Do we give up on the humanities or do we try to help it adapt and be a useful and actionable tool for more of the folk? It is clear to the author in the article that something is very wrong and needs fixing.

 

 

I disagree with the author that concepts like

“gender performativity,” “intersectionality,” or “emotional labor” — they can “actually come to constitute the phenomenal base to which they refer.” People “make sense of their lives by organizing them with respect to such notions,”

Instead they are used more often as weapons to win arguments and, way worse, to hurt others. I think that the long tradition of the humanities argues for careful explication of these concepts as analytical tools, not weapons.  For example, maybe people have cottoned to the weaponizing of ‘intersectionality’ as opposed to its legitimate use helping us to understand the world.  This is a classic propaganda tool straight from 1984.

We are witnessing a much diminished world. Any way you regard the issue, it is past time to adapt or die. It appears we are dying here in the U.S.