Focus 2002.tif 252 Fot'JIJ on Germ:m Studies 253 "Fash ion is no t a bad dung": CONVERSATION WITH SAND ER GILMAN Dr. Sander Gilman, D istinguished Professor o f the Liberal Arts and Sci­ ences as well as of Medicine and Director o f dle H umanities Laboratory at the University o f [llino is at Chicago. p resented his response to the ques­ tion '<\'Vhere are dle H umanities going?" in February 2002 Ul the Ma.."'< Kade Center at th e University o f Cincinnati. Before his lecture, he spoke with Susanne Lenne about social mobility, the dlaUenges for the fo reign language curriculum, the fashion o f sd lolarship and current trends in Ger­ man li tera ture. FOCUS: Your Curriculum Vitae, published on the web-page o f the University of Illinois, is a very impressive accomH o f your academ.ic en­ deavors. Could you brieAy highlight some of the most impOnafll steps and turns in yOllr academic career? Gilm an: Well , r have been employed by many ulstituOOns, and r have taught a wide range o f things. I spent a very long time at Cornell and I was a member o f the faculties of Liberal Arts and MedIcine as well. "111cn, I went to Chicago. I was Lhere fo r seven years, bo rh at the Medical School and in the Humanities. And last year I went to the Ufilversity o f Illinois at Chicago and aga in, I have a spht appo i.n tment at the Liberal Arts and Sciences. My interests are clearly interdisciplinary, but they have always been on German Studies. I was trained well as a Germamst, and my mterests have always been centered on, though no t exclusively, German texts, Ger­ man history. German culture. FO CUS: In your rcce nt hook The ForfuNes oj tJ)l H umlllu'{ies, which ap­ peart!d in 2000, you o bserve that the «system o f social mobility is break­ ing down," and you predict dmt the reduction of funds fo r higher educa­ tion in the US will Imve great " unfo reseen, long-term consequences for dIe social and economic fabric o f the United States." How would you describe these consequences? 254 FOlJIS 011 Ge.rnJ~n Studies G ilman: Well, J think what has happened since World War n is that higher education was the means by which people fro m the working cb ss and lower middle class have become members of the middle class. In this countey, we believe very strongly in lhe egalitarian access to higher- educa­ tion. Whar happens. and has happened now, is lhat rugher education has become elitist in complicated ways. For a very long period of time, many state universities charged no tuition and there were places where you had immed iate access. Now, even junior coUeges cost enoug h mo ney that, un­ less one borrows money. it is o fte:JltlrneS difficult to gCt an education. And what that does is to eliminate that group which is already o utside o f the mainstream. tn dlis country. it tends to be heavily minorities and new im­ mignrus. The way that these groups used to get intO the system was duough the system of education: public education and public highee education. Private education has recogruzed this in an odd way. One of the things that has bappened this past year. is that Hacvard, Princeton and Yale. as weU as o ther instirutions, have Started. to focus on nOt o nly less Or under-represented minorities, as they have always tried to do. but on mem­ bers of the lower middJe class - no matter what their backgrOlUld is. ft used to be that if you applied for Harvard, for example. and you were extremely good. and got in, and if your parentS were margmaUy able to pay. what you wound up doing was borrowing high amOWllS o f money. Now these universities are recognizing that this IS part of thelt obligation. So, what has happened in the last decade, and certainly thiS year, is that those srudem s who were at the margins. are no longer able to use the universities at all There is a big discussion in Germany o n whether o r no t there sho uld be an introduction of tu.ition there. The arguments for tuition do not recognize the notion o f the wliversities being a fo rce o f social mo bil­ ity. The Germans have gone from a nine percent to thirty-two to thirty-six percent - it depends on the 6gures you read - movement to some type o~ ~gher education, post-secondary education. It has been a majo r leap wlrJun the last forty ycars. But, if you look at dle family patterns, what you see is precisely that there are groups who are no t that well represented in those thirty-six perceoL They are not e,,-en well represented in the Abilllr­ structure. And if you look at class movement in Germany. i( has been prirn.'lrily the middle-class which has increased this Olmlber and not Ihe working-class. This is also true in tenns of the quality of German educa- lnterview widl Sander Gilman 255 lio n. T he most recent comparative survey (PISA) of hIgher educatio n r3. llked Gennan education on the secondary level below dl:lt o f the Ul\ltcd Sta tes in all areas o f srudy. TIlUS German ul1Iversity stlldents are in general more poorly prepaccd lhan the best American students, even though both tend to come fro m similar social groups. ironically, of course, in lhe CDR it was exactly the working class that went to the wuvCCSlties and the 'middJe class' was excluded. (with the exception of the leadership cadre). l1us has now completely collapsed. The ethos, which said that if your fa ther worked in a factory, you sho uld go to dIe university, has been reversed. T he d iSCUSSion on tuitions will be alllll teresting one. I tlunk dial they will introduce some type of [fOrgl'" o r somedling Like thaL Afld the question is whether or no t the re-strucruring of the Gerrnan universities will make it possible for other people to get into the system. I rather do ubt It. FOCUS: TIus brings to mind anolher question: You mentioned, lhalllurtyM six percent o f the Gem"Wl population currently attends the university. On the odler hand, dlerc IS talk about over-qualI6cation. about tOO many aca­ demics for whom there might nOt be a job in their pro fessional ficld. Gilman: That is an interesting quesrion because one of I.he things dut people who make that argument seemed to have missed, is that there is somethingcaUed «Europe'". I wlUgJve you an example: well-trained people in t.he sciences who become PhDs almost by definillon have to be Anglophone. Thc wo rking language of science is E nglt:.h .. Whether you like it 0( nOt., it is. 1'1\:I.t means that you can work in a lab in Belgium, in Italy. in Spain, or beyond Europe in Canada or H o ng Kong. And your generation - you - are wo rking all over Lhe wodd. My o lder son works in To kyo. He does not Ihmk thar tlus is weird. In od'cr word s: the problem in Germany is that they do not understand, that lughcr ed ucatio n systems in general are not intended nowadays to sinWly proVide that soci.a.l l11o bil­ ity widlin Germany but within Europe. More and more young people are now, for example, going to what used to be lhe EaSt - citl\cr the fo rmer SoVIet Union Or fo rmer commuOis t countries - because dlere are all sons of employment posslbilines. And German IS more accepted as a kind of lingua franca than it IS In the rest of Europe. So, o ne of rhe tll1ngs I am see.ing is all interesting German academic diaspora and I think that this is a good dli:ng, not a bad thing. 256 FI)(UJ on Gerrn;m Studies FOCUS: Would you say that this is true mo re so o n the PhD-level than for someone leaving the university with a Master's degree? Gilman: It depends. T he Erasmus program has meant, for example, that I have students - I reach also at dIe Freie Universitii.t in Berlin - who come in o n the E rasmus program, many of whom intend to get whalever the university-leaving-degree IS and go into some type o f internatio nal studies: Tourism, for example. One young WOOWl who was with my class wt year is going to go back to Belgium and is going to work in To unsm. She wanted [ 0 learn a year of German because she kIlew that she would deal with Germans. And it wasn't JUSt the language she wanted to learn, she wanted to get the culrure. So, I see a lot o f mobili ty. But it is an interesting pro blem because the discuss ions that are now going o n with the 1·/ooh;(hHlmhlHtn.t,m/Z mem mat there is going to be a whole generation of young academics who are habilititt1 or at least prollJOtitt1, who are going to have to look for jobs outside of Germany. That freaks people.. because they think that dley are going to lose somedling. But if you think in more global terms it means that you got people out cllere who are weU-trained in your me thod throughout the world. FO CUS: In your latest book you remind us that, in the years following \VWU, knowledge of a foreign language was seen either as a means o f acquiring the command of "hig h" culture or as a p ragm:ltlc tool WIthin the cOntext of the \Vat. Why do s rudents today learn a fo reign language? How do German Departments respond to that? Gilm an: WeU, again, one of the things you have to understa.nd IS that over the last twenty years we have persuaded people that the learning of lan­ guages is also a learning of cultures. And if you learn a culture, you also learn about your own culture. I think about young Germans. I JUSt did a r:r program with TIlOmas Meinicke, who is o ne o f the beS t yOWlg nov­ elis ts today, who spent a year in the Sta tes when he was in high -school, and you see: tlut pemlCaring aU o f his fiCbOlL His experiences in the United States helped him understand himself as a roung German writer bencc. Sometimes this kind o f experience has pragrnatic ends, that is. sometimes you then go and wo rk in that area, and sometimes It does no t. I think recelldy we have also had a grealer access for high-school Interview with Sander Gtlman 257 srudents to spend time outside of the United States. And that immediately changes why you study a language. The connection between language and rulNre becomes manifest b y living abroad. 1 mean , when T studied Ger­ man in high-school, we stud ied exactly the way you stud Ied Lano. TIlere was absolutely no difference, because there was no lIving culture to which one related the lesson. I think therein 1.Jes a big difference. FOCUS: Your concept of " language across the cumculllm", whIch woulci aUow, for example.. his torians of France (0 study Frendl history 10 French and participate in discussion sections III the fo reign language, e IC. , is fasCI­ nating. Could you comment on the success o f such programs? Gilman: I f they are done systematically, they arc extremely successful. But they are also very labor-intensive. That IS, you do nOt get large sectio ns. And then the quesuon IS, h ow do you set tlus up within a teaching struc­ ture? The alternative structure, which has been used in pl-lces like in the city o f Buffalo, where you have a class and you let students who have had some language facilities work in that language. This Ius been a disaster. Because, again, you have to be dealing with someone whose language skills and culrural knowledge are good enough to where dley can actually make sense. And pcs:haps yOll migl\! then, tn that person's large lecLUre course, assign a T A from the Gerlllan Department to do the discussion sectio n, even if it is o nly with five students who \\'a.tlt to do it In German. BtU then, the college or th e university has (0 be willing to say: ' '1 t is wo rth our willie for mat qualiry o f instruction." And, by the way, I am convinced thaI over time, those numbers will increase. Because when students come back from experiences abroad, they want to lise thclr language, and they may no t be interested in do tllg it in a literature o r film co urse. They may be interested in doing it in their major. FOCUS: Will there be e nough qualified faculty to o ffer th ese kind o f specialized courses and discussion sections? Gilman: The answer is "yes" at e\'ery university, but u\ey are different -at every institution and they are a rclatJVely small numbec. There may be a musicologist, for example, who is a Rameau-speciabst who spent a lo ng time working in Paris. 111ere may be someone til ule E nglish DepartnlenL But you have [ 0 be {lexible: "\Vhat faculty resources do we rutve?" Rather 258 FOClIJ on Germ:w Studies than say: 'We need someone to do Porruguese history."There may nOI be anybody who does Portuguese history. So, you have to be very flexib le. FOCUS: In response to the question on how to attain tcnuce in German Srudies, you stress the importance of the " new and interesting" 10 aca~ demic writing and you asSert that "'fashion' in scholarship is a sign of this importance." This could be understood as if scholarship should feed the market and as if, to put it plainly, anything goes as long as il pcovokes enough interest or controversy, withoul regard to the validity of the argu~ ment How do you respond to such an interpretation? Gilman: Db, you see, "validity of the argument''' has to do with whedlcr (here is consensus, rather than truth. In other words, if you say 10 me: "TIoes it have to be right or truthful?" dlen I am saying: 'C[ don't know what that lnealls." FOCUS: BUI should it not have to be convincing? Gilman: This IS what I mean: that is consensus. And I found quite often that, what at one moment was conSidered to be ourside of a disciplinary fie ld, can very quickly be<:ome convincmg if the argument is powerfully enough made. I will give you an example from my own work. Many years ago, 1 gave a talk and then wrote an essay, which became a chapter of a book on Richard Saauss' SakJlIll. I was attacked profoundly by mu~ sicologists, because I made an argument that the musIC itself carries a certain stereotypical weight. Never mind the hb[erto, (eading dle lib[etto as a literary critic is easy. Oscar Wilde wrote the libretto, Strauss did not. Strauss wrote Ille music. And people said: «MUSIC cannot carry meaning in dle modern age.. That's on ly ProgrOf!1lHusik. That'S Mendelssohn." And I said: «No, that is not true." And now there IS Mark Weiner's book on Wagner. Even in musicology it has now simply been accepted that music can create, indeed, mean.ing. My essay came at a moment before that was considered an ac~ ceptlble 2rgumenL Most people, and clearly very serious musicologisls, were simply dism.issing it And now, twenty yeus late[, this is JUSt com~ monplace. I had the ability to write thai essay, exactly because T was not a musicologist. That is, , canle from oUlside the field. And German Studies, once you think of it as not gence oe discipline driven, but srudying the Intecview with Sandee Gilman 259 complicated culture of the Geeman speakmg wodd~ gave me a perfe~t1y good right to work on it. What is inlerestil~g, .dlen, IS when those weird, singular, unacceptable VICWS are accepted wltlnn a consensus. Now, I ha~e written othee lhings that have nevee gotten accepted. People t~ay soil think that they are weird. And you know, they may ecally be weml. You cannot l1ways tell when you are working tlUflgs out. And therefore, One of the questions always is, not only to think of thiS as a form of an ongoing dialogue, but wheee you are in that dl2logue. ~fhethe[. you are early in dlat dialogue, or you are late. I think it is not very mteresnng to be the last person to do a peojcet, which a hundred people have wor~ed on before because the amount of inspiration would have to be very luruted. So Fa,ilion foe me is nOt a bad thing. With fashion you can shape yOU( , . , , field. FOCUS: Does this not also pave the way for sensatio nalism? Anything that arouses controversy, anydung that attracts attention would be accep{~ able? Gilman: The answee is: it can attract attention in a negative o r positive way. I think the saddest scholarship is scholarship that has the porenual for changing the world that we know, and is presented In a way as to deny such po tential I am comfortable with the notion that you address a broad audience in such a way as to engage their mterest. But Lllat does nOI mean that dley are goi.ng to agree with you. This is why culnu:al con fhcls arc important. They realiy are imporlam. And schola~hlp t~at does 1101 en­ gage in those conflicts _ if they are asking qUestlOllS, lil a sense JhoJlkJ engage - seems to me not worth domg. FOCUS: "[lus reminds Ole of a eecen( announcement of a conference entitled U(Ab)usmg Auschvmz::{ ... J" \'Ilith such an exteOSlVe body of wOtlI1g in the last decade, scho lady, fictional, autobiographical and o ther. do you think that lhe Holocaust has become a topic dial is being abused in order to gain ftmds or publicity? Gilman: 111is is an interesting qucstlon. Let me ask you ano ther question: Do you think that after Napo leon's defeat l.he obsession ":'lth (he Btjruungskrieg, to use lhe German leem, was a Sign of cOmm()(~tf1catlon of Napoleon? Wagner, Heine, indeed vleruaUy every French,Bonsh, and 260 FOl'IlI on GerHJim Studies German writer o f. the mjd-~ineteenth century was obsessed with Napo­ I~. The anS\V~ IS: traumatic events have always shaped the nen gen.er.t­ non an~, .oft~umes. the genenbon thereafta Is it being exploited? Of course It IS bemg erplolted! Are there cheap explo itative th.ings that have to do with dIe Holocaust? Of course. ShouJd we forbid this as a topic? No. But we should - and the conference will p w bably address this - ask ~e hard questio~s about how it is used, why it is used, what the unplica­ tlons o f the aU~le~ce are, and what me implicatio ns o f the theme pre­ sented ~le way It IS presented are. And sometimes dIe answer is: