Til demonstrationen på Aarhus Universitet i dag talte forfatter og lektor ved Engelsk, AU, Tabish Khair. Her har i hans utroligt gode tale: I could start with my sheer astonishment over the under-remarked fact that today, all over the world, the very politicians who plough in billions to bail out banks and corporations that mis-invested and lost your parents’ savings, these very politicians cannot find a few thousands to enable you to study the subjects of your choice. But I will not talk facts or politics today. Instead, I will tell you why I am here with you. Sometimes I am asked: where do you belong? In places like Denmark, this is supposed to be a difficult question to answer. People like me, who seem out of place in Denmark, and even more so in Aarhus, and entirely so in Hjortshøj where I actually live, are supposed to be torn between nations and places, cultures and languages. Unfortunately, I – and many more like me – have never felt torn. The notion of an identity-conflict is something imposed by others on people like me, and these others are usually people who feel conflict on encountering us! I have always felt that I belong both here and there – not just in India, UK and Denmark, but even in the small Indian town I come from and the small village outside Aarhus where I live now. I do not have to choose between them. There is no reason to do so. But if you ask me as an associate professor, where do you belong, I would give you an answer that is similar and different at the same time. Do I belong here as a teacher, or as a researcher, or as a student myself, for no thinking person ever ceases to be a student? Do I belong here as an academic or a writer or a citizen, or a proto-citizen as I do not have a Danish passport? Evidently, I cannot choose between these and other designations; they are all regions where I dwell and have dwelled. But there is one difference, and the difference arises if you put the above question to me in a different manner, if you ask me, for instance: to what do you, as an associate professor, owe allegiance? My answer would be: I owe my primary allegiance to my field or fields of knowledge. No market statistics, no corporate structure, no political injunction, no administrative compunction, no, not even pedagogic pressures can change that. My first allegiance is to my fields of knowledge. It is this I have committed myself to; it is this I want to be judged by; it is this I intend to hand over to the next generation. Knowledge, and a desire for knowledge, which inevitably involves questioning and re-questioning. Critical thinking. It cannot be reduced to an account sheet or a handy tool. It should not be reduced to an account sheet or a handy tool. Some people might turn to me and say: well you teach English Literature, there is some need for it, after all it is a global language, we need it to get jobs and make money. What about smaller subjects? Why retain them? There are many answers to this inane question, but I will give only two of them. 1. People who put this question have no idea what knowledge is. Knowledge is not a tool or an account sheet; it is a mesh, with every point relating to more points than we can ever imagine. In this, it is like life. You erase one insignificant point, and you lose out in a hundred places elsewhere: you have got it coming. Answer 2 is even more obvious: who is to decide the insignificance of a branch of knowledge? On what grounds? Are jobs or salaries – easy economic convenience – the criteria? When did they become the criteria? – Søren Kirkegaard, Karen Blixen, Niels Bohr were not doing a job, when they did what they did. No plumber, no carpenter, no teacher, no writer, no nuclear physicist, no one who has done anything good, ever did it simply as a job for a salary! And moreover, need I say it, if convenience is the criteria, surely there is no difference between eradicating so-called small subjects or economically-weak areas, and getting rid of the diseased or the handicapped or … The list is long. We have been through it before, in other terms. So we need to speak up, not just for our subjects but for knowledge, for what made universities what they almost are when, in the 18th century, the first modern universities arose. As Johann Gottlieb Fichte, one of the earliest thinkers to discuss the modern university put it in 1807, the university exists not to pass on information but to teach the exercise of critical judgement, without which information cannot be evaluated in any case. Critical judgement comes with knowledge, and vice versa. What this means is that we need to protect the small subjects first, and for exactly the reason given to us in those famous lines by Pastor Niemoller: First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. Speak up now. Speak loudly. Make sure you are heard. Speak up not just for your subjects but also for other subjects. Tabish Khair
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 16:25:22 +0000
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