The Work of the Humanities
“Ripped to core”, Brad Widness, intaglio print Many of us feel we are in a moment of transition, looking at a past era, and wondering what rough beast is slouching toward us, waiting to be born. A cogent description of the last fifty years can be found in Gary Gerstle’s The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order [published 2022]. (Or you can listen to him describe his thesis in this discussion .) But no one knows what is coming. My question, as always, is, what do the humanities have to do with it? I think they need re-definition and grounding. In the first place, the humanities are narrowly defined as the study of poetry and literature, the visual arts, music, and film, which encompasses all three. Original art works are made by people. They are in no way in conflict with science, history and fact if they come from an origin story based on evolution and all that we have learned about ourselves and the history of our world. In a recent gallery talk which accompanied a showing of his
