Imagining the humanities – Amid the inhuman

Abstract

The rationale for retaining the humanities in universities in the 21st century is not self-evident. A case for the humanities can only be fully made against a sense of their loss or their absence. Some say that we are already in a post-human society, but what role might the humanities play in such a society? Presumably, the fate of the humanities is bound up with a sense as to what it is to be human, and that such being–human, such human being, has value. The humanities are rather self–centred, it seems, according human being a special place on this planet. Perhaps some modesty is called for. The humanities go through crises – a crisis of the humanities – every decade or so. Are we currently in the midst of just such a crisis? Or is it a terminal crisis? It may be that a new kind of imaginative and critical humanities awaits.