Protest Literature in Central Asian Higher Education Space

• In Event: Decolonizing, critiquing, and reimagining higher education

Proposal

Independent Central Asia is frequently presented as a space of low civic activism, authoritarianism, and limited academic freedom. Indeed, according to many international rankings and indexes, most post-Socialist countries are still undergoing democratization processes to a various degree. Researchers focusing on higher education reform rightfully point out the need for academic freedom reforms for the universities to fulfil their research and teaching commitments (Chankseliani, 2022). Whilst there is a need for more research on how academics navigate limited academic freedom in authoritarian contexts, this paper attempts to highlight how humanities academics and writers persevere such limited political contexts and manage to discuss difficult societal issues in their work. Hence, this empirical paper focuses of Central Asian protest literature.
More specifically it analyses the work of a writer-oppositioner Gerold Belger titled “Kazakh word” and the work of academic-oppositioner Amantai Akhetov “Influencing the minds”. Whilst Belger’s work is published in Russian language, it presents an interesting analysis on the role of Kazakh language in reawakening of Kazakh civil society in the period of post-Soviet independence. This work was selected as a central case study since it was published by a local writer and thinker who worked in the authoritarian context and was widely seen in the society as a major academic civil activist. Akhetov’s book was selected as an example of a literary work that historicises the important role civic awareness played in Kazakh society throughout times, as his work looked at the role of Baitursynov, a famous linguist and Alash activist in the beginning of the 20th century. Akhetov spent the last years of his career at the Auezov Institute of Literature and Art, Kazakh Academy of Sciences, which is governed by the Higher Education and Science Ministry.
This paper is a contribution to a global pool of academic literature on the contribution of humanities to supporting the democratic processes globally. Nussbaum (2016) makes a strong case on the role of liberal arts education in making global citizens aware of the importance of civic engagement and democratic institutions. Kudaibergenova (2022) analysed the role artists and art play in reshaping the political processes through protest art. Yet, by and large, such research specifically focusing on either academic activism or the role the humanities play in political reforms is not widely available in Central Asian context, possibly, due to the sensitivity of the issues discussed. Whilst such discussions do take place in the academic community and new initiatives on tracking political protests exist, the contribution of this study is the analysis of how poets and writers were continuously at the forefront of protest moods and critical thinking in the case of Kazakhstan.
Postcolonial research is calling for epistemically just spaces where the voice of local communities and researchers is heard on a global academic stage (Bissenova, 2023). This paper is a contribution to such calls, since it analyses the work of local scholars and writers.
Finally, the goal of this paper is to highlight that despite authoritarian context of Central Asia, the scholarly community needs to carefully engage with the local knowledge to see a more nuanced, complex, and complete picture of how democratisation processes take place in the region and what role humanities play in these vibrant developments. The paper makes two observations based on the analysis of the empirical data: poems and close engagement with the local research community that concomitantly two processes shape the protest literary art in Kazakhstan: 1) the authoritarian context, 2) the emphasis on the commercialisation of science and a significantly imbalanced funding of STEM subjects. So, for critical voices to exist, the humanities academic community navigate both politically and financially volatile contexts by self-publishing their works and trying to persevere in these intersecting difficult contexts. Also, the uniqueness of this contribution lies in its analysis blurring the strict categories of the ‘writer’ versus a ‘humanities academic’, since in the context of Kazakhstan, such critical art and academic communities are small, and its work is frequently better understood when analysed collectively. Hence, we use the term 'higher education space', to challenge the existing binary categorisation of who belongs to higher education and who is an 'independent' writer or an academic.

References

Akhetov, A. (2015). Influencing the minds. Almaty-Raritet.
Belger, G. (2009). Kazakh Word. VOX POPULI.
Bissenova, A. (Ed.) (2023). Qazaqstan: Labyrinths of contemporary postcolonial discourse. Tselinny Publishing.
Chankseliani, M. (2022). What happened to the Soviet University?. Oxford University Press.
Kudaibergenova, D. T. (2022). Art and Protest in Kazakhstan. Current History, 121(837), 271-276.
Nussbaum, M. C. (2016). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton university press.

Authors

• Olga Mun, Oxford University

• Svetlana Ananyeva, Auezov Institute of Literature and Art