Abstract
How do the literary humanities mobilise transformative change for sustainable peacebuilding? This paper provides a multidisciplinary theoretical framework in humanities education for a hermeneutic model on reading for peace through the literary humanities. Critical reading that identifies and engages with “difficult dialogues” (Trifonas et al, 2013) in non/fictional representations of “structural” and “cultural” conflicts (Galtung, 1979) can construct normative and ethical commentaries for sustainable peace. ‘Dialogue’ comprises a philosophical constant in peace studies and literary criticism alike, signposting the importance of co-constructed contextual knowledge for understanding different perspectives to/within conflicts. Drawing on the discourse of world literature that distills dialogue as disciplinary praxis in its curriculum and pedagogy, I propose a reading model in Critical Peace Education (CPE) where the “idealistic”, “ideological”, “intellectual” and “politicisational” (Haavelsrud, qtd in Bajaj, 2008) elements of critical peace appear in the reading of world literature through four interlinked interpretative pathways of authorial discourse, literary tradition, cultural contexts and genre. The paper then situates these reflections within current hermeneutic debates on critique and post-critique, liberal humanism, and critical sociology to comment on the relevance of these pathways as critiques of structural and cultural conflict. I conclude with a caselet delineating the development of curriculum and pedagogy using this framework to interpret Chimamanda Adichie’s short story “The Headstrong Historian” (2008) in a reading course in India, and the implications of the critical/normative aspects of interpretation as CPE for sustainable peacebuilding.
Presenters
Nishevita JayendranAssistant Professor (Literature and Humanities), Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Hermeneutics, Critical Reading, Critical Peace Education, World Literature, Literary Humanities
