The Titanomachy of Relevance

The dissolution of 18 research positions at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology highlights a contentious debate in contemporary cultural politics: the relevance and economic sustainability of humanities in modern capitalist Western society. Archaeology and anthropology are but two disciplines (or discourses) that are constantly required to justify their existence in the face of capitalist discourse, with which they are at variance.

By discourse I mean, in a very broad sense, a pattern of abstract ideas in co-extension with materiality and human agency, resulting in specific paradigms that comprise and drive society as we know it. In pitting the discourse of a humanities discipline such as archaeology against the dominant discourse of capitalism, the former will invariably become marginalized due to its incompatibility with the dominant discourse. This results in such a scenario as that of the Penn Museum.

Alternatively, attempts are made to infuse capitalist discourse with that of humanities so that they fit in better with the dominant paradigm. For example, the decline in public funding of universities has compelled them to seek financial assistance from large corporations, which in turn consider themselves justified in influencing the university curriculum and research direction, thus altering the discourse of disciplines warded by the university. Such institutions as museums and universities therefore begin to operate under the precepts of capitalist discourse. This results in what Hamilakis aptly summarizes in his article on archaeology and pedagogy (published in volume 36 of World Archaeology) as “relentless competition for funding, resources, students and staff, and positions in league tables”.

Disciplines like archaeology and anthropology are significant in that they are fields that are capable of engaging in critical and reflexive debate about established orders and discourses through studying the material record and society respectively. By marginalizing them, the possibility of this kind of debate is removed, and the disciplines, along with their discourses, risk become value only for their ability to create financial return.