The ‘rhetoric of gloom’ v. the discourse of impact in the humanities: Stuck in a deadlock?

Abstract

Times of financial hardship are always especially difficult for the arts and humanities, within academia and outside, for it is in periods of austerity and contraction in public funding that the spiky question of the ‘value of the humanities’ raises its ugly head, demanding at least robust engagement, if not a final resolution capable of satisfying, once and for all, those who see arts and humanities education as self-indulgent frills to be forgone in times of financial restraint. Being accustomed to be called upon to justify their existence in the curriculum and their claims on the public purse, arts and humanities scholars and practitioners at these times usually have feelings of being beleaguered, undervalued, and misunderstood, or even ‘under fire’ (Pinxten 2011).