Engagement in Humanities

A response based upon ‘Critical Concepts for the Creative humanities’

Anton Janicki

Eva Kom

Nino Jovicinac

Souad Attar

In “Engagement in Humanities” Jovicinac, Kom, Janicki and Attar explore the concept of Engagement, identified by Van der Tuin and Verhoeff as “friction between beings”, through the lens of Political Science, Literary Studies, Linguistics and History. In their analysis, they identify the forms that engagement takes across various disciplinary landscapes: duty, one’s personal relationship with a book, as well as cultural movements, civil service and abstraction are a few examples. The authors problematize Engagement in their discussion by noting that its causes and consequences are fuzzy at best.

Introduction

Engagement is a fickle term, it is all to do with the act of participation or even the connection and dialogue between corporeal beings. Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities (Van der Tuin & Verhoeff, 2022) identifies engagement as friction between beings, a friction with strong ethics of care and a core affective value ingrained in the act of engagement between individuals or collectives. Their definition does include the act of participation in it, but it focuses on affective participation rather than an act done from a position of emotionlessness or with no emotional consequence. Nonetheless what their exploration proves is that engagement is a multidisciplinary term that can be many different things in many different disciplines and acts. The multidisciplinary nature of engagement can notably be seen when examining it from the perspective of political science, literary studies, linguistics and history. 

Political Science Perspective

Engagement in political science is the physical or mental participation in political procedures or activities by individuals and/or groups. Much like the common definition of engagement is linked with participation, the political scientific definition is linked to a specific type of participation, political participation. Engagement from a political standpoint, on the most rudimentary level, is the participation of individuals in citizenly duties that demarcate them as members of a particular political community.

The nature of these duties varied through time, as the level of past state centralization and civil rights would determine; the ability and will of the state for certain groups to engage politically.

In the past, political engagement tended to be limited to the select few individuals who fit certain genealogical, economic, or social criteria to be allowed to participate in political life.

For them, engagement was influencing directly or indirectly state policy, through the right to vote or the ability to counsel decision-making bodies. Those who did not fit the criteria would be structurally limited such that they would be incapable of influencing state policy and instead their engagement would entail participation in state-enforced duties like tax systems or other duties required of them by those directly above them in the socio-political hierarchy.

In modern systems, political engagement is inexplicably intertwined with participation in custodial duties as well as in political, economic, and legal systems. The ability to influence the state varies accordingly with differentiating civil rights in various states, but due to the grander political agency of all individuals, political engagement now also entails at least the acquiescence of the majority of the populace to the political system.

The extent of participation as a definition of engagement has varied, nonetheless engagement has always been the foundation of the non-corporeal connection which are political beings.

Literary Studies

When looking at engagement from a literary perspective, the first question that comes to mind is perhaps more philosophical than a literary one: does literature matter if the reader does not engage with it? Do books still serve a purpose when they’re not read? And perhaps more importantly: what happens to literature when engagement fades?

Within literary studies, there are at least two canonized views regarding the questions posed. Ronald Barthes, literary critic and theorist, wrote in his famous 1967 literary essay “The Death of the Author”: “The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.” (Barthes, 1967). Engagement with the text, according to Barthes, creates and holds its ultimate meaning. According to this view, there is no way in which literature and engagement are not intertwined; they are two sides of the same coin. Without one, the other would not be able to coexist. 

This is an indirect response to what later would be categorized as “traditional literary theory”, which values the author’s history and personality as a role of understanding the meaning of the text. The author is seen as an authority on the meaning of the work. This theory is able to separate both engagement and literature, as the text’s value does not decrease if not read. Yet the question remains, at what cost?

Unread books are not without meaning. The meaning of making art does not lay in its destination, but in the process. However, it becomes distinctively clear that engagement with art, and thus literature, can transform into something greater. As Iris van der Tuin and Nanna Verhoeff state in their book Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities: “The strategy for art to foster engagement, in their words, is a matter of “reconnection”” (Van der Tuin & Verhoeff, 2022).

Historical Perspective

For most historians, engaging with history means endless digging through archives, libraries, and databases to truly interact with the past. While this can be very useful for the discipline itself and the people who practice it, it does not necessarily benefit anyone else, besides providing potentially interesting little facts for people who might be tangentially interested or involved in history. 

How then, can historians meaningfully engage with their environment? Here we naturally turn to public engagement to see what a historian can actually do for civil society. 

A historian can attempt to communicate and engage with the public on many different topics and levels. Economic historians may want to point out how the development in economics affects our everyday lives and why that is important for the public. Environmental historians might want to emphasize the role of climate change or pollution in how the world looks today. Political historians may want to communicate the impact of different ideas on modern day politics. Social historians are likely to talk of the legacies of social constructs and social structure in our societies, that affect us to this day.

In the end, when the historian engages with the public sphere, they are always performing an inherently political task. This is because, when putting forth a hypothesis in a public context (even private), a historian is implicitly either endorsing or contesting the status quo in his field. Since social orders, states, social structures, etc. strongly rely on history to maintain the status-quo, a historian is always making a contribution to political discourse. 

However, here we run into the traditional question of whether historians even should interact and engage in the public sphere: a question with a long history and many people on both sides. Consequently, it depends on each academic, which route they choose.

Linguistics

Engagement in Linguistics is a very general term depending on which branch of linguistics one studies. It can be engagement between people or between the linguist and abstract ideas or it can even be with paper. When a linguist wants to study language development, they engage with other people specifically developing children. Because one needs to engage with the developing language of a child in order to study it and come to conclusions. 

Engagement in linguistics is also a matter of engagement with abstract concepts like words and morphemes and possible relationships between them. Those relationships can be syntactic, semantic or pragmatic. A formal linguist spends a great deal of their time with words/morphemes and how they engage, relate and interact with each other. So in a way a formal linguist engages with non-physical entities on paper. 

A linguist also needs to engage with communities in order to study other languages and compare them to their own so they also need to engage with oneself and reflect on one’s language. Lastly, in more recent times a linguist needs to engage with technology. For example, to develop competent language models which at the moment seem to be forming a great deal of the future of technology. 

In conclusion, all these different types of engagement though they vary, they essentially require care and attention in order to achieve the purpose of forming them. 

Multidisciplinarity

As explored in the paragraphs above, there are several similarities present within the discussed disciplines combined. Most prevalently, the importance of human connection with the subject seems to be the connective. Whether this subject is literature, history, political science or linguistics does not matter. Furthermore, in the second part of this essay the topic of performance art will be discussed in relation to engagement. The similarities between engagement within a creative practice – performance art – and academia are striking, yet there is also a noticeable difference. Where engagement within academia is seen as a plus, an extra layer on top of the discipline, within art this essay noticed an entanglement that seems more prevalent than within academia. This will be explored within the second part of this essay. 

Performance Art

Performance art is a movement within contemporary art that centers around actions, both from the artist and the audience. Often, the pieces are known for being shocking and protesting societal norms (Frazer 2012). In contrast to other forms of fine art, art is not an object, yet it is deemed an experience. The interaction between the artist and the audience is crucial. 

In 1974, – then – upcoming artist Marina Abramovic started Rhythm 0 in an art gallery in Naples, Italy. As part of her series of works, Rhythm, Abramovic laid several seemingly random objects on a table, standing behind it. The audience read a note that said Abramovic would not react for six hours, and that she would remain passive (Frazer 2012). She told the audience, essentially, that they could do as they pleased with her body, using all objects on the table. She would take full responsibility. 

This performance is an example of the crucial entanglement of engagement and art. This becomes obvious as Abramovic reverses the roles stereotypically given to respectively the artist and the audience. Most commonly, the audience takes on the passive role, the role of the voyeur. Even though this essay, as previously explained about literature, argues that engagement still is present within this common division, the conflict that arises when these roles are reversed highlights the role engagement plays in the creation and reception of art. Rhythm 0 is created by engagement, and could not have existed otherwise. The audience becomes the artist, and the artist becomes the art. 

Performance artists, such as Abramovic, act from a desire to change existing societal or artistic structures. Rhythm 0 most commonly is seen as a critique of human nature or as Abramovic puts it: “I wanted to force [the audience] to deal with me by presenting myself as an object. But I’m not an object” (Frazer 2012). Yet it also, be it more subtly, a reversal of the roles that are placed within the arts. The engagement of the public is highlighted. The public becomes aware of the importance of their role. 

Perhaps performance art is not an art form in which engagement is immensely present, but an artform in which engagement is accentuated. One could argue that performance art lacks depth if the role of the public would be taken away, yet this is not always the case; not because there is no actively participating public, but because engagement and art cannot be separated. Art, unlike our previously discussed themes, is at its core an expression of humanity. Engagement will always be present within art, as long as humans continue to make it. The form which can vary, as discussed above, but the loss of engagement from humanity with art, at least art as people now understand it, is inconceivable.

Engagement as a critical concept for creative humanities

Iris van der Tuin and Nanna Verhoeff’s conception of engagement adheres fairly well to our respective disciplinary examples. The general outline in the chapter is as follows: “Engagement with someone or something else is a form of relationship or partnership anchored in connection. As such, it opens up to a dialogic relationship that is both intrinsically processual, productive and risky.” Their emphasis on a dialogic relationship is usually evident in our examples as well. With literature, the relationship and interpretive action that occurs when the reader engages with a text can certainly be described in that way. The text communicates information and the reader projects an interpretation. The same can be said for political science. The individual engages with a political system and the system in turn interpellates them. A dialogue with the demands of a member of society on the one hand and the expectations of that society on the other. Linguistic engagement is also deeply dialogic, as research literally requires an active dialogue between the researcher and the researched. Where this perhaps does not apply is the example of history. There is little trace of a dialogue, as the historian simply presents his interpretation of history and how it applies to society to the public sphere without necessarily expecting or wanting a response. One might perhaps say that society acting on the input might be a certain response, but that might already be part of a different process entirely. Nonetheless, the simple fact that a response is likely to be generated means we are probably speaking of a dialogue. 

What is of particular interest in their definition is the risk factor, which they explain in the following way: “There is also a risk involved because of the dialogic and reciprocal dynamic that makes the engager complicit and (co)responsible for the relationship and everyone and everything involved.” This naturally applies to all of our examples. Engagement from a historical perspective carries the risk of utter rejection and public embarrassment. One’s historically rooted claim about contemporary society can turn out to be completely irrelevant and incorrect, in which case the individual has to carry the responsibility of their claims influencing people’s perspectives. In terms of political science, an individual’s engagement has very real consequences for the world around them, as they have a direct role in determining the shape of society. Why that is a risk need not be explained. Literary engagement also carries its risks. How we engage with a text can have strong repercussions on how we act, how we think, and how we perceive the world. The risk entails engaging with the correct kind of literature while avoiding works that might affect you negatively. Some forms of engagement in literature also entail a certain amount of risk. If we take the example of child development research, incorrect conclusions, if applied in practice, might have repercussions for generations to come.

Where our examples somewhat deviate from the chapter is that they are mostly personal forms of engagement, whereas the authors also emphasize collective engagement. Literary engagement, for example, can be a distinctly personal matter. Additionally, Verhoeff and van der Tuin focus on the positive results and intent of engagement. I would argue that engagement does not necessarily have to have either. An individual might engage politically with the public sphere, not because of a wish for positive change, but due to selfish interest. The same can be said about a historian, publicly pushing a narrative only to sell a book, for example. Linguistic engagement can conceivably be a collective, well-meaning effort, though. A deeper understanding of language (and the example of child development specifically) can reflect a genuine effort at positive change. One that formulates better methods to engage with language and people. Uniquely, engagement with literature can be seen as an entirely value-free category. Likewise, the short segment on touch and affection has very little to do with how any of our disciplines think about engagement. It seems to be an excessively specific and somewhat irrelevant (I hesitate to use the term useless) category, with little application outside what is briefly outlined in the chapter.

Regardless, we are in general agreement about the consequences of engagement and how it can change society and the world. Disregarding its collaborative character, their example of artivism fits in well with the rest of our examples, save perhaps literature, as there is no implicit push for social change in literary engagement. However, if we approach a text with the explicit intent of engaging with it in a certain way (eg. a Marxist analysis of Animal Farm), this can certainly be a vehicle for social change.

Conclusion

Engagement is a term that encompasses a great many things within it. By working with its definition in Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities (2022) and identifying its applications in various disciplinary perspectives one can begin to grasp how important engagement truly is in the modern world. Engagement is an essential factor in grounding that which is noncorporeal. In a world full of theory and creativity, a great many things balance on the boundary of that which exists and that which does not, only by our act of engaging in it. In Literary studies, engagement is that which allows for the very existence of stories, the contents of literature only exist by our act of engagement in them. If we were not to engage in them, they would simply be collections of letters and symbols. In Political science engagement is the foundation of intangible political beings. For a historian engagement is the very essence of his job, it is an act of examining past experiences for the public or entering academic dialogue, but it is also engaging with past realities and thus making them real in the present. Engagement for linguistics is both the personal interaction of the linguist with different lingual groups, but also the non physical engagement between words/morphemes. By examining engagement one can gain substantive knowledge on the boundaries of the theoretical concepts that surround us, the risks involved by performing the act of engagement as well as the inherent differences between individualist or collective engagement. This can also be visible in creative practices where engagement can be a crucial analytical paradigm in discussing the role of the audience in art.

References

Barthes, Ronald. 1967. “The Death of the Author.”. In The Norton anthology of theory and criticism, edited by Leitch, Vincent B., William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, John McGowan, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting and Jeffrey J. Williams. 2018. New York ; London: W. W. Norton & Company.

‘Literary Theory | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’. z.d. Geraadpleegd 11 januari 2024. https://iep.utm.edu/literary/.

Tuin, Iris van der, en Nanna Verhoeff. 2022. Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities. Blue Ridge Summit, UNITED STATES: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uunl/detail.action?docID=6788465.

Ward, Frazer. 2012. No Innocent Bystanders: Performance Art and Audience. UPNE.