liberation

Review of “Speaking Truth to Power” – where are all the public intellectuals?

There’s an important discussion going on over at the Kiwipolitico blog on the question of “Does New Zealand have Public Intellectuals?” This is a topic of great interest to me, and I argued recently in my Drinking Liberally talk on “What’s left in 2009 in New Zealand?” (and subsequently posted on my blog here) that the New Zealand left is currently at an extremely low point partly related to the fact that ‘there’s few leftwing intellectuals of any prominence’ anymore, which seemed to spark some interest and debate. As a contribution to the ongoing debate at Kiwipolitico (and now on Chris Trotter’s Bowalley Road blog here), I’ve republished my own review of the seminar 2008 book entitled Speaking Truth to Power, edited by Laurence Simmons. My review was published in early 2008 in the Political Science journal. At the time I also published extensive explorations of the various chapters of Speaking Truth to Power. Here are the links to the relevant blog posts on Bruce Jesson, Nicky Hager, Brian Easton, Jane Kelsey, Sandra Coney, Laurence Simmons, Michael King, Roger Horrocks, Belich, Waring and Walker, as well as my posts about Chris Trotter’s review of the book, and Mark Broatch’s Sunday Star Times book review. But my own review is below. [Read more below]

[NewLabour Party history] 23: The Alliance oligarchy

In the short history of the NewLabour Party (NLP) and Alliance, the conservative and rightward political developments were paralleled by comparative organisational tendencies towards oligarchy. During their short existence, both parties undoubtedly displayed a concentration and consolidation of power within the leadership, as the Anderton group came to dominate both. As one senior member of the NLP said about working inside the Alliance: ‘Its just like in the old Labour Party again. People get power and they want more of it’ (Interview). According to Robert Michels, the writer of Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, an influential book about the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the rightward drift of parties usually goes hand-in-hand with organisational tendencies towards an increasingly narrow distribution of internal political power. [Read more below]

Drinking liberally or problematically?

While it might sometimes appear that the Drinking Liberally political project has been hijacked in New Zealand by the Labour and Green parties for their own partisan purposes, it doesn’t have to be that way. In Dunedin we’re lucky enough to be starting our branch of the project (Tuesday 7pm, Velvet Underground), and hopefully we can be sure not to let its potential be siphoned off by politicians for their blatant permanent electioneering. If the project is to survive as a credible and useful project for the left, it needs to be protected from such partisan abuse and top down elitist speech making from MPs and party hacks. After all the Drinking Liberally project imported from the US is a potentially exciting development for politics in New Zealand – or at least for the small politerrati involved in activism, blogging, etc – as well as also for the search for new ways of ‘doing politics’. Yet there are a number of significant problems with the project – many relating to the highly contested definition of the term ‘liberal’. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Laurence Simmons

The editor of Speaking Truth to Power (Auckland University Press, 2007), Laurence Simmons has performed a huge service to both politics and the left in New Zealand by putting together his book about the decline of the life of ideas in this country. He argues that ‘Not all intellectuals are academics, and not all academics are intellectuals’ [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Roger Horrocks

Emeritus Professor Roger Horrocks contributes an insightful and reflective essay on ‘A short history of “the New Zealand intellectual”’ to Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand (edited by Laurence Simmon, 2007, Auckland: AUP). In this, Horrocks deals with being chided for being “ivory tower”, he details the reality of the university common-room discussions and debates, he explains why the media doesn’t contribute to ‘the public sphere’, and he criticises the current Labour Government for continuing the neoliberal model of media [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Chris Trotter’s ‘power of speaking truth’

Chris Trotter wrote a review of Speaking Truth to Power (edited by Laurence Simmons, AUP: 2007) in a March edition of the Independent Financial Review. In the review (entitled ‘The power of speaking truth’) he salutes the all those individual and isolated intellectuals 'kicking against the pricks'. He also takes issue with the idea that New Zealand’s anti-intellectualism is deeply ingrained, instead arguing that it’s a ‘prejudice requiring constant maintenance and reinforcement’ by rightwing forces. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Mark Broatch’s ‘Smart thinking’

Is the Sunday Star-Times New Zealand’s most intellectual newspaper? Certainly the paper ran a very good review last year of Laurence Simmons’ Speaking Truth to Power. Written by Mark Broatch, the article entitled Smart thinking allows for an insightful examination of the NZ personality. And it must be one of the few times that a newspaper article mentions both Antonio Gramsci and Fred Dagg. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Belich, Waring, and Walker

The least interesting interviews in Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand (edited by Laurence Simmons, 2007, Auckland: AUP) are with the liberal rather than the leftwing participants. But it’s still worth pointing out that in their interviews James Belich says NZ and Australia didn’t actually become nations until 1901, Marilyn Waring claims to have nothing good to say about academic management, and Ranginui Walker defends biculturalism. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Bruce Jesson

Not only was the late Bruce Jesson (1944-1999) one of New Zealand’s most important leftwing intellectuals, he was also deeply concerned with this country’s anti-intellectualism together with the ideological poverty of the political left. Therefore Laurence Simmon’s Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand (2007, Auckland: AUP) constitutes, in many ways, a fulfillment of Jesson’s pleas for the left to take seriously this defect. Fittingly the book is also dedicated to Jesson (as well as Michael King), and contains a very good examination of Jesson’s approach to these issues, written by retired professor of Political Studies, Andrew Sharp. In this, Sharp spells out Jesson’s frustration with the ‘mindless activism’ of the NZ left, his despair with the state of the media, and his love-hate relationship with NZ politics. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Nicky Hager

Nicky Hager is described in Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand as ‘a freelance intellectual, a commentator, a writer, a book-reviewer, a speech-maker, [existing] outside an institution’. In his interview in this book (edited by Laurence Simmons, 2007, Auckland: AUP) it becomes apparent that Hager is one of the most important and incisive ‘organic intellectuals’ that we’ve currently got. His chapter is probably the most interesting in the book. Among many other things, Hager explains how Helen Clark spends a lot of her time ‘doing things which I despise and think stupid’; why ‘we have a government that could do good things but it’s cautious and visionless and nervous and going nowhere’; why MMP is killing the social movements; why the ‘debate on Maori sovereignty or Maori rights is now a no-go zone’, and why political protestors are an important part of public intellectualism. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Brian Easton

New Zealand’s most well known economic commentator is neither an academic, a journalist, nor a financial sector representative, but instead ‘an independent scholar’. Brian Easton was interviewed for the new publication Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand (edited by Laurence Simmons, 2007, Auckland: AUP), and spoke of why he thinks that blogs have now overtaken the mainstream media as the most important vehicles of political information and opinion to the public, why NZ shouldn't be a bicultural nation, why the country is very nervous of having proper debates, and how the role of the intellectual is to be sceptical of everything. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Jane Kelsey

Jane Kelsey is probably the most important leftwing academic in New Zealand today. Her published criticisms and records of the implementation of neoliberalism in New Zealand remain the definitive accounts of that time. So her views on intellectualism in NZ are bound to be of interest. In her interview chapter in the new publication Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand, edited by Laurence Simmons (2007, Auckland: AUP), Kelsey argues that NZ used to have a much more intellectual culture, that the Labour Government is philosophically empty, obsessed with managerialism, and hostile to criticism, and that there is currently a small revival in intellectualism and dissent. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Sandra Coney

What role do New Zealand intellectuals have in social change? What should be the role of NZ academics in public debate? These are some of the issues discussed by Sandra Coney in her interview chapter in the new publication Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand, edited by Laurence Simmons (2007, Auckland: AUP). In particular, Coney is rather intelligently pessimistic about the anti-intellectualism in NZ society, the role of academics in public debate, the current state of gender relations, and the ability of the current Labour Government to roll back neoliberalism. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Michael King

New Zealand society is considered to be a very anti-intellectual. Certainly nowadays there is little public discussion of ideology, ideas, and political theory. Such things tend to be ghettoised in the universities where academics are often – for various reasons – disconnected from public life. Such issues relating to the state of NZ intellectualism are discussed in a new book edited by Laurence Simmons, entitled Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand (2007, Auckland: AUP). This blog post is the first of a number that will highlight and reflect on the ideas raised by the contributors to this book, starting with the late Michael King, who in this book offers some controversial opinions about NZ universities, ethnicity, and the idea of pakeha culture being an indigenous one. [Read more below]