CONSCIOUS TIME-BINDING: PROBLEMATIZING THE FUNCTION OF PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS

Tiowledge is a complex concept that cannot be limited to scope of a definition. It is also a process influenced by and impacting society and culture. Terms that usually appear in conjunction with knowledge are perception, understanding, analysis, learning, skill, and like. The socio-cultural dynamics of knowledge and its intricate and multi-layered relation with are analyzed in this article. In light of this analysis, function of intellectuals as conscious time-binders is worked out. Instances to illustrate relationship between and knowledge are selected from literary narratives and history. The possible functions of with reference to Korzybskian idea of time-binding can be read in conjunction with ideas of both Antonio Granisci and Michel Foucault. Foucault's complex conceptualizations of episteme and socio-cultural dynamics of power/knowledge problematize function of the intellectual in society. The argument presented in this article is based on insight that history is marked with dominance of certain discourses in different epochs. Human beings as time-binders have a collage of such discourses on their horizon. Foucault's analysis, in his work The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences, of how all periods in history are based not on absolute truths but assumptions of what is right and real, gives an alternate view on knowledge, which he further developed in his subsequent works. According to Foucault, all discourses are based on epistemes which are in a state of flux. Episteme here means historical a priori that grounds knowledge and associated discourses and most importantly represents condition of their existence, possibility, and validity within a particular epoch. Foucault defines an episteme thus: I would define episteme retrospectively as strategic which permits of separating out from among all statements which are possible those that will be acceptable within, I won't say a scientific theory, but a field of scientificity, and which it is possible to say are true or false. The episteme is apparatus which makes possible separation, not of true from false, but of what may from what may not be characterized as scientific. (Power I Knowledge, 197) In his later writings, Foucault acknowledges that several epistemes may coexist and interact at same time, being parts of various power-knowledge systems. So every age has its own dominant discourses and there are reasons why they gained dominance. This also means that there had been discourses that were obliterated, de-visualized, marginalized, or totally silenced. Foucault wants to emphasize vulnerability of discourses, especially scientific statements to impacts of power: At this level it's not so much a matter of knowing what external imposes itself on science, as of what effects of circulate among scientific statements, what constitutes, as it were, their internal regime of power, and how and why at certain moments that regime undergoes a global modification. (Power I Knowledge, 112) Foucault considers scientists and scholars who remain confined in their field and lead more or less a secluded life cut off from everyday happenings as specific intellectuals. According to him, writers of old who were very much involved and engaged in life around them could be aptly called universal intellectuals. He also acknowledges fact that writers have been absorbed in modern society by structure of regime. Foucault sees intellectuals not only in terms of science and ideology, but also more significantly in terms of truth and power. Foucault is convinced that Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it includes regular effects of power (Power I Knowledge, 133). Foucault's statement implies that knowledge is produced or constructed through disciplines. …