A Public Roundtable: Humanities as craft, with and without purpose. Discuss.

Purposeful writing – what of this?

The raising of language as an art for its own sake makes us more subtle, more nuanced, without actually doing anything. Poetic writing evades immediate, measurable practical outcomes to allow ‘nothing’ to happen; to suspend us from the rituals and trials of productivity and ‘means-ends rationality’ that dictate the day-to-day and allow us to grow into a different kind of relationship to praxis – being together rather than doing to.

There is a querulous purposiveness to questioning the regime of purposes in which we find ourselves inserted. Writing and the urgency of a thwarted purpose is the environment we find ourselves in, but to evade the demands for immediate practical outcomes is also to open-up a different kind of possibility, an exploration of hypotheticals, imagined alternatives, utopias, and critiques.

How are we, as humanities learners, researchers, practitioners and leaders understanding ourselves and our craft in culture and society as we experience it today?

As a public roundtable, we will, in Part II of the discussion, welcome questions and contributions from the audience. This is optional.