What Ought Humanists to Do? J. Hillis Miller

What Ought Humanists To Do? J. Hillis Miller I am honored to contribute to this issue of Dædalus, “What Humanists Do.”1 Each contributor was asked by guest editor Denis Donoghue to identify a text that has meant much to her or him, then discuss it. This assignment presupposes that humanists spend much of their time interpreting texts and promoting their circulation among their students, readers of their scholarship, and the general public. It is as though we contributors were asked, “Come on now, account for your activities as humanists. Tell us what you do. Tell us why what humanists do contributes to the public good!” I promise further on to give such an accounting for my own work. First, however, I need to make a few preliminary remarks. 1) Such an issue of Dædalus would not be needed if the social utility of what humanists do were not the subject of widespread doubt. That utility used to be taken for granted. It is hardly necessary to rehearse the evidence for this doubt. A high-level adminis- J. HILLIS MILLER, a Fellow of the American Academy since 1970, is trator at Harvard is reported to have said a few years Distinguished Research Professor ago, “The humanities are a lost cause.” Humanities Emeritus of Comparative Literature departments around the country are being either and of English at the University of abolished or amalgamated, for example into a single California, Irvine. His books include department of “Literature and Cultural Studies,” or Reading for Our Time: Adam Bede into a single department of “Foreign Languages.” and Middlemarch Revisited (2012), President Obama, in his eloquent speeches about The Conflagration of Community: Fic- tion Before and After Auschwitz (2011), the need for increased support for education in the For Derrida (2009), and Literature as United States, always speaks about science and math, Conduct: Speech Acts in Henry James never once, to my knowledge, about the need for (2005). more and better humanities teaching. © 2014 by J. Hillis Miller doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00250 19 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00250 by guest on 24 September 2021 What At the same time, literary studies (my and book manuscripts; meeting students Ought ½eld) paradoxically remain extremely and colleagues during of½ce hours and in Humanists To Do? active. The large number of dissertations, the halls; responding to requests for sub- books, essays, new journals, and confer- missions of essays for special issues of the ences worldwide in the ½eld is evidence proliferating multitude of journals around of that. A newly advertised university po - the world, many of which are now online sition in literary studies typically has hun - journals; reading the geometrically in - dreds of highly quali½ed applicants. Most creas ing number of books and essays in of these, alas, will remain unemployed, one’s ½elds; not to speak of trying, al ways or employed as adjuncts typically teaching unsuccessfully, to keep up with the innu- three or four composition courses a semes- merable (and to a considerable degree ter, often at several different colleges, for incompatible) books on theory; writing a poverty wage and often no bene½ts. commissioned essays like this one that try 2) A somewhat different answer would to justify literary studies as an important need to be given if instead of asking, “What part of the humanities divisions in colleges do humanists do?” we humanists were and universities; answering requests to asked, “What did humanists use to do?” be interviewed, sometimes for podcasts; or “What should humanists do now?” The and yes, looking something up on Wiki - latter question is perhaps the most chal- pedia, blogging or using Twitter or Face- lenging. I have therefore called my essay book (the latter two I do not yet do), watch - “What Ought Humanists To Do?” ing ½lms or television shows, playing video 3) It would be seriously misleading to games, listening to any one of the innu- suggest that a literary scholar spends most merable forms and subforms of popular of her or his time reading good poems, music by way of CDs or iTunes, sur½ng novels, and plays and then teaching them the Web, and using iPhones or iPads–in and writing about them. Relatively little short, doing everything but what many of a literary scholar’s time is spent doing people assume is the main justi½cation of the sort of work I think Denis Donoghue a literary scholar’s existence: reading, in - has in mind when he asks, “What do hu - terpreting, teaching, and writing about pri- manists do?” From graduate school until mary literary texts. I forbear even to men- achieving status as a senior professor, lit- tion family responsibilities. erary scholars, like those in most academic No book in literary studies was ever ½elds, spend a great deal of time these days completed and published except in the face sending and answering email messages; of multitudinous professional and personal serving on time-consuming departmental demands that conspire to keep literary and university- or college-wide commit- scholars from doing what is, or what it tees; writing seemingly innumerable let- seems ought to be, their primary vocation. ters of recommendation; serving as a de - Most such work is done in the brief mo - partmental or program administrator; ments snatched from other duties. For a participating in reading groups; preparing number of years, especially while I was a and giving a multitude of conference pa pers department chair, I used to get up at ½ve at home, in the United States, and around (modeling myself somewhat laughably on the world; hearing and responding to pa - Anthony Trollope and Paul Valéry) and do pers given by colleagues or campus visitors; serious writing work until 8 a.m., at which applying for fellowships and post docs; point my time for “literary studies” was plan ning new programs and curricula; over for the day. Others work late at night, eval uating students’ and colleagues’ pa pers when much of the world is sleeping. 20 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00250 by guest on 24 September 2021 I am not saying the other work I have The casement slowly grows a glimmering J. Hillis listed is not important. It is essential to the square; Miller collective work of sustaining that complex So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. bureaucracy we call a “college” or a “university,” or to keeping a given discipline or Dear as remembered kisses after death, subdiscipline alive. I mean, however, that And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d you cannot be sitting in a committee meet- On lips that are for others; deep as love, ing evaluating a colleague for tenure and at Deep as ½rst love, and wild with all regret; the same time, as the letter from Dædalus O Death in Life, the days that are no more! requesting this essay put it, be returning yet once more to “a text . that inspired –Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and continues to inspire the work [you] “Tears, Idle Tears” (1847)2 do,” or asking yourself, “What text would you want to see passed on to the next gen- eration of scholars and why?” I turn now to ful½lling my commission This is one of the songs from Tennyson’s to choose a text and to answer the stated long narrative poem, The Princess, an early questions about it. I have found it impos- poem about women’s liberation. (I have, sible, however, to stick to a single text. My by the way, downloaded Tennyson’s song work has gone through several phases over from Wikipedia, to save the bother of typ- the decades. (I don’t mean several theoret- ing it out and to hint at the way the Inter- ical orientations.) I therefore must briefly net has transformed literary study.) In The discuss two texts, not just one, with some Princess, a group of women have withdrawn other citations thrown in. from men’s society to form a new species of gynæceum, a women’s university where men are forbidden to enter. The poem is sung by one of Princess Ida’s maids, in the presence of the male narrator, who, with two friends, has invaded the Princess’s do - main. They disguise themselves in drag. Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, (I kid you not! Victorian literature con- Tears from the depth of some divine despair tains many unexpected things.) Tennyson Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, asserted that: “This song came to me on In looking on the happy autumn-½elds, the yellowing autumn-tide at Tintern Ab - And thinking of the days that are no more. bey, full for me of its bygone memories. It is the sense of the abiding in the transient.”3 Fresh as the ½rst beam glittering on a sail, You will probably not be surprised to learn That brings our friends up from the that in the end, the Princess and the in - underworld, vading Prince marry and live happily ever Sad as the last which reddens over one after, though the Prince promises to treat That sinks with all we love below the verge; his wife as an equal. So much for the limits So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. of women’s liberation in Tennyson’s imag - ination! Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer I did not know any of this when I ½rst dawns encountered the poem as a freshman or The earliest pipe of half-awaken’d birds sophomore at Oberlin College in 1944 or To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 1945.

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