the proverbial cake works best in this regard. And his reasons for intellectuals to engage with popular culture are strong: 1) humanism: mass culture is still culture and so says something about our humanity; 2) criticism: in order to be able to critique the culture one has to understand the culture; and 3) hedonism: usually mass culture is about just plain fun. Or as Wieseltier puts it: life.

As for participating in American politics, he lays out a forthright pragmatism that is perhaps a little too pragmatic. He encourages intellectuals to engage in policy, since that is ultimately what affects people, but it's also what people don't get and I am afraid that we are already overly wonky - we need to work on communicating with the masses, so to speak. I happened across the website of the Iranian Communist Party the other day and I was struck with the way that language is used and how different it is from the American left today (though perhaps if I compared it to the CP-USA there wouldn't be much difference). The Communists tend to talk in language people understand - politics rather than policy (even if they sometimes go on and on, which can be alienating in its own way). Left intellectuals in America have distanced themselves from this, in part because the anti-Stalinist left always celebrated humanism and populist rhetoric can be very much anti-human, especially when it preys on fear (Exhibit B: The Tea Party). But it is one of the things that makes us seem like high-minded, ivory-tower academics that don't understand reality. But, I think Wieseltier's ultimate point is to again have it both ways - policy and politics, though I think the case is weaker here.

Lastly, he wants to be "both patriot and world citizen." I think there might be an argument here, but Wieseltier never fully engages with the issue. He imagines a world in which certain times he can be a patriot and other times he can be a world citizen, but the real question is: what do you do when these two frames come into conflict with each other. The sort of question that the Vietnam War posed to young people in the 1960s - a patriot supports their country, a world citizen condemns the United States for aggression. Which takes precedence? Wieseltier never explains the path which helps us to resolve the difficult questions.

Overall, his essay is hit and miss - his main theme is to celebrate the fullness of life and humanity and as such he refuses to take sides. This is laudable in some circumstances, but it can also be morally problematic when it becomes a refusal to engage in the issues seriously.

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In some ways, this post is an accomplishment for me (yay me!). I set out to do this project over the course of a week and it's only taken me the better part of 6 months or so. The project, if you will remember and have been keeping up, was to respond to each of the participants in Dissent's symposium on the role of intellectuals in America. This post concludes the original 8 essays that were written as part of that project and were published in the Winter 2010 issue of Dissent. The Spring 2010 issue contains three more, and so the project continues, but this is a milestone.