The Itchy Tweed

In the never-ending lineage of think pieces on “humanities, state of” the New York Times offers one this week: (pro tip: open it in an incognito or private tab in your browser if you don't want the endless nytimes sign-in nonsense)

Despite running a digital humanities program and trying out the label “humanist” at various points, I am not a huge fan of the term “humanities”, as it has become an empty signifier whose meaning is in the eye of the beholder. (The same is true for “digital” as well as “digital humanities.”) This nyt piece starts with well-trod ground and does an admirable job dismissing familiar dichotomies. The solutions part speaks to directions that appeal very much to me, particularly this bit from the end.

it means undertaking those activities not as experts or sages, but as partners in a continuing dialogue about how we should live together.

This has always been the most important part for me. It's probably why academia fits like a suit too many sizes too small all the time, as that's not the values system on the ground in most places. (Of course, it could just be that I'm a bit too fat for those old clothes. Probably a bit of that too. Where exactly does the generalist or polymathic type fit in? The structure of higher ed doesn't reward that.)

That quote in context provides some ways forwards (and name-drops some initiatives which I have watched with interest and excitement over the years):

Expanding the reach of humanistic education, however, means more than broadening the media channels by which we transmit scholarly insights. It also means putting more thought — and for those who can, financial support — into creating opportunities for humanistic reflection in our everyday lives. This could include helping to design robust liberal arts curriculums for secondary-school students or supporting the growing stable of “great books” schools like the Living Water School in Maryland; working with companies like Books@Work, which use English professors to moderate seminars about short stories in workplaces; and valuing continuing education courses (like those for professionals and older people at Chicago’s Graham School) as seriously as we value traditional undergraduate education. And it means undertaking those activities not as experts or sages, but as partners in a continuing dialogue about how we should live together.

But... (there's always a but), to put on the philology close-reading hat for a moment, this paragraph betrays an undercurrent of insiderism which undercuts some of the message. “expanding the reach of humanistic education” ... “broadening channels by which we” ... “...helping to design” ... “using English professors” ... “valuing continuing education courses.” Those phrases are professors talking to professors. And that's the problem. It's hard to shed the insider discourse, where humanities have a natural home in a university and it's just a matter of reaching outward.

Humanities — whatever is covered by that overly broad label — aren't owned by universities. That universities formed around a core that included the medieval predecessors of “humanities” makes what's left more like a barnacle, a parasite, or a scab. Humanities are not a thing inherent in the university that can be exported. “We” need to de-center the discourse.

The more radical proposition of the piece could be (and they head in this direction but need to go further): What happens if you take that list of activities above — lifelong learning, secondary school curriculum, workplace reading groups — and make that the stuff? Forget the university. Forget “reform”. What happens if we foreground a humanities that is fundamentally (as I think it has always been) outside of the university?