The Object(ive) of the Humanities: objectivity, politics and knowledge production
Target audience
PhD students and postdocs that work in what we define as humanities and/or that engage in some way or another with the questions we address in this doctoral school.
Organizing and scientific committee
Prof. Dr. Paul M. Kurtz
Prof. Dr. Gertrudis Van de Vijver
Prof. Dr. Maarten Van Dyck
drs. Iben Bollaert
drs. Christian Hoekema
drs. Dries Josten
drs. Marie Sauter
drs. Benjamin Zonnkeyn
Abstract
Questions like: What is the object—and the objective—of study within the humanities? What do scholars in the humanities actually do, and what drives their work? What do the concepts we work with allow us to state? Questions, we sensed, all humanities scholars sooner or later deal with. Our symposium aims to revisit these core questions of the humanities and offer a platform for pre- and postdoc researchers from different disciplines. We aim to do so under the guidance of top scholars who have addressed these questions in an insightful and original fashion. This summer school offers a platform for bringing together different disciplines to revisit core questions of the humanities. We do so under three main headings: history, epistemology, and interdisciplinarity.
The humanities—defined as an umbrella term for scientific research into the human being, it’s relations, and human-made creations—are by nature multi- and interdisciplinary. Despite their diversity and broad societal relevance, one theme recurs with striking persistence, namely: the idea that the humanities are “in crisis.” They are alternately portrayed as a stronghold of left-wing politics, or as a loose cluster of disciplines in search of a shared epistemological ground. What remains constant, however, is that their role and legitimacy is recurrently called into question. A persistent cliché? continues to haunt the humanities: that knowledge of human subjectivity can never be as objective as knowledge of ‘mere objects’. This threatens to relegate the humanities to a secondary role in interdisciplinary projects—there only to ‘add a human, subjective, touch’. This seasonal school not only refuses this cliché? of two cultures (one objective, one subjective) but also confronts the question of formalization head-on: what is the epistemological status of knowledge produced by the humanities? That is, what kinds of objectivity do the humanities appeal to and how does its writing relate to its knowledge? What does it mean to “write history”, for instance? And how is the relation between the types of formalization in the natural sciences and the human sciences to be considered? Our contention is that actually articulating a genuine epistemological viewpoint appropriate to the humanities provides the very voice through which they resonate in the social field. The humanities need not mirror the natural sciences to do so; they have to develop their own means of articulating their object and objectives.
Dates and venue
14-18 September 2026
Blandijn, Blandijnberg 2, Campus Boekentoren
Programme
Programme: Public lectures
17:30 – 19:30, location: Auditorium 4 ‘Jaap Kruithof’
Address: Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent (2nd floor)
14/09 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Title: CUAFA inaugural opening example: Humanities as the Practice of Learning.
“The Humanities” are Literature and philosophy. All other disciplines produce knowledge. The humanities teach the practice of learning. We go to the gymnasium (in the US sense) to train the body; let us go to the classroom to train the “soul” (not just reason but also imagination) to practice learning. Just as you have to take time to train the body, so do you have to take time to train the soul. Speed is not necessarily a desired value here. The task is to produce “muscle memory.” And, in the arena of the soul, imaginative reflexes cannot be produced by the tool kits of knowledge management. The basic human affects are greed, violence, and fear. In the humanities, the training to “learn” the other, is to train the imagination to displace itself into the space of the other. A literary text for literature, and a general human soul for philosophy. This learning gives practice against self-interest; perhaps even against greed, violence, and fear, all affects which keep you locked in yourself. Attempting to displace oneself into the space of the other is also the irreducible form of the unconditional ethical. Muscle memory, by virtue of our guiding analogy, in this particular case is something like a reflex, trained by the imaginative reflex of displacement into the other’s texture.
On a more abstract, collective level, this is also the paradox of democracy: between the abstract subject of democracy and the racialized, sexualized, class-casted subject of discrimination, crosscutting each other as in venndiagrams; and between this aporetic subject-space and the multitudinous other people, whom I must also consider my equals (though not the same, who do not resemble me -- the subject – and may be completely unlike my taste in every possible way). This paradox, between liberty and equality, generalizable beyond democracy, is another proof of the power of humanities training. It allows us to understand that every decision is caught in what has been described as a “double bind,” the possibility that the opposite of my argument might also be true. Although for the short-term progress of action (of whatever kind) we must take a decision, we would know that the decision is not necessarily correct and it would thus halt the self-congratulation of ethical action, which allows opposition to continue. This powerful tool – the humanities -- can be used against the global race/class/gender apartheid in education, which is the condition and effect of many of our gravest problems. For this, we must consider the practice of learning (in addition to the production of knowledge which, by itself can lead to destruction) as important as defense. We already have an international civil society, the field of non-governmental organizations. We should use that available structure to produce and sustain (for the work must be persistent) a decentralized teaching- and teacher-training system, texturally focused, mindful of the different needs of race- class-gender-marked collectivities, respecting the world’s wealth of languages. I should add that I don’t think this will ever happen.
15/09 Brooke Holmes
Title: Life History: The Bioclassical Complex and Turbulantiquity
Abstract: In this talk, I consider the problem of how to approach the longue-durée and diasporic history of life within a cosmo-anthropology of natures and Nature that takes shape through texts written in Greek within a larger Afro-Eurasian context in the second half of the first millennium bce. I consider this question through the lens of the history of premodern sympathy from Plato to Georges Canguilhem, using its history to argue against a bioclassical model of the history of the life in favor of the turbulence of reception.
16/09 Kasper Eskildsen
Title: Things and Time: Ethnographic Museums and the Resistance of Objects
Abstract:
Museums have shaped our concept of the past as well as our understanding of the world. By placing physical objects in proximity to one another, curators allow us to travel through time and space. Walking through the exhibits, we can compare periods and peoples with one another and comprehend developments and differences. This experience of time and space travel, as decades of scholarship have shown, is often illusory. Museums do not merely reveal the past and the world but reflect contemporary worldviews and, through their constructions of time and space, have legitimized global inequalities, racism, and colonialism. However, I argue, the commitment to material artefacts has also often challenged these constructions. The objects themselves offer resistance. This can even be seen in ethnographic museums, which have been the target of much of the criticism. The racist and (neo)colonial misuse of ethnographic museums demanded the suppression of certain kinds of objects. The resurfacing of these objects, in turn, has enabled and inspired criticism. Illustrating both the suppression and the resistance of objects, I focus on examples from the Royal Ethnographic Museum in Copenhagen, which was founded in 1849 and inspired many later museums, and the Department of Ethnography at the British Museum.
17/09 Chad Wellmon
Title: Permanent Crisis. The Humanities in A Disenchanted Age
Abstract: TBA
18/09 Veena Das
Title: Inordinate Knowledge and the Hidden Mythology of Our Language
Abstract:
In this paper I reorient the concept of inordinate knowledge as proposed by Stanley Cavell and Cora Diamond by putting it in conversation with a discussion of aesthetic emotion from Indian philosophy and aesthetics. Drawing from Wittgenstein’s formulation of “primitive reaction” as a response drawn out in relation to the pain of the other, I argue that this primitive reaction is not external or anterior to forms of life. Since we can also invent natural histories for our emotions, I show another region of primitive response in which a curse drawn out at the sight of injustice to another, is sought to be domesticated so that it does not become a curse on the world. If reason fails, the difficulty of reality that Diamond alludes to, might be hosted by the hidden mythology in our language as it allows life to be reinstituted in small acts of acknowledgement.
Registration
(post-)doctoral researchers are kindly invited to fill in this call for participants before 31 May 2026, through this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd9xQq4rAFtSKOL786RDMRD78ADrMyXDuQ1bAFdkEYSUGRW2g/viewform.
Please note that there is a limited number of places available for this symposium. Because we wish to guarantee multi-disciplinarity, we ask you to submit a short description of your research interests and a brief statement on your vision on the question of the object(ive) of the humanities. By 30 June 2026 you will receive a notification of acceptance.
Registration fee
Free of charge for Doctoral School members.
Number of participants
Maximum 35
Language
English
Training method
The division of our program is twofold: first, during the day, we organize reading groups. Texts are selected by our keynote speakers and participants are expected to have read beforehand. The keynote speakers lead the discussion, which proceeds by means of the Octavian method.
The afternoons are off, free to catch up on reading or for further socializing with the rest of the group. By the evenings, however, the keynotes will deliver lectures on their own research for a wider audience. While these lectures are open to general public, their content will be related to the material discussed within the reading groups and room is reserved for our participants in the Q&A.
Evaluation method
Only full participation in the reading groups together with the evening lectures is sufficient for recognition of the course. If some sessions are missed due to illness or other circumstances that justify absence, an exception can be made, if and only if the attendee still attended the majority of the course.
After successful participation, the Doctoral School Office will add this course to your curriculum of the Doctoral Training Programme in Oasis. Please note that this can take up to one to two months after completion of the course.