Linda Hutcheon, “Oh, the Humanities”

hutcheon

Linda Hutcheon’s post “Oh, the Humanities” at The Mark here.

Money quote:

The reason given for one of these cuts – that Comparative Literature has been so successful that every department now does that same theoretical and comparative work, and thus the centre is no longer needed – echoes, or perhaps parodies, Yale comparatist Haun Saussy’s famous lament about the institutional weakness and yet the great intellectual strength of comparative studies in Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, the 2004 report of the American Comparative Literature Association. But the negative implications of one of Saussy’s sobering conclusions are worth considering: “We may all be comparatists now – and for good reason – but only with a low common denominator.” In intellectual terms, this is hardly something to be proud of supporting.

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