Image Credits: New York Public Library Archives, The New York Public Library. "Public Catalog" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1875 - 1925.

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Hi Scholar,

Have you ever wondered why we decided to call this publication The ‘Scholarly’ Letter? We could have decided on a more conventional category for our publication to speak to: like that of an ‘academic’, a ‘researcher’, or even ‘scientific’. But we didn’t. Why?

 Perhaps such questions do not bother you much, for ‘what is in a name?’ But we believe that names hold significant weight. The naming of a thing, or a publication in our case, is not just symbolic; it has material consequences. A name shapes how a thing is taken up, what it does, how it invites others in, and therefore, is engaged with.

 At the time of deciding the name of this publication, we were both strongly against relating it to categories like the ‘academic’ and ‘researcher’. But ‘scholarly’, ‘scholar’, ah! There was something about this word which we were drawn to. It left a different taste in our mouths when we said it out loud. Back then, we were unable to articulate the distinction between ‘the scholar’ and ‘the academic’, even though we had a clear preference for one over the other.  But it is a line of questioning that has provoked us often. Who is a scholar? What does it mean to be scholarly?

 In this Sunday Letter, we take up that question. And to answer it, we begin not by defining the scholar, but by turning to their shadow: the academic. By tracing what has happened to the academic - what they have become and what has become of them - we aim to illuminate the figure of the scholar. Not in opposition, but as reclaiming. By working through the ruins of the academic, we, as writers of The Scholarly Letter, seek to erect a vision of the scholar.

 P.S. this piece is inspired by a wide variety of reading. Rather than referencing throughout, we’ve compiled this bibliography if you’re interested in what previous work has informed the making of ‘The Scholar Manifesto’.  

We have scoured the Internet in search of what it means to be a scholar. At every turn, we repeatedly encounter the image of the ‘academic’, someone who holds an advanced degree – typically a doctorate – and works at a university as an instructor and/or researcher. And why shouldn’t the scholar be linked to the academic?

 The academic has an interest in, and maintains a relationship with, knowledge. She consumes, produces, and disseminates knowledge. She conducts her relationship with knowledge in the university, which traditionally referred to ‘a community of teachers and scholars’. 

 Today, however, it refers to an “institution of higher education offering tuition in mainly non-vocational subjects and typically having the power to confer degrees".

 Many individuals desiring to be in a relationship and work with knowledge flock to universities in hopes of becoming academics. By pursuing the profession of the academic, the hope is that they will be able to satisfy their intrinsic motivation for pursuing knowledge. For is it not true that the academic is one of the rare professions today where the desire to ‘know’ can be translated into a livelihood?

Will you, Scholar, allow us a moment’s diversion as we linger on this ‘desire’ for knowledge we all have in common being gathered here in the space of The Scholarly Letter? 

 For the human species, as Cristiano Castelfrenchi suggests, knowledge is purpose in itself: an activity, a pursuit that provides motivation purely from within. We acquire and seek out knowledge because it is an activity we are capable of, through our interconnectedness with, and situatedness in, the world. Our abilities to understand, analyse, and interpret are borne from our curiosity about, our interest in, and our passion for, the connections we form with and in the world.

 We pursue knowledge the way we do because we can: it is both an exercise of, and an amplification of our cognitive capabilities. It is this kind of activity - this intrinsic motivation for knowledge – that we cannot help but deem ‘scholarly’. And yet, if we wish to understand what it means to be scholarly, we must look not only to the intrinsic nature of this desire, but also to what becomes of it. 

 For in tracing how this desire is institutionalised, shaped, and at times constrained within the academic form, we begin to see more clearly what the scholar is, and what she is not.

This brings us to a difficult reckoning. When we settle into the grooves of the modern university as professional scholars - i.e. academics - we begin to realise something unsettling. The university, imagined as a place where curious individuals can pursue knowledge as an activity with an intrinsic purpose of its own, reveals itself to be an illusion. We begin to realize that knowledge here cannot be purpose in itself. This realization comes alongside the academic’s growing awareness of ‘where’ she really conducts her relationship with knowledge.