The Crimson’s recent editorial extolling the decline of the humanities reveals a deeply flawed understanding of the field. The Crimson’s editors would have us accept the fall of the humanities because “people will continue to seek truth in philosophy, solace in music, and company in the pages of books.” Like many commentators arguing both in favor of and against the humanities, The Crimson relies on the fallacious assumption that the main reason we study the arts is for some sort of personal edification. In reality, the arts are the battlefields of culture. Cultural criticism, when practiced correctly, is a blood sport.
If the humanities seem to be a space for the squishy and impractical aspects of human subjectivity, this is only because the links between aesthetics and action are poorly understood and often overlooked. While the humanities are often caricatured as a space for introspection and self-understanding, the real action occurs when this gaze is turned outward. The humanities are as much about finding our own humanity as defining the humanity of others.
The critics of the humanities tend to point to the practical importance of advancements in technological know-how or economic policy as if they had some inherent value. In fact, these “advances” are only considered as such through the social lens that the humanities provide. Those who control our understanding of the aesthetic world shape our judgments of what is beautiful and natural as well as what is not. Human action is rarely determined by the objective state of affairs, but instead by what people subjectively believe.
Consider the universal mobilization of the German state against the Jews during the Holocaust. While the gas chambers stand out in our collective memory, their construction was the result of currents in philosophical thought that had begun a century earlier. German philosopher Bruno Bauer published The Jewish Question, a theoretical text that cast doubt on the possibility of Jewish identity co-existing with political emancipation in 1843. The same year, Karl Marx responded with an essay “On the Jewish Question,” that examined the relationship between Judaism and economic systems. By the 1930s, the Jewish question was widely debated as a policy issue, setting the stage for Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler to outline the question’s lethal “Final Solution.”
More recently, shifts in cultural interpretation are creating a vastly different society. Terms like rape culture, fat-shaming, and cultural appropriation are ubiquitous in liberal circles today because of trends in feminist interpretation that trace back to the publication of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex in 1949. Today’s growing acceptance of queer and transgender identities owes much to Judith Butler’s publication of Gender Trouble in 1990.
What is interesting about both examples is that once a philosophy or aesthetic has been established, the natural and social sciences fall in line. Just as Nazi eugenic scientists quickly furnished empirical facts “proving” the validity of racial differences, today’s neuroscientists are making discoveries favorable to queer acceptance. One popular study has “proven” that homophobes experience high levels of same-sex attraction; others hope to discover the morphological differences between gay and straight men. Science isn’t driving the structure of our society; the structure of our society drives our science.
We should thus interpret the “fall” of the humanities through the lens of power. It is unlikely that we have suddenly become more rational and objective creatures. Instead, it appears that college students in particular see a decreased correlation between holding a humanities degree and being able to affect the world.
This shift in perspective mirrors shifts in the media landscape. While in our parents’ generation, strong students of the humanities could look forward to relatively stable careers in journalism, publishing, and media, these prospects are no longer certain. Government funding of the arts continues to decline, and consumption patterns have shifted from newspapers and books toward non-traditional media available on the Internet. As media become increasingly decentralized, one’s degree is no longer a key to entry.
The same trends we see in the humanities would occur in the social sciences if it became accepted that high school graduates could practice law or in the natural sciences if we accepted that any savant could develop new theorems or practice medicine. (If this last comparison seems shocking, consider that in 17th century France, advancements made by amateurs in math and science were widely accepted, while the arts and literature were tightly controlled by professional academies.)
The job market doesn’t look good for the humanities right now, but may improve as new media organizations rise to fill the current power vacuum. Progressive media companies like Upworthy are already leading the push to curate the Internet’s content in the service of certain narratives. Additionally, humanities students are increasingly able to cross-pollinate other fields.
More concerning is the crisis of confidence among students. Viewing the humanities as a luxury discourages low income students and students of color, which in turn reinforces the power of the white and well-off to shape culture. Consider the composition of The Crimson itself. 63% of the newspaper’s executive board studies the humanities and around 84% is white (compared with 18% and 52% of the general population.) The Crimson’s sassy suggestions that the masses “eat code” seem incongruous with the way their own power is structured.
Students of the humanities need to stop framing their studies as a matter of “introspection” of “learning for its own sake” and start seeing their work as a way to engage and change the world. Students should exercise caution when considering the humanities, not because the arts are irrelevant but because they are dangerous.