What is the Use-Value of English Literature Today? 💜

The Academia – Society Connect!

How English Departments Can Stay Relevant!

#newspaperinlearning

This is in continuation of our past blogpost on “Preserving the Ecological Wisdom of Dying Languages”.

And the purpose of this blogpost is three-fold!

Firstly, for the backdrop! On how English Literature found its way into academia.

When English literature was first proposed as a formal academic discipline for the very first time in the 19th century, the proposal had to face a lot of resistance from elite Universities like Oxford and Cambridge.

Well, that’s because, the academic establishment was of the firm opinion that, reading books was a purely leisure-oriented activity, and hence it lacked the intellectual rigour and “use-value” of traditional subjects.

On the same vein, you may want to listen to a lecture by this blogger on “The Use-Value of Literature”, six years ago, in May 2020, at The Cochin College, Kochi, on their YouTube Channel HERE.

So yes! For centuries, the curriculum at Oxford and at Cambridge was dominated by Mathematics and the Classics (ancient Greek and Latin). These subjects were believed to possess immense “use-value”, because of the fact that, complex Latin syntax, Greek grammar, and ancient philosophy were seen as the ultimate training grounds for the minds of future clergymen, civil servants, and imperial administrators.

That’s hence, when compared to these ‘great’ subjects, reading poetry and fiction in English seemed comparatively easier, and hence they carried the ‘soft’ subject stigma, incapable of training the intellect.

Added, there was this notion amongst a large section of academia, that reading Shakespeare or Milton was simply something a gentleman did in his armchair for pleasure and entertainment purposes.

Also, literary appreciation – back then - was seen as a matter of personal taste, emotion, and sensibility, rather than hard, examinable facts.

However, as the 19th century progressed, the cultural landscape saw a radical shift of sorts. The societal authority of religion was slowly on the wane, and great Victorian thinkers like Matthew Arnold argued that literature could step in as the new moral glue to hold society together, providing the much-needed “use-value” that was denied to the subject hitherto.

That’s how, Oxford and Cambridge finally relented, and “accommodated” the study of English Literature in its curricula.

At the end of it all, then, English literature did not enter these elite universities for its artistic beauty! On the contrary, it was introduced because, in an era of social unrest, cultural crisis, and global empire, literature finally acquired the political and moral “use-value” that the academic establishment had originally asked for!

This takes us to the second core point of this blogpost!

Like unto the “use-value” crisis of the 19th century, English literature stares at an existential crisis today.

In an age of automation and distraction, there is an urgent need than ever before, to reposition English literature to the demands of society.

And this crisis today is quite similar in scope to the “use-value” crisis of the 19th century!

Earlier, spurred by the Industrial Revolution and yes - Jeremy Bentham’s concept of utilitarianism, academics had demanded that literature justify its existence in a world obsessed with quantifiable productivity. If a poem could not build a bridge, cure a disease, or generate wealth, what good was it?

Today, in the same vein, academics and industry demand that literature justify its existence in a world obsessed with quantifiable productivity and economic utility!

Earlier, in the 19th century, the machine threatened the physical labourer; today, artificial intelligence threatens the intellectual labourer.

Just visualise this situation where -

If an AI can give us an instant summary of Jane Eyre in less than three seconds, or generate an insightful and highly perceptive essay on Shakespeare’s use of the iambic pentameter, or write an inspiring sonnet, why-o-why should we spend hours struggling to read and analyse texts – especially when a machine can do that for us, instantly?

This takes us to the third and final point for this blogpost –

How to effectively capitalise on the “use-value” of English literature and make it relevant and functional to the needs and demands of society?

Firstly, a socially engaged academia is our most powerful vajrayudha to reposition English literature and attune itself to the needs and the requirements of society.

Secondly, reframe the value proposition. It’s high time the goals of the literature classroom change or in other words, evolve for the better!

And how-o-how do we do that?

Let’s stop summarising “themes” in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in the literature classroom! Let’s leave it to AI which has already won the battle on this front! 

It’s time we stopped using those monotonous and bugging PowerPoints that supplement the work of the teacher in the literature classroom!

It’s time we stopped using the literature classroom as a one-way monologue, where the student is a mere passive receiver of content!

And yes! It’s time literature students stopped marketing themselves as people who simply read books by the dozen and pride themselves about it! I personally feel that, there’s no palpable use in merely reading books by the dozens and not acting upon them in the service of the greater common good!

It’s time literature classrooms stop giving those cliched assignments and dulling presentations in the classroom – mere paper tigers that don’t have any use-value for the literature student.

It’s high time literature students and professors start marketing ourselves as specialists in human behaviour!

Finally, it’s high time literature students step outside the bounds of the classroom and step into the community – the living laboratory!

This paradigm shift in the literature classroom – from the classroom to the community – the vital need of the hour, would – I’m sure make literature regain its use-value, and also make it relevant to the needs, demands and requirements of society, wherein our literature classrooms cease to be mere academic exercises, and instead evolve into living laboratories of cultural celebration and preservation!

I would like to end this post with an inspiring observation made by Spivak, at her insightful Plenary in Sibsagar College, Assam, on 12th October 2012, that I had the blessed privilege of being part of!

Here goes Spivak –

In the year 2000, when the University of Toronto was about to shut down its Comparative Literature program, I went to talk to the President and it got a lot of publicity on the internet also. I told him that it was “health care for a culture”.

You can never think of doing moral metrics by indulging in knowledge management techniques! The true aim of the Humanities is to train the soul! And yes! you've got to do it slow! Not fast!

And therein lies the phenomenal ‘use-value’ of English literature.

PS: You may want to read the full speech, transcribed by this blogger, on our past blogpost HERE.

Coming up next in our blogpost – Does “use-value” alone define the study of English literature?