Fw: Article in the December 8 issue of The Globe & Mail

[Richard Plant]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fedcan" <fedcan at hssfc.ca>
To: <@hssfc.ca>
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 4:52 PM
Subject: Article in the December 8 issue of The Globe & Mail


> The following article appeared in the Saturday Globe and Mail.  >It makes
a number of valuable points about the humanities and the HSSFC.

Richard Plant

> ---------------------------------------------------
> Taking up arms against the barbarians at the gate
> By RUSSELL SMITH
>
> Saturday, December 8, 2001 - Print Edition, Page R13
>
>
> An organization I very much support and approve of -- the Humanities and
> Social Sciences Federation of Canada (HSSFC) -- recently sent a pamphlet
to
> some 30,000 academics. The pamphlet was designed to do two things:
describe
> what the HSSFC does, and try to drum up support for those activities.
>
> Apparently they're about to launch a fundraising drive. But they're also
> obviously desperate to convince provincial governments -- the ones that
> cough up money for education -- that, despite the current obsession with
> technology and job training, universities should continue to teach such
> impractical things as history, economics and political theory.
>
> The HSSFC does interesting things. It sponsors and organizes the annual
> massing of the brains that used to be called the Learned Societies
> Conference (now called the Congress of the Social Sciences and
Humanities),
> which is a forum for the presentation of recent research in dozens of
> fields. That convention has been running since 1930, and 6,000 scholars
> participate every year. The congress is claimed to inject $6-million into
> the local economy of the host city. The HSSFC also runs the Aid to
> Scholarly Publications Programme, which helps ensure that important
> research on ideas -- even that without any commercial appeal whatsoever --
> get published. It also administers four prizes for the best academic books
> of the year. And it sponsors lectures for members of parliaments by
experts
> on topics of current significance -- such as Islamic fundamentalism or
> Palestinian history. If there's any evidence that the social sciences are
> valuable to unfrivolous people, it seems to me that these lectures are it.
>
> All this is great. And the idea of launching a propaganda blitz about the
> value of philosophical thought now -- at a time of sanctioned government
> Philistinism -- is even better. I'm behind it. So why does this pamphlet
> dismay and disappoint me?
>
> Why is this pamphlet -- an essay that could be a call to arms, a rallying
> cry, a defence of all that is great and valuable about academic research
> and universities generally -- so dull? Perhaps because it isn't a call to
> arms at all; it's a recital of truisms written in corporate advertising
> jargon. It's bland. It looks like a recruiting pamphlet for a cheery but
> unexceptional university. It's filled with pictures of smiling undergrads
> in sweatshirts, acronyms ("Current SSHRC-funded research in the CURA
> program . . . "), statistics and pie charts.
>
> It's not that I disagree with anything it says. I agree that, "Innovation,
> discovery and creativity are increasingly understood to emerge from the
> interplay of diverse perspectives." I agree that, "Humanities and
> social-sciences research contributes critically and fundamentally to
> Canadian intellectual culture and to the building of the knowledge
> society." I agree that, "An educated citizenry and a healthy democracy are
> inevitably linked." But I am a believer to start with. How are we going to
> convey the fire and passion of intellectual study to those members of
> Harris's Tories and Day's Alliance who believe that all this elitist study
> of unreadable books is overprivileged, impractical, lesbian-vegetarian,
> self-indulgent wanking?
>
> Are we going to do it with polite and listless generalizations? Or with
> some passionate rhetoric -- something that we humanists have learned to
> execute, one would hope, better than those who studied fan-belt design at
> the (infinitely more practical) Toyota Institute of Fan Belt Studies?
Where
> is the excitement that we all feel on first engaging with Marx or Freud,
or
> on first looking closely at a slide of a Vermeer interior or a Munch
> landscape or a terrifyingly emaciated Schiele nude?
>
> There is nothing in this defence, really, about what it was that drew me
to
> the study of French literature at university. There is nothing to describe
> the euphoria of discovering brilliant writing for the first time, of
> discovering ideas written in a language that makes you close your eyes and
> see stars, fireworks, light, sex, death and darkness.
>
> It could be so much more aggressive. The barbarians are at the gates:
Let's
> show why intellectuals are necessary. Why should we study religion and
> ethnicity? Show a photo of an Afghan warrior with his foot on the head of
a
> Taliban enemy in the dust at Mazar-e-Sharif. There: That's why.
>
> The text only really comes alive when a famous humanist is quoted: Martha
> Nussbaum, author of Cultivating Humanity, who wrote, "Transformation is
> what Socrates and the Stoics had in mind: the idea that one would take
> responsibility for one's own reasoning." There is a density to her
> language, an educated, gravid but clear language, that is the very
hallmark
> of what study in the humanities is all about. How about a little more
> elegance in this debate? That itself would prove the point.
>
> Instead of listing the advantages of a BA for a career in business, the
> HSSFC could quote the French playwright Jean Anouilh, who wrote, "Life is
> very nice, but it lacks form. It's the aim of art to give it some." That's
> one of the cleverest things I've ever heard said about art, and it's said
> with characteristic French verve. It's faintly humorous, or at least
> playful. And playfulness is surely one of the great gifts of an education
> in the humanities: the study of the liberal arts teaches us to be playful
> with ideas, playful with language. It's what we do best -- why not show
off
> a little?
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