Watchmen and Speculating on the Future of the Humanities

Abstract

Abstract:Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' comic book Watchmen speculates on possible future relationships between the humanities and the sciences. Watchmen offers four versions of how scientific and humanistic knowledges might play out including anticipating the challenges facing the humanities in light of a future tied to techno-scientific and financial speculation. Drawing on the aesthetic qualities of speculative fiction to interrogate a future conceived, produced, and determined by the sciences, Watchmen draws attention to the epistemological limitations of scientific knowledge and the potential of the humanities to disclose a different kind of truth: what is sui generis and miraculous about humanity. While speculative, Watchmen suggests that the reevaluation of knowledge that resulted in prioritizing science over the humanities during the twentieth century, the gap that grew between these two forms of knowledge, as well as the efforts to reconcile science with the humanities, have failed to bring about a vision of a unified and peaceful world. Despite this failure, or perhaps in its aftermath, Watchmen suggests the humanities are destined to reappear in order to disclose a truth marginalized by a scientific future.