Ancient narrative and modern promise: the political arguments for the value of the humanities in Lithuania

ENThis essay, while focusing on contemporary Lithuania, raises issues that are of perennialimport to the academic study of the humanities in modern nation states, particularly the‘national’disciplines of history, language, and literature. There is a constant tensionbetween the scholar’s desire for the freedom of academic inquiry, and the desire ofstate, which often pays the scholar’s wages, that the scholar produce research that is‘useful’, especiallyfindings that can be used to legitimize a particular political course ofaction. In this way, the Law on the creation of the Historical Institute of Latvia in 1936 statedthat the purpose of this new research institution was to study and explain historicalphenomena in the‘spirit of nationalism and truth’(‘nacionālisma un patiesības garā’)–in that order of precedence. This directive reflected the politics of the authoritarian regimeof Kārlis Ulmanis at the time. Similarly today, is not uncommon for the various state fundingbodies and central research councils to earmark significant resources for research pro-grams conforming to the political agendas of the parties currently in control of the relevantministries. This problem is by no means exclusive to Lithuania, or even the Baltic states. But,as the authors here ask, using Lithuania as an illustrative example, what is the cost ofsubordinating the freedom of scholarly inquiry in the humanities to a narrow, politicizedview of what the product of research should be? Keywords: Lithuania; humanities; nationalism; politics; narrative; Darius Kuolys; Alvydas Jokubaitis. [From the publication]

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