WHAT ARE THE HUMANITIES

1
WHAT ARE THE HUMANITIES?
2
DISCIPLINES IN THE HUMANITIES AT SUSSEX

• American Studies
• Art History
• English (including English Language and Drama)
• History
• Languages
• Media and Film Studies
• Music
• Philosophy

3
OED Definition

• Learning or literature concerned with human
  culture a term including the various branches of
  polite scholarship, as grammar, rhetoric, poetry,
  and esp. the study of the ancient Latin and Greek
  classics.    a. sing. (Still used in the Scottish
  Universities, in the sense of the study of the
  Latin language and literature.)

4
Humanities as Salvation?

• in our truest readings, as students, we searched
  the page for guidance, guidance in perplexity. We
  found it in Lawrence, or we found it in Eliot,
  the early Eliot. The rest of our reading, by
  comparison, was just a matter of mugging things
  up so we could pass exams.
• If the humanities want to survive, surely It
  is those energies and that craving for guidance
  that they must respond to a craving that is, in
  the end, a quest for salvation.
• J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello

5
Humanities as critique?

• It is the humanities and the humanities alone
  that will allow us to steer our way through this
  multicultural world, precisely because the
  humanities are about reading and interpretation.
  The humanities begin in textual scholarship, and
  develop as a body of disciplines devoted to
  interpretation.
• J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello

6
Humanities as commodity?

• Faculties of Humanities remain the core of any
  university.
• The humanities the core of the university?
  She may be an outsider, but if she were asked to
  name the core of the university today, its core
  discipline, she would say it was moneymaking.
  That is how it looks from Melbourne, Victoria
  and she would not be surprised if the same were
  the case in Johannesburg, South Africa.
• J. M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello

7
Globalisation and the Humanities
8
Globalisation, Violence and the End of Literature.

• Theodor Adorno, Cultural Criticism and Society,
  in Prisms, 1955.
• The sinister, integrated society of today no
  longer tolerates even those relatively
  independent, distinct moments to which the theory
  of the causal dependence of superstructure on
  base once referred. In the open-air prison which
  the world is becoming, it is no longer so
  important to know what depends on what, such is
  the extent to which all things are one. All
  phenomena rigidify, become insignias of the
  absolute rule of that which is . To write
  poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this
  corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become
  impossible to write poetry today.

9
Fiction, Globalisation and Terrorism

• Don DeLillo, Mao II (1992)
• Theres a curious knot that binds novelists and
  terrorists. In the West we become famous effigies
  as our books lose the power to shape and
  influence. Years ago I used to think it was
  possible for a novelist to alter the inner life
  of a culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have
  taken that territory. They make raids on human
  consciousness. What writers used to do before we
  were all incorporated.

10
mechanical reproduction and global violence

• Andy Warhol, Atomic bomb

11
Art, commodity culture, and mechanical
reproduction

• Andy Warhol, Campbells Soup

12
Francis Fukyama and the end of history

• "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of
  the Cold War or the passing of a particular
  period of post-war history, but the end of
  history as such that is, the end point of
  mankind's ideological evolution and the
  universalization of Western liberal democracy as
  the final form of human government."

13
September 11thAn end to the end of
history?Questioning the inevitability of global
capitalism and the universalisation of Western
liberal democracy
14
Don DeLillo In the Ruins of the Future

• In the past decade the surge of capital markets
  has dominated discourse and shaped global
  consciousness. Multinational corporations have
  come to seem more vital and influential than
  governments. The dramatic climb of the Dow and
  the speed of the internet summoned us all to live
  permanently in the future, in the utopian glow of
  cyber-capital, because there is no memory there
  and this is where markets are uncontrolled and
  investment potential has no limit. All this
  changed on September 11.

15
Don DeLillo

• The sense of disarticulation we hear in the term
  "Us and Them" has never been so striking, at
  either end.
• Two forces in the world, past and future. With
  the end of communism, the ideas and principles of
  modern democracy were seen clearly to prevail,
  whatever the inequalities of the system itself.
  This is still the case. But now there is a global
  theocratic state, unboundaried and floating and
  so obsolete it must depend on suicidal fervour to
  gain its aims.

16
George Bush

• You are either with us or against us in this war
  on terror

17
George Bush

• 'The terrorists are fighting freedom with all
  their cunning and cruelty because freedom is
  their greatest fear and they should be afraid,
  because freedom is on the march'

18
Tony Blair

• This is a moment to seize.
• The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are
  in flux. Soon they will settle again.
• Before they do, let us re-order this world around
  us.

19
Humanities as an engine forcounternarrative
critiqueinterpretation
20
Don DeLillo

• Terror brings the new future into being
• The Bush administration was feeling a nostalgia
  for the cold war. This is over now. Many things
  are over. The narrative ends in the rubble and it
  is left to us to create the counternarrative.

21
9/11 Fiction

• Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and
  Incredibly Close
• John Updike, Terrorist
• Don DeLillo, Falling Man
• Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
• Ian McEwan, Saturday
• Orhan Pamuck, Snow
• Julia Glass, The Whole World Over
• Ken Kalfus, A Disorder Peculiar to Our Country
• Claire Messud, The Emperors Children
• William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
• Martin Amis, The Last Hours of Mohhamad Atta

22
Some implications for the study and practice of
humanities

• Cultural hegemony
• with us or against us
• Structuralism
• text
• what it is
• Absolute meaning
• Fixed meaning
• Closed reading

• Dialogical plurality
• multiculturalism
• Semantics
• context
• what it might mean
• Multiple interpretations
• Changing meaning(s)
• Open reading

23
9/11 - the closing-off of dialogue?

• The parable of Pierre Boulez, the problem of
  opera, and international anti-terrorist laws!
• ....a woeful tale of closed reading in the
  hegemonic climate of anti-terror paranoia...

24
Swiss Terror Swoop Discomposes Boulez, 75 (The
Guardian 05/12/01)

• At dawn on 2 November 2001, less than two months
  after the attacks on the World Trade Center in
  New York, Pierre Boulez was arrested in his Basle
  hotel bedroom on suspicion of international
  terrorism. Ignorant of musicological protocol,
  the Swiss police had mistaken his infamous
  suggestion of the late 1960s that the most
  elegant solution to the problem of opera is to
  blow-up the opera houses1 for a literal call to
  arms and targeted him as a threat to world
  security.
• (Ben Parsons, Arresting Boulez Post-war
  modernism in context JRMA 129 no. 1 161176, p.
  161)
• 1 Pierre Boulez, Jan Buzga Interview mit Pierre
  Boulez in Prag, Melos, 34 (1967), 1624 English
  trans. in Opera, 19 (1968), 44050.

25
Discomposed Boulez cont.

• The Swiss polices faux pas is coloured by a
  somewhat uncomfortable irony. In the context of a
  historical process in which Boulez has been
  iconicized as a defender and legitimator of
  abstract organizational principles, we are not
  used to having to make the connection between him
  and the problems and politics of a real world
  that lies outside the boundaries of the narrowly
  defined serial aesthetic. (ibid.)

26
Discomposed Boulez cont.

• we tend not to mix post-war serial music with
  what might be called the extra-musical. Indeed,
  it is this very understanding of early serialism
  that has marked out what Richard Taruskin has
  characterized as a cordon sanitaire around the
  Music Itself a decontaminated space within
  which music can be composed, performed and
  listened to in a cultural and historical vacuum,
  that is, in perfect sterility1 (Parsons, ibid.)
• 1 Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Subhuman,
  a Myth of the Twentieth Century The Rite of
  Spring,
• the Tradition of the New, and the Music Itself
  , Defining Russia Musically Historical and
  Hermeneutical
• Essays (Princeton, 1997 repr. 2000), 36088 (p.
  368).

27
Problems of the parable of Boulez

• Absurd confusion of a subtle intellectual
  critique, set in the context of 1960s modern
  opera, for an absolute, decontextualised, literal
  (mis)reading of a terrorist threat.
• Failure to stop and think!
• Failure to be still and know!
• Questions whether art/critique is itself a
  political act or whether it sometimes needs a
  decontaminated space in which to speculate

28
Is music/art engaged with the real world?

• 2 Examples of highly repetitive structures (à la
  Warhol)
• Pierre Boulezs Ritual (1974) Perfect sterility?
• Organised Delirium - exists in a
  cordon-sanitaire
• Can we merely explain how it is structured/made?
• vs.
• John Adams Death of Klinghoffer (1991)
  Politically engaged?
• Coincidence recorded on 9/11 - appropriates new
  context
• Immediately censored an opera about
  terrorism!

29
Klinghoffer and Terrorism

• It happened that the world premiere of John
  Adams The Death of Klinghoffer...took place
  in...1991, during the First Gulf War. The
  subject of the opera is the hijacking of the
  Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro by Palestinian
  terrorists in 1985. Pickets from the Jewish
  Information League staged demonstrations outside
  the theatre in San Francisco. The problem was
  that Adams had dared to give an equal voice to
  both sides, making no judgment as to who is right
  and who is wrong. (Oh that politicians would do
  the same.)....The demonstrators presumably saw in
  this work insufficient condemnation of the
  terrorists... (Stephen Pettitt The Death of
  Klinghoffer, Decca DVD inlay card.)

30
Klinghoffer and Terrorism

• Disgracefully, the work has not been staged in
  America since that run. Moreover, a performance
  of choruses from the opera scheduled in Boston
  late in 2001 was also cancelled because of
  sensitivities arising from the events of 11
  September, a decision with which the composer
  angrily disagreed, not only because it presumes
  the...audiences only want comfort and familiarity
  during these difficult times, but also because it
  sets a precedent that there is poetry and music
  that should not be performed at a given moment
  because of its content. Klinghoffer has
  effectively suffered censorship, and that in a
  state that consistently asserts its love of
  freedom. ( ibid.)

31
9/11 shook the kaleidoscope

• 9/11, like Auschwitz before it, shook the
  kaleidoscope (to paraphrase Tony Blair) of art.
• A number of reactions ensued before the
  kaleidoscope settled
• In its wake, as Adorno felt half a century
  earlier, it was natural to question whether we
  could continue to make art or write about it.
• Was art now rendered a distasteful indulgence
  protected from harsh reality by its various
  cordon sanitairesmuseums galleries concert
  halls opera houses literary texts digital
  media linguistic games historical archives?
• Or were such decontaminated, apolitical spaces
  vital for art and critique to survive and
  paradoxically become political?

32
9/11 shook the kaleidoscope cont.

• But art also offered consolation
• on the night of 9/11, the BBC Proms programme
  changed to a programme of respectful,
  comforting American Nationalism (e.g. Barbers
  Adagio)
• But the most distasteful paradox of all.....
• some tried to regard 9/11 itself as a work of art
  - the greatest ever!

33
E.g. 1 Stockhausen on 9/11

• Composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was forced to
  apologise for describing the terrorists' attack
  on the World Trade Centre as "the greatest work
  of art one can imagine".
• (See Kate Connolly, Twin Towers Symbolised
  Arrogance, says Top Designer, The Guardian
  16/10/2001.)
• He actually referred to it as "the greatest work
  of art by Lucifer. In his apology he said that
  his comments had been misconstrued and he had
  been horrified by the atrocity.
• Beware the dangers of selective quotation!

34
E.g. 2 Damien Hirst on 9/11...

• The artist Damien Hirst said...he believed the
  terrorists responsible for the September 11
  attacks "need congratulating" because they
  achieved "something which nobody would ever have
  thought possible" on an artistic level. Hirst,
  who is no stranger to controversy, said many
  people would "shy away" from looking at the event
  as art but he believed the World Trade Centre
  attack was "kind of like an artwork in its own
  right".
• (See Rebecca Allison, 9/11 wicked but a work of
  art, says Damien Hirst, The Guardian 11/9/2002.)

35
Damien Hirst cont....

• "The thing about 9/11 is that...it was wicked,
  but it was devised in this way for this kind of
  impact. It was devised visually." Describing the
  image of the hijacked planes crashing into the
  twin towers as "visually stunning", he added
  "You've got to hand it to them on some level
  because they've achieved something which nobody
  would have ever have thought possible. (ibid.)

36
Damien Hirst cont....

• Referring to how the event changed perceptions,
  he added "I think our visual language has been
  changed by what happened on September 11 an
  aeroplane becomes a weapon - and if they fly
  close to buildings people start panicking. Our
  visual language is constantly changing in this
  way and I think as an artist you're constantly on
  the lookout for things like that." (ibid.)

37
Dangers of dehumanised structuralist analysis

• 9/11 becomes objectified, even commodified
• described dispassionately as a series of
  structural visual elements utterly removed from
  the context of those visual elements!
• 9/11 is made into a text
• Paradox of art decontextualising terrorism and
  appropriating it for itself
• Inverse of Nazi/Fascist propaganda in which
  terrorism appropriated art for its own ends.

38
Humanities and ethicsAn ethics derived from
the suspension of ethical engagementAn ethics
derived from balancing thought in both political
and depolitical spacesAn ethics derived from
being still and knowing