The University, the Universe, the World, and "Globalization"

This essay centers on the post-WWII decline of the humanities and a proposal for a radically reshaped organization of cultural knowledge and a project for social, environmental, and mental reformulation in the integrated world capitalism. The abandonment of the museum and the university may in itself be not a catastrophe. Yet the way today's scholars and writers of different "kinds" (in gender, ethnicity, class, and discipline) have ceased to talk together, discuss together, or even disagree together is quite alarming—especially now that the environmental deterioration demands that the planet be understood and experienced as a commonality that belongs to every single being on earth. The humanities that has always been at least implicitly sustained by the idea of nation-state can now seize this demoralized moment and reorganize itself around the planet and the universe, the ultimate totality as the central imaginary. Unlike the nation-state, the planet, and the universe, is an inspiring commonality on which writers, scholars, and scientists can work together in a truly trans-disciplinary endeavor.