A friend and collaborator just e-mailed to say he enjoyed my use of Hanif Kureishi’s formulation on multiculturalism, in my remarks at Goldsmiths College:
‘Multiculturalism’, he says, ‘is the idea that one might be changed by other ideas’. It is a movement based on the dialogic exchange of ideas, even traditions, based on ‘the idea that purity is incestuous’.
I have used it in another speech recently, to the Society of Young Publishers annual conference, in Oxford last December. In the interests of posting something new to the blog on a Monday morning, here is the speech I wrote. It is not necessarily the one that I actually gave, but until Jon S uploads a video of the proceedings, I’m safe. The discussion was on ‘The Responsibility to Publish’, and I shared the panel with Chris Brazier, Co-Editor at the New Internationalist, Sarah Totterdell, Head of Oxfam’s publications department, and Alan Samson from Orion Books.
The View from the Panel. Photo by yrstrly.
On being asked to speak at this event, I was terrified that I was going to end up speaking in tautologies. If you’re at the Society of Young Publishers, then you’re already speaking to a group of people who are, by definition, of the belief that publishing is a civic good, that they are part of civil society.
So, I want to say more. Let’s go the whole hog. My first thought is this: That of The Arts, it is literature and publishing, that has by far the greatest impact on politics. Continue reading
