ABSTRACT
In Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville (1835–40; 2003) links the development of democracy with that of the humanities, where “Poetry, eloquence, memory, the beauty of wit, the fires of imagination, the depths of thought (are) . . . turned to the advantage of democracy.” The arts and humanities can flourish under autocracies and theocracies, but their purpose in such political contexts is to celebrate ideologues, and not to act as media for resistance or critique. There is no better account of such resistance that I know than Peter Weiss’ (2005) novel The Aesthetics of Resistance. A group of young socialists growing up in pre-WWII Nazi Germany are part of the underground resistance movement. They meet in galleries and museums to study art, honing their humanitarian beliefs through discussions about relationships between aesthetics and the politics of resistance. Weiss shows how art can be sterile until mobilised as a form of social resistance embodying justice, equality and tolerance of difference. This offers an important critique of medical humanities ‘lite’—oriented to mere diversion or embellishment, as supplement or complement to medical studies. Such a version of medical humanities serves to reinforce a tradition of hierarchy and oppression in medical culture that educates for insensibility (as denial of aesthetics) and insensitivity (as denial of politics), rather than serving to challenge and change that tradition for the better. Weiss seeks a deeper and more challenging seam for art’s purposes—also one that is ultimately more nourishing.
