The Holberg Masterclass with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: ‘The Practice of Learning’

All disciplines produce knowledge and the students learn to know. The humanities – literature and philosophy – teach the practice of learning. In knowing, you know an object. Five PhD candidates in the Nordic countries are invited to participate in a masterclass with Holberg Laureate Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Each participant will be asked to prepare a 5-minute presentation related to the theme chosen by the Laureate. After the presentations there will be a panel discussion. ABSTRACT In the practice of learning, as taught by the humanities, you attempt to hold yourself effaced, suspending judgment, in order to displace yourself into the space of what you are trying to learn. This is imaginative activism. The literary or philosophical text stages a field of desire. Uninstructed reading usually takes the text to be a fulfilment of those desires. This Masterclass will discuss these and related issues. SPEAKERS - Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 2025 Holberg Laureate, and University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. - Sabina Ivenäs Dyverfeldt, PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Gothenburg. - Sadie Hale, PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen. - Jillian Loise Melchor, PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of Helsinki. - Johannes Sartou, PhD candidate in Intellectual History at Aarhus University. - Telma Velez, PhD candidate in Education and Diversity at the University of Iceland. This event is part of the 2025 Holberg Week, which takes place from 3rd to 6th June, in Bergen and Oslo. Please see the Holberg Prize website for more information: https://bit.ly/4jqs3Vp