One of the struggles of public humanities is that it often reinforces old hierarchies or inscribes new ones (privatization, any one?). Or, to put this differently, it wants to share humanities with the masses without unleashing any crowd power. In Elias Canetti’s language, it wants to use the masses but maintain the fear of being touched. Which is one of the interesting aspects of Canetti’s account of the crowd – how temporary it is, how easy it is to slide into old distinctions, hierarchies, inequalities even after the emotional burst that results from being immersed in equality, ‘freedom,’ and a touch that one does not need to fear.
As he writes:
“Everyone belonging to such a crowd carries within him a small traitor who wants to eat, drink, make love and be left alone” (23).
Of course, in an era of budget cuts, of under-staffed programs, and increased labor, this small traitor often gets louder and larger. But it’s a traitor nonetheless, because engaging with publics should mean that one can no longer be simply left alone.