Kellner Intellectual Analysis

Hulya Eker

Discussion Questions:
(1) Kellner distinguishes between “functional” and “critical oppositional public intellectuals. What are the major distinctions? Which of the two styles of theorizing most appeals to you? Why?
I’d like to start answering this question with Kellner’s definition of Intellectual because it helped me to better understand the rest of the article and I think it might help others too. We all know what “intellectual” means but here is Kellner’s definition of intellectual from his article “Techno-Politics, New Technologies, and New Public Spheres”; “The concept of the intellectual traditionally involved workers in the sphere of mental labor, who produced ideas, wrote text, and developed and transmitted intellectual abilities as opposed to manual workers who produced good and worked with their hand in the realms of manufacture, heavy industry, agriculture and other field that primarily depended on manual labor”.

The major distinctions between functional intellectuals and critical oppositional public intellectuals are that the functional intellectuals want to stick with the standing standards of societies and in contrast oppositional public intellectuals are opposed to the current values of society and want social change.
Kellner thinks functional intellectuals work on improving the existing societies while they focus on the technical knowledge but critical oppositional public intellectuals work to create a better society while changing the existing society and he also think that they struggle trying to create a better society.
One other distinguish between functional intellectuals and critical oppositional public intellectuals is that functional intellectual thinks existing values are being violatet but they mostly do not react for this in contrast critical oppositional public intellectuals choose not to stay quiet if they ever see injustice, they fight for justice and truth.
One example from the article “Techno-Politics, New Technologies, and New Public Spheres” is

Critical oppositional public intellectual theorists is the one that most appealing to me. Because I like how they raise their voice against injustice as opposed to the functional intellectuals. They are not only raising their voices against injustice they also fight for the justice, they use all their speaking and wring skills to stand against whatever is not right for them. I think I would do the same. If I ran into a situation where there is injustice, I cannot just see that and do nothing, I would do something to make it right. Another reason that makes Critical oppositional public intellectual appealing to me is them wanting to create a better society even though they struggle doing it so eve n though they try to change the existing society in order to accomplish their goal. Because their struggle is for a better society and everyone would want that.

(2) What does Patricia Hill Collins' mean by "matrix of domination?" In what ways does her notion of and thinking help to subvert the matrix in her view?

Give an example from your life that exemplifies how intersections of some of your multiple statuses (e.g., gender, race, class, age, etc.) affect your social experience.
Collin thinks “race, class and gender represent the three system of oppression that most heavily affects African American women”. She also believes there are other groups than Black Women being affected by this oppression.

In her article “Black feminist thought in the matrix of domination” Collin states “Race, class and gender constitute axes of oppression that characterize black women’s experience within a more generalized matrix of domination.” By “matrix of domination” she means black women mostly affected oppression because of the race, class and gender factors of the matrix of domination but other group of people might be affected for other dimension of the matrix such as ethnicity and

religion.
One perfect example for that is when I return from an international visit to USA. After 12 hours of flight me and my kids are too exhausted and all we want to do is come home and sleep as soon as possible but unfortunately our misery does not end even after our plane landed we still have to go many security checks. They make us wait and we go through extra security checks as if we are criminals. But we are not. Then why are they torturing us like that and not everybody else? The reasons are where we are coming from, how long we stayed where we stay, what our names are. It is hard to believe but once they pulled my husband and made him wait extra and we asked them why and the answer was “sorry but you have a common name. Great, now what, just because some certain people who happened to have the same name as my name did something bad that would make him possible suspect.

(3) Why do Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley believe that female sociologists’ early focus on advocacy helped to undercut their perceived importance? Hint: what was the perceived status of advocacy relative to the perceived status of “objective” science in the early days of sociology?

Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley believe “writing out of the women founders occurred as part of the politics of gender and politics of knowledge within the discipline.” In the beginning of the chapter Lengerman and Niebrugge explain us what “being written out” means and how it differs from being invisible; “being written out” means being removed from history in spite of having once been there and in contrast being invisible means not having been there at all. The authors discusses that many early sociologist have big contributions to society but their names are not being mention for what they have done. Lengerman and Niebrugge believe “being written out” is what happened to early sociologist. Because of the man power, gender inequality, and the political powers the female sociologists were not given credit for their works. The textbook lists many of the founders of the sociologist and their contributions to sociology. I’d like to give one example from the text book; Martineau has many accomplishments and writing social analysis, journalism, history, novels, children stories, travel books, and sociology was some of the work she has done but she was known only as Comte’s translator. It is very unfortunate having work so hard and not being recognized for their accomplishment but according to our textbook these women all knew that and yet continued to work hard.