Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya explored how the rich and powerful make certain social groups ‘disposable’ at the inaugural Interdisciplinary Humanities lecture on 12 March.
Professor Bhattacharyya is director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation at UCL, which explores the scientific, metaphysical and cultural impact of racism.
In ‘What is there to say in the face of catastrophe? What might it take to understand the horror of the world?’, they used the skill of ‘reading’ gained from their first degree in English Literature and applied it to current world events and global structures. Using their approach of ‘following the money’, they interrogated how the powerful and wealthy operate in society today.
Techniques of reading allow us to understand structures of power – but the type of power we see now is not easily contained in the reading styles we know, like popular acclaim and democratic reason. The stealth of the powerful is difficult to follow.
Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya
Professor Bhattacharyya’s talk was both powerful and inspiring. Their emphasis on reading not just as training, but as a suite of sophisticated tools to diagnose and resist today’s crises, perfectly captures what we strive to achieve in our teaching and research. By confronting our current predicament head-on, they empowered and emboldened us to tackle its challenges with renewed resolve.
Dr George Legg, Head of the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities
Professor Bhattacharyya discussed how hate is pinned on different social groups in overt ways (such as through speech acts) and through covert means (such as by disguising and dispersing agendas).
In modern times, where both methods for spreading hate are used, groups are made ‘disposable’ by setting them up as targets of hate to distract from the actions of the rich and powerful. Professor Bhattacharyya argues that this is achieved through racial capitalism, which refers to the way capitalism makes all humans into things that value can be extracted from.
Such financial power is hollowing out state structures and breaking democratic contracts, according to Professor Bhattacharyya.
They also questioned how intellectuals responded to momentous changes to the world order in the past and what can be learnt from that in the face of the rapid unalignment and uncertainty we face today.
The temptation to perform ‘expertise’, not least in the face of such extreme attacks on universities, is so present. It is a mimicry that can create a fleeting sense of authority. But I do wonder what previous intellectual classes who lived through a dismantling and re-ordering of their analytic reference points did.
Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya
250312 prof gargi bhattacharyya 780x440 (sarah mclaughlin)
Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya delivers the first Interdisciplinary Humanities Annual Lecture. (Image: Sarah McLaughlin)
The death of democracy
During the Q&A, audience members probed the longevity of current forms of democracy and civilisation. Professor Bhattacharyya encouraged a rethinking of what democracy is and the state’s role within it, suggesting that this brings an opportunity to rebuild systems and structures.
One of the tasks is to unlearn the idea that democracy for us is to make a claim to an impersonal third who can somehow regulate the terms of our lives. If that ever existed, it doesn’t exist now. It’s almost like starting again to consider what a political culture might be.
Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya
They emphasised the need for humans to engage in dialogue with one another, find common ground and accept different perspectives.
To do this, they propose we need to abandon the polarisation that we have rapidly moved towards with social media, which only allows for binary responses, and instead lean into ‘incomplete readings’ to find a way to meet each other in the middle.
Part of our collective work is to practise modes of communication and co-existence that can find the half-answer between yes or no, that can allow for the fragments between. It seems better to know only a little, imperfectly and together, than to pretend the next step will be just like the last.
Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya
About Interdisciplinary Humanities
The event was the inaugural annual lecture by the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities, established in August 2024 by bringing together colleagues in Liberal Arts and Cultural Competency.
This new lecture series gives us an opportunity to think as a newly combined set of academics and students about the sort of conversations we want to have in terms of interdisciplinary work and what the humanities can do. And these conversations are made all the more important and all the more pressing given our current global and political environment.
Dr George Legg, Head of the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities