Yes, There is no Crisis: Working Towards the Posthumanities

Abstract

There is widespread consensus in the Humanities scholarly community that it is inappropriate to speak of a “crisis” of our field, yet we do spend a disproportionate amount of time actually justifying or defending our existence to the public. I want to argue that this is a constitutive contradiction of the Humanities today and that it reflects not only public concern about our relevance, but also significant internal fractures within the Humanities. In this paper, I want to look more closely at some of these inner fractures. The Humanities can and will survive their present predicament and contradictions to the extent that they will show the ability and willingness to undergo a major process of transformation in response to both technological advances and geo-political developments.