Yakhni for Pakistani Liberal Arts Undergraduates

Lets talk about some academic clusterfucks here.

So here I am partially plagiarizing the title from one of the chicken soup for the soul series. I’m a rebel. No. Really. I am one. It’s been four semesters and still not a day goes by where every syllabus that I have ever gotten isn’t marked with a huge section dedicated just to the policy of plagiarism. And guess what! It’s plagiarized from syllabus to syllabus. (Ironic, huh?)

Coming back to the real reason why I’m writing this article; I have immersed myself in possibly the greatest transition anyone could make. In the duration of four years I’ve been converted- no- baptized by age and experience to go from being a pre-undergrad SJW shooting empty barrels and gaining nothing to becoming the prepped and pampered about to be undergrad soon-to-be corporate slave feigning significance under the facade of better work-pay, benefits, and “gaining PR”.

Now that I look back, I notice the catalyst of the change: alienation and a lot of yes people surrounding you in your university. And trust me, you might think it can’t get to you- but it eventually does. At dinner table conversations, you suppress your emotions, your anger, your rage, for everything that is being said goes against your understanding of things. Sexist jokes, colonial mindsets, pro-capitalist blessings! Oh the Horror! But in all honesty, you can’t seem to talk about what you learn with the outside world because:

1. Only a few would like your views, the rest won’t understand you.
2. You might start getting threats from your neighbors of being a “marxist zionist kafir.” I’ve gotten four till now.
3. You’re so trapped into your bubble that you master the art of supporting just your arguments and find a lot of like-minded (similar bubble sharers) in your institute that support you.

You completely and willingly outcast yourself from society in order to observe society objectively, at the same time you create a gap between yourself and society you observe. Sounds like a clusterfuck doesn’t it?

I think it was a matter of fate or a calling perhaps that I began working as a permanent employee in my last semester, and that too for a job which primarily requires me to talk to people and inter-act. I understood how alienated I was from society. I spent hours and hours learning in closed class rooms how capitalism was horrible, just to discover how irrelevant the discussion was for a man who’s daily goal in his life was to put food on the table. It wasn’t an organic approach to engage people in conversation about anti-capitalism and on the art of rhetoric when they had (in their opinions and perspectives) greater problems.

I don’t blame them and neither do I call them out for being ignorant. I understand the superficiality of the situation. There is a huge gap within our society where we as academics can not make our discourse accessible by the greater public. We write for a specific audience which comprise of academics and we defend our work in front of them. There is nothing inclusive about our research. Most of us actually conduct our research on specific communities and those communities never even get to read what we’ve written about them. How can we blame them about being ignorant about their surroundings and the hegemonic structures when they really have absolutely no idea of what we’re talking about.

What’s a good way to start? All solutions seem theoretical, and never practical. But is it really that difficult to implement what you learn, into society?