“To analyze the spectacle means talking its language to some degree – to the degree, in fact, that we are obliged to engage the methodology of society to which the spectacle gives expression.  For what the spectacle expresses is the total practice of one particular economic and social formation; it is, so to speak, that formation’s agenda.  It is also the historical moment by which we happen to be governed.”
–Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

At a recent “Symposium on the Future of the Humanities” held at Johns Hopkins University a group of academic luminaries – ranging from eminent scholars in the humanities to presidents of liberal arts colleges like Kenyon and Earlham – demonstrated once again that there are many options available to advocates of the humanities in an age of educational reform.  The Princeton philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah argued somewhat optimistically, “I don’t think that our society is so degraded that we have to defend giving attention to the excellent,” which means that the great works populating any good humanities curriculum can still get a fair hearing from eager students and prudent administrators.  Others tacked closer to contemporary questions of use and efficacy, arguing for example that the subtle understanding of “religious belief as an independent motor of people’s actions” that comes from the study of religion, literature, philosophy, and history will yield more effective policies both domestically and abroad.  A more vulgar group of scholars even went so far as to suggest integrating hard data about students of humanities outperforming their contemporaries in the workplace, in civil society (they are more likely to engage in volunteer work), and in politics (they are more likely to vote).

Chances are readers of this website are sympathetic to aspects of these kinds of justification, and it is precisely the axiomatic character of these defenses of the humanities that causes so much consternation.  If we are both clear sighted about the real economic pressures being placed on higher education in general and humanities programs in particular, while at the same time remaining absolutely convinced of their value, then what kind of argument can we mount that can break this deadlock?  Or, to put it another way, how do we make the case for the value of our pursuits when it is the very notion of value that is being flattened out in attacks on the humanities (try pitting Nietzsche against the target “outcomes” of educational reform)?

In Martha Nussbaum’s Not for Profit, Chris Hedges’ The Death of the Liberal Class, and Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism we see three very distinct attempts to find a way out of this morass, and read together they go a long way in bringing to light the deeper anxieties and aspirations that underlay gatherings like the recent Symposium at Johns Hopkins.  In addition to the content of their interventions in this debate (which I will turn to in a moment), the intellectual positioning of each author tell us a great deal about our options and what the debate might mean outside the realm of the academy.  Martha Nussbaum, a prominent philosopher who has previously weighed in on these matters (in her book Cultivating Humanity) is closer to participants in the Symposium who believe that defenses of the humanities fall or stand on the quality of the argument one can mount against the creeping forces of budget cuts and calls for more direct economic relevance in education.  Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who has been marginalized due to his strong stances against the war in Iraq and the corporatizing of media, is less sanguine about these pressures.  He believes the only way to mobilize an effective resistance to such pressures is to excoriate the liberal institutions (like the university) who have let us fall into this sorry state and hope that a heroic new political agent can assume their place.  Mark Fisher falls somewhere in between as both a lecturer in social theory in Britain and a prominent social critic through various online and print media outlets.  But more importantly, Fisher is an example of a humanities scholar armed with an impressive array of critical and philosophical tools with which to offer a withering prognosis of contemporary society (and make very elegant calls for commiseration amongst his peers), but with significantly less to offer by way of practical suggestions.  Before turning to whether we can look outside of these three options of argumentation, lamentation, and radical critique, we need to examine in more detail the contents of each book to see how the problem is conceived.

Not of Profit is in a way the simplest of the three books to summarize.  According to Nussbaum the “future of democratic self-governance” is being imperiled as “the imaginative, creative aspect, and the aspect of rigorous critical thought” engendered by humanistic studies are “losing ground as nations prefer to pursue short-term profit by the cultivation of the useful and highly applied skills suited to profit-making.”  In the face of this “silent crisis” of democratic education, Nussbaum implores us to reconsider the essential link between the kinds of skills and dispositions that are attached to humanistic studies and the vital health of democracies.  Her primary examples of such skills are the abilities to imagine the sufferings, concerns, and interests of others in a multicultural society (best accomplished through the study of literature), to bring a reflective, critical, and pragmatic orientation to political debates and the demands we place on our leaders (best accomplished through the study of history, philosophy, and politics), and to transcend the narrow constraints of national interest in an interconnected, globalized world (again, accomplished better through the study of religion and literature than by comparative economics).  Against such a well-rounded model she places contemporary visions of education that promote the acquisition of basic technical skills demanded by contemporary economic structures, which begins to cede educational ground to economic considerations.

Given the rather uncontroversial nature of Nussbaum’s vision for a democratic education rooted in the humanities, it is surprising that she calls her project a “manifesto.”  It is in Chris Hedges’ The Death of the Liberal Class that we can see a clearer picture of at least one half of any good manifesto – the brutal disparagement of contemporary social institutions.  Unlike Nussbaum, Hedges is more interested in naming the people who might be responsible for humanistic education coming under attack.  Yet surprisingly he devotes most of his attention to the beleaguered liberal institutions themselves (the liberal church, the university, the media, the Democratic Party, cultural institutions, and the labor movement) as opposed to the coordinated efforts undermining them, the most active component being the ascendency of a consumerist neoliberal culture beginning in the early 1970s, which Hedges sees solidifying the status of “the power elite,” a term made famous by C. Wright Mills in the 1950s.  In the final analysis we are left with the feeling that the marginalization of the humanities in educational reform is in large part due these institutions progressively losing their soul in a series of Faustian bargains with the Corporate State.

Whether we agree with Hedges’ harsh assessment of the liberal class’ role in their own demise (which I do not given his downplaying of the nature of the threats which they have faced), he does sketch a convincing picture of a series of social safety valves that have fallen into a state of disrepair.  In the case of the university, this is due to a perceived aloofness from the pressing social and political issues of the day for elaborate forms of naval gazing and disciplinary territorial disputes.  Hedges cites the “continued impotence and cowardice” of academics and university presidents during the run up to the war in Iraq as a prime example of the hypocrisy of liberal defenses of humanistic education today.  We may want to ask what standard is not being lived up to here—echoes of 1960s utopian politics, and their eventual failures, ring throughout the book—but Hedges is certainly right that universities are in part to blame for their complicity in their own depoliticization (for example, by subsuming academic freedom under market mechanisms, best captured in the “publish or perish” culture that leads to increased specialization).

Hedges’ palpable disappointment in the liberal class perhaps limits the range of people on whom he would have us cast blame.  In this respect Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism is the best of the three books for understanding where universities find themselves today because he does not attach his work to a broader project of political rehabilitation.  Instead he is attempting to describe “a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action,” which he calls “Capitalist Realism.” Fisher is also armed with an impressive toolkit of theoretical instruments with which to pry open the more vexing and illustrative contradictions of a university in late capitalism (and the quality of this operation might be the best justification of the value of an education steeped in theory, philosophy, and literature on offer).  Here are a few:

Interpassivity – A film (Fisher chooses Wall-E), work of art, or piece of critique “performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity… It is impossible to conceive of fascism or Stalinism without propaganda – but capitalism can proceed perfectly well, in some ways better, without anyone making a case for it.”

Late Capitalist Disavowal – Quoting Zizek: “Cynical distance is just one way…to blind ourselves to the structural power of ideological fantasy: even if we do not take things seriously, even if we keep an ironical distance, we are still doing them.”

Market Stalinism – Speaking of the confused analogy between universities and market driven enterprises aiming to maximize operating efficiencies, he writes that  “inevitably a short-circuiting occurs, and work becomes geared towards the generation and massaging of representations rather than to the official goals of work itself…This reversal of priorities is one of the hallmarks of a system which can be characterized without hyperbole as ‘market Stalinism.”  What late capitalism repeats from Stalinism is just this valuing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement.”

The reason that Fisher’s wide-ranging social analyses are so pertinent to attacks on the humanities is that he sees educational institutions as “a kind of lab in which neoliberal ‘reforms’ of education have been trialed, and as such, they are the perfect place to begin an analysis of the effects of capitalist realism.”  So while his two major positive political suggestions may leave many unsatisfied – re-politicizing mental health and resisting Post-Fordist forms of bureaucratic management – he does demonstrate that more broad ranging forms of social analysis are needed to round out the pictures painted by Nussbaum and Hedges.  And it does not hurt that good, social theory is often more engaging and effective than a well-reasoned piece of analytic political philosophy.

So where does this leave participants of the Johns Hopkins Symposium and sympathetic devotees to an education steeped in literature, history, philosophy, theory, and other disciplines that cannot seem to adequately demonstrate their immediate “cash value” to an impatient public?  One of the takeaways from these books is that the language that defenders of the humanities use matters, and a book like Capitalist Realism shows that a more nuanced and developed defense of liberal learning is not going to be easily or widely received in contemporary debates.  As the epigraph from Debord suggests, it is perhaps helpful to step outside of the “agenda” of how we are to think about the role of universities in contemporary society.  Yet the on the ground experience of Nussbaum (in top tier universities, or in women’s education projects in India) and Hedges (in his movement from mainstream liberal institutions to a marginalized position on the left) are also very helpful in reminding us where these struggles are actually being waged, and perhaps how they will spill out into broader areas of society.  Though strange bedfellows, these books can go some distance in repairing the fractured relationship between the university and society at large.


 
 
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