As the ferocity of political antagonism grows around the world, and societies splinter into a bedlam of individuals holding up their own versions of the truth, many traditional modes of reportage and commentary are struggling. Reason is deployed too frequently for sophistical argument, and knowledge seems to many people little more than a function of power that is therefore suspect. In order to overcome our deep divides we need to move beyond what Mohsin Hamid calls “a dangerous and decadent tyranny of binaries.”
Can literature help us out of this impasse? How can its unique capacity to describe the complex states of consciousness of different peoples at different times and different places broaden our understanding of truth? Do its innate virtues of ambiguity and irony, and commitment to paradox and contradiction, help us extend human sympathies across hardened walls and boundaries, beyond the local and national to the global level? Mohsin Hamid, Ece Temelkuran, and Parul Sehgal explored these questions in a conversation moderated by Aminatta Forna.
This event was part of the Georgetown Global Dialogues, which feature leading intellectuals from the Global South in forward-looking conversations with U.S.-based thinkers across a range of topics. It was co-sponsored by the Department of English, Georgetown Humanities Initiative, Georgetown University Library, and Lannan Center at Georgetown University.
