“When the academic humanities are finally, definitively destroyed by the studied, self-important irrelevance of theorists’ dogmatically inaccessible progressivist stance, no one will be able to complain that there were not cogent warnings of what was to come.” –Erin O’Connor

If the academic humanities are finally destroyed–and reports of this impending destruction are greatly exaggerated–it will not be because of theorists. Death will come when people finally give in to the notion that institutions of higher education should be financially profitable enterprises run like corporations, and when they give in to the notion that the purpose of higher education is to allow those who partake of its benefits to earn more money at their jobs. What chance do the humanities have then? It won’t matter if humanities academics are writing like Jacques Derrida or like Cleanth Brooks. All the good writing in the world will not save the academic humanities at that point.

“This thing upon me like a flower and a feast. This thing upon me crawling like a snake. It’s not death, but dying will solve its power … And as my hands drop a last desperate pen in some cheap room they will find me there and never know my name, my meaning, nor the treasure of my escape.” -Charles Bukowski