critical theory – Page 2 – Aliosha Pittaka Bielenberg

As a concentrator in Archaeology here at Brown, I am also a member of the Engaged Scholars Program. I’ve recently been thinking a lot about the nature of engaged scholarship and my relationship with it. I wanted to summarize and comment on three seemingly disparate strands of engaged scholarship that I’ve recently come across: the more traditional idea of service learning; Antonio Gramsci’s concept of the “organic intellectual”; and Cornel West’s more recent evolution of this idea, as demonstrated through an essay on Martin Luther King, Jr. I end by drawing together these three thinkers and articulating a critique of dominant understandings of engaged scholarship.

This semester, I am in SOC 0310: Theory and Practice of Engaged Scholarship (with Allen Hance and Lynsey Ford). We’ve been talking a lot about what engaged scholarship means for the program, particularly as an evolution of “service learning.” The traditional idea was that students gain valuable skills and experiences through direct service. More recently, Tania Mitchell has encapsulated a trend away from this idea towards a kind of “critical service-learning,” which emphasizes the importance of critical reflection as a way of addressing structural and systemic issues that underlie the most apparent problems. Brown offers a number of courses that fit within this philosophy, and has recently approved the introduction of a course designation in Community-Based Learning and Research (CBLR). Indeed, I would argue that the idea of service learning (mostly in its critical form) is at the heart of engaged scholarship as the Swearer Center currently understands it. Other definitions abound. For example, as used by New England Resource Center for Higher Education, engaged scholarship focuses on the role of faculty “in a reciprocal partnership with the community, is interdisciplinary, and integrates faculty roles of teaching, research, and service.” This definition (focused on faculty) has greater ambit than the idea of service learning, which is focused on student experience. I feel that this difference points at the crux of the issue with engaged scholarship as it is currently understood — more on this later. Continue reading “Engaged Scholarship and the “Organic Intellectual”” →

I wanted to jot down some initial thoughts about Spivak’s famous piece “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Despite the obscurantism and the great attention required to really parse Spivak’s text, reading it is ultimately a deeply satisfying and rewarding experience. The question that pervades the essay is essentially identical to that posed by Edward Said in “Always on Top” (published in the London Review of Books): “What does one do about the representation of undocumented experiences — of slaves, servants, insurgents (such as those at Morant Bay) — for which we have to depend on socially elevated, literate witnesses who have access to official records?” Said’s answer to his own question can be gleaned from his article in Critical Inquiry entitled “Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors”, and more indirectly through Orientalism. Like Foucault, Said is invested in rigorous empirical work that informs, interrogates, and integrates critical theory; hence why Said responds to the criticism that his “work is only negative polemic which does not advance a new epistemological approach or method” (210). Said concludes by advocating the work of “engaged historians” whose “instigatory force … is of startling relevance to all the humanities and social sciences as they continue to struggle with the formidable difficulties of empire” (225). Continue reading “Reading Spivak with Said” →