Literature Against Fundamentalism

Acclaimed novelist and academic Tabish Khair argues that literature as a distinct mode of thinking can counteract fundamentalism.

Literature is a mode of thinking, stories being one of the oldest thinking ’devices’ known to humankind. The ways in which literature enables us to think are distinctive and necessary, because of the relationships between its material (’language’) and its subject matter (’reality’). Although present in oral literature, these relationships are exposed in their full complexity with the rise of literature as a distinct form of writing. Literature Against Fundamentalism argues that literature enables us to engage with reality in language and language in reality, where both are mutually constitutive, constantly changing, and partly elusive.

Tabish Khair defines this mode of engagement as essentially an agnostic one, resistant to simple dogma. Hence, literature can provide an antidote to fundamentalism. Khair argues that reading literature as literature--and not just as material for aesthetic, sociological, political, and other theoretical discourses--is essential for humanity. In the process, he offers a radical re-definition of literature, an illuminating engagement with religion and fundamentalism, a revaluation of the relationship between the sciences and humanities, and, finally, a call to literature as in ’a call to arms’.

Tabish Khair, Associate Professor, Aarhus University

Tabish Khair is an Indian writer, academic and journalist, born (1966) and educated in the small town of Gaya in Bihar, India. After finishing his MA from Gaya, he completed a PhD at Copenhagen University and a DPhil at Aarhus University, Denmark, where he is now an Associate Professor. He has been a visiting professor or research fellow at various universities and has received Carlsberg, Leverhulme, and other academic grants. Khair is also an internationally published novelist.