Disagreeing Together A Lecture by Nirvana Tanoukhi

Why are citizens of Anglo-European democracies increasingly uninterested in talking to others who disagree with them and in contending with facts that challenge their held opinions? Nirvana Tanoukhi argues that current answers to these questions fundamentally misinterpret the retreat from dialogue and disregard for facts as developments. The dysfunction of our public discourse can be better understood, and more effectively addressed, by returning to the kinds of conversations that cultural historians and political theorists widely credit for originating the public sphere: disagreements about literature and art.  Tanoukhi clarifies why publicity’s literary origins have been overlooked in the current inquiry about the democratic crisis, and explains how aesthetic disagreements can attune us to the importance of forming and sharing opinions in a way that ostensibly higher stakes conversations cannot.

Nirvana Tanoukhi is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. Her research and teaching focus on the history and theory of the novel, comparative modernisms, literary aesthetics, and the future of literature in the public sphere. 

Sponsored by COLLEGE, Comparative Literature, Division of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, Department of English, and Philosophy and Literature