“Intellectual Hick”: Sorting Out Our Complex Identities (Robert Jensen)

I am from rural America, sort of. I’m an intellectual, sort of. I’m certainly on the political left, but some comrades believe I’ve turned conservative.

Like many people, I don’t fit easily into conventional labels used in today’s polarized political debates. To understand me—and anyone else—takes some sorting out. Here’s how I sort myself out.

I was born in North Dakota and grew up mostly in the big city of Fargo (well, it’s the largest city in the state). I never lived in a rural area, but I was a part of a larger rural culture, in which most everyone had some connection to the countryside through family, friends, or business. After living in several big cities during my professional life, I now live in northern New Mexico outside the small town of Taos, in a county with a smaller population than the university where I used to teach. Recent imports like me live alongside farmers and ranchers, interacting regularly through the acequia irrigation system.

I’m not rural, but I like to think I understand rural.

I started my professional life as a newspaper journalist before earning a PhD and becoming a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. But once I secured the guaranteed employment that comes with tenure, I walked away from the scholarly world of academic journals and conferences. I continued to teach but wrote for a general audience, immersing myself in a variety of community organizing projects.

I was an intellectual by profession, but I never really wanted to be part of formal intellectual life.

I’ve met intellectuals who assume rural life is bereft of intellectual activity. And I’ve met rural people who assume that intellectuals are condescending and annoying. There’s a kernel of truth in both assumptions. Since moving to a rural area, I have fewer opportunities for certain kinds of intellectual engagement; I don’t go to as many scholarly lectures as I did in Austin. At the same time, I don’t find myself wishing I was back in a faculty meeting and dealing with academic status-seeking. But I’ve met too many smart rural people and too many wonderful professors to fall back on stereotypes.

As I explain in It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics, perhaps most important to my identity is that I’m a radical. My politics are based on a critique of systems and structures of power that create impediments to meaningful social justice and real ecological sustainability: patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, First-World domination, and the worship of high-energy/high-technology gadgets in an industrial worldview. But how I apply these analyses make me both a part of the left and alienated from the left.

Let’s start with patriarchy. I was first politicized by the radical feminist movement to challenge the sexual-exploitation industries (pornography, prostitution, stripping—the ways men buy and sell objectified female bodies for sexual pleasure). That form of radical politics goes to the heart of systems and structures of male power. I also embraced what is typically called a radical analysis of racism, economic inequality, and imperialism. I thought that this kind of consistent critique—going to the root of problems by focusing on systems of power—was what it meant to be on the left, but over time I realized that most of my left comrades didn’t much care for radical feminism. Over time, more and more leftists not only rejected the critique of the sexual-exploitation industries but celebrated “sex work,” sometimes even portraying it as liberating.

When I started offering a critique of the ideology of the transgender movement, an analysis rooted in that radical feminism, I found myself not only disagreeing with left comrades but effectively being banished from left organizing groups. I learned quickly, starting in 2014, that a radical feminist critique of trans politics was unacceptable, even seen as a sign of closet conservativism.

But that shunning didn’t mean I wanted to find a home on the right. Conservatives weren’t much interested in a feminist critique of male domination—many on the right see patriarchy as the “natural” state of human societies. Conservatives might share a concern about the sexual-exploitation industries and transgender ideology, but for very different reasons than feminists.

Meanwhile, my focus on ecology and a deepening critique of technological fundamentalism—the belief that more technology can solve all ecological problems, including those created by previous technologies—has put me at odds with both right and left. Those who believe in the miracle of the market usually dismiss any talk of ecological collapse because free enterprise will save us. My left friends take environmental degradation and climate change more seriously but routinely argue that a more participatory democracy in a more socialist economy will save us.

Across the political spectrum, it’s hard to find anyone who agrees that a sustainable human future requires us to put dramatic limits on our consumption of energy and material resources, while we also dramatically reduce the human population. Conservatives often believe that is what leftists are secretly planning for, but I meet very few leftists who advocate those goals. The majority of left environmentalists I meet believe that renewable energy, combined with amazing yet-to-be-invented inventions, will allow us to dodge collapse.

I think I am making consistent and coherent arguments. But many of my left friends think I have abandoned left politics, even though we still agree on many issues. Conservatives will accept my political positions that seem in line with their own, though typically they aren’t interested in the radical analysis behind those positions.

I have changed my mind about specific policy proposals over the past four decades—as new information and insights emerge, reasonable people should adapt. But my analytical framework remains unchanged. I focus not merely on individual choices but on how systems work, and I don’t ignore the data that suggests collapse is all but inevitable on our current trajectory.

This leaves me largely in agreement with left comrades, but dealing with uncomfortable tensions when we disagree. Meanwhile, I’m at odds with right opponents most of the time, and when there is apparent agreement on policy there is an uncomfortable tension underneath.

How do I sort out all these political tensions, and sort out myself? To friends, I have started describing myself as an “intellectual hick.” I have no problem defending my intellectual contributions but also am happy to be living at a healthy distance from official intellectual spaces. Even with neighbors who don’t agree with my politics, our shared interest in caring for the land and water creates deep bonds.

How I label myself is less important than realizing that we all would benefit from sorting out ourselves. Once we critically self-reflect about our identities and ideas, it’s a lot easier talking with others about how they have sorted themselves out.

This article first appeared in Dissident Voice.  

Robert Jensen, an Emeritus Professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics from Olive Branch Press. His previous book, co-written with Wes Jackson, was An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. To subscribe to his mailing list, go to http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html.