Yes, There is no Crisis
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. I will argue that 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.