The Humanities in the English-Speaking West

There is, understandably, widespread boredom with the topic of the ‘Humanities in Crisis’. In the Western world the crisis has been declared repeatedly for over half a century (perhaps from even much earlier – ever since the rise and consolidation of modern science). Anything so chronic cannot properly be described as a ‘crisis’. So, a new rhetoric is needed every decade or so to uplift us from the boredom the topic induces and to make it seem as if it is acute rather than chronic. The latest vocabulary speaks of STEM (an acronym for the subjects that fall within Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), as the source of the crisis: we are in a brave new world (to use an earlier rhetoric) which is so overwhelmingly committed to promoting STEM in its patterns of research funding and the employment opportunities it goes on to offer university graduates, that the Humanities (to put it somewhat incoherently, but I want to suggest that \ incoherence seems to be built into the topic) continues to have no future.