Who are we: digging into Gramsci and Bourdieu to understand our identity as “thinkers of society”
Marilia Coutinho, Ph.D. , the #BaffledImmigrant
Oct 19th 2019, 18 tweets, 5 min read
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1/ I’ve just been asked by a friend about Gramsci recommendations. I fished only the prison notebooks from my old memory, but there is much more. I am sharing a few resources here since Gramsci seems to be attracting younger scholars' attention again.
2/ I have a feeling that those of us that are “intellectuals” sensu lato (as those members of society with the role of thinking society itself, such as scholars, journalists, leaders, etc) are aware that our place has changed. Our responsibilities as well.
abahlali.org/files/gramsci.…
3/ There are also generational, national-cultural and historical moment factors that deeply affect not only our action, reaction, fulfilling of our role, but our self-representation itself.
4/ Why not go ahead and while you are at it, read a bit on Bourdieu’s theory of field, intellectual habitus and the symbolic elites?
5/ Sorry, I wasn’t done with the tweet. Here, for example, in “forms of capital”
5/ For example, the theory of fields and the role of intellectuals in esoteric fields:
6/ And you can follow-up with Homo academicus:
7/ This has been particularly disturbing to me and other Latin American scholars recently. Typically, as members of the “symbolic elite”, we attend the best universities, which are all public and our tuition is paid by the government (“free”, which is not really free).
8/ That creates, for many of us, a clear sense of reciprocity: I must serve this society that has rendered me privileged (our families are not wealthy but we inherit “intellectual/symbolic capital”). I went to the absurdity of calculating how much public money was spent…
9/ … on my education and how much I had generated to Brazilian society. My calculations showed me I had provided more than the investment and that gave me relief.
10/ However, previous clumsy bureaucrats and the present fascist mob that seized power in Brazil (the “Bolsonaro criminal mob”) destroyed much of what I did. The thought the that investment was in vain is horrible. Almost unacceptable.
11/ I tried to explain that to American friends, all left leaning. The difference is that the American higher education system changed too much from the days of Vannevar Bush.
ia800207.us.archive.org/12/items/scien…
12/ The dream of being scientifically and technologically self-sufficient through the most spectacular higher education and public research system the world had ever seen was betrayed by American conservatives.
13/ And with this, American intellectuals seem pretty lost. Most have, as my friends explained, “invested in themselves” to acquire an education. It’s easy to understand they don’t see themselves as owing society anything, as we, Latinos, do.
14/ But we have also been kicked out of our mission-oriented identity by the fascists.
So who are we? World scholars, intellectuals, thinkers?
How about we go back to the classics and think?
15/ By the way, @cacrisalves and @ingridharvold, I’m game, ok? For whatever you guys are planning. We got work to do. I’ll share mine — you share yours. Deal?
16/ I hope this thread helped. I really hope some young curious soul downloads at least one book and reads it.
