Pet humanities. Museum humanities. Cabinet of curiosities humanities. A humanities zoo. Decorative, more than anything.
A few humanities specimens, just for interest. A few of us, doing your humanities thing. Doing our arts stuff. They should be able to watch us all at work, through a glass panel.
The humanities in the era of their decline. Philosophy in the period of its obsolescence. A last gasp. A final efflorescence in the final hours before it collapses into nothing.
Decline theory. Obsolescence theory. How to think your own unimportance.
The humanities are nothing more than hobbies. Ways to amuse yourself when you’re not busy with something more important.
The humanities, in a time when their cultural capital is no more. When you don’t have to know things about opera to impress at the dinner party.
The humanities, going for a song. No one wants the humanities. They’re losing money per student head.
The cultural capital’s gone. The prestige that the humanities used to have. Which business studies so signally lack … But that it doesn’t care that it lacks.
It’s all business now. No more high humanities. They’re a fucking liability. Everyone wants rid of them.
They’ll pare down the humanities. To a single humanities degree – the liberal arts. Any ol’ shit studies.
They’ll have a humanities optional module or two that you can do as part of your O.M .degree – which will be the only degree you can do. A sampler of history and music and history of art and literature. Just to get the idea. Just to familiarise yourself with some old names. Just to have something to say on your CV. To talk about at interview. A humanities hobby or two!
They’ll keep a humanities type or two around as a curio – like a folly on an old country estate. Like an eccentric hermit.
Work in Progress 