I attended a lecture on post-colonial theory by a world-famous academic at Bristol uni last evening. He is orignally from Bombay so I attended partly as gesture of South Asian solidarity. Post-colonial theory is notoriously dense, and I was prepared to be left scratching my head. The speaker spent an inordinate amount of time specifying what he was NOT saying because all those things he was not saying seemed identical or extremely close to what he was saying. Nuance on steroids. I was also a little peeved by neologisms, my favourite one being intutionism.
But there were a few redeeming features of the evening. One, was the sight of the academic and his host, who is turns out is quite well-know in his own right, hugging at the start and end of the literature. Two elderly brown men, one Indian and the other Pakistani, hugging each other wholeheartedly in one of the temples of British academia. The British shudder at the prospect of eye contact, much less physical contact, so I am sure these men were making a statement.
The other redeeming feature was the wine, of course. I often feel like I lost my taste for alcohol after Dengue Round 2 but yesterday it went down pretty smoothly and I was happily tipsy with just two glasses.
But there were a few redeeming features of the evening. One, was the sight of the academic and his host, who is turns out is quite well-know in his own right, hugging at the start and end of the literature. Two elderly brown men, one Indian and the other Pakistani, hugging each other wholeheartedly in one of the temples of British academia. The British shudder at the prospect of eye contact, much less physical contact, so I am sure these men were making a statement.
The other redeeming feature was the wine, of course. I often feel like I lost my taste for alcohol after Dengue Round 2 but yesterday it went down pretty smoothly and I was happily tipsy with just two glasses.
No comments:
Post a Comment