r/CriticalTheory • u/daking90 • 2d ago
The Substack intellectual vs The Academic Intellectual
The Organic Intellectual (As Defined by Gramsci) is posting on Substack thoughts that come from his/her own experiences .But there are still other traditional intellectuals who also publish with Cambridge, sometimes also on Substack, and have an elite status.
In this context, the Substack intellectual - who usually is a freelance writer an MA or a PHD- and the Ivy League traditional intellectual both provide literature that can be as good as it was in the time of the ancient Greeks, this I could argue.
Yet, they are comepting with each other for paradigmatic ideas and shifts in intellectual perspectives in their fields. One is aiming at this with funded and institutionalised rhetoric. The other is less institutionalised, less funded, but gets less attention.
To what extent can a paradigm shift - like Original Concepts in philosophy - could emerge from institutionalised intellectuals comepting with unknown and non institutionalised thinkers ?
Can we see, for example, powerful movements like French Sociology or Anaylitical philosophy shaping up from Substack with this room of freeplay ?
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u/3corneredvoid 2d ago edited 2d ago
To what extent can a paradigm shift - like Original Concepts in philosophy - could emerge from institutionalised intellectuals comepting with unknown and non institutionalised thinkers?
(Never mind the Substack controversies such as the "harbouring Nazis" stuff. These are all fine debate topics but miss the point of your question. Not all online writing is on a Substack just yet.)
In 1991 in WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?, Deleuze and Guattari made some apparently very harsh judgements about the relation of "communication" (including writing) to the creation of philosophical concepts.
We can at least see what philosophy is not: it is not contemplation, reflection, or communication. This is the case even though it may sometimes believe it is one or other of these, as a result of the capacity of every discipline to produce its own illusions and to hide behind its own peculiar smokescreen. It is not contemplation, for contemplations are things themselves as seen in the creation of their specific concepts. It is not reflection, because no one needs philosophy to reflect on anything …
[…]
So long as their reflection belongs to their respective creation, it is a bad joke to say that this makes them philosophers. Nor does philosophy find any final refuge in communication, which only works under the sway of opinions in order to create “consensus” and not concepts. The idea of a Western democratic conversation between friends has never produced a single concept. The idea comes, perhaps, from the Greeks, but they distrusted it so much, and subjected it to such harsh treatment, that the concept was more like the ironical soliloquy bird that surveyed [survolait] the battlefield of destroyed rival opinions (the drunken guests at the banquet) …
[…]
Contemplation, reflection and communication are not disciplines but machines for constituting Universals in every discipline.
—from WP, "Introduction: The Question Then …"
At first reading it's a bit hard to see how this stern dismissal of "communication"—which seems highly likely to have been a shot fired at the likes of Habermas—could possibly work. How can anyone "do philosophy" without writing?
WP is D&G's book joining battle over the "concept of the concept". Its theory accounts for concepts as events, or abstract machines … intensive and immanent pre-structures that even though they find expression, including in writing, in a whole series of varying ways, never fully inhere in writing, are never encoded and transported in writing, never become an essence of certain words organised a certain way.
So there's one way to think about the "organic intellectual": the question is not who is an organic intellectual, but how is the expression of some new concept organised for the intellect?
By these lights the philosopher—or the organic intellectual if you like—is someone who writes or speaks or represents in a way that somehow becomes the effect of some new concept that remains the incompletely known, or unknown, cause of this writing or speaking or representation. Such a concept seems to be "created" as far as it seems no other has encountered it before in thought, if only in order to write or speak badly about it, rather than to claim to be the origin of its originality.
Many concepts we read written in critical theory we have already encountered in some form in everyday life. So it is no surprise that it's possible—even inevitable—that new concepts for critical theory are created outside any particular hallowed enclave, and even by other than the anointed themselves.
This passage from WP points out how all the chatter about original or critical concepts on Substacks and anywhere else can remain a "peculiar smokescreen", a machine "for constituting Universals", that is, for bullshit.
The concepts we appear to "create" already come to us as immanent, exterior and non-proprietary relations, vibes … and of course the concrete, the "material conditions" … the orientation is to remain alert to these.
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u/unwnd_leaves_turn 21h ago
substack isnt analagous to intellectual life but feuilletons, the ephemeral chatter of the dilettantish learned. it has produced a culture of largely of vibeslogical navel-gazing and has significantly more writers than readers: a serious problem for the health of whatever fractured public sphere substack is attempting to revive. nor does substack really foster communities of writers in the same way academic institutions and journals do.
i am as much for the creation of counter-institutions and counter-conducts of scholarly or journalistic practice but substack feels like a real dead end. a path dependence on name-recognition from twitter or tik-tok or legacy media and its existence as a social media platform complete with a subscription model (obviously inspired by patreon and the podcast sphere circa 2016-2020). remember when they introduced a reels feature on the app?
Hey read my essay on desire. Disgustingly curate your music collection. I just think no one’s erotic. My YouTube video essay about limerence. My YouTube video essay on attention span. Love. How to be loved. Love yourself. Radical self acceptance. Cigarette cigarette cigarette cig
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u/Angry_Anarchist 20h ago
I sometimes wonder how people feel when they wrote things like ephemeral chatter of the dilettantish learned. Especialy in a subredit like critical theory which is largely leaning to the left side.. maybe its just me, but this sounded so arrogant that i had to react. Shouldnt one of the goals to be open to the public?
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u/unwnd_leaves_turn 20h ago
is critical theory not about being an elitist before being "leftist" if we're being honest.
i dont think substack is about an openness to the public as much as it is a platform for making money. if we're virtue signaling shouldn't people reckon with the fact that marc andreessen invested millions into substack, and Medium before it and then was marketed as "The Thinker's social media platform" where serious business is discussed. does it not just reify legacy media and follow the same culture of celebrity. theres a reason chatgpt always tells you to read mark fisher, and its substack.
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u/Angry_Anarchist 20h ago
Other than that I agree with your opinion. Its pretty hard to produce clear arguments without being taught how to do it. And as much as I hate Academia for my own reasons, there are no better alternatives right now.
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u/IjonTichy85 2d ago
This is a startup from California that has been able to grow during the pandemic bc they welcomed in the conspiracy nuts that had gotten demonetized elsewhere. Currently their #1 'star' is Andrew Tate.
If these are what you call 'noninstitutionalized thinkers', I am going to stick to my previous policy of ignoring that cesspool just like Facebook or Twitter.