WE’RE ONLY HUMAN?

American literary journalist and professor SARAH CHURCHWELL speaks to Singapore book author Melissa De Silva about politics, history, and literature’s role in being human

“Sciences study the natural world and humanities study the human world.” That is Professor Sarah Churchwell’s simple exposition, which she uses as a working definition of both fields – one that a layman would instantly understand.

The high-spirited American author and professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of London elaborates: “We aren’t going to solve terrorism, for instance, without an understanding of religion, of conflict, of the history of different regions, of languages. These are all humanities. Part of what is so confusing about the world right now is that we don’t have the humanities context that would help us understand it.”

To shed light on Donald Trump’s presidency and the

us’s current political landscape through the lens of history, Churchwell penned the highly acclaimed Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream (it was a Guardian Book of The Year 2018).

She is also Director of Being Human, a 10-day event in the uk. Taking place every November, it sees a slew of activities held across the nation to promote public engagement with humanities research. Through talks, film screenings, performances, workshops, exhibitions and other fun, off-kilter activities, the festival aims to foster a better understanding of how everyday lives and relationships are impacted by language, visual and performing arts, history, literature, philosophy, religion, law, politics and even fashion.

Stigma-smashing “menstrual artworks” by Bee Hughes, shown alongside research photographs and materials, in

The Periodical Exhibition, for instance, examined societal and cultural attitudes towards menstruation as shaped by medicine and media portrayals, with an aim of shifting negative associations and getting people talking about this natural biological process. Words You Didn’t Know

You Needed, an interactive quiz-based performance examined the evolution of language and armed the audience with an arsenal of quirky, arcane words from the Irish language that they may find useful today.

The festival has spun off activities in a handful of cities around the world, Singapore being one such outpost. Last year, a panel of writers – Adam Aitken, Romesh Gunesekera and Cathy Song – shared how being Asian writers in Australia, Britain and the us respectively impacted their experiences of “being human”. This discussion took place during last November’s Singapore Writers Festival, which also brought Churchwell to town.

We got Churchwell together with Singapore writer Melissa De Silva, author of the award-winning ‘Others’ is Not a Race (a collection of stories offering insight into the micro-minority Eurasian community in Singapore) to discuss literature and its role in “being human” over brunch at Aura, at National Gallery Singapore. Melissa De Silva ( mds): What prompted you to write Behold, America? Sarah Churchwell ( sc): The book is an attempt to say that American history allows us to understand Donald Trump more than one might think. Although he is anomalous in the presidency, he is not anomalous in American political culture, unfortunately. After Trump’s election and he was using “America First” as his campaign slogan, the focus of the media was on how this phrase was used in the context of America’s debates over whether to enter World War ii.

But I knew from the research I’d done on F. Scott Fitzgerald for

Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby that the phrase had a lot of political significance in America in the 1920s and 1930s. And that phrase has had huge resonances with Trump, his campaign, his agenda and particularly white nationalism. Mainstream America had lost sight of what “America First” meant, so I wrote this book to make clear to people what this phrase meant.

mds: Some people think reading and the appreciation of literature is simply an optional form of entertainment, alongside the more visual offerings of entertainment today such as tv or social media. How much of a unique role do you think literature has in helping us become more fully human?

sc: One wants to be respectful of people’s choices to a point. But when I meet somebody socially and they say, “Oh, you’re going to hate me for saying this, but I don’t read,” what I always say to them is, “I don’t hate you, but I feel like you’re missing out.” It’d be the same if you loved music and I said, “I don’t listen to music.” You’d say, “You’re missing out.”

Reading is one of life’s great pleasures and I wish people who don’t experience it that way were able to. But I’ve also spent time with people

“I THINK BOOKS ARE THE ONLY THINGS WE INTERNALISE — AND SUDDENLY, SOMEBODY ELSE’S THOUGHTS ARE YOUR THOUGHTS” — SARAH CHURCHWELL

who are dyslexic, for instance, and that makes it very hard for them to read... I do think there’s a certain kind of thinking that a literary text enables, that no other kind of storytelling enables, so if you’re not reading, you’re not encountering that kind of thinking, and I think that is a shame.

mds: I believe literature does a singular job of nurturing empathy in the reader, giving them insight into someone else’s experience, compared to a visual medium of storytelling, such as film.

sc: I think books are the only things we internalise – and suddenly, somebody else’s thoughts are your thoughts. It’s the only thing that breaks down the barrier between self and the other. Film just reproduces the barrier between self and other. I’m me and I’m looking out, watching you do things on film... it just mirrors our experience of the world. Only books break down the barrier – suddenly, you are Henry James; you are Jane Austen. And not only are you experiencing somebody else’s thoughts, ideas and experiences, you’re experiencing the thoughts of a genius!

mds: What role do you see the humanities playing in a future increasingly informed by technology?

sc: To me, it’s about the interrelatedness of the humanities and technology. If you build a bomb without asking what the human and moral consequences are, then technology would be doing a lot of damage. Or, less obviously, you build something with unintended consequences, say, Facebook. Those engineers changed the world, but there’s absolutely no thought to the political or moral consequences of what they did. They built a toy and it has opened Pandora’s box because engineering didn’t ask questions the humanities would ask.

The sciences and technology ask, “Can we do it?” and the humanities ask, “Should we do it? Why are we doing this? What would be the consequences? The human consequences, the social consequences? What does history tell us? Have people tried something like this in the past and it caused World War ii? Maybe we shouldn’t do it again.”

mds: The line-up for the Being Human festival in November 2018 was very exciting. The Feminists Eat Your Greens! event, for instance, had the Glasgow Women’s Library playing host to an Edwardian vegetarian restaurant for a night, using menus and cookbooks from the early 20th century to explore the relationship between the Suffragette movement and vegetarianism. How do you keep things so fun?

sc: Part of what we’re trying to achieve is to make the word “humanities” less intimidating. It’s explicitly told to those applying (to participate in the festival) that there’s a higher chance of the application being accepted if it’s fun, because this is a festival. It’s about celebrating ideas and curiosity, and reminding people that learning is fun. So if you’re a historian, do a pub quiz or a walking tour. Academics from the classics could do something about the history or mythology behind the movie 300.