The 2025 Holberg Symposium, feat. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: ‘The Power of the Humanities’

This academic symposium is held in honour of the 2025 Holberg Laureate Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. The Laureate introduces the topic, followed by presentations by three invited speakers, a panel discussion and in the end an open Q&A session.

"Reflecting my more than sixty years of university teaching and elementary school teaching among the so-called untouchables and aboriginals in India, the power of the humanities seems to be the one thing of which I am convinced."
– Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Our world today is progressively unhinged by evil; every new technology brings with it a new kind of crime; artificial intelligence makes it impossible to distinguish between truth and lie; war continues to wreck the planet. This terrible regression is accompanied by a gradual trivialization of the humanities. “The Humanities” are Literature and philosophy. All other disciplines produce knowledge. The humanities teach the practice of “learning” the other by training the imagination to displace itself into the space of the other. A literary text for literature, and a general human soul for philosophy. This power of the humanities offers practice against self-interest; perhaps even against greed, violence, and fear, all affects which keep you locked in yourself.

This event is part of the 2025 Holberg Week, which takes place from 3rd to 6th June, in Bergen and Oslo.

Please see the Holberg Prize website for more information: https://bit.ly/4imBKU8

SPEAKERS

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 2025 Holberg Prize Laureate; University Professor, Columbia University.
Emily Apter, Julius Silver Professor of French Literature Thought and Culture and Comparative Literature.
Oluwaseun Akinfenwa, PhD, Principal System Analyst, Kwara State University.
Lakshmi Subramanian, Professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta.
Moderator: Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, Academic Director of the Holberg Prize; Professor, University of Bergen.

Photo: Anirban Bhattacharjee.