What arts and humanities can mean to our living: a review essay

Community College Enterprise, The, Fall 2004 by Aquila, Dominic A

Spellmeyer's purpose in retrieving this populist cultural tradition, which he identifies closely with the pragmatism of William James, is not to lecture his readers on what might have been. Rather, he presents it as a treasure trove of resources to reenergize the humanities in the twenty-first century. The humanities, writes Stellmeyer, can develop "an understanding of cultural life that supports our ideals of democracy," but to do so, they must reconstitute "themselves as arts of living, arts of self-cultivation" (Spellmeyer, 201). Towards this end, he champions an interpretive rather than a condemnatory criticism, one that sympathizes with works under study instead of standing aloof from them, immediately raising suspicions about them, or snuffing them out under a blanket of literary theory (Spellmeyer, 214). An interpretive criticism invites and excites creative agency, which, Spellmeyer argues forcefully, is much needed today. "The problem at the end of the twentieth century was not that we were squirming helplessly under the dead weight of tradition, but that we had lost the capacity to imagine ourselves as genuine actors in a genuine world" (Spellmeyer, 170). Accordingly, "the work of the arts and humanities in our time is to imagine-and create-alternatives that are more satisfying, just, and beautiful" (Spellmeyer, 25).

Spellmeyer's vision for revivifying arts and letters is attractive. And while it is beyond the scope of his book to lay out concrete strategies for realizing the new vision for the humanities, he does indicate some promising directions to pursue. Perhaps the most interesting is his recommendation that the humanities supply the human and literary dimensions to various realms of professional work, something that Robert Coles has spent his life doing, both in his teaching at Harvard and in his writing. Spellmeyer proposes a study such as "medical humanities," which would probe "questions about the history of medical practice and institutions; about historical and cross-cultural perceptions of illness, including those represented in literary texts" (Spellmeyer, 21). A second proposal is for the humanities "to connect specialized knowledge with the everyday life-world" through art (Spellmeyer, 22). "Doctors, engineers, and web masters," he writes, might benefit more from "the experience of actually writing fiction or making linocuts or taking photographs, then enrolling in an isolated survey course for nonmajors" (Spellmeyer, 23-24). Midway in the book, Spellmeyer directs his attention to literature courses, advocating for a "pragmatics" of reading that would explore links between works of literature and "the problems they were written to address" (Spellmeyer, 167). Spellmeyer's strategy of "pragmatics" has met with success in the wide-reaching writing course he designed for Rutgers freshmen.

Beyond the academy, Spellmeyer celebrates the development of new, innovative human groupings that promise to decentralize knowledge and ameliorate the academy's tyrannical hold over the humanities. "The case can be made," writes Spellmeyer, "that the most important social changes of our time are not taking place inside the academy, but in the private lives of women and men who have begun to explore new and uncoercive forms of interaction-as couples, families, support groups, 'salons,' and congregations-and in our courses we too might explore interactions of this same uncoercive kind" (Spellmeyer, 135).