Svetlana Alexievich Didn't Make it to the Royal Commission - Dr Maria Tumarkin

Venue: Public Lecture Theatre, Old Arts (Building 149)

Presenters: Dr Maria Tumarkin

The Wednesday Lectures 2016 hosted by Raimond Gaita

It is striking how often people now speak of 'a common humanity' in an ethically inflected register, one that expresses a fellowship of all the peoples of the earth. More often than not, however, we refer to the idea of a common humanity when we lament the failure of its acknowledgment. The forms of that failure are depressingly many: racism, sexism homophobia, the dehumanization of our enemies, of unrepentant criminals and those who suffer severe and degrading affliction. As often as someone reminds us that 'we are all human beings', someone will reply that to be treated like a human being you must behave like one.

Many people appear now to fear that within twenty years or less national and international politics will be dominated by crises that caused and inflamed by the shameful gap between the rich and the poor nations, aggravated by the effects of climate change. They fear their children and grandchildren will not be protected as they have been from the terrors suffered by most of the peoples of the earth because of impoverishment, natural disasters and the evils inflicted upon them by other human beings. In such circumstances the ideal and even the very idea of a common humanity is likely to seem to have been a foolish illusion.

The six Wednesday Lectures of 2016 will explore what sustains and what erodes the idea of a common humanity and, more radically, whether it is a useful idea with which to think about the moral, legal and political relations between people and peoples.

Wednesday, 7 September: Svetlana Alexievich Didn't Make it to the Royal Commission. (The Dramas of Non-Witnessing)

In this lecture Maria Tumarkin brings together two seemingly unconnected things: the unclassifiable Belarusian winner of last year’s Nobel prize for literature Svetlana Alexievich and Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. She asks what are we to make of the Royal Commission's apparent failure to get the under the skin of our culture despite the world-shattering significance of what it continues to reveal? And ditto for other shatterings? Her purpose here is to think hard about unwitnessed suffering and how it complicates, or not, the fragile idea of common humanity.

Speaker: Dr Maria Tumarkin is a writer and cultural historian. She is the author of three acclaimed books of ideas: Traumascapes, Courage and Otherland. All three books were shortlisted for literary prizes; Otherland, most recently, was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Award, NSW Premier's Award and The Age Book of the Year. Tumarkin's essays have appeared in The Best Australian Essays (2011, 2012 & 2015), Griffith Review, Meanjin, The Monthly, Kill Your Darlings, Sydney Review of Books, The Age, The Australian and Inside Story. In 2015 her essay No Skin was shortlisted for the Melbourne Prize of Literature. Maria is involved in wide-ranging artistic collaborations with visual artists, theatre makers and audio designers. She was a 2013-14 Sidney Myer Creative Fellow in humanities and is a member of the Melbourne Writers Festival's programming committee.

from
https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/7139-svetlana-alexievich-didn-t-make-it-to-the-royal-commission