The Public Intellectualism of Phyllis Ntantala

Abstract

South African scholars have not substantively engaged with how they have conceptualized who the public intellectual is and where intellectual activity occurs. The dominance of men in the scholarship is attributed to scholars defining public intellectuals according to the roles and functions they supposedly perform. Consequently, intellectual activity has been confined to the public sphere to be performed by a male figure. This has encouraged the under-exploration of how African/Black women have pursued and enacted public intellectualism. In South Africa, Black women have been erased from genealogical accounts of public intellectualism. Erasure has occurred despite their visibility in the fight against colonialism and apartheid. Black women are public intellectuals, and this is a matter of historical fact and necessity. The study adopts Phyllis Ntantala as its referential subject. Ntantala's public intellectualism is characterized by fluidity between the public and private spheres. She utilized what many regard as private issues to inform her work in the public sphere. Issues confined to the private sphere became her entryway into the public sphere. The ways Ntantala pursued and enacted public intellectualism urges us to reconsider how we might re-envision the public intellectual and what counts as intellectual activity.