CHEF lecture: Do we really need the humanities? A heretic’s perspective

Chef Talk

Date: May 4, 2022, 16.00 - 17.30

Venue: Campus Aarhus, Nobelauditoriet, Room 105, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 4, Building 1482, 8000 Aarhus C 

Fee: Free

Registration deadline: May 1, 2022, 23:59

Registration

The event opens with a lecture by Emeritus Professor Ronald Barnett, Institute of Education, University College London, titled 'Do we really need the humanities? A heretic’s perspective', followed by a commentary by Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University, Johnny Laursen.
After the lecture and the commentary, there will be open up for questions and a plenary discussion with the audience. 

Abstract

Ronald Barnett's view: The humanities are needed more than ever - the challenges of the world will not be met in an algorithmic, bio-informational, landscape - but we need a totally new conception of the humanities, not least because the humanities are heavily implicated in the formation of the Anthropocene, and its several maladies. The humanities have been far too human!

It is time to awaken the humanities from their all-too-human, relativist and constructivist slumbers and to become not just realist but critically realist, beginning their orientation from the world - the whole world - and to discern absences in the world, and to bring their resources to bear on ways of ‘absenting’ those absences (as Roy Bhaskar might have put it).

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