Cultural Studies Quotes

“Against the urgency of people dying in the streets, what in God's name is the point of cultural studies?...At that point, I think anybody who is into cultural studies seriously as an intellectual practice, must feel, on their pulse, its ephemerality, its insubstantiality, how little it registers, how little we've been able to change anything or get anybody to do anything. If you don't feel that as one tension in the work that you are doing, theory has let you off the hook.”
― Stuart Hall

“The human heart is too grand to be wasted in the gutter of cultural exclusivity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“Language is the highway to culture.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood

“I switch cultures like clothes,
I switch sciences like pens.
I switch scriptures like tides,
I switch languages like seasons.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“I owe endless gratitude to my ancestors whose names I'll never know—and to my as-yet-unconceived children whose names I don't yet know: I already love you, though I've never met you; I already miss you, though I haven't left you; I don't even know you, but I can't forget you.”
― La Marr Jurelle Bruce

“From Ape to Human (The Sonnet)

To label a spirit is to cripple a spirit,
What we call cultural imprints are prison.
Society of such culture is no human society,
but merely an overglorified animal kingdom.

Sure, the culture we're born in are part of us,
But it must never take over human identity.
That's how heritage facilitates bias-n-hate,
And culture becomes excuse for inhumanity.

Call it advaita, nirvana or humanity,
the purpose is to surpass all divide.
Anything that distances mind from mind,
must never be defended as cultural pride.

Mission is, not to remove cultural imprints,
But to be civilized enough to surpass them.
Only then can we be the bridge of benevolence,
Only then the glorified ape shall emerge as human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“To transcend culture is the beginning of culture.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“The iceberg model highlights why we cannot judge a new culture purely on what we see. Instinctively, we know there's more to a situation than we initially perceive... It is essential to take time to uncover the beliefs that underline behavior.”
― Gaiti Rabbani, Curious About Culture: Refocus your lens on culture to cultivate cross cultural understanding

“The peril of unconscious bias is greatest when it seeps into all levels of society and becomes group thinking.”
― Gaiti Rabbani, Curious About Culture: Refocus your lens on culture to cultivate cross cultural understanding

“Patterns in language offer a window into the nuances of culture. Beyond an assortment of words, language also preserves cultural heritage.”
― Gaiti Rabbani

“Language is the history of its culture”
― Antariksh Ghosh

“I never hankered for booze or drugs, you know why - because I'm already drunk, with the most hard-hitting, brain-altering contraband in history - I'm ever consumed with languages and cultures.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Like a doctor watching a patient in agony, the nostalgist feels powerless before the passage of time, as was the case for many anthropologists. Some of them felt outrage and a sense, no doubt, of personal loss.”
― David Berliner, Losing Culture: Nostalgia, Heritage, and Our Accelerated Times

“Nostalgia is intimately tied up with their desire to imagine a different world: one able to withstand cultural homogenization and preserve ethnic diversity, one where social and political recognition can be gained for all. Truly, hope is never far from nostalgia.”
― David Berliner, Losing Culture: Nostalgia, Heritage, and Our Accelerated Times

“An so it is out of fear of disappearance, for the children of the future, that we seek to preserve, to "museumify" ways of life. In this "age of nostalgia", when faced with losing everthing, something of the past must absolutely be carried forward, of identities and cultures, whether our own or those of others.”
― David Berliner, Perdre sa culture

“Give up the filthy habit of associating philosophy with the greeks, and poetry with the english - education that doesn't reflect plural humanity, raises only goodlooking jungle rubbish.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Larger than tribe, larger than time, I am Detonation of The First Multicultural Civilization.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Sonnet 2500

You're right, I am not a poet,
I have not written hundreds of poems;
you're right, I am not a writer,
I have not written a couple of books.

I'm sorry, I am not a poet,
I have not written hundreds of sonnets,
I have written thousands -
I have not written a handful of books,
I have erected a library.

You do not have the scales
in your two-dimensional intellect
to measure the multidimensional
Ecosystem of Expansion -

larger than tribe,
larger than time,
I am Detonation of The First
Multicultural Civilization.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“I don't describe, I embody -
I don't study a culture,
I disappear into the culture.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“I grew up speaking two languages,
mother tongue and national tongue,
then in my late teens I assimilated English
from pirated dvds of American movies;

soon after I absorbed another language,
from the South of India, again from movies.
Years later when I started writing and got WiFi,
that's when an entire new horizon opened up.

This time I found myself drawn to Turkish
and Spanish, which became second languages
in the canon, after my first English.

I don't describe, I embody -
I don't study a culture,
I disappear into the culture.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Why Humanities Matter (Sonnet 2443)

There's not one but two kinds of knowledge,
one is empirical, another is existential.
Maths, physics, chemistry, biology,
these are empirical knowledge that explore
the building blocks of life and universe,

whereas existential knowledge of the humanities
make us unfold new meanings of life and universe,
not in an archaic, blind, preordained sort of way,
but by fostering a deeper sense of lived community.

Empirical disciplines are instrument of efficiency,
while humanities are the carrier of illumination.
Abundance on the outside counts for nothing,
if the inside is suffering from malnutrition.

Empirical disciplines will take us to the stars,
but it's humanities that make sure,
we don't leave behind our humanity,
otherwise we'll just end up a bunch of space monkeys.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Empirical disciplines will take us to the stars, but it's humanities that make sure, we don't leave behind our humanity, otherwise we'll just end up a bunch of space monkeys.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Scientific truth changes with data, spiritual truth changes with era, cultural truth changes with civilization.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Empathy originated in Mother Africa,
naturalism originated in Latin America,
divine love originated in Arabia,
equilibrium originated in China,
integration originated in India.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Empathy originated in Mother Africa, naturalism originated in Latin America, divine love originated in Arabia, equilibrium originated in China, integration originated in India. Pluralism is not a polite idealism, pluralism is civilizational emergency.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“I am the warfare (A Very Naskar Sonnet, 2698)
My brain is the planet's largest organic
manufacturing plant of multiculturalism,
so don't, I beg you, don't trigger me too much,

because once the hate crosses my threshold,
I won't hate you back, instead, I will inject
your language, your culture into my bloodstream,
and pour out literature at such a vast scale,
that before you know it, your offspring will
be studying my canon as their native heritage -

my human-centric divinity will be their divinity,
my life-centric culture will be their culture,
my service-centric science will be their science,
my earth-centric existence will be their existence.

I am the warfare, and the rewriting of civilization
started decades ago, when I made slave
out of the most tyrant language on earth.
Show me love, I'll respond with a quiet smile -
throw me hate, I'll metabolize it and rewrite your history.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“My brain is the planet’s largest organic manufacturing plant of multiculturalism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“As long as political movements exercise a fatal attraction for those who seek to drown the sense of personal failure in collective action - as if collective action somehow precluded rigorous attention to the quality of personal life - political movements will have little to say about the personal dimension of social crisis.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations

“Autopsy of The West (Naskaristana 2754-2757)

Food just tastes better when you eat with hands, sitting on the floor, together with family - which goes against the artificial, life-wrecking lifestyle invented by the west -

in western narrative, isolation is liberation, the elderly is inconvenient, apathy is aesthetic - invasion is ambition, exploitation is exploration, indifference is etiquette, appropriation is innovation -

this is the autopsy of the west, not biopsy, because we do biopsy of the living, not the dead. We cannot establish proper, healthy human integration, without first decolonizing the world, which is why it is imperative, that the world outgrows the west, no matter the country -

in short, whether you're born in a first world civilization of the global south or a third world country of the north, like England or America, you must outgrow the west, if you want to be civilized, if you want to be human.

The American must stop being american, you must outgrow everything that the pilgrims held near and dear, because the pilgrims were among apekind's most grotesque offenders, second only to their own forefathers, the british empire and other euro imperials.

You cannot end dehumanization while abiding by the narrative established by the dehumanizers, you cannot end a pandemic while playing by the rules of the virus - you cannot heal a war-inflicted planet while studying from the rulebook of colonialism, that planted the germs of most of those wars in the first place - colonial history is not heritage, it's a crimescene.

Civilization is care over conquest, civilization is integration over isolation, civilization is belonging - to burn the bridges with dehumanizers is the first requirement of civilization.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“We cannot establish proper, healthy human integration, without first decolonizing the world.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace