Doris Sommer, Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies, discusses the relationship between the humanities and democracies, as well as the dire implications of budget cuts for the humanities both in the United States and Latin America.
June:
Doris Sommer is Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literature and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University. She is also Director of the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University. welcome Doris.
Doris Sommer:
Thank you so much June. It's really a pleasure to be here with you.
June:
We'll be talking today about the humanities. And I was doing a little bit of reading and I came across a quote from something that you had written in an essay called "Welcome Back". And in that you say, "Reflecting on my own practice began when I noticed how many talented students leave literature to pursue something "useful" economics, politics, medicine. Bereavement is a familiar feeling for humanists, and it made me wonder why we are left behind. Is what we teach useless?"
June:
So I'm asking you today in the middle of this pandemic where we need science, and in the middle of this online learning where we need technology, are the humanities useless?
Doris Sommer:
We're also meeting on a day when we can celebrate the inauguration of a democratically elected president. And I want us all to think about how important the humanities are for democracy, for the health of a beautiful and precarious political experiment. Democracy depends on thinking slowly, listening to different points of view, enjoying debate and deliberation.
Doris Sommer:
If we don't enjoy those practices and develop those skills and tastes, the technology, the medicine, don't have the effects that they could. So what the humanities do is develop a social fabric and a taste, as I say, for debate, for deliberation, for being together. It's a talent for sociability.
June:
That's very interesting. Could you give us a couple of concrete examples about that?
Doris Sommer:
Yeah. Many historians placed the beginning of modernity in something called a public sphere where people just got together because they wanted to, salons, cafes, reading groups. When people enjoy each other's company and enjoy being smart with each other in each other's company, there's an opportunity to develop as I say, this taste for difficult conversations. I'll give you a counter example.
Doris Sommer:
When a political theorist or important philosopher like Bergen Haber mas talks about communicative action as the name for politics, when people can talk through challenges and come to agreements. Skeptics ask him, "How do you get there? Why do people want to talk to each other? Why do people want to raise difficult questions with each other? And how do you level the playing ground?" And I think a humanist would say, "Well, it begins with sociability, with the desire to be together and to think through difficult questions simply because you enjoy each other's company."
June:
Well, being sort of the devil's advocate while recognizing the importance of what you say, why can't students just take science and technology and talk about these things in the coffee shop?
Doris Sommer:
Okay, well, I'll put the question back to you, June. How do students of science and technology address a question? Are they interested in getting the right answer or are they more interested in listening to everybody's speculation?
June:
You're interested in getting the right answer.
Doris Sommer:
Exactly, exactly. When you read Haber mas for example, getting the right answer is an important part of democratic process, but the other just as important part of democratic process is universal participation. It's enjoying the sharing of different perspectives, different experiences, different stories. That's what we would miss if we're in the coffee shop with technical thinking.
June:
So you've done a lot of work and have taught a course on Latin studies. How does this whole discourse about the importance of the humanities figure into the Latin community?
Doris Sommer:
Yeah, the course that we just did finished last semester, is on Afro-Latin American literature. That's the particular part of Latin that we developed last semester. And it was called Literary Liberties, Libertines liter arias, Afro-Latin America Rights.
Doris Sommer:
And there, what is interesting about the humanities in the development of rights and resources in minority communities is that the humanities are an exercise again, to listen to everyone, to speculate, to appreciate one another's ingenuity. The literary liberties is a way to focus on the crafting, the cleverness, the way that conventional words are used in unconventional ways. In other words, it's focused on art.
Doris Sommer:
People ask me, "What do the humanities do? What does it mean? What is it good for?" And a very simple answer is that the humanities interpret the arts. It's one thing to make art. It's another thing to reflect on it. So what we did in that course, and what we do in general in the humanities is reflect on art, notice where it has made a change, where it has opened a liberty, where it's gotten people to think in unconventional ways, which aren't violent, they can be irreverent, but they don't go to physical violence, open up new ways to relate to one another and to enjoy difference.
Doris Sommer:
There's a value in the humanities that we should treasure. Even when we know we need technology, medical science, and all the other fields that we developed, we enjoy difference just for itself in the humanities.
June:
So could you talk to us a little bit more about this course that you just talked? And you're teaching at in an environment in which the United States is going through a lot of racial turmoil and one might even say polarization. So what kind of awareness's, what kind of realizations did the students in your class and perhaps even yourself have by teaching this subject?
Doris Sommer:
Thank you so much for the question. This is precisely where we can engage with each other and engage the public. In so many ways the racial polarization in the United States and in many countries brings politics to an identification style. We defend a particular culture, race with an dentaria position. We say, "This is what I am. You cannot speak for me. And I defend my right to be who I am, period."
Doris Sommer:
What a course in the humanities does is show that within the constraints of racial inequity, within the constraints of using someone else's language, one is incredibly clever, very admirable and finds new ways to connect to people who didn't expect a particular move in a piece of literature, in a conversation.
Doris Sommer:
So literary liberties is a way of expanding the range of conversations and developing admiration. Admiration is an important political word. We haven't been using it, but when you admire an interlocutor, even when you don't agree with them, there is a basis there, as I say, it goes back to the sociability that was a value for the enlightenment on, there's a value in admiration that sustains difficult conversations and doesn't just reject people out of even reasons of prejudice.
June:
Give us a couple of examples of things that went on in the class about difficult conversations, about funny points of realization, just so that our listeners can understand a little bit more about the dynamics of what's happening here.
Doris Sommer:
The people who took a course on literary liberties in African-American, Latin-Afro literature, you can imagine are already friendly interlocutors with the same. But to read with an eye to admire new moves was a new experience for many students. They expected to find important themes, and what they were shown were ways to find important moves, strategies rather than content.
Doris Sommer:
And what I want to say about the course, the best thing about the course was the students. The next best thing were the guest speakers. We had an illustrious roundup of excellent authors, brilliant contemporary Latin American, Afro-Latin American authors, who came to speak with us. That's one of the gifts that Zoom has given us.
Doris Sommer:
We had Lucía Charún-Illescas, a brilliant Peruvian novelist who lives in Germany now. She came to speak with us about the literary moves in her excellent novel, Malambo. How does the herb dealer, [Duothregon 00:12:00] which gets the attention of a person whom she needs to help her find her lover. But the language of herb remedies becomes one of the resources that Afro Latin American readers will recognize. And yet she used it in a way that is new for anybody who hasn't read her.
Doris Sommer:
We heard from Fabienne Kanor, a brilliant Martinican novelist who began her conversation with a taped invocation to issue to the God of roads and crossroads in the Yoruba Pantheon. And I, Doris Sommer started the course with an invocation to issue, not as formal as hers, but a reference to the God of the crossways, because I quoted Henry Louis Gates Jr., who wrote an important book in 1986, called "The Signifying Monkey" about North American literature, African-American literature in the United States.
Doris Sommer:
And he says, the Yoruba Orisha for the the crossroads, whose name is Eshu-Ellegua Elegbarra is much more important than the Americas than in Africa, because when you're in a tight spot, such as slavery and prejudice, you need to figure out maneuvers to find some freedom inside the constraints. And that's what an artist does. And that's what elicits our admiration.
Doris Sommer:
So in this lineup, let me just say we had Mayra Santos-Febres. We had Nancy Morejón. We had Alfonso Munera, who is a brilliantly creative historian and Adelaida Fernandez from Columbia too. We had brilliant writers. And the tapes of those sessions are available on the website of Libertines liter arias, which you can access through ALARI, through the Afro-Latin American Research Institute and through romance languages.
June:
Our listeners take advantage of that. Your point though, about the composition of the class, that these are students who are prone to accept these values and treasure, these values, how in the humanities, particularly in the academic situation, do you create spaces so that people who either never have heard of this kind of literature or who think in some way that it's inferior or they can't be bothered with it, how do, how does the humanities managed to create these spaces? What can be done?
Doris Sommer:
Yeah, I like that question too, because I asked myself the same question and one response has been to partner with colleagues outside the humanities who understand the value of the humanities and want to bring that value to their students. So for example, two years ago, I taught a course in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences with David Edwards and Rob Howe. It was the art and the science of making.
Doris Sommer:
This coming semester is starting next week, I start a course with Fawwaz Habbal, a Dean of SEAS, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences on science and sociability. The subtitle of the course is "Janice faces the future." Well one face to the sciences, one to sociability, and we will be discussing the importance of both in the construction of new products, new markets, new publics, because without that combination, we fall short for our students.
June:
That's fascinating. Could you tell us a little bit more about what's going to be included in this course?
Doris Sommer:
Yes. And I invite everyone to consider joining us formally or informally. What we'll consider is the importance of beauty. That's one of the anchors because beauty of course, is important in product development, lots of engineers and business people understand that entrepreneurs understand that.
Doris Sommer:
Apple has been successful, not only, or even mostly because of its engineering, but because of its design, right? And other people can find other examples of successful businesses that know that beauty sells. But beauty is also very important as a topic of conversation.
Doris Sommer:
When you talk about beautiful things, your phone, or a flower or a sunset or a painting, you are talking at a level that doesn't have any economic value or any political value or any moral value. It just is a glue that makes you want to talk to each other, hear each other's opinions, get each other's references to experiences that you haven't had. But they are now interesting to you because everybody is looking at the same thing or listening to the same music.
Doris Sommer:
And there you generate the social glue of sociability that makes people valuable through this disinterested conversation. And I'm using a standard vocabulary from 18th century enlightenment. Disinterested enjoyment is aesthetics.
June:
That's very, very interesting. We're talking all these wonderful things about what humanities can do, but the fact is that humanities budgets, especially in smaller universities and colleges has been cut way back. What impact does that have and how can Harvard as a more privileged university perhaps help to fill those gaps?
Doris Sommer:
June, you really put your finger on the wound as we say in Spanish, because Harvard has cut back significantly in its commitments. The entering Ph.D. Class in the humanities has been decimated, literally. There are some departments that have zero admissions in Ph.Ds.
Doris Sommer:
Romance languages will have two admits instead of eight. African and African-American studies will have three. American studies has zero. And I'm talking to you about the departments in which I am a member, and I know firsthand. But I know that all departments in humanities and most in social sciences have had drastic reductions.
Doris Sommer:
This is a concern not only for Harvard, but as you say, as a model for other colleges and universities, and the logic is reasonable. COVID has cost a lot of money and we have to get through a very tight situation. The danger is that these cuts will remain. That's what happened after the cuts from the crash in 2008. There was a cutback. The economy recovered. But our admissions did not recover.
Doris Sommer:
How do we rededicate the university to this mission of a general education that needs to include the humanities? Because without the humanities as we've been saying, you don't have reflection, you don't have openings. And the most important thing is you don't have sociability. You don't have the level ground where everybody's voice is interesting and important.
Doris Sommer:
So I think that your question leads me to engaging our listeners, you and our listeners, to thinking of ways to support Harvard, to re-establish the humanities as a core set of skills for democracy. Very often the calculation has been whether our PhDs get jobs in academic fields, and that's a very narrow calculation.
June:
What kind of calculations do you want to use?
Doris Sommer:
I want to use calculations that obliged us to link inside the university, fields of the humanities with other fields. For example, in my case now with engineering, but there should be more crossover courses with other professional schools.
Doris Sommer:
When professional schools teach the humanities, it's with internal professors. Business professors teach novels, medical professors teach medical humanities, et cetera. There's very little crossover. So whatever specific or long-term commitments we have developed through the humanities, don't get shared. For example, we have a joint Ph.D. Program with the school of education, but-
June:
When you say we you're referring to?
Doris Sommer:
To GSAS in the humanities. I'm not talking about my particular fields. But the school of education and the humanities GSAS in general are charged with developing joint programs. But it's much more common to see professors from the school of education, teach in gen ed, teach other courses in the college than it is for teachers in the college to teach in education.
Doris Sommer:
We haven't been using our resources inside the humanities to reach out to professional schools. I think that, that's a very important move. And the other important move will be to convene leaders in business and industry and government to think of important ways that they will engage PhDs and the humanities.
Doris Sommer:
Those who have already know that PhDs in English and other languages are very good collaborators. They know how to communicate. They know how to think creatively. We need to cultivate a market, an intellectual market, and we need to cultivate good humanists who are agile in the world.
June:
Now, when you say that there is a need to convene these people, is there a plan to convene these people?
Doris Sommer:
Not yet, not yet. But let's plant a seed right here June and see, who would like to think along with us? I think that the first step will be to have a hard look at ourselves, a self-reflection among humanists and social scientists at Harvard, and think about where we assume our PhDs will land in the world. And maybe, adjust our curriculum and our collaborations across the university in, in a direction we find creative and useful.
June:
Give me a couple of examples or just wild thoughts about directions that might go in.
Doris Sommer:
Think of a director of traffic for a major city. Where would the routes go? Do they include museums and libraries? Do they bring together people from different areas of the city to convene in these public sphere opportunities? That's a wild connection between the humanities and traffic control.
Doris Sommer:
But just imagine if we could do that, what about violence prevention? We have been working with partners in safer cities, which is a project of UN habitat in violence prevention because it turns out that the arts and the humanities are very powerful arenas for engaging youth and other citizens in activities that make them participants of the city without being resentful to the city.
Doris Sommer:
There's a wonderful project. I hope we'll produce a case for culture on this project in Mannheim, Germany, where a young artist who comes from Albania set up a kiosk in a tough neighborhood in Mannheim, where she rents out musical instruments and paint brushes, and costumes. And it's had an incredible effect on this neighborhood, reduced violence, created conversations, and that needs to be made visible and celebrated, but she is not a violence prevention expert. She is an artist.
Doris Sommer:
If we had humanists who could help her coordinate multiply, think about the rationale behind these kinds of interventions and police effects. We would be addressing problems that look insoluble today.
June:
We've been talking a lot about the cutback in humanities in the United States. You just mentioned Mannheim, Germany. I know that you've done an enormous amount of traveling in, particularly in Latin America. What is your general assessment of our humanities being cut back in Latin America? Also, what's the effect there?
Doris Sommer:
Yeah. The humanities are being cut back everywhere. Kind of dramatic news is that Japan just basically gutted all the humanities programs. In Latin America, the investments are much more modest. There's still a culture of sociability, a love for reading that we should take advantage of before the evaporates. You know very well Columbia, and that poetry festival can convene tens of thousands of people.
Doris Sommer:
There's a social resource that we need to make visible rather than just enjoy. That is a triumph, a cultural triumph that needs to be part of political processes, violence prevention processes, and now also restitution processes.
Doris Sommer:
I would like to say in that vein that we will be working through the project pretexts, which is a program that uses the humanities to teach anything. We will be working through pretexts with the JEP, the Special Jurisdiction for Peacemaking in Columbia. We'll be training lawyers in the JEP, along with a group of victims to actually understand what transitional justice means. We're starting that workshop next week.
Doris Sommer:
So I think there are opportunities in Latin America that include and also go beyond traditional humanities programs that we should engage with full admiration for the way that they still convene people as political, economic, and violence prevention resources.
June:
In much of Latin America, unlike in the United States, when you go to college, you have to decide going in, "I'm going to be a doctor. I'm going to be a lawyer. I'm going to be a biologist." And how has this affected the interest and support in the humanities?
Doris Sommer:
Yeah, that's why I say the projects and the programs that go beyond formal education, our resources we have to look at, the youth orchestras, the arts workshops, the theater groups, all of these are institutions formal and informal. To engage as we develop the humanities, my approach is pretext because we take art as a resource to get people to read deeply and listen to one another and develop understandings together.
Doris Sommer:
But I think that the ministries of culture need to be engaged more fully in developing the humanities and not only in developing art. What falls out of the picture is very often this important element called the humanities, which is reflection on the arts. It's a space to talk to each other about beauty. And to talk to each other and develop that solid fabric of social integration that can, would stand more difficult conversations.
Doris Sommer:
So when ministries of culture and education divide, that looks like progress for culture, because culture never gets enough money. But intellectually and in terms of programming, it can be a weak point. The distinction between ministries of culture and ministries of education can be beneficial in terms of budgeting. But in terms of programming, it weakens the bond, and if we don't teach through the arts, we lose some of the excitement, Some of the pleasure.
Doris Sommer:
Without pleasure, nothing good happens. That's a motto I learned from our very esteemed friend, Antanas Mockus, the former mayor of Bogotá, almost President of the country a couple of times. Without pleasure, nothing good happens because if you force a conversation, if you force a decision, you generate resentment and maybe resistance.
Doris Sommer:
But if you can enjoy a good argument, if you can enjoy someone else's point of view, even if you don't share it, then you have a society. So pretexts and other projects that we do through cultural agents takes advantage of the pleasure that can be shared. Interpersonal pleasure, again, this is an enlightenment concept to build education and to build society in general.
June:
When you look at university reform in Latin America. And I know that some countries are thinking about what they are teaching and how they are teaching it. Is there any move towards, including the humanities in a more integral way?
Doris Sommer:
No, we just made a convenio through the NGO face of cultural agents. We're a Harvard initiative as you said, but the work that we do outside of Harvard is done through an NGO, which makes us agile inside and out. And through the NGO, we have a convenio with the Universidad Mayor in Chile, precisely because they have that vision.
Doris Sommer:
They have that vision of an entrepreneurial university. If you look them up, that's their sub-title. An entrepreneurial university, and it understands itself as developing the humanities as part of the development of a practical imagination, an imagination for the future.
Doris Sommer:
So we will be doing projects with them to develop the [Pabellón 00:35:23] in the South in Temuco as a way of integrating their campus in the land of the Araucanos, the Mapuche land. We'll be using [pretextos 00:35:39] there in [Pabellón 00:35:40], which is a museum and also a campus in Santiago`.
Doris Sommer:
And I hope that will be a beacon to other universities to engage in the same kind of way, not backward looking to a classical education, but forward-looking as entrepreneurs who are agile and creative enough to think about society the same at the same time, as they think about economics, as ways forward.
June:
That sounds like a message you might be delivering to the President of Harvard also.
Doris Sommer:
I hope that given the importance of your podcast series June, we'll have interesting interlocutors. Yes.
June:
Thank you so much for spending this time with us. You've been listening to Doris summer. She's the Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literature and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University. She's also Director of the Culture Agents Initiative at Harvard. Thank you so much for being with us.
Doris Sommer:
Thank you so much.