‘Teaching of Literature must link with imaginative activism’

Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, an Indian Literary Theorist, and a Professor at the Columbia University, has said the learning of literature must focus on habit formation.

She, therefore urged teachers to teach students to think beyond the box, through creativity and imagination in decision-making, to produce results.

Prof Spivak was speaking at the Aggrey-Fraser-Guggisberg Memorial Lectures organized by the University of Ghana in Accra, on the theme: “Humanities: Asia, the West, and Africa.”

The Lectures are to honour James Kwegyir Aggrey, a great African visionary and spokesperson for racial harmony and equality, Alexander G. Fraser, first Principal of the Achimota College, and Sir Gordon Guggisberg, the best administrator under the British government.

She said the study of humanities could provide a critical route to social justice for today’s youth within globalization.

She stated that "Humanities supplement globalization and that the way of inhabiting the humanities as it is taught, depends on the relationship to the environment, and that students must be taught to understand Literature, and how to use it and not only memorizing it for examination purposes,” she added.

Prof Spivak was of the view that humanities pedagogy must be revised to contribute to the statistical estimation of human development.

Prof Ernest Aryeetey, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, said the memorial lectures were instituted in 1957 to mark the contributions made to the founding of the Achimota College, and the advancement of higher education in the country.