Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 15:04:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Amardeep Singh <asingh-AT-emerald.tufts.edu> Subject: Re: Organic intellectual M.Srinivisan is accessible on alt.culture.us.indian at least, and many others I think. I don't think I should forward any of the actual messages to the list right now; it might not be appropriate, and anyway, the posts won't really be useful outside of their context. An "organic intellectual" in my understanding is simply an individual who decides to start speaking to people about their sense of self, someone who functions as a locus of organization in a discourse. The reason for "organic" is that the individual isn't motivated/trained to act in any institutional/academic context. For Gramsci this was a way out of the inevitable elitism of marxist intellectualism, where five tenured profs. would sit around and plot Revolution... (it also anticipates Foucault's critiques of both 'discipline' and 'institution') I call Meera Srinivasan an organic intellectual because she's attacking head-on many problems (and exploiting some of the benefits) of internet discourse, without claiming any institutional backing, and without retreating to a position of safe remove (as I am- it's a little too nasty for me). If she employed either of these tactics, it wouldn't be an equal playing-field: she wouldn't qualify as being entirely a part of the 'body' of the discoursive field (the 'masses') she would be atttempting to lead. -Deep Singh --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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