Public Intellectual in Exile: Implications for Curriculum and Methods

• In Event: 51.023 - Rethinking the Intellectual for the 21st Century

Abstract

In this theoretical project, the authors reflect upon the concepts of isolation and exile as they relate to the public intellectual. Said (1996) has suggested that the “right role for today’s intellectual” is that of the “outsider,” a concept “best exemplified by the condition of exile” (p. 117). Nearly a century prior ago, Nietzsche suggested something similar in the idea of the free spirit (Nietzsche, 1984) , a Zarathustrian (Nietzsche, 2005) figure who is constantly at odds with conventional wisdom and normalcy. For this free spirit, “solitude encircles and engirdles him, always more threatening, more throttling, more heart-oppressing, that terrible goddess and mater sceva cupidinum (cruel mother of desire).” It is out of this solitude that one may generate new wisdom, determining his or her own values, that which should constitute right and wrong, truth and falsity, on his or her own terms, without the influence of the public. It is in solitude that the free spirit is “free.” We may certainly think of figures who exhibit this concept of the intellectual in solitude or exile, from authors such as Ovid, Dante, Joyce, Dostoevsky, Wilde, Rushdi, and Byron, to religious leaders such as St. Patrick, Buddha, Luther, and even Christ. Historically, many exiles have been decidedly intellectual and have given us much to think about for thousands of years.

What does this mean for us as researchers, methodologists, and educationists? Or a better question: who represents an intellectual exile in our times? And what knowledge might exiles have from us? The larger and more specific purpose of this presentation is to consider how research might attempt to include perspectives from the exile, particularly those that are generally understood as “cast-off” from society in some capacity. We use loosely the perspective of “funds of knowledge,” originally defined by Moll, Amanti, Neff, and Gonzalez (1992) as “historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being” (p. 133). While their study was a landmark in integrating new knowledges into educational thinking, we contend that other funds of knowledge may exist—beyond household functioning—within individuals conventionally undesirable, e.g. the homeless, the insane, the elderly, especially regarding knowledge. What have these individuals learned in isolation, and what lessons might they be able to teach us, especially given that these individuals are not conventionally seen as teachers or fonts of intellectual? How might we integrate other or “abnormal” thinking into our curricula and lives?

Authors

• Joshua M Cruz, Texas Tech University

• Jorge Sandoval, Arizona State University