Intellectuals

Last Wed- nesday I participated in a session on Writers, Intellectuals, and Politics in Ronda. It was part of a week long Univerrsity of Malaga summer course organized by Fernando Arcas. Ballesteros and Soler were the other participants. Typically, the session started late, in this case because there was an improvised press conference at noon, when the session was scheduled to start. Poor students! The press, of course, was mainly interested in what Soler had to say and, in fact, after five or ten minutes with the three of us, a couple of journalists pulled Antonio aside to interview him.  So we finally go started around 12:25. There were about 35 people attending the session, a mix of young university students and older individuals. It was an interesting session, with Ballesteros and Soler focusing on their own experiences.  I explained that my intervention would be somewhat parenthetical and perhaps offer a point of comparison and contrast. My focus was on positions taken by public intellectuals on the Iraq war (I talked some about Poets Against the War and explained the origins of that movement), but I also disucssed the importance of the web (electronic journals, blogs, videoblogging, etc.) and how that has changed greatly how information is disseminated. I ended with some comments on how the internet age is destroying the traditional role of urban centers as the exclusive incubator of intellectual ferment. There were a couple of questions about Chomsky at the end. Overall it was a good session and we went past our scheduled 2 pm limit by a good fifteen minutes. It seemed to help Antonio organize a few thoughts and he dedicated his weekly article in Sur to the topic.