Tabish Khair, "Literature Against Fundamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Feb 22, 2025

Tabish Khair, an acclaimed novelist and academic at Aarhus University, discusses the transformative power of literature in combating fundamentalism. He argues that literature encourages complex thinking and fosters an agnostic approach to belief systems. Khair explores the nuances of religious texts, highlights the importance of context in literary education, and positions classic works as relevant to modern issues. He also addresses the impact of cancel culture on literature and advocates for literature as a means of resistance and understanding individual narratives.

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Intro

00:00 • 4min

Literature and Fundamentalism Unbound

04:11 • 11min

Agnostic Reading and the Book of Job

15:37 • 8min

Language, Literature, and Human Experience

23:34 • 15min

Reinterpreting Classics: Literature's Role in Modern Discourse

38:36 • 4min

Navigating Literature in a Censorious Era

42:58 • 12min

The Interplay of History, Literature, and Interpretation

54:57 • 3min

Literature as Resistance and Interpretation

57:33 • 16min

Exploring Visibility and Recognition in Literature

01:14:02 • 2min

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 (Oxford UP, 2024) 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 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.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

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