Vernacular Intellectualism and Visionary Artistry
I come to the concept of the vernacular intellectual from Antonio Gramsci and Carmen Kynard. The organic intellectual is a layman or a working-class person who has had no formal training in the academy, but as Gramsci notes, they become enlightened by the environment’s inner workings and educate the masses of laymen on strategies to negotiate institutions of power. The vernacular, as described by Kynard, turns one away from the dominant and accepted modalities and vocabularies and focuses on the adoption of language and thought that connects with the innate experiences of a culture and community. Vernacular intellectuals [1] use their identity to employ language varieties and performances for storytelling purposes. The storytelling techniques these intellectuals use help to espouse cultural and societal issues that relay narratives which connect cultural and critical memories to inform on generational experiences [2]
Harryette Mullen describes the visionary artist and writer whose work “serves as a medium” for the spirit of African cultural traditions. She says:
Visionary artists, who are called by our ancestors and our vibrant cultural history to profess, pick up tools – pens, paintbrushes, dancing shoes, keyboards, and cameras – to participate in a storytelling tradition. Mullens suggests that this work comes from a spiritual need and desire to collect, examine, and interpret the ideas of the world. Visionary artists, in essence, are vernacular intellectuals that do this work of archiving and storying as a rhetorical practice to bring awareness to, and examine ideas and issues that speak to, about, and for the Black experience in America.For visionary artists, as for these spiritual autobiographers, the art work or text is an extension of their call to preach. It functions as a spiritual signature or divine imprimatur, superceding human authority. The writer as well as the artist can become ‘an inspired device for the subconscious spirit,’ … The work of such individuals, while resonating with ancient [African] traditions, ‘is conceived out of [a] deeply intuitive calling and spiritual need’.