Intellectual work must intervene in the world, distinct from academic work

Evidence

I come back to the deadly seriousness of intellectual work. It is a deadly serious matter. I come back to the critical distinction between intellectual work and academic work: they overlap, they abut with one another, they feed off one another, the one provides you with the means to do the other. But they are not the same thing. I come back to the difficulty of instituting a genuine cultural and critical practice, which is intended to produce some kind of organic intellectual political work, which does not try to inscribe itself in the overarching metanarrative of achieved knowledges, within the institutions. I come back to theory and politics, the politics of theory. Not theory as the will to truth, but theory as a set of contested, localized, conjunctural knowledges, which have to be debated in a dialogical way. But also as a practice which always thinks about its intervention in a world in which it would make some difference, in which it would have some effect. Finally, a practice which understands the need for intellectual modesty. I do think there is all the difference in the world between understanding the politics of intellectual work and substituting intellectual work for politics. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 259

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the intellectual-vs-academic work distinction and theory as contested conjunctural knowledges rather than universal truth.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the culmination of Hall’s whole intellectual project — the distinction between understanding the politics of intellectual work and substituting it for politics is dense and paradigm-defining.
• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s organic intellectual discussed in the next passage and to Milgrom’s work on institutions as functional replacements. — connects to: Research should be a citizen’s right to knowledge tools, not an academic monopoly — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 636