JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 17, Number 2, 1997 Page: 155

                                
Race and the Public Intellectual 155

transition between academic discourse and more public discourses affecting
your work? And, are there problems of translation when moving between
discourses?
A:I see the transition from the academic to the public as a self-conscious decision
to intervene on debates and conversations that happen in public spheres-a
different public sphere from the academy because I consider the academy a
public sphere-that have enormous consequence on everyday peoples' lives
that I want to have a part of. The transition, however, is not smooth; the
demands for rigorous debate within the academy are much different than
those demands in the public sphere. Within academic, linguistic practices,
there are enormous debates going on right now that are being prosecuted
within the academy in the larger intellectual scene about the function of
academized language. I'm not one of these people who-for obvious reasons,
self-interest being the primary one [laughter]-jumps on academics because
they don't speak for a public audience or that they cannot speak in ways that
are clear and articulate, because those are loaded terms: clarity, articulate. As
many other scholars-Henry Giroux, Donna Haraway-have all reminded
us that language has multiple functions even within a limited context. To
understand that is to acknowledge that there are a variety of fronts upon which
we must launch our linguistic and rhetorical resistances against political
destruction, against moral misery, and against narrow conceptions of what
language does and how it functions. Being reared in a black church, being
reared in a so-called minority linguistic community that had rich resources
that were concealed and obscured for a variety of reasons, I think that I'm
sensitive to the claim against academics and probably understand their
defensiveness when they say, "We're writing for a specific audience." That's
fine. I think that if you write an article that will be read by a thousand people,
and that those thousand people gained something from it, there's an exchange
of information, there's an exchange of ideas, there's a sharpening of the debate,
there's a deepening of the basis upon which we understand a particular
intellectual subject. There's no reason to be apologetic for that because that's
a very specific function within a larger academic enterprise that needs to be
prosecuted. If, for instance, somebody writes an essay upon a specific aspect of
Foucault's conception or appropriation of Benthamite conceptions of the prison
and they make dear the relationship between not only Bentham and Foucault,
they also rearticulate our conceptions of the panopticon and how surveillance
operates as it's extended into the black ghetto. That's all for the better and good--
even if only a thousand people understand the language in which it's deployed
and if only they get it. That means that some advance and understanding and
exchange of information has gone on, and that's a legitimate enterprise.
The problem I have is we don't have a problem with brain surgeons who
speak languages that only twelve people can understand. If the man or woman
can save your life, speak the jargon; do what you've got to do; operate! We
haven't got anyproblem with that. So, I don't have a problem with the similar