‘Technological immediacy threatens our tolerance for the intuitive time it takes to make sense of arts’

Homi K Bhabha speaks at the 16th Vasant J Sheth Memorial Lecture at CSMVS Thursday.

Homi K Bhabha, Anne F Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, on Thursday spoke on the importance of the arts at the 16th Vasant J Sheth Memorial Lecture, held at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS).

Starting his lecture, titled ‘Treading Water: Reflections on an Intemperate Medium’, with an anecdote from his childhood, Bhabha narrated his anxiety about swimming and water as being associated with his intense fear of death. He connected ideas of fear, exclusion and death as being widely symbolised and portrayed in literary and visual arts.

He also expressed anxeity over the fate of the arts in a fast-changing society. “Although the rush to technological immediacy and professional instrumentality are important signs of progress and should be encouraged, they threaten to overwhelm our tolerance for the slow, the incremental, the repetitive and intuitive time it takes to make sense of arts and humanities.”