By Om Prakash Dwivedi
There cannot be a game in the absence of any rules. This tautology also supports the much eulogised notions of freedom and progress linked to globalization and liberalism. Affirmative platforms and echo chambers are not only the revered consensus but also the imposed fidelity. The virtue signals of freedom and progress then, are served on the plates of unimaginativeness and subversion, aided and abetted by our institutions of denialism and populism. The Austrian writer and journalist, Karl Krauss, prefigured these underlying elements, “Through decades of practice, “[populism] has produced in mankind that degree of unimaginativeness which enables it to wage a war of extermination against itself.”
Apparently, diversity, equality, and inclusion happen to be the fiction of our globalized world order – an order in which things that pretend to be, are said to be, and appear to be, are very different from what the fiction of globalization presents us. The archival evidence and the present quotidian realities of the liberal savagery turn out to be thrice removed from any normative frameworks, reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s cautionary remarks, “Between the idea/ And the reality/ Between the motion/ And the act/ Falls the Shadow.” The unchecked villainy of this liberal-global rendition of our worldmaking has reached that stage where ‘human animals’ and “killing children legally” are the new norms. It is also a world where the flow of capital is made possible, but the flow of humans across borders remains intolerable. Concurrently, while life on another planet can be imagined, the sustenance of life on this planet continues to be a mirage.
Never in the history of human civilisation, has one encountered this precarious condition where humanity and planetary are in a constant battle against a handful of demagogues and oligarchs. At a time when opinions qualify as insubordination, intellectual courage is seen as an exercise in juvenility, death is promoted in the name of life, humans and the environment are turned into resources, and universities are being converted into entrepreneur hubs, how can we think of our collective future(s)? At the Writer’s Trust Gala in Toronto in May 2024, the same question was provocatively asked by the South African author, Lesego Molope, “The time is coming when the world will start to apologize for what is happening—and when that time comes we will be asked: what did you do with your power?”
Apparently, most of us are being silenced, asking us to disengage from the world while also emphasising that inclusivity is always an act of virtue. Seen this way, brutalism is no longer a fiction, but a crude reality of our present times. It is, therefore, vital to churn out cognitive mappings of moral webs at a time when listening, seeing, and witnessing are assigned a particular lens. Truth, like other institutions, has also been privatised, and that sums up the gravity of the problem we are faced with. Thinking differently is considered detrimental to the community, nation, and even life. In the age of ‘informational capitalism’, information itself is coded in specificities. Yet, it is also through the phlegmatic wisdom of our language that we may penetrate the impenetrable extractive ideology of brutalism. The refusal to witness or even acknowledge the collapse of our social assets marks a radical shift in our epistemologies of truth, value, freedom, and human dignity.
We need to renew our contact with the ‘remaindered life.’ The project of critical humanities is central to our collective futures. In a recent international conference, Critical Humanities as Ways of Reading, organised by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, such a laudatory attempt was made by the organisers and the team members. Reading and critique are essentially vital to map a collective trajectory of humanity. The cognitive and emotive mapping of our moral webs are steps towards the fundamental recognition that all lives are important. If reading is an act of breathing in, critique is an act of breathing out. Our liveability is to be found within this continuum of inhalation and exhalation. Evidently, it is vital how we perform these two balancing acts. Reading and critique are exercises in futurity. For example, when one reads, one not only engages with the present but also remediates the past, getting a better understanding to reshape the future. Similarly, critique is vital to downplay the clarion call that there is a singular consciousness of how to live.
That said, reading and critique are ways of looking into new languages and grammar of humanity. If language always evades the grip of language, then by the same token, it is through language that one can map new ways of looking at the world in enabling and liberating ways. It should not tax much on our common-sense to understand the simple fact that reading and critique are fertile acts of empowerment, capacious enough to mark a shift from consent to speaking otherwise. It is in ‘speaking otherwise’ that newness enters the world, and in the same way, it can lead to new frameworks of freedom and human dignity that have long been suppressed and compromised by those who act to mute our voices.
The spark of our imagination can be seen as metaphor for seeds. Just like seeds germinate into plants, in the same vein, imagination – integrally tied to both reading and critique – is critical to the project of humanities at a time when institutional pressure has been trying to narrow, even decimate it. Oscar Wilde once said that any map that doesn’t have a utopia on it is not worth looking at. Likewise, Ernst Bloch imagines utopia, not as programmatic or having a blueprint, but an ongoing process that is an integral part of human nature and all of existence itself. The challenge to roll back the infrastructure of agency in the wake of heightening forms of monstrosity is inherent in our reading and critique, only if we are willing to engage with our texts and society.
In an age where ‘update’ and ‘scrolling’ are the new norms, criticism and a new lens of inquiry have been selectively abandoned, even infused with sloganeering of ‘anti’ theories. In reading and critique, it is implied that states, or for that matter, other institutions are always open to revision and updates. This project of humanity is a joint and collaborative venture. It is not just dialogical but also emotional. No wonder, why the project of humanity has been airbrushed, taking the form of a crystal gazing exercise. If life is about choices, then we must get our act together to prioritise the choice of humanity first. In matters of collective futures, one must sharpen the analytical gaze, for the stupidity of powerful echelons will always refuse to acknowledge our presence. It is a well-known fact that stupidity always tries to match its standards. This particular brand of stupidity is ingrained into the structures of the deep state that monetises life and life forms.
These standards need to be decimated. ‘If only this was possible, someday’ has been the perennial dream of the majority of humans who have been perpetually thrown into multiple crises. Let’s say for example, when the national level format for selecting the best talents repeatedly falls short of expectations, it takes courage and vision of reading and critique to curate and implement a different format for ensuring that merit and integrity are not compromised. That is the sociological provenance of reading and critique. Seen from this context, it is neither accidental nor paradoxical that the interpretative communities have been abandoned by higher education systems across the world. It is only when one learns how to read and critique that the dialectical grasp of limitations and possibilities is made possible. Judith Butler reinforces the same view, “What is the relation of knowledge to power such that our epistemological certainties turn out to support a way of structuring the world that forecloses alternative possibilities of ordering?” Evidently, Bertolt Brecht prefigured the vitality of reading and critique, “Truth is the child of time, not of authority.” It needs to be stressed that reading and critique are not primarily to be seen as fault findings, rather they are exercises that reemphasise and prioritise methodologies of repair and care. The gaze of critical humanities need more investment in such methodologies.
Contributing Author: Prof. Om Prakash Dwivedi is a well-known literary critic and columnist.
Support Our Journalism
The global Indian Diaspora and Australia’s multicultural communities need fair, non-hyphenated, and questioning journalism, packed with on-ground reporting. The Australia Today—with exceptional reporters, columnists, and editors—is doing just that. Sustaining this requires support from wonderful readers like you.
Whether you live in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States of America, or India you can take a paid subscription by clicking Patreon
