Intellectuals in the 21st Century by Barria-Asenjo, Nicol A.;

Short description:

This book sees international academics from across five continents come together to critique the role of the present-day intellectual. It will appeal to scholars, intellectuals, and postgraduate students with interests in social and political theory, social and political philosophy, epistemology, social class, neoliberalism, and academia.

Long description:

This book sees international academics from across five continents come together to critique the role of the present-day intellectual.

Arguing that the elitization of the social sciences and humanities has reached a major climax in the 21st century, owing to the commercialisation of knowledge and the advent of the capitalist model, it asks how intellectuals can free themselves of the ideological labyrinth in which they now find themselves, and reshape the contributions of the social sciences and humanities as adequate tools for the needs of our time. The international academy has the aim and the responsibility to look at, criticise, and work against the dominant logic and to allow knowledge and international debates to reach the farthest corners of the globe. Intellectuals from different areas of the social sciences and humanities offer unique insights along this theme to offer critical analysis and reflection on our current situation, asking: what are now the duties and responsibility of intellectuals?

Bringing together relevant and influential voices from diverse perspectives, it will appeal to scholars, intellectuals, and postgraduate students with interests in social and political theory, social and political philosophy, epistemology, social class, neoliberalism, and academia.

‘It is impossible to overstate the significance of this collection of essays, which assembles an impressive array of intellectuals to reflect on the current status and responsibilities of the social sciences and humanities. A truly monumental achievement.’

Alenka Zupančič, Philosopher, Slovenia.

‘For some time now, since the crisis of the neoliberal system in 2008, we have been facing various episodes including the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the hot period following the outbreak of the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza – not to mention the importance of the irruption of AI in the midst of the Trump phase of US domination. Faced with these events, humanity feels the need to take a reflective pause to find schemes by which to reorient itself. This reflective halt must meet two conditions: To be radical and to be cooperative, and thus capable of involving the world’s intelligentsia. Nicol A. Barria-Asenjo fulfils these conditions with this book and it will therefore be indispensable as a starting point for thinking about the future.’

José Luis Villacañas, Emeritus Professor of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.

‘This remarkable collection is at once a map and a compass. Its authors represent multiple locations, generations, languages and critical traditions. With a powerful organizing voice from Chile, Prof. Barria-Asenjo generates a new geography of intellectual exchange and debate, which also offers a new territory of dialogue across disciplines from philosophy to critical theory, and from politics to psychoanalysis. Bringing together authors who refuse to accept their historical limits and contexts, this volume offers an unflinching claim on a variety of unclaimed and unsafe political futures.’

Arjun Appadurai, Emeritus Professor in Media, Culture and Communication, New York University, USA

‘In times of uncertainty, the Universidad de Los Lagos, from the south of the world, takes on the challenge of being a space where critical voices from the five continents converge to rethink the present and project possible futures. This book demonstrates that critical thinking and international collaboration are powerful tools to open horizons of justice, dignity, and emancipation amid the tensions of the 21st century. Intellectual work, understood as an act of responsibility and commitment, is not the heritage of an elite: it is nourished by plurality, dialogue, and difference. Bringing together thinkers of diverse trajectories constitutes a resistance against the elitization of knowledge and, at the same time, an invitation to reflect on the issues of our time.’

Oscar Garrido, University Chancellor, Universidad de Los Lagos, Chile.

Table of Contents:

Foreword by Peter Frankopan  Introduction: Intellectuals in the Age of Politics  Section I: The Academy as Counter-ideology of the Academy: Towards a Reconfiguration of the Neoliberal Labyrinth  1. Crossing the Walls Between Disciplines in the 21st Century  2. Communisation, Materialisation and Transformation: Three Pending Tasks of Left-Wing Intellectuals in the 21st Century  3. Five Duties of the Intellectual Today (and a Hegelian Riddle)  4. For a Clitoral Revolution: Transfeminism as a Community of Jouissance  5. Against Trench Warfare  6. Nelly Richard and the Journal Revista de Crítica Cultural (1990-2008): The Construction of an Intellectual Scene  7. To Be Truly Decolonial  8. Urgent Engagement of Critical Intellectuals: The Foundation of Counter-Institutions  9. Looking Through the Concave and Convex Mirrors: Centering Arab Indigeneity and Decolonizing Theory  10. The Untimely Intellectual  11. Lenin: the (Un)beloved Madman  12. This Shift to the Right Among Intellectuals was Foreseeable  Section II: A General Cartography of the 21st Century. Intellectuals Against the Elitization of Knowledge  13. The Ambiguities of Populism and the Challenges of Psychoanalytic Political Theory in the 21st Century  14. Three Spaces of Practice in and against the University  15. The Mandate of the Marginal: Psychoanalytic Ethics between Duty and Responsibility  16. Tomás Moulian: Between Macchiavello and Lenin  17. The Dialectic of Formalization and Philosophy Under Conditions  18. Edward Said and the Intelligentsia’s Consciousness in the Twenty-first Century  19. Reactionarism Closes the Door. Revisiting Kant’s Aufklarung and The Conflict of the Faculties in the Age of Post-Truth  20. “They do not move”: Salto Vitale in Fascizing Times  21. The Social Embedding of Truth: The Role of the Intellectual and the Inevitability of the Ideological  22. From Prophetic Intellectual to Democratic Intellectual  Section III: A Critical Turn against the Hybris of the Social Sciences and Humanities: The Subversive Power of Collectivity  23. The Liminal Time in Politics of the 21st Century: State, Common Sense, Society and Community  24. Sartre´s Engagement: Some Reflections on a Complex Concept in the Light of the Responsibility and Duty of Intellectuals in the 21st Century  25. Recognizing Our Global Indigeneities: Our Duty and Responsibility  26. Theory and Demos: The “Red” Memory of French Philosophy in South Korea  27. The Role of Progressive Thinkers Face to the Global Conflict  28. The Diffidence of the Intellectual: Mediatory Uncertainty and Critical Consciousness  29. The Rearguard Intellectual  30. Intellectuals in Education: Emergencies and Ethical-political Challenges  31. Gramsci and Lukács in Dialogue: Revolutionary Legacies and the Role of the Intellectual Today  32. The Epistemology of Participation:  To Heal and Integrate the Indigenous Practices  33. Parrhesia in Contemporary Academy: Challenges and Potentials of Frank Speech  34. Along a Shady Road: The Non-Listening  Section IV: A New Era of Intellectuals Effort: Between Historical Changes and Global Struggles  35. Another Politics, a New Communism: Intellectual and Political Dialogues on the 21st Century and Beyond  36. The Political Commitment of Intellectuals in the University of the 21st Century  37. The Intellectual and Technology  38. Intellectual Autonomy under the Crisis of Revolution: Post-Soviet Trajectories  39. The Deleuzo-Guattarian Century Has Come  40. What Comes After What Comes After?: Towards a ‘New Realism’  41. Which Intellectuals for the New Time of Authoritarianisms?  42. Queer Eco-Feminist Counterpublics for the New Millennium  43. A (Lacanian) Taxi Driver’s Notebook  44. Intellectuals Against Neocolonialism: Fostering Knowledge, Resistance, and Agency  45. The Metamodernity and Digimodernity Hypothesis at the Crossroads of the 21st Century  46. How to Reinvent Ethics, Our Role and Responsibility in a World Defaced?  47. What is an Intellectual Today?  48. The Mystery of the Public Intellectual