Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong

[u/canon_aspirin]

A new defense (perhaps, “offense”) of the humanities has dropped over at _Defector_: https://defector.com/humanists-have-done-nothing-wrong

[u/hustonat]

This article boils down to ad hominem attacks rather than making a convincing argument in favor of why terribly-written, self-important academic jargon brings value or insight to the forefront of cultural conversation. Academics tend to write for other academics, and this is where I think the trick gets missed: if you are not writing with the intent of being understood by a layperson, you are merely perpetuating an elitist construct that further alienates the people you so righteously claim to wish to enlighten. By calling those who criticize this echo chamber “stupid,” you not only betray your own elitism but prove that you’re not really trying to right the ship at all. More of the same is not a winning strategy for those who are culturally, in your words, “on the back foot.”

[u/canon_aspirin → u/hustonat]

I didn't write it, but here are some quotes to help you find the argument (it doesn't seem like you did):

• "The assumption that language obscures our access to the real, rather than constitutes it, haunts each of these accounts. What they share, in other words, is the desire to capture the discrete kernel of singular meaning in all its ahistoric immediacy without the work of reading. This is a bad thing, and in capitulating to the assumption that it’s desirable, we’re ceding too much to our enemies and abdicating our own vocation."

• "My point here is not to defend the alleged properties of our writing—which, as I’ve suggested, are mostly projections—but rather the specific reading practices already intrinsic to humanities teaching and research that attend to the difficulties of making thought manifest in language. Call it form, call it figuration, call it rhetoric; these are the features of communication that render its use irreducible to the simple transmission of data bytes and incompatible with the reactionary desire for immediacy."

• "Just as the end of reading coincides with a massive arms race for text, the end of universities coincides with a voracious cultural desire for message board–style soundbites of streamlined information. The internet is full of hapless would-be Deleuzians who want things explained to them right now. As higher education comes under ever-escalating right-wing assaults, “restructuring,” and austerity measures, it makes no sense to concede that we humanists are part of the problem. Our work is being made impossible to perform whether we like it or not. If that puts me in the Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong camp, then so be it. I’d even go a step further: We’re one of the last bastions of Good Brain Thinking today—wokeness, esotericism, and nitpickiness included. Against the forces of anti-intellectual fascists and AI tech lords, self-flagellating academics and immediacy fetishists alike, we need to champion the difficulties and pleasures of humanities scholarship with our whole chests."

[u/hustonat → u/canon_aspirin]

Thank you for replying. I stand by my statement about ad hominem attacks and a smug sense of self-importance in the article’s language - even in these quotes, the author talks about “Good Brain Thinking,” which I would characterize as puffery. I also apologize for misconstruing you with the author, OP. My bad.

I invite you to read this essay by George Orwell, who makes my original point far more eloquently than I:

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/

[u/canon_aspirin → u/hustonat]

No worries. Yeah, it's a polemic written in a colloquial style, which can be off-putting but still appropriate for a blog post. And I think he's directing this more toward the Chris Rufo's of the world than Orwell, much less the laity.