Agents of change

February 18, 2018

The 9th Karachi Literature Festival 2018 made good on its curatorial promises by looking at how action can be channelled through public and popular spaces

Agents of change

Has literature become simply another tool of mass distraction at the service of the consumer-entertainment culture that blinds us to the truth of what is really happening in the world around us?

Our community of art -- and by extension, dance, poetry and theatre -- has done an effective job of marginalising itself into virtual irrelevancy for the general public. We carry out our business safely out of view. We sequester ourselves in the quarantined cell of the studio, at exclusive gatherings in white cubes, and at clandestine performances in black boxes. We talk to ourselves in an endlessly self-referential hermetic discourse -- like a snake eating its tail.

When we are on the radar of the mainstream, it tends to be empty entertainment, a sensational but ultimately hollow spectacle. We patrol our own borders, making sure nothing unworthy is allowed to enter and that everything inside is too precious for the rest of the world to participate in.

All of these discussions mapped inner or imaginative worlds and must be situated within an ecstatic rather than a rationalist paradigm. The most radical decision to situate the festival at the same venue did produce plenty of peculiar moments of déjà vu.

I don’t want to sound hostile to the communities of artists and litterateurs, but I speak here using hyperbole, generalisations and partially unfair characterisations to make a point.

It’s not the job of literature to solve problems, but the writer who responds to his or her time can help us feel the truth of the moment, which may be an end in itself, or the start of something else. This, perhaps, was the agenda of the 9th edition of Karachi Literature Festival 2018, held at Beach Luxury Hotel and organised by Oxford University Press (OUP). It showcased literature that questioned the systems and structures that we have inherited, in particular our sociological, geographic, and especially our disciplinary borders. These could be fortified divisions or porous membranes that give and take, responding to changing conditions.

The team behind KLF issued so many well-intended progressive statements and condemnations of the neo-colonial, patriarchal, hetero-normative world order that it’s hardly surprising the event occasionally felt like a trip to perdition. The good news is that the current festival was not a monolithically pious exercise, but a multiplicity of proposals. It involved music concerts, dance performances, as well as individual voices. Think of it as a two-headed octopus with some arms unfurling in distasteful directions, others pointing towards places of exhilaration.

Inaugurated with keynote speeches by Francis Robinson and Noor ul Huda Shah, Karachi Literature Festival is famously intended to heal the wounds of recent history by affirming the continuity of discussion and debate, dialogue and discourse, whose formal language has become a symbol of individualism and artistic freedom of speech. KLF has thus become the stage for the construction of the contemporary in relation to historical, socio-political, and ideological entanglements.

Occasionally, one could detect traces of another trajectory behind the politically persuasive but sometimes intellectually underwhelming explorations of migration, colonialism, and economic inequality staged in the Festival.

The decision to foreground the art and knowledge of the indigenous is welcome, as in the book launch session of Thousand Cups of Tea: Among Tea Lovers in Pakistan and Elsewhere in the Muslim World by Jürgen Frembgen, especially at a moment when the environment is faced with catastrophic destruction, and when global stability is threatened by the insatiable greed of thuggish plutocrats. But in this session, more could have been done to stage this encounter in a way that diminished the ethnographic angle.

A number of writers retrospectively engaged the fraught period of the divide (Partition) in ways that broadened the discussion far beyond Eurocentric notions, with the relationship of Pakistan and India serving as a metaphor or mirror of global turmoil. Whether it was panel discussions such as ‘The Flames of Separation’ or ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ or narrative frameworks as in book launch sessions of Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory by Aanchal Malhotra or Mr and Mrs Jinnah by Sheela Reddy, 1947 and its aftermath were revisited when history seemed open-ended -- those fragile junctures in which various futures were equally possible and plausible before they became concretised, especially in the trajectories of the emerging nation-states that would go on to constitute South Asia. Reddy’s insightful investigations based on correspondence highlighting the ‘father of the nation’s’ marital life were revealing and objective.

Of particular note was a long roster of poets emphasising the idea that each verse writer should have a share in the festival, thus creating a real time ethnos built on a radical contingency of equals. As moral arbiters and guardians of humanistic values, the poets in the festival responded to the changed landscape of today with a self-professed transnational parliament of ideas that grappled with timely questions about borders, and the authoritarian powers that police people, knowledge, and history. From ‘Sindhi Mushairo’ to ‘Nasri Nazm and Nayee Shairi’, from ‘Safar aur Khwab: Shairi Yaadain aur Baatain’ to a general Mushaira, the programme extended the participatory motif, offering the audience to interact with each author.

In ‘The Punjabi Muse’ session, Amarjit Chandan offered a panorama of miniature tableaux in which human life and labour were laid out in scenes that were at once touching and sublime.

The highlights of the festival were, however, ‘The Other Muse: Poetry in English’ and ‘Slam-Bam Verse! Utterances of the Age’. While the former was a showcase of disparate voices, ranging between the autobiographical and the political -- packed into a single session like sardines, featuring Ibrahim Waheed Ogaru from Maldives, Amit Chaudhuri from India/ UK, and Jose Oliver from Germany alongside Mehvash Amin, Farida Faizullah, Sadaf Halai and Harris Khalique weaving verse together via motifs and rhythms -- the latter was more of an introduction to the new-fangled trends in poetry writing led by the dynamic Zohab Khan , a spoken-word poet of Pakistani origin residing in Australia.

The ambitious refashioning of KLF as a kind of activist catalyst or social space to spur critique and debate included intense sessions on ‘Universities or Nurseries of Terrorism?’ and ‘Saving our Children from Predators: Role of Civic Society’. Autobiographies and biographies also occupied a special podium in the programme, as did paeans to poets and authors.

The latter included a long-awaited tribute to Jaun Elia and an ode to the Bard, led by the inimitable Zia Mohyeddin in ‘Why is Shakespeare, Shakespeare?’

Amardeep Singh’s palpable passion for the Sikh heritage in Pakistan and Jürgen Frembgen’s relentless forays in Sufi culture of the shrines underlined the importance of the imminence of poetics in our society. Lastly, came the book launch of Sayeeda Leghari’s ‘Pakistan Heritage Cuisine: A Food Story’ as a perfect dessert in the festival. Beautifully laid out and crisply photographed, this coffee table tome on the rich culinary delights set precedent for such books to be included in the literary festivals. Moderated by Niilofur Farrukh with Hussain Haroon on the panel, the latter inspired the audience with his sizeable knowledge of the provenance of ‘haute cuisine’, from shahi tukra to biryani.

All of these discussions mapped inner or imaginative worlds and must be situated within an ecstatic rather than a rationalist paradigm. The most radical decision to situate the festival at the same venue did produce plenty of peculiar moments of déjà vu. To hold a festival that can actually be attended to - without panic - is an unusually generous act.

To sum it up, the 9th Karachi Literature Festival 2018 made good on its curatorial promises, by looking at how action can be produced and mobilised through public and popular spaces and what roles representation, aesthetic fashioning, documentation and dissemination can play in facilitating real change.

Agents of change