DR. PARUL TIWARI, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE AND LANGUAGES, EASWARI SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS, SRM UNIVERSITY-AP
University and conversation have an intrinsic relation: Conversations, discussions, debates, argumentation have always been associated with the university, which has been considered as the space par excellence for the unfolding of these intellectual exercises. Learning and unlearning have always been as much in the classroom through books as outside it through interactions and conversations. The seed of a doubt that gradually develops into a challenge to established narratives, and subsequently into revolutionary truth and even part of the university curricula, is most often a discussion outside classes and prescribed books. This is how the seeds of the very early idea of a heliocentric world emerged in 15th-century university conversations and later gave way to one of the most important intellectual events of our world: the Copernican revolution. It was a university conversation that led to the discovery of the sun as the centre of our solar system. It not only challenged the established earth-centric narrative but also changed forever the way we think about ourselves and our world. But this seems a bit too grand a notion to be associated with just some chitchat in the university in our times.
In our times of hyper-documentation and hyper-productivity, anything ‘unproductive’ is considered unworthy of our time and this measure of productivity is often performed through metrics that could be documented, preferably as numbers. Any discussion that does not lead to yet another assignment, publication, project, reflected in numerical enhancement of grade points is considered a waste of time. But the purpose of education is well beyond that. Our immediate, local lives do not give us a chance to reflect upon education as anything more than a means to end, the end being a job. However, if we even as much as look at this entire exercise self-reflexively, we can see that this seemingly self-contained, local goal in life is a mark of the web of relations that connects us all. Aspirations of upward class mobility, overcoming cultural stigma, better life, all problematise the nodal points of identity and power. It both explains our positions in the world as well as gives us imperatives to re-arrange and shape the world in ways that could improve positions vis-à-vis equality and justice.
As much as our syllabi, course outlines evolve and accommodate newer, more courageous ways of covering multi-faced themes and topics, the complex nature of literary-cultural discourse somehow qualitatively exceeds these modules designed for time-bound, scope-defined, measurable objectives of learning. What we need to remember is these discussions not only ‘discuss’ but also shape discourses as we speak, often making it a practice that requires the capacity to come to terms with difficulty, ambiguity, unsmooth-unresolvable questions and problems.
These days, practices of reading, listening, speaking are reduced to ‘interpersonal skills’, something one learns only to tell what they learn everywhere else, let’s say even in a book, or to perform well in an interview. But this approach to conversations has harmed our literary-cultural atmosphere. Favouring short-spanned content that invites immediate reaction, over the demanding and patient exercise of participating in literary-cultural conversations has resulted in over-simplification and flattening of narratives. We need to understand the unique relation between what we express and the format of expression: literary-cultural topics require an openness to possibly counter-intuitive, unsettling, surprising new points of view. It goes well beyond communication of information, to invite all kinds of responses and lines of inquiry. One of the most accessible public philosophers of our times, Byang Chul Han reads our growing aversion to being challenged as a symptom of our “Positivity Society”. We can see that agreeing or disagreeing are being simplified and turned into binaries, there is no patience to hear out the other person and see how that affects your thought process, your opinions, or your way of looking at the world. It is not that we have stopped talking to others, but the other person has become our extension. We like to create our small bubbles where we engage with ideas and people we only agree with. This affirmative same-ness is also reflected in the way our AI chatbots are trained. That being said, a site for conversation must open to overcome our tiny, personal halls of mirrors and ensure that once again mirrors start to show others and, more importantly, show the different and even unrecognizable, unconscious faces of our own selves. The study of literature and culture has gone through multiple theoretical and practical shifts, from placing the human subject in the centre to a more fragmented and displaced kind of human identity to now studying the world through mainly the non-human entities. But whatever the shift may be, literature is sustained by an essential exploration of what it means to be a human in different times and through different relations.
Another public philosopher, Alain Badiou describes the university as a sustained administrative management of knowledge, where degrees, marksheets, lists, organize education, which allows it to function systematically. What he considers the space of emergence and transmission of knowledge is something like an event, an extra-ordinary eruption of something that exceeds quantification, description, and maybe even planning. A literature festival, although planned and organized, perhaps erupts as an event of knowledge production thanks to the elusive and multi-faced nature of literary-cultural conversations. It can rebuild and strengthen the channels of literary and cultural conversations in our public spheres that so often pass through the spaces of the university.
In India, we have had a long tradition of literary-cultural discussions, in various formats such as mushaira, sahitya sabha, poetry recitation clubs. It would not be wrong to call the modern literature festival an amalgamation of all these traditional conversational practices. When a university organizes a literature festival, it also creates a space where stakeholders in the field of knowledge production meet each other: students, faculty members, authors, but also the public. The singular objective of the literature festival is to function beyond the tableau exhibition of books in book fair stalls, and open a space for discussion, misreadings, disagreements upon meanings, different forms of translations and so on and forth. More than reading and studying literature, the festival tends to develop a culture of reading but also practices of reflection and contemplation upon the cultural terrain of literary engagements. It not only showcases works that are complete but also invites new directions, clusters, and trains of thoughts. A literature festival celebrates the essential role of the university in building a culture of readership, inquisitive mind-cultivation, and thinking about society and the world at large. Literature festivals are not a standalone ‘cultural events’ fitted into the academic calendar, but an intentionally created space for conversations that seeks to recreate the atmosphere that the university accidentally produces in tiny corners. This must be done with the conscious attempt to continue and better facilitate these dialogues from tiny unexpected corners to perhaps the rest of the city.
With this grand and ambitious but also local and grounded outlook towards literary-cultural discursive practices through the university, such spaces of conversation acquire renewed relevance. The university can provide an environment where students, authors, critics, casual readers, and members of the wider public encounter one another through literature and culture, allowing conversations to move beyond prescribed academic frameworks. In this context, the second edition of the Amaravati Literature Festival, to be held from 7th to 9th October 2026 at SRM University-AP in Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh, becomes one such occasion through which these possibilities of dialogue may be explored.
