The Public Intellectual in Canada ed. by Nelson Wiseman (review)

The term ‘public intellectual’ still remains highly contested in the early twenty-first century, many of those on whom the title has been designated resisting – and even undermining – the presumed status of such labelling. Indeed, many of the ‘all-star’ cast of contributors to Nelson Wiseman’s collection appear decidedly uncomfortable claiming such a title, questioning their suitability for such a role with characteristically Canadian self-deprecation. These contributors range from academics to pollsters, economists and journalists, many holding multiple positions in the course of their careers.

The articles included cover a range of debates from the role of the media and rise of ‘infotainment’, to distinctions between celebrity intellectuals and public intellectuals and the potential dangers of political correctness. While many of the articles are written from an academic standpoint offering overviews of the history of the public intellectual in English Canada and Quebec, many of the contributors also reflect on their experiences as practitioners. These more personal accounts make engaging reading for their detailing of various political and economic events in Canada’s recent past, yet many of the authors’ active involvement in these debates oftentimes appears to undermine the necessary objectivity needed to determine the status of the public intellectual in Canada in relation to the events discussed.

Despite the inclusion of four female contributors in the collection, its engagement with the role of female public intellectuals is decidedly limited. Wiseman argues in his introduction that this ‘speaks to the historical inability of women to claim equal space and attention in public forums’ (p. 8). Responding to this historical absence, Sylvia Bashevkin’s article instead encourages us to ask ‘which women thinkers evidenced the attributes of creativity and courage, with respect to what issues and when – regardless of whether their contributions were interpreted as the interventions of public intellectuals’ (p. 113). Taking a more openly adversarial tone, John Richards’s article on the role played by public intellectuals in the evolution of Canadian Aboriginal policy argues that these intellectuals have produced an unbalanced dialogue (in which he himself is equally culpable). He closes by offering questions that he hopes might help correct this imbalance.

Intriguingly, Wiseman is one of his collection’s own worst critics. He provides a detailed analysis of each of the articles in his conclusion, drawing links between the collection’s rather disparate articles and finding common points of comparison or dissonance, and deliberately drawing attention to the collection’s lack of minority and ethnically diverse voices. When justifying this absence, Wiseman concludes that ‘as these essays collectively reflect them, the faces and pre-occupations of Canada’s public intellectuals have not changed as rapidly as have the faces and concerns of Canada’s evolving society’ (p. 245). Thus, while this collection offers some interesting insights into the role and status of the public intellectual, Wiseman seems to draw the reader’s attention to the limits such a role still holds and its drastic need for reinvention in order to remain relevant in twenty-first-century Canadian society.