The Significance of Stories in the Post-Truth Era: Or, Why Literature Matters

Building on the distinction between contemplation and computing, as in the work of Byung-Chul Han, Tabish Khair will argue for the increased significance of literature, and a need to return to stories as thinking devices. With reference to trends in postmodernism and postcolonialism as well as the phenomenon being dubbed 'post-truth' (not confined to USA, as Islamism, Brexit obfuscation, and Hindutva demonstrate), he intends to highlight not our supposed failure to get facts straight, but our greater failure to read stories well in contemporary times. This lecture is a call to return literature to the centre of human thinking, partly by restoring it to what it does best and not what it is made to do in deference to other disciplines.

This is a Writers at York event.