Chapter 3: Teaching Intangibles: Uncertainty and Imperfection and the Institutional Challenge of the Unmeasurable

Antonioni, Berger, Magritte and Sontag, with their respective challenges to our perceptions of what is real and unreal, set the scene for a discussion of the tension between current policies and norms in higher education systems and the increasingly important need to introduce true interdisciplinarity in university programmes – specifically, here, with regard to the role of the humanities in business-related courses. It is argued that uncertainty and imperfection are key signposts to creativity and innovation. Uncertainty demands the constant search for possibility; imperfection provides the constant opportunity to improve and is therefore the inspiration for innovation. In an exploration focussing principally on the various potentialities of the study of literature, it is suggested that many initiatives to introduce the arts into non-humanities programmes have a common and significant limitation in that they are defined by a specific purpose – by an understandable and, in our current higher education environments, an inevitable need to specify what ‘impact’ the intervention will have on the skills and employability of the student. However, something much more radical is needed if what George Eliot called the ‘vital connections of knowledge’ are to be truly made, and the radical adjustment required runs directly counter to a culture that is dominated by the compulsion to demonstrate impact, set measurable targets and prioritize practical application.