The first time...

 The first time, they say, it is history. The second time around, it is hilarious comedy. Well, i never knew that could be true of famed scholarship. As things stand, yesterday i was to listen to a  famous scholar at an international online seminar. I was rather looking forward to it coz when I had read the stuff in the first flush of excitement regarding the decolonisation process and the post-colonial saga, the analysis did sound exciting.

Much water has thence flown under the bridge. Well, sadly, however, nothing new seemed to flourish on that tree of knowledge! It was the same old beaten to death argument which now sounded quite banal, repetitive and boring. 

So predictable was the analysis that one could very well have guessed the next syllable. Honestly so repetitively tiresome was the entire stuff that it looked a perfect example of the gist/chaff/mill justice.

It almost sounded like an old fashion(ed) in intellectual disguise. In such a scenario, one pities oneself for imagining that the argument might have gained on finesse what it now seemed to lack  on depth. Instead, one felt out of depth in the "in the room/the intellectuals come and go/talking of the pet foe" scenario to quote Eliot's Prufrock with a slight alteration.

Undoubtedly, there is a framework within which to examine one's ideas,concepts, thoughts. Should not, however, some basic and/or radical changes be visible in either the framework or the thought processes or the ideas? Otherwise, would not it boil down to academic cynicism, and further would not it be absolutely undemocratic, not to mention lazy as far as the theoretical rigour would go.  I would not know, and hope never to know!

Pratima@ Are arguments and knowledge, too, like the iron ore in a wet place? Seem to go rusty! Skim and scan repeatedly this blog to understand why I feel that a seminar could be quite Prurockian! No, no need to worry. The analysis is brand new, and could add to the fund of your knowledge regarding doing the seminar rounds  in words few.