Speaker : Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Indian Literary Theorist, Philosopher and University Professor at Columbia University, Recipient of the 2012 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy
Day 1 & 2 (27th -28th May, 2015)
Time: 5.00pm each day
Day 3 ( 29th May, 2015)
Final Lecture and Special Congregation
Time: 4:00pm
SYNOPSIS
Humanities: Asia, the West, Africa
Appropriately taught, the humanities have transformative power. Classically, the humanities within the university tradition that we follow have been literature and philosophy. The social sciences, when not completely quantitative, are also touched by the humanities method. I describe this method as an "uncoercive rearrangement of desire." I look at the implications of these convictions in today's globalized world.
The humanities supplement globalization. Our way of inhabiting the humanities as we teach, depends upon our relationship to the terrain. Hence my three sub-themes distinguish between my perceived positioning in relationship to the specific nation-states.
My lectures are based on experience. Thirty years of elementary school teaching in India, and some experience of scattered work in Bangladesh, China, Nepal. Fifty years of full-time university teaching in the United States, at both public and private universities, with some experience of Europe and Australia. In Africa, a more recent experience of collaboration in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria. I want to put these vectors together because I want to continue learning how one can harness the humanities to be of use for the future, indefinitely. Questions of disciplinarization, translation, and the continuing importance of the nation-state; and a constructive critique of global/digital humanities and informal market creativity will run across the lectures.
Sub-themes:
1) In the Indian case, I describe how a citizen proficient in a local language harnesses the humanities to train for democracy –differentiating from my positioning in the other Asian nation-states.
2) In the “western” case, I describe how a permanent resident from the global South can refuse identitarian tokenism and harness the humanities to train for reading self and world toward an auto-critical role in globality. I will differentiate my positioning in the U.S. from the various Schengen countries, the Balkans, and New Zealand.
3) In this final lecture I will discuss how a general scholar of Asian descent and U.S. residence can try to learn specific involvement patterns in the harnessing of the humanities in Africa. I will differentiate from my positioning in the various African nation-states.
The University community and the general public are cordially invited.
