"The Humanities, Then and Now - Reflections on the Dark Mountain Project" by John Cruickshank
Kudos to John Cruickshank for
his superb June 26, 2018 O&I slideshow presentation, "The Humanities,
Then and Now - Reflections on the Dark Mountain Project." John's multi-media PowerPoint slideshow of his talk is available here. A PDF of John's presentation, minus the multi-media, may be found here. All individual documents, links and other files referenced in his talk may be downloaded here.
Using the Arts and Humanities
Citation Index (A&HCI) John presented articles and book reviews he found
relating to a number of key words - "Anthropocene," "back to
nature," "resistance," "Humanities science relationships,"
"selling the Humanities," among others.
The following is a selection
of articles, books, book reviews and other content he found and briefly
introduced to the group. After each entry are my brief notes taken during
John's talk. Some of the following are proprietary and have paywalls. (Go here to download all the documents, links and other files referenced in John's talk.)
Arts of Living on a Damaged
Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene (2017) by Anna Lowenhaupt
Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt, reviewed by Regine
on We Make Money Not Art, September 5, 2017, https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/arts-of-living-on-a-damaged-planet
- Humanities and
science links getting stronger.
"Thinking about Memory
in the 21st Century," a review by dorothy of Memory in the
Twenty-First Century (2016) by Sebastian Groes (ed.), in Arts &
Humanties Research Council, June 11, 2014, https://www.sciculture.ac.uk/2014/06/11/thinking-about-memory-in-the-21st-century/
- Beyond postmodernism. Literary
criticism becoming more psychological, less moral or sociological. Mind
and consciousness coming together in the work of artistic writers.
"Book Review: Apocalypse
in Mary Shelley's The Last Man," by Christopher Hewitt, Seven
Ponds, June 27, 2014, http://blog.sevenponds.com/lending-insight/%E2%80%A8%E2%80%A8book-review-apocalypse-in-mary-shelleys-the-last-man
- A profound sense of
cultural loss. Lack of knowledge and technology.
"Education for Survival:
An Historical Perspective," by Richard Aldrich, November 7,
2008, Journal of the History of Education Society, November 7, 2008, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00467600802331895
- Survival of family crucial.
Fragmentation and professionalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Education
needs to focus more on the larger picture.
"Future Readers:
"Narrating the Human in the Anthropocene," by Pieter Vermeulen, Textural
Practice, June 14, 2017, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0950236X.2017.1323459
"How Western
Civilisation Could Collapse," by Rachel Nuwer, BBC, April 18,
2017, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse
- Ecological strain. Economic
stratification.
The Collapse of Complex
Societies," (1988) by Joseph A. Tainter, http://wtf.tw/ref/tainter.pdf
- Retraction of people &
resources back to their "core homelands." Homer-Dixon.
"The Return of
Civilization - and of Arnold Toynbee?" by Krishan Kumar, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, October 3, 2014, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/the-return-of-civilizationand-of-arnold-toynbee/FE6F858900CBB1843DD7C0D3DD5BE360
- Toynbee's ideas popular in the 1950s and 1960s, a rival of Oswald Spenger. On Freud and ghandi on "civilization." Toynbee: Civilizations do not merely di, they also throw our their successors. How civilizations start over.
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons
From the Twentieth Century (2017), by Timothy Snyder, Free PDF
Download: https://edu.glogster.com/glog/free-download-pdf-ebook-on-tyranny-twenty-lessons-from-the-twent/2i8gatbocih
- On rejecting science
because we don't like the implications of the facts of science.
Posthumanism and
Deconstructing Arguments: Corpora and Digitally-Driven Critical Analysis by
Kieran O'Halloran, Free PDF
Download: file:///C:/Users/Jim/Downloads/9781315622705_googlepreview.pdf
- Deconstruction software to
help find the underlying language games of power wielders.
"Making and Impact: New
Directions for Arts and Humanities Research," by Ellen Hazelkorn, Arts
and Humanities in Higher Education, May 8, 2014, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1474022214533891
- Measurable benefits should
be focus of A&H research.
GeoHumanities: Alliance of
Digital Humanities Organizations, http://geohumanities.org/
Geographic/Geographical
Information Science (GIScience),
Evolutions: Fifteen Myths
That Explain Our World (2018) by Oren Harman, https://www.orenharman.com/oren-harman-evolutions-book.
Kindle Book: https://www.amazon.com/Evolutions-Fifteen-Myths-Explain-World-ebook/dp/B077FD4FLC/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1530673167
- Similarities between
science and myth, as metaphors. Harman: "Humanities are a process unlike
the fact or theory finding enterprise of life science." ... Science took
agency away from Humankind, has taken us further and further away from nature.
Facts versus being, thinking. A common, consensus view in the scientific
community - facts are most important and science is the only way to understand
something. Science is a path to happiness. Yes, science has favorably impacted
human happiness, but it's a trap to believe the new tech inventions will bring
happiness. We should be skeptical about scientists' claims for making us happy.
"Review of The
Googlization of Everything," by Christopher Parsons, Technology,
Thoughts and Trinkets, July 18, 2011, https://christopher-parsons.com/review-of-the-googlization-of-everything/
- On the Humanities, their
importance.
KEY POINTS
-Science is about finding
facts and developing explanations. The Humanities are an expressive process
that reveals being, living, meaning. The sustainability of Humankind and Earth
requires an integration of the sciences and humanities. A consilience. With the
integration of science and humanities we can/may progress & survive.
Thanks, John! Your
outstanding talk expanded and help clarify our understanding of the current
state and possible futures of the Humanities. Personally, it strengthened my
post -Trump uncertain optimism about the role of the sciences and the
Humanities in Humankind's future. I needed the boost...
John's talk, and Judith
Moore's presentation on "Art" on June 12, brought to an end our
group's study of the Dark
Mountain Project. A brief summary of what we gained from this six-month
project will be shared soon.
O&I
}:> & ~:)
P.S. Here are two essays from
the Chronicle of Higher Education relating to John's presentation. I
found them after his talk:
"The Humanities As We
Know Them Are Doomed. Now What?"
"The 'Two Cultures'
Fallacy - Stop Pitting Science and the Humanities Against Each Other"
Comments
Post a Comment