THE TERM “PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL” is a fount of confusion. We admire such persons for speaking the truth about the corruptions of politics, for explaining climate change to a world that would prefer a more convenient truth, or for their unblinking acknowledgment of the structural racism of our society. At other times, we mock them for dumbing down the ideas they have the privilege to steward, and suspect them of a venal desire for influence and power, or, worse, we suspect that beneath such desires lies a lack of intellectual curiosity and seriousness. The word “public,” when conjoined with “intellectual,” sometimes seems to invite an intellectually lazy enthusiasm or an equally lazy criticism.
The real interest in the term “public intellectual” lies in what its usage can tell us about ourselves: how we imagine the links between politics and prose, thought and action, individual contemplation and social congregation. Why, for example, has the notion of publicness itself become such a high value for some, practically synonymous with benevolence, as if to attach “public” to the name of a discipline grants it a special dignity? Getting un-confused about the term “public intellectual” does not require jettisoning the notion of public engagement altogether, but rather turning these keywords — “intellectual,” “public” — over and over, depriving them of the sense of obvious meaning produced by too-frequent use.