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Time for literary introspection
Changing academic focus.
A QUOTATION from the body of works by the Protestant theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, used in a treatise against globalisation by Anita Roddick - Take It Personally - says ``the test of morality of a society is what it does for its children''.
And that takes us to the question: Are we providing the right kind of knowledge to our younger generation?
This question was motivated by a couple of literary seminars organised by two leading colleges in the city recently. They attain relevance in the evolution of our society - in times of globalisation.
The Maharaja's College had organised a two-day national seminar on ``Post-modernisation in society - redefining literature, culture and commerce''.
K.G. Sankara Pillai, principal of the college, said seminars like these are basically meant for the teaching community and are rooted in the textual context and syllabi for a given academic year.
But then, as Ayyappa Panikker said in his key note address at this seminar, we are in post-modernism. ``Whether you like it or not''. And in post-modernism, barriers vanish.
From here, let us move on to the next seminar. The fourth Rev. Dr. Daniel Thottakara Memorial national seminar at Sacred Heart College was on ``writing and difference: literature and the public domain in post-colonial context''.
The seminar provided an opportunity for an introspection of our society, as Sashikumar, chairman, Media Development Foundation, Chennai observed that the age of information is an anti-thesis to the age of contemplation. The flood of information takes away time for serious thought and the public are presented with intellectuals who react spontaneously to issues.
The theme of the seminar was selected in keeping with the college's decision to go for ``writing in public domain'' as an elective from a list of options given for post-graduate courses in English literature.
``In this particular course, we teach writings by Arundhati Roy, Virginia Woolf and Dario Fo that remain outside the realm of conventional notions of creative literature,'' said C. S. Jayaram, head of the department of English.
By placing Noam Chomsky and Ivan Illyich along with writers who have ventured beyond creative literature, the course is sending out clear signals.
That the student community cannot remain aloof from the changes happening around them.
The stupor of a homogeneous youth, as propagated through our media, thus becomes outdated. All of a sudden, they are confronted with individual issues of negotiating marginalities and identities of the subaltern.
One of the premises of the seminar at Sacred Heart was how can ecology be emancipated from the `economics of the greedy'?
Are our academic community seriously thinking about alternatives to the emerging consensus on economic and political freedom?
Going through the syllabus, one teacher expressed doubts on the availability of study materials. The answer, perhaps, is still evolving. It could lie somewhere between the lines of works like ``Samskaram, Pradhirodham, Aadmiyata'' by Antony Palackal, which is a guideline for alternate options with specific reference to similar experiments in the State. Those like Kanavu in Wyanad, swasraya Vypeen and Ayalkootam in Alapuzha.
Anita Roddick's effort was to gather opinion against the vicious effects of globalisation. A dangerous game.
As she quotes Voltaire, ``it is dangerous to be right, when the government is wrong.'' Incidentally, Bonhoeffer was executed in one of the Nazi concentration camps for questioning Hitler's politics.
By Anand Haridas
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