The New Public Intellectual

Politics, Theory, and the Public Sphere

Jeffrey R. Di Leo, Peter Hitchcock, Jeffrey R. Di Leo, Peter Hitchcock

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137585752
• eBook ISBN: 9781137581624
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice
• Index: Literature

What are the theoretical parameters that produce the category public intellectual? By pondering the conceptual elements that inform the term, this book offers not just a political critique, but a sense of the new challenges its meanings present. This collection complicates the notion of public intellectual while arguing for its continued urgency in communities formal and informal, institutional and abstract. While it is not quite accurate to say public intellectuals have disappeared entirely, it is clear they function differently in an age of global neoliberalism and techno-digital overdrive. Today the idea of the public intellectual bears only the slightest resemblance to what it was fifty or even twenty-five years ago. The essays in this collection provide a number of different ways to imagine the fate of public intellectuals and offers a thorough exploration of the commonplace ideologies and politics associated with them.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Before the Beginning, After the End: Toward the New Public Intellectual
• Part I: Neoliberalism, Education, and Commitment
• Part II: Democracy, Community, and Globalization
• Part III: Legitimation, Publics, and Philosophy
• Notes on Contributors
• Index