Against the Grain: Modern Times and the Humanities
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April 2009 | Vol. VII No. 8 One Civilized Reader Is Worth a Thousand Boneheads The Center for Against the Grain: the Humanities Advisory Board Modern Times and the Humanities 2008–2009 Nancy Berg Associate Professor of Asian and Near There’s an evenin’ haze settlin’ over town house-price bubble, and spent billions of dollars on Eastern Languages and Literatures advertising campaigns to persuade Americans to Ken Botnick Starlight by the edge of the creek Associate Professor of Art increase their mortgage-related debt” (“Crisis in the Gene Dobbs Bradford The buyin’ power of the proletariat’s gone down Heartland,” New Left Review 55, January–February Executive Director Jazz St. Louis Money’s gettin’ shallow and weak 2009, newleftreview.org). I found Gowan’s article Lingchei (Letty) Chen difficult to read, but I recommend it for the way it Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Well, the place I love best is a sweet memory Language and Literature goes against the grain of the mainstream accounts Elizabeth Childs It’s a new path that we trod of the origins of the global financial crisis and Associate Professor and Chair of Department of Art History and They say low wages are a reality throws light on the darker corners of the mess we Archaeology find ourselves in. Mary-Jean Cowell If we want to compete abroad Associate Professor of Performing Arts What brought me to want to step beyond the nor- The lyrics are from Bob Dylan’s “Working Man’s Phyllis Grossman mal boundaries of analysis is an article by Patricia Retired Financial Executive Blues #2,” a track on his 2006 CD entitled Modern Cohen in the New York Times entitled “In Tough Michael A. Kahn Times. I know this because my husband played the Author and Partner Times, the Humanities Must Bryan Cave LLP CD every Sunday morning Justify Their Worth” (Febru- Chris King for months. Given the topics Only intense commitment Editorial Director ary 25, 2009). Cohen’s anal- The St. Louis American Newspaper of some of the other songs to the values of a shared ysis is built on mainstream Olivia Lahs-Gonzales on this CD it is probably no Director humanity can enhance our views. In response to the Sheldon Art Galleries accident that it has the same faltering economy, Cohen Paula Lupkin title as the 1936 Charlie lives by more than what has Assistant Professor of Architecture casts doubt on the tradi- Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts Chaplin movie about one practical and economic value. tional liberal arts education Erin McGlothlin man’s struggle to adapt to an Associate Professor of German And that is precisely what because “in this new era of Steven Meyer industrialized world. Chap- the humanities do. lengthening unemployment Associate Professor of English lin’s film was a comment on Joe Pollack lines and shrinking uni- the desperate employment Film and Theater Critic for KWMU, versity endowments, ques- Writer and fiscal conditions many people faced during the Anne Posega tions about the importance of the humanities in a Great Depression—conditions created, in Chaplin’s Head of Special Collections, Olin Library complex and technologically demanding world have Qiu Xiaolong view, by the efficiencies of modern industrializa- taken on a new urgency.” The questions that Cohen Novelist and Poet tion. Since we have outsourced most of our indus- Sarah Rivett identifies as having urgency are the usual suspects, try, the “new path” of desperate employment and Assistant Professor of English because the humanities are not intended to pre- Henry Schvey fiscal conditions we trod these days was created by Professor of Drama pare students for specific vocations, let alone those “efficiencies” of the financial industry. And this too Wang Ning engineers and scientists essential to an economic re- Professor of English, Tsinghua University may have been no accident. As Peter Gowan points covery. So the humanities will take the hardest hits James Wertsch out in New Left Review, “there is evidence that Marshall S. Snow Professor of Arts and in faculty hiring and the largest decreases in student Sciences the Wall Street banks quite deliberately planned a Director of International and Area Studies Ex Officio Ralph Quatrano Interim Dean, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Zurab Karumidze visit our blog site at http://cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu/pubs/blog.htm Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia editor’s notes continued enrollment. Responses from interviewees regulated. But the issue is not whether include remorse for not having adver- growth is controlled; rather it is the kind tised the fact that students can apply of control that matters. To believe that abilities learned in humanities courses science and technology alone can solve to the world of work (e.g., writing and our problems is wrong because it ignores analytical skills) and hope for return- the interests that science and technol- ing to the classic version of humanities ogy currently serve. Computer models courses as imparting the values of a that exploit the financial marketplace or life worth living. Cohen’s conclusion is consumerist models of science that profit equally predictable: “As money tightens, from cosmetic surgery, pharmaceutical the humanities may return to being what solutions, and gene therapy as paths to- they were at the beginning of the last ward human perfection are superficially century when only a small portion of the exciting but hollow at their cores. Only population attended college, namely, the intense commitment to the values of a Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin, 1936 province of the wealthy.” In Cohen’s ver- shared humanity can enhance our lives sion of our modern times, the humani- by more than what has practical and ties are in danger of becoming a luxury corner analysis must illuminate. We have economic value. And that is precisely that many cannot afford “if we want to lost sight of the fact that our heteroge- what the humanities do. compete abroad.” neous societies rest on at least a watered- It seems that every generation or Cohen’s analysis raises at least three down version of these values. We have two we need to be reminded that easy issues. First, can an educational sys- forgotten that there is something distinc- money, luxurious houses, good jobs, and tem survive if it offers only vocational tive about being human that makes the benefits of the consumer economy training for the majority who can afford special demands of education. Without are not all there is to living. The Boom- little else, and the “privileged” study philosophy, literature, history, ethics, ers need to be reminded that they of what it means to be human for only poetry, art, and music, we might as well cannot simply pull the rip cord on their the few who can afford anything they be machines on Chaplin’s cinematic retirement parachutes without leaving want? Second, rather than ask what one assembly line rather than his little tramp something behind in the passenger com- can do with a major in the humanities, struggling for human dignity. partment for younger generations. The she should be asking what humani- It is time to go beyond our normal young need to understand that all those ties majors can do. Thanks to the skills analyses of both the humanities and the things that make life worth living must taught in humanities curricula, the economic ideologies that seek to corrupt be perpetually fought for, and can be lost answer is almost anything. Third, the our humanism. Rather than seeing the in the blink of an eye. So, here we are at economic mess that she sees confront- current meltdown as a particularly harsh another crossroads, much like Chaplin’s ing the humanities is, in fact, partly rerun of the economic downturns of the little tramp and his sweetheart at the end the result of our failure to teach those past twenty to thirty years, we might of Modern Times. She has all her worldly humanistic values, ethics, and traditions want to view it as a fundamental shift possessions tied in a small bundle and to all students, rich or poor, no matter in the growth model we created over the cries out to him: “What’s the use of try- what their vocations or majors may be. last fifty years. Our planet’s resources are ing?” He says, “Buck up—never say die. The decline in support for the humani- limited; our ability to pollute and poison We’ll get along!” He shows her how to ties that Cohen traces is not simply due seems endless. We ought to ask our- put a smile on her face while a tune (the to their lack of economic value in the selves what it means if our current idea tune we now know as “Smile”) plays in face of the meltdown; it is deeper than of the good life is something no longer the background. And in the final, most that. Humanity is losing its salience. As sustainable economically and ecologi- memorable scene, Stanley Fish notes in the same newspa- cally. The question is not out of bounds; they walk optimisti- per a few weeks after Cohen’s article, “in the magnitude of the global economic cally down the dusty the passage from a state in which actions mess means we have to change the way road toward the fu- are guided by an overarching notion we live. But how should we change? In ture, toward modern of the public good to a state in which time, we will recover. Jobs will re- times. individual entrepreneurs freely pursue turn, although income levels may not. their private goods, values like morality, Houses will again be bought and sold.