Nothing Sacred, by Stathis Gourgouris, a professor of Classics and of English and Comparative Literature, is a call to action for reconceptualizing humanism and democracy as creative sources of emancipatory meaning, from the immediate political sphere to planetary ways of living.
Restaging Aristotle’s classic notion of the political animal in broad historical and geographical frames, Gourgouris explores the autopoietic capacities of human-being in society, and develops new frameworks of anticolonial humanism and radical democracy. This reconfigured horizon, he says, enables us to imagine new ways of living by pursuing an autonomy and a planetary vision that uphold coexistence and equal sharing instead of hierarchy and servitude, money and technology, sovereignty and endless growth.
Gourgouris talks about the book with Columbia News, along with books he's now immersed in, current projects, and the ideal dinner companions.
Why did you write this book now, aside from the state of the world?
Well, it took me 15 years to write Nothing Sacred, so the current state of the world was not the impetus per se. Even though right now things seem particularly aggravated, the state of the world in the last 15 years has not changed significantly. What was dire and life-threatening then remains just as dire and life-threatening now.
I wrote this book out of a need to understand and explain in clear language how humanism and democracy—two notions that are much maligned and considered bankrupt of meaning—are essential to any serious project of human emancipation from oppressive and debilitating conditions. I also wrote the book with the explicit purpose of challenging and ultimately overcoming the tyranny of specialization of knowledge, and the increasing incapacity of expert scholars to address the broad problems of our world.
There is always a danger of not focusing on problems of an immediate nature when you contemplate the broad horizon. On the other hand, there is no way one can be a responsible thinker and teacher without stepping out of one’s comfort zone, without daring to imagine ways of connecting deep time across centuries and broad space across geographies and cultural differences. In order to change conditions in our bleak world, we have to envision worlds that do not yet exist, but we can do this only by learning from and re-invoking aspects of history that cover a range beyond what we conventionally acknowledge.
Can you provide some examples from the book of how to seek the political through a poetic perspective, and how to imagine new ways of living?
Even though I am a poet, when I use the term “poetic” in this context I am not referring to something literary. I think of it in its original ancient Greek meaning, which refers to making, creating—indeed, creating new forms, and not at all on an individual basis. The poetic faculty pertains to all of society—to how society makes itself and other entities, how it creates, but also how it destroys worlds (both its own and/or the worlds of others).
In this respect, the poetic is entwined with the political, especially if we don’t confine the political to how a society arbitrates power or organizes conflict, but how society enables an organization of life that gives it meaning, enables it to be. The passion with which young people today are demanding that their world be changed is poetic through and through—they just need to invent the politics that will make such change happen.
What books have you read lately that you recommend, and why?
I just read Judith Schalansky’s An Inventory of Losses, which is an astonishing work. Impossible to categorize—we might call it fiction of a Borgesian nature, but it is also a meditation that addresses the core psyche of our catastrophic world. The gentleness with which she thinks about what vanishes is totally disarming and heart-opening.
What's next on your reading list?
A number of works on music and on listening—philosophical, historical, anthropological. Also, biographies. I like to read many things at once. It gives purpose to my distraction.
What books would people be surprised to find on your shelves?
I have such a range of interests, which are reflected in my teaching and writing, that people won’t find much in the shelves that would likely surprise them. Except perhaps for a notable number of biographies of all kinds, because I am really taken by this genre. I probably read more biographies than I do fiction. Also, books on physics, astrophysics, and cosmology: I began my university studies in physics before I turned to literature, and something there has remained unrequited.
What are you teaching in the fall semester?
I am not teaching in the fall because of administrative duties. This past spring, I taught a graduate seminar, The Epistemology of Edward Said, which had an organic connection to Nothing Sacred, since my discussion of anticolonial humanism in the book begins with Said. I’ve taught the course only three times in the last 20 years; it consists entirely of Said’s writings, from Beginnings onward, no secondary literature whatsoever.
The point is to engage Said as a writer (an extraordinary writer) in a whole range of genres—literary criticism, political writing, journalism, essays, interviews, memoirs, writings on music or the arts. And to immerse ourselves in his multifarious paths of thinking through writing, always responding to the occasion and with remarkable subtlety, incisiveness, and resilience. Given the current political context, the course was especially relevant and inspiring—a great learning experience for all, including myself.
What are you working on now?
For the first time since I wrote my dissertation in the late 1980s, the coast is clear. There is nothing on my desk! Apart from writing poetry and music, which is meaningful right now, I am reading and thinking about a book on listening, which is my Guggenheim project. I’m not sure exactly what sort of book this will be—certainly nothing like I’ve done before. I’m rather befuddled by it, which is a fun state to be in.
Which three academics/scholars, dead or alive, would you invite to a dinner party, and why?
I’ve been graced with the dinner company of extraordinary men and women in my lifetime since I was young, so I will only respond with people from a time before me, but close enough to be imaginable—Malcolm X, Rosa Luxemburg, Sun Ra. Not quite academics, but people of astonishing learning and vision, as well as acerbic wit and passion. All of them, singular inspirations.
https://news.columbia.edu/news/call-action-reimagining-humanism-and-democracy