“We Don’t Harm the Environment”: Defensive Regimes of the Humanities in the Administrative Discourse of Academia

Abstract

For the last decade, the humanities are globally pronounced as stranded in a crisis or at least touched by it. In the times of crisis the apologetic discourse is more important and visible than in the times of relative peace and prosperity. Comparing to the Anglo-Saxon humanities, the rhetoric of crisis is not very popular among the representatives of Lithuanian humanities. The article reconstructs the main arguments and defensive regimes used by scholars during experimental discussions on the value of the humanities in Lithuania. The empirical data consists of four discussions (conducted in 2017–2018). The aim of the article is to analyse this argumentation and to compare it to the global discourse on the value of the humanities.