Fellow NUDHL participants,

Just following up on our discussion today with that link to Judith Butler’s recent commencement speech at McGill. As I mentioned in the seminar today, it strikes me that many of her questions about the value of the humanities are the same ones we’ve been kicking around all year. She addresses the contemporary critique which we were discussing:

And now, most certainly, there are new voices of skepticism, asking: What value do the humanities have? Are they useful? Can we measure their impact, their outputs, their profits?

It’s a great talk, and I’m interested in what everyone thinks about DH and its possibilities for reconceptualizing the same questions and challenges Butler addresses here.

You can listen to the whole talk (and read a few excerpts) at Brain Pickings.