Why there is no Pakistani Literary theory?

Lahore: Speakers at a seminar on the “interdisciplinary role of philosophy in the academic space of university” have strongly objected to the euro-centric configuration of knowledge in the developing countries and supported the idea of situating philosophy in the context of its indigenous operation.

The one-day national seminar, spread over four technical sessions, was organized by the Government College University Lahore (GCU) Philosophy Department with the funding and technical support the Punjab Higher Education Commission (PHEC) at the University’s Bukhari Auditorium.

In her opening speech, GCU Philosophy Department Dr Sobia Tahir said that academic seminar was designed to explore the basic question: What type of conceptual and paradigmatic unity interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinarily can bring about when operating in the multidisciplinary world of human knowledge. And what role can Philosophy, the most elusive of all disciplines: historically once having all the disciplines in its ambit, and then becoming bankrupt of all the disciplines—can play in this enterprise.

In his key note address, eminent philosopher and novelist Prof Mirza Ather Baig said that every culture had its own particular requirements, so it could not be fitted easily into a developmental sequence derived from Western experience of tradition-modernity-postmodernity.

He said that the queries naturally and enthusiastically hence rather crudely erupting from the young minds is that why there is no Pakistani Literary theory? Why are they calling their theorizing German, Russian, American or French? What has happened to our minds that we generally fail not only to theorize about matters physical, chemical, biological, social and psychological but even to conceptualize the first step in the ladder leading to the schematization of human experience as valid knowledge?

Prof Baig said that actually we never feel the urge or drive to indulge in such a cerebro-cognitive exercise. For us it is more than enough to gobble the appropriate disciplinary texts and then re-text them at appropriate moments on demand. He said these intellectually mellowed down version of these inquisitorial exhortations rising though from a particular miniscule onto-epistemic location yet pointed towards the emergence of the rudimentary contours of the Nonstandard or Revised Academic Model. 

He also said nobody would be imaging absurdities like Pakistani Physics, Indonesian Biology, Saudi Arabian Mathematics, or Indian chemistry but these disciplines actually work in “the minds and hearts” of these varied cognitive spaces, their lived reality against the backdrop of their cultural a-priori is probably the most crucial question, answer to which can go a long way to the formation of the Revised Academic Model. What is needed is a phenomenological analysis of the life-world of disciplines both in the dominant and dominated sites of knowledge and learning. Such an acute self-awareness of the complexities of our relationship with disciplinary knowledge would be the first step to unfold the real dynamics of the much touted, but very vaguely understood paradigm of “Indigenization”.

Vice Chancellor Prof Hassan Amir Shah expressed gratitude to PHEC Chairman Prof Nizam-ud-Din for his technical support and funding for the highly crucial academic activity. He also said that modern research had grown complex and interdisciplinary, rather multi and trans-disciplinary; subjects of social sciences such as geography were playing key role in inventions and innovations in the fields of natural sciences such as physics and biology.     

GCU Dean of Social Sciences Prof Dr Tahir Kamran and noted philosophers Prof Dr Abdul Hafeez Fazil, Dr Ali Raza Tahir, Hassan Farooqi and Muhammad Afzal Khan also addressed the seminar.

Noted academician from Punjab University Shahzeb Khan said explicated upon the imperil connection of the disciplines of philosophy and English literature and advocated decolonizing the academic space of making these disciplines engage with the context of our society.