The 2025 Holberg Symposium, “The Power of the Humanities”, is held in honour of Holberg Laureate Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Reflecting my more than sixty years of university teaching and elementary school teaching among the so-called untouchables and aboriginals in India, the power of the humanities seems to be the one thing of which I am convinced.
— Gayatri C. Spivak
This academic symposium is held in honour of the 2025 Holberg Laureate Gayatri C. Spivak. The Laureate introduces the topic, followed by presentations by three invited speakers, a panel discussion and in the end an open Q&A session.
This event is part of the 2025 Holberg Week, which takes place from 3rd to 6th June, in Bergen and Oslo.
Abstract
Our world today is progressively unhinged by evil; every new technology brings with it a new kind of crime; artificial intelligence makes it impossible to distinguish between truth and lie; war continues to wreck the planet. This terrible regression is accompanied by a gradual trivialization of the humanities. “The Humanities” are Literature and philosophy. All other disciplines produce knowledge. The humanities teach the practice of “learning” the other by training the imagination to displace itself into the space of the other. A literary text for literature, and a general human soul for philosophy. This power of the humanities offers practice against self-interest; perhaps even against greed, violence, and fear, all affects which keep you locked in yourself.
Programme
Welcome
By Professor Jørgen Magnus Sejersted, Chair of the Holberg Prize Board.
Introduction of the 2025 Holberg Laureate
By Professor Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, Academic Director of the Holberg Prize.
Introduction of the topic
By Holberg Laureate Gayatri C. Spivak
The Humanities and the Human Sciences
If the humanities teaches the practice of learning, and provides training for the imagination (Spivak), the human sciences instruct us on how learning across generations becomes the basis for living in common. This paper examines the philosophy of the imagination as part of a project of learning to live in common, by examining how anthropologists think about social difference.
By Rosalind C. Morris.
Learning from Below
Professor Spivak’s emphasis on learning from below has reshaped scholarly engagement. Her mentorship has encouraged a deeper appreciation for marginalized knowledge systems. Her approach offers a transformative model for more inclusive and socially responsive academic inquiry. The insistence that development cannot be imposed but must be built on structures continues to influence context-sensitive studies and interdisciplinary dialogue.
By Oluwaseun Akinfenwa.
Humanities and Social Sciences in India
The talk will reflect on the state of the Humanities and Social Sciences in India at the current moment. It will respond to government attempts at overhauling the disciplines in the form of the National Education Policy and to the overriding impulses of the market to instrumentalise higher education.
By Lakshmi Subramanian.
Commentary
By Holberg Laureate Gayatri P. Spivak
Panel discussion and Q&A
Moderated by Professor Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, Academic Director of the Holberg Prize.
Closing remarks
By Professor Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, Academic Director of the Holberg Prize.
Speakers
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. (Photo: Alice Attie.)
Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is the 2025 Holberg Laureate. She has held the position of University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University since 2007, where she has been a faculty member since 1991, and where she is also a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Spivak has published nine books and translated many others. Her works have been translated into over 20 languages. Spivak’s key works include In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (1987), A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present (1999), Death of a Discipline (2003), An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (2012), and Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee and Certain Scenes of Teaching (2018). Her latest book is Spivak Moving (2024).
Rosalind C. Morris
Rosalind Morris. (Photo: Julia Knop.)
Rosalind Morris is an anthropologist, cultural critic, and documentarist who is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. Her most recent books are Unstable Ground: The Lives, Deaths and Afterlives of Gold in South Africa (Columbia, 2025) and For Lack of a Dictionary: poems (Fordham, 2025).
Oluwaseun Akinfenwa
Oluwaseun Akinfenwa. (Photo: Private.)
Oluwaseun Akinfenwa is a Principal System Analyst/Programmer at Kwara State University, Nigeria. His doctoral research focused on traditional birth practices. He has extensive fieldwork experience with unsystematized languages and examines the intersection of technology and society.
Lakshmi Subramanian
Lakshmi Subramanyan. (Photo: Private)
Lakshmi Subramanian is Professor of History at The Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. She is also affiliated with Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani – Goa Campus. Subramanian has had a long and distinguished teaching and research career in India and overseas. She has written extensively on both business history and on the histories of music and performance in modern India.
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen (moderator)
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen. Photo: Eivind Senneset
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Bergen. He is the Academic Director of the Holberg Prize. His research delves into the nature of the urban, political protest, egalitarianism and violence.