tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post7677532575004354041..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: After the End of Everything, Then What? Medieval Studies, the Humanities, and the Post-CatastropheCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-43244274280281747502009-12-28T09:09:19.787-05:002009-12-28T09:09:19.787-05:00Eileen asked me to enlarge upon my perception that...Eileen asked me to enlarge upon my perception that we are much to blame for the decline of the humanites (but see the links below).<br /><br />Foolishly rising to the bait, I offer the following [I hasten to add that these are the result of 45 years of teaching, some reading, a great deal of thinking and discussion with colleagues. There is nothing imaginative or new here.]<br /><br />1.We have disconnected the humanities from most other bodies of knowledge; indeed, we have disconnected the humanities disciplines from each other.<br /><br />2.We have disconnected the humanities from work, from the arenas where the humanities can be practiced.<br /><br />3.We have disconnected them from the everyday existence of average folk.<br /><br />4.We have disconnected ourselves from the values implicit in texts because they seem unpopular or unimportant.<br /><br />5.Having disconnected ourselves from active humanities, we reject the need to practice humanistic values in our professional lives.<br /><br />[I realize that the Liberal Arts are not synonymous with the Humanities but the latter is a major component of any definition of the liberal arts. Apparently, in spite of our (my) sense of the failure of the humanities, research is showing the exact opposite.]<br /><br />See:<br /><br /> http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/liz_coleman_s_call_to_reinvent_liberal_arts_education.html<br /><br />and<br /><br />http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/12/28/marcyken tompkinsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-38262070332852125992009-12-23T13:13:03.121-05:002009-12-23T13:13:03.121-05:00[continuing]
But sometimes I think this kind of w...[continuing]<br /><br />But sometimes I think this kind of work, although important and sustaining of persons, programs, careers, scholarship, etc., can also be a bit nearsighted, situated as it often is within existing institutions. One question might be: how to imagine wholly new institutions of so-called "higher learning" in which the humanities, in partnership with other disciplines, might completely restructure the university we have inherited [partly from the lyceum of Plato, partly from the Middle Ages, and partly and most regrettably from 18th- and 19th-century Germany] into something more 'modern', but 'modern' in a way that makes the humanities central to, say, the problems and desires of the present we inhabit? [This would be to riff off of Ken's suggestion of a future in which humanists are in *more* and not *less* demand]. That's a weird thing to say, I know, and perhaps even nuts: how can anything be thoroughly 'modern' anyway? We have shelves of books on that subject and it's so hard to describe the present we inhabit [although many brilliant people do a fairly decent job of it: Anthony Giddens, Scott Lash, Ulrich Beck, Kenneth Gergen, Bryan Turner, William Connolly, Jodi Dean, Charles Johnson, Slavoj Zizek, Niklas Luhmann, and other social, political, and critical theorists]. Now I am rambling, but this is just another way for me to say that, as a rubric for the conference, "after the end" does not so much denote real catastrophes and apocalypses as it creates space for thinking the future of the humanities [and medieval studies more epsecially] with the present both in and out of mind, if that makes any sense. But on a more literal level, the conference also asks us to think about the role of the humanities in real catastrophes, which are all around us, every day [both locally and personally and more globally].Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-78140948273817247802009-12-23T13:12:48.743-05:002009-12-23T13:12:48.743-05:00Ken: thanks for your further comments here; I'...Ken: thanks for your further comments here; I've been thinking a lot more about your and also Jeffrey's comments as prods to more carefully think through our aims for this conference. I think it's a good point to separate the current state of the humanities job market from our ruminations on possible futures [emphasis on the plural] for the humanities and the kind of work that can be done under the banner of the humanities. I also realize that you're asking us to think more about how, if the humanities are losing some ground, job-wise, it is not necessarily tied only to a lack of funding for higher education in general or some sort of stasis in retirements or hiring in general, but that there are more broad changes an shifts in the culture at large that have led to a de-valuing of the kind of work [reading/thinking/writing] that we do, and further [as you are implying, I think], we scholars working in literature departments and the like have contributed to this state of affairs? [I would actually like to hear more of your thoughts on that particular point--is it because, in your estimation, we have made our discipline too esoteric and unapproachable, or something else?] <br /><br />In any case, regardless of all the reasons why the humanities might be in a little bit of trouble [measured, I realize, in all sorts of ways, with the "trouble" being perceived as fatal or just temporary or maybe even as not the problem some perceive it to be--in other words, the so-called "state" of the humanities is contestable and often even *feels* different depending on which institution you might be attached to/employed by], I think it is always a worthwhile exercise to imagine the possibilities for a newly invigorated humanities, and to work toward those with as much energy as possible, regardless of contingent circumstances. Weirdly, I find so-called looming "ends" very productive sites for imagining and building new things [especially new communities]. I take Jeffrey's point very much to heart regarding how important it is to intervene in the process of change, no matter how incrementally, and that is what I [think/hope] I have been doing with my own career all along, both within the institutions where I work [where I have led initiatives in curricular and other reforms] and across institutions and disciplines [through the BABEL Working Group]. <br /><br />[to be continued]Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-5495972727426488782009-12-22T14:57:44.519-05:002009-12-22T14:57:44.519-05:00Let's imagine a future -- not too far off -- w...Let's imagine a future -- not too far off -- when we actually need humanists and every college and university is hiring. Will students, then, take humanities courses?<br /><br />I guess what I'm asking is for us to separate the terrible job market from the changes in popular culture resulting in a strong rejection of the humanities.<br /><br />We haven't lost humanities positions merely because we don't have the money to pay for them or because gray faculty have decided not to retire until their 70's thereby severely limiting the number of open jobs. There have been cultural changes that have diminished the value of the humanities in the public's and administrators' eyes. And, in some ways, folks, we have brought this on ourselves.<br /><br />Sorry, Eileen, I think I remember you stating some time ago that you reject self-blame. Maybe not. I have, in your past writing, been incredibly impressed with your ability to think out side the box.<br /><br />If I had to start a college again (I did so in 1970) I'm not sure I would shape it anything like what my college has become. Humanists would be there but not as they are today.<br /><br />Sorry to ramble; Eileen does that to me.ken tompkinsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-64286459570209087062009-12-22T12:02:01.045-05:002009-12-22T12:02:01.045-05:00Like you, Jeffrey, I am mainly skeptical of apocal...Like you, Jeffrey, I am mainly skeptical of apocalyptic thinking--it usually doesn't end well, either for millennialist doomsayers or Chicken Little. For me, thinking "after the end" is actually more a utopic mode of thought for the cultivation of the very discontinuous futures you mention. Sometimes, so mired in the present, we can't see beyond it, as you indicate. I think of this, especially, in relation to the job market situation and the so-called "waning" of the humanities in general. A lot of anxiety that coalesces around this state of affairs centers upon the anxious hope of wanting things to stay the same [to maintain the status quo]. As dismayed as I am by what is happening, job-wise, I also see it as a positive opportunity for productive reflections on new directions for the humanities.<br /><br />I did not mean the post to be chilling, but I think it's productive, too, to reflect on the fact that, all around us, in the past and present, there are all sorts of real catastrophes and apocalypses [war, genocide, natural disasters, etc.] that call for reflection on the kind of work the humanities can do in and around such sites. While composing this post, I re-read Primo Levi's "The Drowned and the Saved," where he reflects that culture may actually be of no good whatsoever in the Lager. But he also recalls a moment when, to preserve his sanity, he taught a fellow prisoner, who was not Italian, how to recite Dante.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-58904770789140759952009-12-22T07:33:55.711-05:002009-12-22T07:33:55.711-05:00What a chilling meditation. I oscillate between tw...What a chilling meditation. I oscillate between two feelings: that we academics are natural born doomsayers and our love of the apocalyptic can distract us from actually intervening in the process of change (a process that in fact tends to be more incremental than seismic, even if it keeps seeming to be the latter); and that our propensity to keep projecting the present into the future as if the latter were always going to be an extension of the former blinds us to the fact that in fact the future can be disturbingly discontinuous with the present in ways that we recognize only retrospectively.<br /><br />In other words I don't know if we are on the verge of everything ending, or if that verge is the place we've always inhabited.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com