If you’ve studied in a humanities department, you’ve probably noticed a divide between what you read and wrote there and the culture at large: movies, videos, music videos, songs, broadcast news etc… which (as Camille Paglia argues) is the culture for a majority of Americans.
The author Frank Donoghue, whom Fish reviews, argues that it’s a losing proposition to even try and work against this tide, mostly for financial reasons:
“Such a vision of restored stability,” says Donoghue, “is a delusion” because the conditions to which many seek a return – healthy humanities departments populated by tenure-track professors who discuss books with adoring students in a cloistered setting – have largely vanished. Except in a few private wealthy universities (functioning almost as museums), the splendid and supported irrelevance of humanist inquiry for its own sake is already a thing of the past.
The departments are not self-sustaining, and it’s evident from within.
I would argue that much of Donoghue’s thinking has likely been influenced by the idea that because there is a lack of a central vision of what liberal learning ought to consist of (in part due to the influences of Continental postmodernist thinkers, the tail end of Existentialism etc. again this is a Paglian view of things, with some Allan Bloom throw in)…
…as a result a result race identity, gender politics, and all manner of other interests (many politically left) have helped filled the void. I won’t argue that these groups don’t contain a lot of truth as many other on the political right are doing.
I will argue that from the current state of Humanities departments… these ideas are informing our politics and shaping public opinion…and the political and idealogical reactions to them (on the right)…for better or worse.
So does Donoghue have a solution?:
“In his preface, Donoghue tells us that he will “offer nothing in the way of uplifting solutions to the problems [he] describes.” In the end, however, he can’t resist recommending something and he advises humanists to acquire “a thorough familiarity with how the university works,” for “only by studying the institutional histories of scholarly research, of tenure, of academic status, and . . . of the ever-changing college curriculum, can we prepare ourselves for the future.” “
Not really, though what he does offer seems practical.
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As mentioned: I have some doubts about Fish’s larger interpretation of affairs…a tendency to view the arts, humanities, and philosophy itself through a certain lens. (Fish teaches a course on conservative philosophy..hopefully in the better sense of that word…conservare…).
Many people, especially on the political right, have been motivated by similar interpretations (sophistry?) of what’s going on…
See Also On This Site: Martha Nussbaum saw this coming a while ago, but is her platform broad enough?: From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’
A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche Connection…Stanley Fish In The NY Times: More Colorado Follies…From The Boston Globe: Literature Needs To Embrace Science…
Also: Should You Bother To Get A Liberal Arts Education? Allan Bloom, Camille Paglia and Anthony Kronman…How To Study Literature: M.H. Abrams In The Chronicle Of Higher Ed.
by kinkazzo Poor Old Harold Bloom
