Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 4 Number 3, December 2003

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Spellmeyer, Kurt, Arts of Living, Reinventing the Humanities for the Twenty first Century, New York, State University of New York Press, 2003, pp.297, ISBN 079145648X, price: HC $78.50, PB $26.95.

Reviewed by

Howard Cannatella

The title of Spellmeyer’s book is, if nothing else, like swallowing a pill without any water.  The argument that Spellmeyer makes for reinventing the humanities is fearless, forthright and invective; a manuscript that in short deserves some attention.  It is a lively, passionate, knowledgeable, opinionative and electrifying book to read.  In spite of this, the book is troubling in more ways than one, but is this not perhaps a good thing?  In an educational climate where there is so much appeasement, political correctness and spin, it is refreshing to hear a different and distinctive voice free of educational managerial doggerel.  Spellmeyer’s problem, however, is that he appears unable to notice what is paradoxical and weak in his own argument.  Yet, one should also say that it is a work that is timely and has captured the mood if not a large slice of the problem that is facing humanities teaching.

        The book as suggested is insightful and Spellmeyer speaks in ways that are moving and explorative.  It is a work rich in textural references and while the thesis has a certain American nationalist focus to it, many lecturers working in similar kinds of higher education institutions here in Great Britain may find themselves, to different degrees, sympathizing with Spellmeyer’s account: that essentially there is a current crisis in the humanities.

         Spellmeyer puts much of the blame for this crisis in the humanities directly on the teaching profession itself. A profession he sees that has lost its way and become embroiled in too much conservative thinking, elitism and critical theory.  In essence, he thinks that the humanities teaching in higher education has forfeited its common touch, its normality to the world, its affinity with the people and its ability to address the ordinary citizen in ways that acknowledges and supports their experiences, anxieties and understanding.  He surmises that intellectual navel gazing behaviour in the humanities teaching fraternity has reached epidemic proportions.  The effect of this, he further argues, has been to alienate would-be interested students, the wider public and political allies from enjoying what the humanities can seriously offer in career and life enhancing experience.  The futility of these intellectual games, according to Spellmeyer, has resulted in a decline of interest in the humanities and whatever relevant status it once had in society.  The profession, he argues, has become too inward looking and rarely moves outside its own inner circle of friends, notoriety and fanfaronade.

        Spellmeyer thinks that in part the cause of this decline is due to the intellectual elite of mostly French and German thinkers.  He feels that a lot of post-modernist and Marxist ideology has managed to centralise, restrict, reduce and impose certain narrowly prescribed teaching standards and tastes in the humanities.  The result of this experiment, he says, is the infiltration into the humanities subjects of Marxist and post-modern tendencies which emphasise theory over practice.  He further believes that these theories, which in essence never get a clearly defined role in the work, negatively exclude, subordinate and paralyse other natural evocations of student life and with it the loss of any sustained interest in the humanities as central to cultural well being and ethical life. 

        Clearly, few would disagree with the suggestion that theory can undermine practice, creativity, spontaneity, intuition and other psychological responses. But, according to Spellmeyer's awkward analysis the writings of Gramsci, Marx, Adorno, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Adorno and many more, have become the dominant stock and trade arbiters, the thought police of what counts as proper teaching and thinking in the humanities.  He feels essentially that it is the market driven culture which has been overridingly important in democratizing education and in supporting the expressive nature of the humanities. True enough, but some will rightly feel that his dislike of post-modernism and Marxist thinking is hardly measured.  Spellmeyer shows here considerable ignorance of what many would regard as rigorous argument, effective thought and historical scholarship that borders on the sublime in some post-modernist and Marxist thought.  What critique he has in denouncing these ideas is at best discursive.  Similarly, in criticising minds like T.S. Eliot as he does on the basis that he is a difficult writer to understand, fails to see how he may be rubbishing a whole new generation of poets and writers who followed in his footsteps like, for instance, Seamus Heaney.  Yes, there is some obscurity in Eliot’s writings but many a poet, writer, painter and layperson has found by reading Eliot a plethora of emotional agreement, a lucid mind, a bewildering array of images and an enunciation quite special, memorable, learned and liberating.

          Still, Spellmeyer has a clear point when he suggests that the enjoyment of reading and writing must not be reduced to mere theory, abstraction and formulation.  For in our everyday pleasure that we take from image making, fantasy, conversation, writing, singing, physical contact, meditation and emotional experience, we often find the seeds of many a great story, poem, drama, or painting.  Spellmeyer wants to suggest that these experiences are what attract and make the humanities culturally important.

          Spellmeyer broadens out his criticism of teaching in the humanities to maintain that they are being too frequently compared and assessed against scientific and mathematical truths.  He goes go to say that determinism, bureaucracy, commercialisation, instrumentalism, standardisation and management policies have further damaged the standing of the humanities in education by seeing to it, that literature, music and visual culture become methodologically constrained by these forces.  Smellmeyer surmises that the promiscuity of art, its spiritual intellect and story telling can never really be appreciated when judged as extensions of science.

        Some of the heroes that Spellmeyer draws upon are: John Dewey, Ralph Emerson, Lionel Trilling, James Agee, Matthew Arnold, Max Weber, William James, Thomas Moore, Frank Lentriccia, Edward Ross and Earl Parker Hanson.  He weaves out from the above authors’ different but compatible arguments as a basis to draw a substantial conclusion for reinventing the humanities in the twenty-first century. His solution is for a more populist and less specialised approach in humanities teaching.  Spellmeyer wants to claim that the humanities need a greater sense of artistic individualism, pragmatism, relativism, media information and career culture in order to mirror the aspirations of students and thus counter the growing apathy of interest in the humanities.  The appeal to make the humanities more popular is not without its problems and maladroitness but Spellmeyer’s conception that the humanities need to reinvent themselves may prove to be correct but how to do this comfortably in a way that is nourishing to all sides certainly requires much more of an open intellectual debate.