Griffin/Discourses of Crisis, 2. The “Discipline” of Humanities: Rhetorics of Interiority, Discourses of Crisis, and Contemporary Nationalist Ideology

This chapter asks how discourses of crisis in the humanities rely on the rhetoric so often applied to religion (i.e., the rhetoric of interior, personal matters) to privatize and silo humanistic inquiry. Religious studies as a discipline is particularly poised to talk about rhetorics of interiority, and this essay highlights how discourses of crisis often lead to defenses that emphasize the personal fulfillment of studying cultures, inadvertently making the “humanities” a private endeavor unworthy of public funding. Ultimately, this chapter demonstrates how articulations of “the humanities” – by positing a personal zone of belief, meaning, and value – function to discipline material viewed as divisive.