In the last two centuries since the inauguration of the modern university, the Humanities or the human sciences have played an indispensable role in shaping knowledge production in the modern international world. The constitution of the Humanities reflects this international principle of the modern world, while the specifically modern concept of internationality implies that human sciences have been regulated in what Stuart Hall called ‘the discourse of the-West-and-the-Rest.’ Consequently, the world has been bifurcated into the two kinds of humanity, humanitas and anthropos, in the production of knowledge in the Humanities. In allusion to their residential regions, these two bifurcated terms are also called the West and the Rest. Thus, the modern international world has been characterized by the consecration of the nation-state on the one hand and the colonial order of the world on the other. Area studies emerged rather recently, after WWII, but it embodies this bifurcation of humanity, particular to the modern international world. What we witness today is the gradual deterioration of internationality according to which has shaped the Humanities has been shaped, a process we call ‘globalization’ in which the very apparatus of ‘area’ is superseded. In this presentation, I will discuss whether or not the disciplinary formation of area studies is capable of responding to this process, and how it can transform itself to survive the end of the area.
