Generation Bubble

French Devolution: High Theory, Low Revenue, and the Decline of the Humanities

“Après moi le déluge!” French theory cries, and folks in the humanities reach for their hip-waders. Perhaps, then, the only way literature can survive is by decoupling itself from the university. Otherwise it risks being stinted and starved in the inhospitable climate of bottom-line oriented thinking characterizing today’s institutions of higher learning. The survival of literature as a more or less coherent discipline (if indeed one could claim it ever was that) depends on its retreating to the long tail beyond the threshold of the university’s brand identity, which has become narrowly pragmatic and experiential, and which has in its sites the large bands of anxious, philistine middle-income earners. This means literature will likely become a boutique field of study, but c’est la vie. Besides, it’s overrun by careerists anyway — nest-feathering technicians who in their ever narrowing concerns are destroying whatever the ravages of the economy have left untouched.