It’s been blowing my mind and yet I haven’t been commenting because I didn’t think I had anything to really add; I’m sitting here thinking “Wow!” What I really like on these walks is the showing of how not only the movement but the place of movement shapes thoughts/feelings/experiences/evocations/memories/daydreams….just thought you should know that you’ve got another fan!

Makes me want to go for a walk, which I haven’t done in a long while because it’s so damn cold and windy here (Illinois—the temp hasn’t been so bad lately, but add 20 mph of wind or so and damn!, nahh, it’s another curl up on the couch day.

Thanks for bringing all that info and perspective into the conversation. Being disconnected from academia, that stuff is all pretty much outside my scope of knowledge, so I’m grateful you’ve brought it in for discussing …

I think I had this moment when everyone was talking Saturday night, not being someone who has that conversation among academics in general, where I really didn’t get for a minute that folks were referring to that specific context – which is not to say I presume people aren’t aware that it’s a specific context, but that dropping into the conversation midstream as a non-academic, it was kind of disorienting and took a second for me to realize the context of the comments, which got me thinking …

I obviously can’t speak for my colleagues, but I think that when most academics talk about the humanities dying, we’re aware that we’re using “humanities” as shorthand for “humanities courses in higher education.” Which is probably sloppy, and might just be reinforcing this idea that people don’t talk about literature and philosophy outside of a classroom. But I think (I hope) most of us use it knowing that the humanities are perfectly healthy outside of the classroom.

I guess I feel like it’s a pressing issue because aside from the economic concerns on the teaching end (about 70% of humanities instructors are now contingent, which means we work multiple part-time jobs for low pay with no health care), the people being affected the most by the scaling down of humanities courses are students without class and economic privilege. The humanities are pretty safe at the most expensive schools; at community colleges, however, they’re virtually nonexistent. Almost all you have are composition and grammar courses (which are constantly being canceled or crammed with too many bodies), taught by part-timers who are too frazzled and overloaded to put the necessary time into planning interesting, engaging classes. So if your family can spend $40K a year, you can have these exciting discussions about novels and historical movements and critical theory and anything else in the catalog that turns you on – but if you don’t have the cash, college is just an extension of the same rote exercises you had to do in high school (which was also probably tailored to more privileged people’s perceptions of your class or economic status). And when you consider the wealth of analytical skills and empowerment that comes from engaging critically with texts, we’re essentially helping rich kids become creative thinkers (and rewarding white male academics with full-time jobs teaching interesting classes) and tossing everyone else the crumbs.

And again, I think it’s a folly to believe that people can’t or won’t explore these areas outside of academia – but damn it, as long as we have academia, they should be able to explore it there, too!

But, finally, I do agree that our whole concept of academia and academics needs to be drastically overhauled. It’s terrifying that the academic industrial complex has become so powerful by sacrificing actual education. I think I’ve said this before elsewhere, but it’s mighty interesting that the humanities started “dying” right around the time white men had to allow everyone else to take part in them.

Thanks so much for your ideas, and your questions. I certainly don’t mean to offer a simplistic “fuck the system” in a way that abandons those inside it, or even in a way that suggests any of us can possibly be wholly outside it, or even in a way that suggests there’s one monolithic “it.” BFP is right on, I think, in talking about how she and I and we and all of us exist within these frameworks, and cannot “escape” them, and I love how she is pointing to concrete and community-centered/-guided ways of creating something different within, around, in relation to that.

Also, I feel like, being an “activist” or challenging “the system” needn’t feel like some singular kind of thing, or some kind of thing that takes up huge amounts of time and energy so that not everyone is cut out for it, or something that’s mutually exclusive with working within the system. Part of what I hope we’re doing here with this project is looking at how activism is lived, embodied, in different individual lives that are working collaboratively with others toward structural change and that are also needing balance, and needing different things from life and action and each other, and full of different inclinations and inspirations and skills and more.

And I guess I feel like there is a lot of play given to working within the system, and not a lot of play given to really imagining, creating, imagining-what-we-might-create, creating-what-we-might-imagine, etc., beyond it, and that’s what I was trying to give some representation to up there. I want to hope that our minds and our bodies and our movements haven’t been so colonized by big-institution thinking that we can hardly imagine or work outside or remember what came before them. No doubt, someone could figure out how to do all kinds of rad arts education/organizing from within the Boy Scouts, and I hope rad folks with different visions and approaches would support her in doing that, but let’s not think that being creative within such institutions is the limit to liberation-oriented work. Let’s imagine that as one piece, and know that some other pieces are, yeah, fuck this whole construct, step outside these institutions in the ways we can or feel inspired to, and create or revisit, try, something else.

Thanks so much for your ideas, and your questions. I certainly don’t mean to offer a simplistic “fuck the system” in a way that abandons those inside it, or even in a way that suggests any of us can possibly be wholly outside it, or even in a way that suggests there’s one monolithic “it.” BFP is right on, I think, in talking about how she and I and we and all of us exist within these frameworks, and cannot “escape” them, and I love how she is pointing to concrete and community-centered/-guided ways of creating something different within, around, in relation to that.

Also, I feel like, being an “activist” or challenging “the system” needn’t feel like some singular kind of thing, or some kind of thing that takes up huge amounts of time and energy so that not everyone is cut out for it, or something that’s mutually exclusive with working within the system. Part of what I hope we’re doing here with this project is looking at how activism is lived, embodied, in different individual lives that are working collaboratively with others toward structural change and that are also needing balance, and needing different things from life and action and each other, and full of different inclinations and inspirations and skills and more.

And I guess I feel like there is a lot of play given to working within the system, and not a lot of play given to really imagining, creating, imagining-what-we-might-create, creating-what-we-might-imagine, etc., beyond it, and that’s what I was trying to give some representation to up there. I want to hope that our minds and our bodies and our movements haven’t been so colonized by big-institution thinking that we can hardly imagine or work outside or remember what came before them. No doubt, someone could figure out how to do all kinds of rad arts education/organizing from within the Boy Scouts, and I hope rad folks with different visions and approaches would support her in doing that, but let’s not think that being creative within such institutions is the limit to liberation-oriented work. Let’s imagine that as one piece, and know that some other pieces are, yeah, fuck this whole construct, step outside these institutions in the ways we can or feel inspired to, and create or revisit, try, something else.

Love,

Jess