What is the role of intellectual leadership in our troubled times? At a time when universities are converted into stock exchanges, singularly focusing on “return on interest” (ROI), and scholars – a chunk of them, at least – investing their ideologies and praxis keeping in mind their own personal extravaganza and leadership positions, while few of them are wondering about what role, if any, they have to play in academia, there is a pressing need to rethink the role of intellectual leadership in our universities? The knotty question remains: why are the authoritarians afraid of appointing intellectuals as leaders, or better still, can we expect a leader to demonstrate organic intellectualism?
The nub of the matter is that many of our intellectual leaders have divorced their critical thinking, as they are too occupied thinking of their own vested interests. Not ignoring the point that universities are under an authoritarian gaze in many places, a counterargument can also be made as pointed out by Pramod K. Nayar, “In most public institutions, we have crafted a doomed university from within too.” This is largely a non-performing cohort of scholars, who have recalibrated their thought process to remain in power. For them, the notion of “public good” can be sacrificed and eroded as the praxis of ideological towing reaps several rewards. How then are we to think of “organic intellectual” when the very notion of intellectualism is imperilled?
We can turn to Judith Butler for a response to this question. Butler suggests, “we must reformulate and publicize the critical nature of our work as central not only to the university but to democracy more broadly, to the extent that critical thought, whether inside or outside the university, is essentially related to dissent, judgment, and public engagement.” Likewise, Deleuze and Guattari ask us to hone our critical skills, “How things turn fascist or revolutionary is the problem of the universal delirium about which everyone is silent.” Our thoughts are critical in the same way as our life is. The point I am trying to drive home is that while many of us are potentially wired to become intellectuals, given our ability to think, we fail to do so because the personal and political agenda acquires supremacy over the idea of the social/public good. Therefore, what makes the need for “organic intellectual” more pressing is the fact that the subordinated social category needs to question and challenge the supremacy of class and power. Conversely, throughout the course of history, problems of power and class are invariably linked to specific ideologies, thus undermining the vitality of “organic ideology” and “organic intellectuals.” Eagleton was so right when he pointed out that “The force of the term ideology lies in its capacity to discriminate between those power struggles which are somehow central to a whole form of social life, and those which are not.”
Here, it must be pointed out that the concept of the “organic intellectual” was introduced by the prominent Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks, a series of essays penned down while he was imprisoned by the Italian fascist regime in 1926. His “organic” model remains important because it keeps emphasizing that all components of the state must remain singularly focused on serving the primary needs of the whole, i.e., society/public. To put it simply, intellectuals are meant to serve social needs. Talking about “organic intellectuals,” Gramsci offers an interventionist viewpoint: “Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields.”
Gramsci’s postulation suggests that the arrangement and consolidation of social life require the tools of feelings, experiences, and the courage to speak, which in turn can only be expressed through the medium of language. Since the masses cannot articulate these phenomenological variables, society looks up to “organic intellectuals” to undertake this agency. Much like what Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Amartya Sen, and Abdul Kalam did. How can one forget the crucial role played by B.R. Ambedkar who gave the slogan, “educate, agitate, organize.” One is also reminded of the 20th-century English poet, Thom Gunn, who at the peak of World War II, put his life to risk by helping vulnerable Jews to escape the lurking horrors: “I know he had unusual eyes,/Whose power no orders could determine,/Not to mistake the men he saw,/As others did, for gods or vermin.” (“Epitaph for Anton Schmidt,”1969) How ideological moorings can be detrimental or apocryphal for humanity is best expressed through our inorganic thoughts. The deflection from the self to the other is the launching point of “organic intellectuals,” which can help in the transformation of the material conditions of the marginalized university as well as society.
And yet, the hesitancy, even the inability of our intellectuals, to defend the university and society may at some point in time render the entire society defenseless, as it is happening with universities across the world, which are gasping for their freedom. As Prof. Seton-Watson avers, “Nothing can defend a society if its upper 100,000 men and women, both the decision-makers and those who help to mould the thinking of the decision-makers, are resolved to capitulate.” The location of struggle always needs to be identified at social sites and public institutions. We can term them together as “social assets.” The waning and collapse of these social assets, therefore, continues to remain a committed site of struggle and potential points of freedom.
This brings us to the question: have we, as intellectuals, done justice to our roles? Certainly, not. The emergence and proliferation of “emergencies of authoritarianism” clearly indicate our intellectual dishonesty under the guise of ideological bashing. Because the “emergencies of authoritarianism” are becoming a quotidian reality, hence the greater need for “organic intellectuals.” The Latin etymology of “intellectual,” is derived from the Latin verb, “intelligere,” which means to “discern” or “to understand.” The verb, in turn, is derived from “inter” (between) and “leagre” (to read), which essentially means “understanding between things and ideas. Terry Eagleton makes this idea abundantly clear when he writes about the meaning of ideology: “The word ‘ideology’, one might say, is a text, woven of a whole tissue of different conceptual strands; it is traced through by divergent histories, and it is probably more important to assess what is valuable or can be discarded in each of these lineages than to merge them forcibly into some Grand Global Theory.” To put it in other word, to bombard and decimate social structures and people’s lives in countries like Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, or for that matter, destroying this planet in the hope that some capitalist messiah can explore life on another one definitely account for “ideological fanaticism,” whereas demonstrating our commitments to humanity since it unites us all, is an empirical reality.
Hence, what we need is a robust, global alliance of “organic intellectualism,” constantly questioning and challenging the institutions of hegemony, which have for so long kept the majority of humans in a perpetual state of vulnerability, which is exactly why the task of analyzing the “emergencies of authoritarianism” needs to be an ongoing process. But this is possible only on the barometer of praxis, not through ideological volleying of words, thus reminiscing us of what the French Philosopher, Henry Lefebvre said, “the word has never saved the world and it never will.”
Just like health is not an absolute given in the same way, healthy democracy is also not an inherent category. Both need to be guarded. Extremist demagogues and cannibal capitalism are ingrained in our modern version of democracies. Hence, the dialectical interface between virulent and virtuous need to be in constant motion. This is the sort of clarion call for all our “organic intellectuals.” This sums up the core of “organic intellectual” as social capital. The ruptures in hegemonic structure and subsequent openings for normative world-making can be rendered possible through the agency of “organic intellectual” as Gramsci also suggests, “Every organic development of the peasant masses up to a certain point is linked to and depends on movements among the intellectuals.” The global-level assault and march of “emergencies of authoritarianism” need to be countered with local-level critical engagement by “organic intellectuals” lest we let our democracies die at the hand of ammunition, money power, and fanaticism. Such diverse entanglements of resistance can breathe fresh air into the exacerbating conditions of our troubled times.
Seen this way, “organic intellectuals” can pave the way to dismantle the superstructure of authoritarianism. One can claim this as the transformative character of “organic intellectual” since participation in that insight and praxis has liberating and enabling resonances for society. No wonder, Michael Foucault was right when he advocated, “Societies must be defended” since neither society nor any institution can defend itself. Our existence lies in the mutual constellation and nourishment of cultures of critique and resistance. We need to remember that a dignified life is only available to the extent of asking questions and this interrogative mode must be the signatory style of our “organic intellectual.”
