You were arguing that the humanities were a tool for cultural domination, though, that cultural domination was somehow among (or even the main) role of humaniti

You were arguing that the humanities were a tool for cultural domination, though, that cultural domination was somehow among (or even the main) role of humanities studies. My examples don't show that the humanities have any role in exacerbating the reality of some cultures dominating others, though. How does it help cultural domination if American, Christian students learn that none of Jesus' ideas were actually original to him? Certainly, East/West is arbitrary, as is whether "North" is on top of the globe or on the bottom (an inverted globe is just as valid). You can study things like this in the humanities, whereas you'll never even think about them if you take a technical track. You even mention above that there are large branches of sociology and history dealing with this -- so are the humanities enforcing Orientalism, or actually combating it? Final point, though it's more minor - about this: > Before the acceptance of French into humanities, it was just a language evolving with its speakers. After that it was given the status of "official", with official grammar to maintain purity. But who decided which vernacular was pure and which wasn't? The powers that be. The privileged noble who had time for it. While it resulted in better economic opportunities for everyone (while requiring no effort from those who already spoke the pure form), it also quashed the cultural diversity. See the Académie française (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise) -- French has not been a language evolving naturally with its speakers since the 1630s. There certainly are external forces pushing the French to adopt more loanwords like "email" and so on, but what's cause would you point to for that? Surely not French literature and language programs in other countries...? If anything, me studying Camus and Voltaire introduces more French speakers who use classical French, rather than adopting to a naturally-evolving language (in spite of the Académie française...). Honestly, this is part of what I mean about learning to support a reasonable argument. It's not effective to construct examples to "support" a point you've already committed to. You'll do better taking a reasonably representative set of specific examples of a phenomenon, discarding your earlier assumptions, and look for the best explanation. That's your new starting point.