Notes: researching the material and social value of the humanities

Who is researching the material and social value of the Humanities, especially literature? Simon Gikandi asks "what work does literature perform" (PMLA 127.1, Jan. 2012) which is the same way I pose the question to students: not 'what does the text mean' but 'what is it doing?' 

By talking about social value, I do not want to fall back on arguments about the "canon," "great books," or "eternal truths." These have been generally ineffectual, and they do not take account of the humanities as they are currently constituted. 

Christopher Newfield (Unmaking the Public University) notes that opponents of the public university and those who see no value in humanities research at public u's think this way because they say that the humanities just stir up peoples emotions, they are polemical, they fetishize identity politics, and encourage left-leaning rabble rousing on the public dime, and contribute nothing to the essential activities of STEM and increasing the GDP. This argument is wrong on its face, but what if we were to engage with public distrust and suspicion of the humanities by pointing out the positive material and social value of the humanities: this could be as simple-minded as pointing to (and quantifying) the multibillion dollar Shakespeare/Austen industrial-complex; the immense and continuing value of the public domain as a resource for value creation; the fact that Steve Jobs could not have been Steve Jobs without taking calligraphy, literature, and design at Reed, etc. A simple economic argument for the value of the humanities seems to be where the conversation is stuck at the moment (and the humanities -- the basis for all original university curricula -- are being challenged, questioned, and actively diminished by powerful people within the academy like never before), and unless we engage at this level, we are not likely to be able to move the discussion forward. 

Researching social value would be challenging, I suspect, but not impossible. There must be a strong social reason for the proliferation of MFA programs in the last twenty years, not just "because people will pay for it." That doesn't explain the desire. There must be a strong social reason for the almost bottomless demand for courses in literature and the humanities in spite of the overwhelming apparent financial disincentives for obtaining a BA in English (much less a graduate degree). How does the  subjective encounter with literature become social response, either in or outside of the classroom? How do people understand literature as shaping values, and thus action, or choices? This would likely be qualitative research that asks that people find reasons for themselves for studying the humanities. "Easy A" or "it's all subjective" cannot be the whole picture. 

Granted that not everything measurable is valuable, and not everything that is of value can be measured, but I am interested in whatever metrics are availalble. 

Step 1: look for existing data sets that measure the long-term social and economic impacts of humanistic study and endeavor? NEA/NEH? 

 

Comments

[Nelson S. Endebo]

Dear Prof. Pollack,

Here's my testimony as a student: I get what you're saying in your comment on Newfield, but to respond with economic arguments is, I think, already to betray the democratic value of the university: we would be allowing the logic and language of commodity to pervade what should be a center of resistance to that logic and language - not because commodity is "evil", but because there can be no democracy without a serious understanding of intrinsic value actualized in experience. I am not saying the university should be "anticapitalist" or anything of the sort (although the legions of ideologues would certainly prove me wrong at this point...). I mean that if we have to defend the university for its value (inestimable, in my view) for a truly healthy democracy, we must first of all NOT give in to the pressure to speak the language of commodity.

Otherwise we are affirming the incomparable strength of financial technocracy to lead our interests. If I had to make a point to defend the Humanities I would simply say that it offers the necessary complement to the instrumentalization of knowledge, without which the balance of power can easily shift and threaten democracy. The more intellectuals and academics start trying to prove how there are economic advantages in having a university, the faster the university will vanish, engulfed by bureaucrats. We see that ALREADY happening - and academics should seriously consider their share of guilt in allowing this to happen. I mean, if a professor can't show a student why Dante matters, that's his fault. I don't even have to start talking about how many academics don't even know how to approach an answer - ALL THEIR FAULT. There are too many people getting degrees to show how Shakespeare can make being gay ok to society, or how religion sucks, or how pre-Enlightenment philosophy is worthless - yes, this is all irrelevant and you have to be crazy to fund that kind of nonsense. As long as academics don't confess their own ineptitude they will keep complaining in vain. Put a handful of Erich Auerbachs to handle the department and you'll have a community of scholars - academics KNOW that but got lazy with so many petty battles. This isn't an argument for eternal truths, but simply for common sense. To give you an example: academics can't see the contradiction between their fears now and the fact that they insist to dismiss somebody like Lionel Trilling as a "neocon", when he could be eloquently used to advocate the social value of the Humanities. Professors of READING can't freaking read Trilling without petty resentment. And they wonder why we don't want to learn to read from them. See where I am getting at?

Free allowance for blameless self-expression and ideological babble has indeed a large social demand - it's like Facebook, but (still) with social prestige. The Humanities as they are NOW offer EXACTLY that - they are in fact famous for that. The longer people deny this, the longer they will trouble themselves with questions of value.

Let me put it this way: I would not want my kids to get the same education in the Humanities that I am getting. Because it isn't good enough, because it could be better, yes. But also because it is mostly concerned with irrelevant marginalia. And I am not even talking about it in the economic sense. If we have to defend the intrinsic value of a liberal education, it has to be a solid education in the first place. This seems obvious to me, but I never see people talk about it.

Good luck, Professor. This is going to be quite a battle and I am very interested to see how it unfolds. I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your research.

Yours truly,
n.

[Sean]

Nelson,
Thanks for your response. I think I take your major point, which is that you see the humanities as centered on the marginal, rather than the Big Questions. I would agree insofar as: humanities scholars have not bothered to face the public and explain why their research matters—because it's thinking about how we think about the world. And thinking about the world is (and leads to) action in the world. We in the humanities have become complacent, confident that the public at large is either incapable of caring or understanding (i.e. elitist assumptions). (Yes, a gross overstatement - but not something I've just made up. It's something I've observed firsthand, perhaps even engaged in myself.) And as long as students are compelled to sit through this or that core studies requirement, and a few graduate students will come to our seminars, we don't have to care. Those days, it seems, are probably over, and I for one welcome it.
The question becomes: what comes in its place?
I am willing to engage the economic argument and language of markets not only as a strategy toward changing the conversation, but also because the Humanities are major "winners" in the game of markets. The ONLY place where a free market functions as it is supposed to, theoretically, is in the traffic of ideas. And the humanities have always "paid their own way" in terms of generating revenue at universities (and elsewhere!). And I'm no neocon or doctrinaire capitalist, as I'd hope you remember.
Best regards, SP