© BYU PHOTO 2016
PROVO, Utah (September 21–22, 2018)—This year’s Humanities Center Symposium included lectures from twelve different speakers who came from a variety of universities and fields of study. Along with BYU, Yale, Brown, Aarhus, The University of Virginia, The University of California, Santa Barbara, and Cornell were represented. The lectures and discussions broached subjects of poetry, religion, philosophy, the environment, fossils at the bottom of Lake Bonneville, artificial intelligence, and even vampires. These wide-ranging subjects were tied together with the symposium’s theme: “On Being Vulnerable: ‘Crisis’ and Transformation.”
Dean Scott Miller opened the event with his remarks on the topic of vulnerability. Miller described how, for him, sincere questions that recognize the “limits of [his] own received knowledge… often yield transcendent dimensions of insight and understanding that are accompanied by a kind of joy that [he] can only call ‘enlightenment.’” This statement beautifully underscored the theme, the idea that vulnerability is more than its commonly negative associations, but rather is an opportunity to learn, grow, and undergo transformation.
Coming at this concept from different angles, each of the symposium’s speakers commented on the intricate role vulnerability plays in our lives. L.A. Paul, a professor at Yale University, described the idea of “epistemically transformative experiences.” These are experiences that you can’t understand until after you’ve gone through them. For example, though others may have described it to you, you can’t truly know what it’s like to be a parent without having had a child yourself. Paul went on to describe the implications of this idea, posing questions as to how one can make major life decisions if “you can’t possibly know what you’d like before you’d try it, and you can’t possibly know what you’ll be missing if you don’t.” How can someone decide whether or not to have a child if they can’t accurately imagine what having a child would be like? Not only do we lack the information needed to make these decisions, but Paul explained that these experiences have major consequences, as “they structure and restructure the meaning of your life.” Paul concluded her lecture by addressing the vulnerable position of having to make high-stakes choices we can never be properly equipped to make. She said, “We have to simply embrace this fact about our lives. We have to embrace the unknown.”
BYU English assistant professor Jason Kerr explored another concept that renders us vulnerable and yet can have an incredibly positive impact. Using Shakespeare’s King Lear as an example, Kerr examined the effects of kindness, showing the ways in which “unlike power in the traditional sense, [kindness] comes from a position of vulnerability [as] it doesn’t come with guarantees.” Despite its tendency to make us feel vulnerable, Kerr argued that “kindness can make a difference, bring about a transformation, in a way that critique and resistance can’t.” Kindness, though accompanied by the possibility of rejection, presents an opportunity for transformation and for the forming of “intimate bonds” and “new friendships.”
Both Paul and Kerr commented on the connection between vulnerability and transformation, a link that was explored by other professors throughout the symposium. Matthew Wickman, director of the BYU Humanities Center, summarized the relationship by stating “Vulnerability means being open to transformation.” In his lecture, Wickman focused on the idea of spirituality. He argued that “spiritual experiences,” which are often rooted in vulnerability, “change our minds.” Cornell professor Laurent Dubreuil added to this idea with his views on poetry. Dubreuil asserted that poetry is vulnerable in its very structure, but that this vulnerability is what allows it to “say the unsayable.” He added that “human verbal language is a very powerful organ…that makes us think differently.”
Regardless of whether they approached vulnerability from a standpoint of unknown experiences, kindness, spirituality, poetry, or a number of other interesting angles, the symposium’s speakers all showed that vulnerability brings about change. Being vulnerable—being open to judgement, failure, and the unknown—brings about transformations that reconstruct the way we think, act, and experience life, often for the better.
Full recordings of the symposium lectures will be made available on the Humanities Center website.
Emma Ebert (English ’21)