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IPP Guest lecture: Frans-Willem Korsten (Leiden University): "Why Humanities Matter: Law and Literature and the Long-Term Determination to Fight for Justice"

When

Jan 15, 2025 from 04:00 to 06:00 (Europe/Berlin / UTC100)

Where

SR 109

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The humanities are being targeted and threatened globally. Major, famous universities have eliminated their faculty of Humanities, governments have questioned what value the Humanities might have, and Humanities faculties in the Netherlands are currently eliminating entire programs. To be defensive in such circumstances is silly. We had better check where the humanities are coming from, historically speaking, and see what their role should be in the current circumstances. For those who want to point to humanists as the origin of the humanities (which is historically speaking questionable), it is worthwhile noting that all the major humanists were at some point banned, threatened, or simply killed. Historically, the disciplinary origin of the humanities is to be found in the 19th century European universities, with their task to help found and invigorate the nation-states and their colonial expansion, whether globally or on the continent.

The question then is what the humanities’ political task is today if a seemingly self-evident support by the state is crumbling. Should the Humanities still proceed in producing civility? Enlarging criticality? Strengthening commitment? Such questions immediately imply other questions: in the service of whom, and which or what kind of political actors would have an interest and the determination to still support the Humanities? Are not aggressive right-wing parties claiming to know the proper way to civility; are they not extremely critical; do they not require substantial commitment? In the context of literature and law the path that lies ahead requires that we keep on analyzing the relation between art, law and justice in relation to (manipulated) affective households, on a micro and macrolevel. It requires the combination of theory and praxis, or the willingness to participate in forms of activism, for instance to help realize (underground) archives that protect the transmission of the kinds of knowledge we care for in the service of a justice. And it requires a willingness to help realize a culture of law that is no longer anthropocentric. In short: what Rudolph von Jhering called the struggle for law has acquired a new relevance.