Authors note: With all honesty, I can say I’m not super proud of this piece of work. I always find it hard to write about myself in a serious way, and this intellectual autobiography, written for an introductory media studies course, is full of holes, half-statements and comes off, to me at least, as boring. But, such was the assignment and I do as I’m told in that respect. I pulled down an A-, and was shocked.
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An Intellectual Autobiography
Andrew Nealon
While my intellectual development is as pedantic as the thinkers who’ve sparked my interests, I believe my own personal enlightenment can be boiled down into a set of three contexts that, for the purpose of this paper, can represent my path well enough. To explore the whole of my intellectual experience would be overwhelming and impossible. A generic oversimplification must suffice. Thus, the three areas to be explored are a) my discovery and embrace of academia through rhetoric, b) my professional development in media, and c) the longstanding affect travel has had on my intellectual development.
By focusing on these three areas, a multitude of thinkers, artists and personal inspirations will be lost through the cracks. However, a foundation for my current paradigm should be uncovered just enough to expose my motivations for joining the ranks of the New School’s Media Studies department.
An Embrace of Academia
Up until my junior year of undergrad, I hadn’t been dedicated to academia. In my spoiled, unenlightened mind, education was a fact of life, and therefore I saw it as a set of motions to go through. I felt trapped in science courses and became disenfranchised with my goal of becoming a veterinarian. As a result of experiences that will be covered later, I decided to leave science behind and join the Speech Communication department. This is where I found rhetoric.
Discovering rhetoric — and to a certain extent, philosophy — changed my attitude greatly. Put simply, rhetoric is at the core of my worldview. My lens is one of, as Aristotle puts it, “observing the means of persuasion on almost any subject presented” (Aristotle, 2004, p. 7). And while my grounding in rhetoric is classical, drawing heavily on Aristotle for my source of understanding concerning motivation and persuasion, I believe I’m drawn to a more modern view of rhetoric, as well. However in the monetized, mediated culture of today, relying on Aristotle allows me to see a glimmer of hope from within the culture industry. Viewing rhetoric is a source of power in a mediated culture, Aristotle has helped me realize any situation has the possibility to inspire a meta narrative concerning society and interaction.
As I insinuated above, my understanding of classical rhetorical study and its influence on my intellectual style is simply foundational. The classics have their place, but modern rhetorical theory, and especially the work of Kenneth Burke, has had a far heavier impact on my academic maturation.
My first encounter with Burke was during an introduction to rhetorical theory course during that all-important junior year of undergrad. The professor’s dry, witless delivery of the material turned most everyone in the class away from rhetoric. Despite the lackluster presentation, when we hit on Burke’s definition of man, I became enveloped by Burke’s eloquent way of wrapping up humanity in a simple, scientific, yet masterfully poetic way.
Burke starts with language, calling man the “symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal,” rooting our entire existence in our ability to language while not ignoring our narcissistic tendency for hyperbole and our overwhelming ability for linguistic failure. Moving along, we’ve created the negative and are, in fact, moralized by it, drafting right and wrong from our wants and desires. We use tools to separate ourselves from our natural condition, a point post-humanists and technophiles are realizing more and more every day. Most importantly, though, Burke ends his statement with a wonderful set of points — man is motivated by hierarchy and, as a result, rotten from our search for perfection (Burke, 1966, p. 16). Burke crafts such a wonderfully bleak, yet entirely honest sketch of human kind that I’ve adopted his definition into my worldview. Since discovering Burke’s definition of man, I’ve pursued Burke through his thoughts on history, religion, motives and through his most widely known theory — that of Dramatism.
Shortly after discovering the classics and Burke, I met a number of other great thinkers who inspired me and led me further into my rhetorical worldview. Bakhtin, Foucault, Derrida, Perelman and others helped me struggle through ideas on utterance, grammar and language.
While wading deep into advanced rhetorical theory, I was simultaneously treading through the rhetoric of early America as seen through the lens of the study of social movements. Overseen by Dr. Robert Iltis, the chair of Oregon State’s speech communication department and a fanboy of early American rhetoric, I came into contact with Thomas Paine, among other great early proponents for American society.
Paine’s Common Sense pamphlet had a particular impact on my intellectual framework, especially impacting my search for my own understanding of the American ideal. Paine understood social construction and the power of the mass ideology. This idea is so foundational to Paine that even in his introduction he writes, “a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom” (Paine, 1986, p. 64). Paine understood the founding of America, was at its core, an issue of society’s ability to perform a paradigm shift toward utopia. Paine’s hopes and beliefs, along with his idealism for what America should be, give me hope that freedom is still possible. Paine means to me that we can individually and collectively escape the culture industry that has become our new King.
Again, Paine is only one man in a long line of great American rhetoricians who’ve inspired my development. It would be upsetting to get through this section without mentioning the speeches of Abraham Lincoln and the abolitionist work of the newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy, who both became martyrs for justice and good rhetoric.
However detailed I might hope to be in a survey of my undergraduate awakening and study, I could never do justice all the great thinkers I was exposed to during my final two years at university. Intellectually, this period was just the beginning of a long journey into theory.
At Work in Media
As hinted at in the introduction to the last section, my work in student media inspired my move into the liberal arts and speech communication. Thus, it should be noted that my professional development has been instrumental in my overall intellectual development, both by seeding my interest in rhetoric and media theory, but by also stroking the interest as it grew.
The story of my career started when I answered a call for DJs at the campus radio station my freshman year, a move that eventually led to a job in charge of the station’s programming, as well as a important trip to Berlin, which I’ll touch on more in the next section. I enjoyed my work for the station and found I was quite skilled at production, launching a number of freeform music shows, a live music showcase and a lineup of afternoon talk shows. Working in radio allowed me to combine my infatuation with music with a professional goal. That goal grew and I soon branched out, producing a television show and joining the staff of the campus newspaper, where I would eventually settle in.
After graduation, with the longstanding goal to head back to school in the future, I found myself staying in media, working for a small book publisher before landing a position as the editor of a community newspaper in a fairly rural section of Oregon. Far from the rat race, digging in to a position at the top of a community newspaper allowed me to experience a rare thing — traditional media that was relatively untouched by the trends of new media. During my time as editor, I got to revisit the foundations of journalism, watching the community react to my words, face to face with readers and community leaders. It was an inspirational experience, and my success in the role made me realize I could reach further with my career.
This realization led me to make the move to New York, where despite turmoil in the media market, jobs and opportunity would never be lacking. Since arriving in the city over eight months ago, I’ve established an independent publishing company, through which I run my freelance media work and a number of private projects. In fact, entering into study at the New School has come to represent a step toward full autonomy in my career.
Travel as Intellectual Inspiration
The influence travel has had on my intellectual development can be summed up by looking at two specific, life-altering trips. The first, a journey to Berlin, where I was tapped as a foreign media diplomat and given the opportunity to explore the affect American culture has had in Europe. And the second, more recent trip — a four-month road trip across America in a 1983 VW van.
Upon arriving in Germany as a wide-eyed 19 year old, I had no idea what I was in store for. And while there are a number of dramatic events that stand out, my trip to Berlin occurred under an umbrella of personal enlightenment. It was while in Berlin that I came into my own as an adult and was first welcomed into an intellectual circle. The trip itself was professional — I was traveling on behalf of the Goethe Institute as a diplomatic representative of American college radio. However, the effect the trip held on my personal life cannot be understated. It was in Berlin that I fell in love with classic art, and more importantly, first encountered Dada. The works of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray spoke to my cynical sense of humor. (My interest in Dada would also later feed my interest in Burke, who lived in Greenwich Village during Dada’s takeover of New York in the 1920s.) Most importantly, my trip to Berlin opened my eyes to a larger worldview and, for the first time, made me question what being an American in the 21st Century might mean.
It was after returning to school from Germany that I transferred to the study of rhetoric and started my intellectual awakening in that respect. As I’ve already outlined above, this path took me into the heart of American rhetoric. This academic background, combined with my personal goals to take part in a new American intellectualism, led me to set out on a massive road trip across the country in the summer of 2008. As an exercise in stereotypical Kerouacian Americana, I hoped that I might discover some answers out on the open road.
I survived life on the road with only one major breakdown. And while I didn’t experience a drugged-out adventure like that of Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson, I did find a better way to look at America. Previously, I never understood how to find pride in the post-modern, fear-of-the-culture-industry America. Out on the road, though, I found the roots of my own American pride. I reread Paine and the speeches of Lincoln. I fell for the quiet, panoramic stretches of road in the Southwest. And, most importantly, I made the decision to return to school, where I might be able to expand on my experience and draft a new view on American culture and rhetoric.
Looking Ahead
With a strong academic, professional and personal foundation in rhetoric, media and culture, I hope to take some important steps during my time at the New School. First, I need to explore the possibility of giving into my desire to stay in academia long-term. Ten years from now, I picture myself with a Ph.D, and making the decision on what academic path to walk is important.
Obviously, seeking a graduate degree has some real-world ramifications, as well. Currently, grad school is offering a nice shelter from the storm, as the newspaper industry crumbles. The New Schools focus on practice courses should leave me a well-rounded media producer. And while landing in a career after graduating would be nice, surviving with the skills to be an independent artist and producer would be my ideal situation.
When looking down the road, I simply hope to add something significant to the body of thought surrounding media, culture and society. As broad of goal that is, my intellectual history has set me on the path to do just that. Now, I just need to figure out how.
Aristotle (2004). Rhetoric. Mineola, New York: Dover.
Burke, Kenneth (1966). Language as Symbolic Action. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Paine, Thomas (1986). Common Sense. New York: Penguin Books.