Joy
CONNOLLY and James PORTER Can Public
Intellectuals Think?
Classics and the Public Sphere
Though the
pressures of the present are urgent and real, classical
studies has more resources for ensuring its survival than
classicists tend to think. One of these is the natural
affinity of classical scholarship to public intellectual
life. From its founding, the field has been every bit as
much public and political as it has been a matter of the
solitary scholar poring over the relics of the past.
Indeed, classics has arguably held the prominent place in
society it has historically enjoyed not because it
has been a temple ofof its
timeless value but precisely because classics has been a
contested heritage, one
of direct, if changing, value to each successive
modernity.
Our panel is
both a call to arms and an exhortation to acknowledge and
develop the historical and contemporary links between
classics and public intellectual life, --in our classes and
curricula, in our scholarship, in our public appearances,
and in our aspirations. We believe that classics can and
must rethink its historical and social functions in the
light of its history as a peculiarly civic study, and
that the profession needs to examine the ways its daily
practices of research and teaching enable--or
disable--lines of communication with the public sphere.
Not all classicists will (or will want to) be
contacted by the media for quotation, or write books
designed for non-professional readers. Yet in
order to guarantee classics a place at the table in
the public sphere, we must begin by making our own
historical role in building that table better understood, by ourselves and by the
public.
Contributors
will explore pivotal moments in the historical formation
of the field, focusing on political context: the Italian
Renaissance, 19th century America, the 1960s,
and today. Some will speak from their own experience as
writers for non-professional audiences. How can classics
capitalize on the intrinsic advantages granted to it by
its disciplinary history? What are some of the ways in
which classicists might learn to reach out and to shape
public discourse, appeal to existing public
constituencies, enrich the understanding of classical
antiquity among the larger public, and indeed to create
new publics, without at the same time suffering from
anxieties over the "dilution" of professional standards?
Can classics departments tenure public intellectuals?
What are some of the models available for public
intellectuals in our field today? Can classicists imagine
themselves as "specific intellectuals" (Foucault), as
"organic intellectuals" (Gramsci), as "figures of
dissent" (Eagleton), or as "unacknowledged legislators"
(Hitchens), or simply as public writers trained in the
traditions of classical eloquence and civic virtue? These
are some of the questions our panel wants to address.