Categories of Intellectuals by Carol Boyce Davies

I recently read this categorization of intellectuals by Carol Boyce Davies in her biography of black Communist Claudia Jones and thought you might be interested.

The Gramscian binary of the traditional intellectual and the organic intellectual is expanded by three descriptions: 'the co-opted liberal intellectual' posture, which never sees knowledge as moving into transforming action; 'the accommodationist-reformist' intellectual, who aligns her/himself with popular struggles but cannot communicate with people the ideas of the academy; and the 'guerrilla intellectual' in the tradition of Walter Rodney, whose scholarship, life, and activism were all organized for transformative intent.

Our contemporary U.S.-based realities reveal that two other categories are perhaps appropriate. I would add (1) the commoditized intellectual, whose entire exercise of academic production is hyper-market-driven and in the benefit of the state; and (2) the radically transformative intellectual, whose entire praxis is organized around the production of knowledge directed at transforming the social contexts in which we live and operate in and out of the academy. This latter position comes out of not seeing the Walter Rodney position in idealistic terms, because, at its most extreme, it requires a certain martyrdom in order to be activated.