Funding-wise I mean. This was implied in some of my remarks in the discussion on research funding in the comments on this earlier post. I wonder, are there any major differences between substantive arguments and values that add up to something along the lines of “fund the National Endowment for the Arts” and “fund research by academics in the humanities”? I mean with the NEA parallel specifically funding for artists and artistic production, and by the humanities I mean to exclude things like medical advances, faster microchips, cleaner technology, and social stuff like improved counseling practice for trauma survivors, more effective teaching of reading, and so on - stuff with a clear and relatively short term and obvious economic or social welfare impact.
Hmm. A wrinkle… I realize that I’m assuming that there is no difference between some scholarly research and artistic products. I don’t mean to argue here that this is true for *all* scholarly research (though that’s my inclination, or close to it); I think it’s clear that *some* scholarly research is not different from art in important ways. I suppose then I’ve probably answered my own question: for that work in the humanities that is not different in important ways from art then there could be no real and honest important difference in the justification for that work in the humanities. So I have to extend my claim further. Assuming that some work in the humanities is different from art, what (or when?) is different about justification for funding that work and funding artistic production?
And by “justification” I don’t mean legitimation or rhetorical justification, I mean really, substantively, in terms of right and wrong. So, I’m less after actually existing justificatory practices (whether right or wrong) than I am after normative/prescriptive standards.
Comment by Nate — May 17, 2009 @ 3:16 pm
Hey Nate,
It’s been a long time since I’ve commented. I share a good deal of your skepticism about the usefulness of academic work, but you’re always a much more vigorous skeptic than me. (This is one the things I like about you). I’m not sure, ultimately, that I can support the distinction between, on the one hand, the arts, and on the other, something like molecular biology (and not only because the contribution of the latter is often dubious) in moral terms.
The arts, and cultural works in general, are one of the places where the reproduction of a society’s values and norms takes place, where certain ideas are made to seem natural and inevitable or, on the contrary, denaturalized, contested, made to seem historical and contingent and changeable. Changes in the arts must have some effect–and I’ll agree that this is difficult to measure–on this process of reproduction, and not just by determining what and how cultural works get taught in colleges or presented in museums. It affects secondary education as well, and it has some marginal effect on for-profit cultural products, too: movies, popular music, TV. It’s hard to know what to make of an apparatus like the NEA, since for the most part its goal is to select and endorse forms of cultural production that aren’t threatening to the status quo. I don’t know what the ultimate upshot of these kinds of cultural changes are, but I’m pretty sure that they make a difference–a negative difference as often, probably, as a positive differenc. Parts of the humanities that deal with cultural products–like English Departments or Art History Departments–are places where these values and norms are contested and since many artists and writers come through the academies (more and more these days), the upshot is that the way in which cultural products get taught, and the kind of cultural products that get taught, effect the horizon of future cultural activity. Again, no grand claims here, and to the extent that actual contestation happens at the level of ideology alone, it’s usually totally meaningless unless it connects up with social and political movements. But I do think there’s evidence, for instance, that many of the New Social Movements were nourished through their links not only to living artistic production but the humanities as well. Racism is fought in the schools as well as the streets, even if the latter fight is determining. In some cases, no doubt, connections to the academy can have a regressive or hindering effect. I think we can see this happening with a good deal of contemporary work in the academy.
There’s also a danger, one borne out in recent academic leftism, that this kind of cultural work–as Perry Anderson points out in Considerations on Western Marxism–will come to stand in for political action as such, or that academics will get grand and inflated notions of the meaningfulness of a Marxist interpretation of modern art, for instance, just as artists will get inflated notions about the meaningfulness of a committed novel or poem. Perhaps this is what you’re reacting to. (As somebody who writes about literature and art and also writes poems, I’m wary of both these dangers, since getting an inflated sense of the usefulness of what I do is, in many ways, very tempting, since the alternative is despair. But I’m not sure that this creates an iron-clad distinction between the arts and humanities, on the one hand, and social sciences and natural sciences on the other. Like I said, a good deal of the research in the other parts of the humanities is of dubious “moral” value as well.
Lastly: research in the humanities seems to be well-suited to providing knowledge about the working of ideology and the character of subjectivity in contemporary and past forms of capitalism. Much of this probably isn’t useful to political work, but some of it is, I think. . .
Comment by Jasper — May 17, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
Ugh. The last sentence in the second-to-last paragraph should read “other parts of the academy.” And I forgot to the close the parentheses in that paragraph.
Comment by Jasper — May 17, 2009 @ 5:21 pm
I think this probably isn’t what you’re asking at all, Nate, but I think one difference between some humanities and the arts is the kind of truth being produced (or hopefully being produced) by the enterprise. I suppose I’m more inclined than some to see truth as one of the products of many kinds of artistic endeavour - not truth-claim sort of truth, but more like the truth you get, or maybe the learning you get, when you engage in some new activity and learn something about yourself or about the world from it. (Loads of people think this of course, it’s a common way of understanding stuff, not suggesting this is new…) That’s not all there is to the arts, obviously - there’s beauty, too, which connects to truth, I think, but isn‘t the same at all. Not Keats, in other words. But I suppose I see the arts’ truths as more… personal? Or more embodied, maybe. Less easily transmissible except through direct experience. Art’s communal too, obviously, but the truths of art seem more directly experiential in some way than those of the humanities. It’s like the difference between a scientific claim and a joke, I guess. Writing this I’m not so sure there’s a big difference - both of them have a big effect on you, once you understand them. But with the joke the effect is that you laugh, and then for the joke to continue to exist as a joke you have to tell it to someone else, and they laugh (and you want to do this, if it’s a good joke). The laughter seems to be the point of it. Whereas with a scientific claim, although you feel really good when you understand it, the feeling good doesn’t seem so much the point - the communal element is more external to you, somehow. What I’m saying is that I think the humanities that are importantly different from the arts are after a different sort of truth - one that’s collective in a different way, and that sort of accretes in a way that other communal activities don’t, exactly. I don’t think that makes it better, but I think it’s different, somehow. (Reading this back it seems a bit naïve - I don’t mean to suggest that the arts aren’t massively communal, channelling all sorts of stuff from all over the culture. I just mean that the way the channelling operates, the way we engage with them, is different from some humanities, in some ways. Though of course this differs all over the place in lots of different ways.)
I don’t know that this connects to funding very much at all though. This may be a nonsense comment
.
Comment by duncan — May 17, 2009 @ 5:51 pm
Oh, didn’t see Jasper’s comment before posting. I think his response is probably much more on target w/r/t the point of the discussion?
Comment by duncan — May 17, 2009 @ 5:53 pm
I always thought of humanities and arts to be one and the same.
Comment by Cynthia Warner — May 17, 2009 @ 11:46 pm
hello good people, and Duncan,
Thanks for your comments and thoughts. Cynthia, I don’t think I’ve thought much about the humanities and the arts - I mean, I’ve thought a lot about stuff within the humanities and the arts but not in general - but as I’m starting to I think I’ve got the same impulse as you. I don’t think that works for what I’m after here, though. I think I make this clearer, or muddier but at least expanded on, below.
On that, Duncan, I’m not totally sure I get what you’re saying, and it may be that I’m not being clear. To the degree that I understand you, I agree with you, which is what makes me thing I don’t understand - your comment sounds like you’re disagreeing but I can’t see what the disagreement is. I think you make a good point about the experiential content of art. This is one of the things (from my limited experience) that makes art criticism unsatisfactory in a sense, even when good (I’m not against art criticism at all, in case that’s not clear), if one hasn’t encountered the work being criticized. I think the point about transmissibility is interesting, and the thing about being collective and/or individual. Like with jokes as you mention, part of the enjoyment is telling it to someone. I’m not sure if you meant that as being about art or about the humanities, though. I think of theater as an art, and music, and there’s a hugely important collective element in at least some performances - most of the music I listen to is pretty aggressive rock stuff (mostly punk) and a really good live performance hinges largely on the audience being pretty active and engaged. Likewise for some theater, and from my limited experience comedy too.
I’m not sure I was clear on what I meant by art and the humanities. By art I meant objects (understood expansively to include performances) with a primarily aesthetic content and the production of those objects - novels, songs, plays, photos, paintings, performances, poems, games, etc etc. By the humanities I meant specifically scholarly work. There’s certainly an aesthetic component to that as well, for better and for worse (just as art objects’ aesthetic content is expansive and can have elements of scholarly content, for lack of a better word), but there’s a big difference between, say, a short story and a literary scholar’s article on a short story. They’re different genres. There’s a big difference between the type of work I’ve been dabbling in recently about the Spanish Civil War and about workplace injuries vs novels and paintings about these subjects. Presumably, to the degree that my work has value, it’s different from the value of art about it. (I’d like to think it has value, but my impulse is to say it has less than art; at the same time it my be that most or all the value may be a sort of aestheticized intellectualism - the production and consumption of the type of work I’m doing as its own end… that would in a sense make humanities scholarship like mine a sort of genre of art, one with a vary narrow appeal.)
As I was typing this I thought one way to rephrase what I’m asking might be like this. Imagine some weird political turn of events where the arts become incredibly important - all the politicians have an artistic conversion experience, or some artsy leftists like the Situationists seize power. The new regime asks, given that we have limited resources that we must allocate, and given the obvious importance of the arts, is there any reason why all or most academic research funding should not be cut and transferred to fund artistic production? And so the newly art-icized powers that be establish some tribunal of artists and other folk [a sort of House Unartistic Activities Committee, if you will
]. They make academics who get research funding come before them and justify their funding. Unless that academic research can be shown to have uses that art doesn’t or can’t have, the funding is cut. So, Cancer research? Okay, keep it. Anti-racist pedagogy? Okay, funding secured. Etc. In this scenario, presuming the tribunal are acting in good faith - as all tribunals always have and always will 
- can we imagine some elements of research in the humanities losing their funding? For those that don’t, what would the arguments be for keeping that funding?
Jasper, I think I may have responded a bit to you in what I’ve already written, not totally sure (I’m very tired, sorry if I’m not being clear). I agree with everything you’re saying about the importance of ideology and so on. I notice, though, that a lot of your appeals seem to be about teaching. I tried to bracket teaching off from this, though, in part because I share your views as expressed here and have less (or certainly different) doubts and questions about teaching. What I’m interested in here and basically asking about here is something like this: why should anyone pay me to do research in history or you on literature? This is *not* to say that I want either of us to not get this sort of work. (I’m inclined most of the time toward thinking my own work has minimal importance [bracketing out the fact that I care deeply about it] but I sure as hell want a job and figure that almost all jobs have at best minimal importance. And I hope that by including you in my question isn’t a jerk move, if it reads like it is then I really apologize.)
In terms of the humanities vs sciences in moral terms, I wasn’t trying to say that science is morally justified and the humanities aren’t. I think a lot of what the sciences produce is incredibly fucked up and not morally justified. But it’s pretty obvious why its fundable, because there’s a lot of fucked up people running the world. As I type this I realize my post was ambiguous on a lot, including what sorts of justifications I’ll accept and what ones I won’t. The fucked up products of science discredit the inquiries (and to my mind, the scientists) that produced them, so those shouldn’t be admissible in a sense either. I also wasn’t trying to say “art shouldn’t be funded” (oh, and I take your points about the NEA, I’m pretty naive about all of that, you know more about this than I do). I’m all for artists getting paid.
Hmm, this doesn’t feel very clear.
I think you’re right that anti-racism can happen in the classroom, and can happen in published writing (I’m having trouble coming up with an example but I beleive the point sincerely). Despite the difficulty measuring it, that matters a good deal, akin to advances that help cure cancer or whatever.
But… hmm. I;m not sure how to put this. It seems to me that the justification for the sciences and a lot of the social sciences is instrumental. If we figure out that a science doesn’t work - I don’t know much about science, but at some point people rejected phrenology, right? - then research in that field shouldn;t be funded anymore. Or if it is to be funded the criteria are different, at hte very least, in a way that I think would be more like the humanities (like say the history of science maybe?) Anyway, instrumental. Likewise all of your examples are instrumental. That’s fair and I agree and think that instrumental arguments about the arts are under-valued. At the same time, presumably some of why you write poems is not for their use in social change (or if not you, then certainly some other writers who are legitimately good writers), because social change while incredibly important is not the only thing which is incredibly important. (Bread, but roses too, so to speak.) Likewise, presumably some scholarship which is legitimately good and important scholarship can be apolitical, right?
With regard to scholarship producing useful knowledge, I agree with you, though this may be another area where I;m a more vigorous skeptic [thanks, by the way!
] as my agreement on that point is really tentative. And if that’s true, then that’s a moral argument for why that stuff should get funded, but it would also suggest that really the powers that be really ought to get it together to cut that sort of work out of the university, if it’s such a threat. That is to say, surely the actually existing criteria for funding research must at some high level differ from this one (I apologize if this sounds like I’m tacking back and forth between criteria/types of criteria, I think I am but it’s not the sort of cheap way which is just about winning an argument, it’s becase I’m thinking out loud - for which, thanks all, this is very generative for me - among other things all of this has made me realize I know little about and want to know more about how this stuff really works), because surely people in high places can;t really be thinking “this will help debunk the workings of power in the present, let’s fund that.” I do like that as a criterion for this sort of funding, though, among other things because the instrumental nature of the claim would allow me to criticize actually existing academic ideology critique by pairing it with non-professional ideology critique as practiced in movements and movement organizations, if I were so inclined. 
I think I’m just babbling or tying myself in knots here so I’m going to stop in a moment. As an ending note, two quick points and questions. I agree with all of your remarks about the utility and importance of teaching but that’s not an argument for funding research. Does that seem fair to you, or have I left out or misunderstood part of your point? And, in your argument for humanities research, are you talking about what you think the humanities do much of the time as currently practiced, or are you talking about some scholarship that is currently practiced but not very often? That seems to me to have at least some bearing on all this, even if the results would be the same (the conclusion that the humanities ought to be funded) - it matters if we’re saying the actually existing humanities need funding vs the humanities should be funded largely for their potential. (Not that it’s quite so clear cut a dichotomy but I think the distinction is still useful.)
Anyway, thanks all, very thought provoking comments, sorry so unclear and lengthy in my reply.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — May 18, 2009 @ 6:15 am
Yeah, my defenses above would only really apply to a small portion of the art and scholarship that gets created. My temptation, though, is to say that even the “apolitical” stuff is, at base, political, to the extent that it’s involved with a society’s understanding of itself, sometimes by way of other societies or past history. I mean, I do like a lot of stuff that isn’t expressly political, but I’m always converting it to my own aims. There’s some benefit, I think, to expanding our knowledge of literature and art, inasmuch as this knowledge gets at forms of feeling and thought that everyone should have access to, but that, because we live in a class society, only a small number of people are allowed to experience. This might mean I have an inflated sense of what art is, but there’s something to the Hegelian claims that art, as the unity of sensuous particulars and concepts, promises the integration of spheres of experience that capitalist modernity keeps segregrated. Good art criticism and literary criticism discloses this aspect of art, as much as it discloses its historical and political content. But, in the end, the academy is an instrument for keeping these spheres separate, or at least controlling access to them. I’d rather this kind of discourse take place elsewhere.
In the end, I’m more on your side: I don’t think there can be any real justification for all of the hours of research work in the humanities that the university system funds. I’m not sure why, in the end, capital and the state permit the humanities to exist: partly, they serve to legitimate the current order by permitting a space for dissent whose horizon is, at most, reformist and not radical; partly they are just a way to put social surpluses to use. To the extent that we live in a society that needs only about 20 hrs/week from everyone to meet social necessities, the humanities are a utilization of surplus time that, under a better organization of things, everyone could devote to leisure, play, production of knowledge, science and art. It’s not fair that we get to do this comparatively more enjoyable thing. . .
Man, these are tough questions. They are *the* questions for someone like me, and whenever I think about this stuff, I can feel the pull of all kinds of liberal-humanist bad faith arguments. . . This is totally the 800-pound gorilla in the academy.
Comment by Jasper — May 18, 2009 @ 8:06 am
hi Jasper,
regarding this tough taking place or being better off if taking place elsewhere, I think we’re on the same page. that’s how I feel about art as well as politics. I should say, though, I’m all for the arts and the humanities and their funding. The problem isn’t too much money on that, it’s too little resources for almost everything that matters. I think your comment gets at a big piece of what I’m on about/bothered about w/ all this - surely the type of work done and the products matter. But that seems insufficient justification for letting some and only some people do this stuff. In some ways I guess I’m saying the arts and humanities are like days off or like travel or exposure to natural beauty - clearly important and good for people and a key component to a good society, but none of that justifies the current really out of whack distribution of those goods in our society.
All of this is also tangentially related to gripes about academic elitism - the above named goods should be for everyone to partake of as they want to, including on the production side, so the gatekeeping functions of academic stuff including admissions criteria etc is less legitimate, know what I mean?
Comment by Nate — May 18, 2009 @ 9:27 am
hey, have to run and don’t even have time to read this properly, but i wasn’t meaning to disagree with anything you were saying, nate - i was just associating i guess. will try to pop back and try to explain myself better later on, possibly try to be relevant to the actual discussion too
…
take care…
Comment by duncan — May 18, 2009 @ 11:04 am
Hey Nate, I have close to no expertise on this topic, but I’ve always thought of arts as asthetic in nature and humanities as socially concerned, though I would put art history into the later catagory. Anyways, in response to your comment #9 on the unequal distribution of the good things in life, I think it goes to show that arts and the academy under capitalism suffer from the same dynamics as economy- much is produced, but largely for the benefit of the few and at the expense/exclusion of many.
Comment by Adam W. — May 19, 2009 @ 4:21 am