How can the humanities support democracy?

The Living Untitled podcast is back for a new season. For this week's episode I sat down with scholar and researcher, Aurélien Bellucci , who has focused his career on bridging the intersection between the humanities and political science.

I first met up with Aurélien last year when I was in Paris after coming across his dissertation focused on the concept of people's theatre. This form of theatre is centered around putting a specific audience directly into the show, engaging them through open and unscripted dialogue. People's theatre provides people a voice who otherwise might not feel like they have one, inviting them to speak on issues that directly affect them and their communities. This makes this work an essential and powerful form of the performing arts.

Here in America, we have the privilege of using our voices to share our perspectives and to engage in dialogue on challenging issues without fear of repression. Or at least we're taught that on the surface. But for many, that doesn't feel as true when it comes to their everyday life experience. It can often feel increasingly challenging to find "safe spaces" to engage in a productive dialogue and share our fears and concerns on the things that are affecting our well being. And as part of this, it can feel even more challenging to seek the truth of these matters in the first place.

But when we leave America and other democratic nations like the UK, or France (where Aurélien is from), Germany and other European Union nations, that privilege, no matter how fragile or fraught it might seem to us here, often doesn't exist at all. So when artists bring people together through theatre and other types of work, they're not just inviting dialogue, but often helping people understand the fundamentals and underlying principles of democracy--maybe even exposing people to them for the very first time.

When we practice these types of art forms in established democracies, we remind ourselves of just how valuable public discourse is and how easy it is to let it slip away. Democracy requires constant practice--and it should never be taken for granted. The humanities are powerful tools we have at our disposal to help us accomplish this work. That's part of what makes brave experiments with art forms like people's theatre in many places in this world so compelling. And that's why Aurélien has made it the focus of his research.

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