JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 28, Numbers 1 & 2, 2008 Page: 59
390, [6] p. : ill. ; 22 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Paul Butler
Composition's Displaced Public Intellectuals
The answer, I suggest, involves one of the chief dilemmas facing
composition studies today-the field's lack of public intellectuals, which
Fish, in a different forum, defines as "someone who takes as his or her
subject matters of public concern, and has the public 's attention" (Pro-
fessional 118). A crucial question, then, is, where are composition's
public intellectuals, and why does the field need them so urgently today?
I am not the first person to pose this question about the dearth of public
intellectuals in composition. In a College English review essay, Frank
Farmer asks how composition can reconstitute the concept of the public
intellectual to achieve its own goals: "How can we define-perhaps more
accurately redefine-the public intellectual to meet our needs and
purposes in our moment?" (202). Christian Weisser, whose work on
public intellectuals makes up part of Farmer's review, calls on
compositionists "to rethink what it means to be an intellectual working in
the public sphere today" and suggests that one place to look is in "sites
outside the classroom in which this discourse is generated and used" (121,
42). Weisser hypothesizes that in composition the sites of "public
writing" and "service-learning," in his estimation, "might very well
become the next dominant focal point around which the teaching of
college writing is theorized and imagined" (42).
While Weisser's observations are promising, however, he bases his
thinking in part on one of Fish's highly problematic claims, that is,
"academics, by definition, are not candidates for the role of the public
intellectual" (118)-an assertion that Fish, by virtue of his public work
alone, clearly refutes. In a different context, Richard Posner also counters
Fish's contention. In his book Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline,
Posner states, "Being an academic public intellectual is a career, albeit a
part-time and loosely structured one," and he goes on to suggest that
academics are needed most as public intellectuals in areas that require
expertise "beyond the capacity of the journalist or other specialist in
communication to supply" (41, 45). Within the context of composition
studies, public intellectuals can accurately convey the field's theoretical
knowledge about writing to the general public. For instance, when the
widely circulated editorial by Fish appeared, it prompted one New York59
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Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition (U.S.). JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 28, Numbers 1 & 2, 2008, periodical, 2008; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc268403/m1/57/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .