Zadie Smith, in one of her essays, reflects upon writing fiction; particularly her novels, which include characters outside of her community, surroundings, history, such as a Malaysian girl, a Chinese man, a White American male. She, as a creative individual, defends the author’s choice, capacity, and right to imagine the world not directly connected to, or experienced by her. To her “The old – and never especially helpful – adage Write what you know has morphed into something like a threat: Stay in your lane…. This rule also “pertains” that “the experience of the unlike-us can never be co-opted, ventriloquized, or otherwise ‘stolen’ by us”¹.

She further states, “As the philosopher Anthony Appiah has noted, these ideas of cultural ownerships share some DNA with the late-capitalist concept of brand integrity.”². Practices cemented in the idea of authenticity are present in multiple spheres today – under the proud and popular banner of originality and political correctness. These also germinate from the concept of political representation; being a spokesperson for a specific community; and barred from commenting on others.

Actually this is not a new phenomenon, because in the past, due to the limits of travel, trade routes, human exchange, communities were contained in isolations; and as a result fabricated firm fables on the purity, superiority, even the divinity of their modes of existence, resulting into the unbreachable categorizations of race, religion, gender, class. To cross these borders, or un-shelf was an offence, a crime.

However creative inquiries have been bridging conventional gaps; a course that was also evident in examples from the past; and now emerged in multiple ways, and due to diverse desires. The search to know an outsider – may that be a living being, an unfamiliar faith, an unknown language, an alien terrain, strange flora and fauna – is an effort to include oneself into the world beyond, and simultaneously assimilate this insurmountable territory inside the cubicle of the individual.

The second volume of IEDAs Journal is titled ‘Intersectionality: Creative Inquiries’. The theme is explored by contributors investigating cultural heritage, memory, systems of contemporary pictorial productions, examination of history, soil, and environment, transmigrations, comparison of production of rural setups to hi-tech factories; through multiple lenses ranging beyond regions, periods, personal and collective.

Language, a tool the entire humanity uses, is the apt example to illustrate intersectionality. It connects individuals across faiths, genders, classes, communities, and regions. By default, it serves to come out of one’s usual situation to look and locate others, to discover, perhaps not similarities as much; but the interconnectedness. These relations are recognized in the long history of conversations between cultures. Language is a form of conversion; where differences matter, but the value remains identical.

This exchange, between individuals, groups, communities, cultures is called translations. Imagine if there were no translators who facilitate overlaps, encounters, and ties, eventually connecting people across continents; how pure – in reality poor, and empty literature – consequently the imagination of each language would be world over.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o discussing the colonial imposition in the guise of superiority of European tongues over African languages, a construct transmitted through official discourse and education, informs that in the occupied lands, speaking in one’s native tongue during those years invited penalty, if not the capital punishment. In his book Decolonizing Language, he declares that the language of translation is the common, equal, and prime language of humanity.

This reality was realized by Arundhati Roy who titles her ‘The W. G. Sebald Lecture on Literary Translation’, delivered at the British Library, In What Language Does Rain Fall Over Tormented Cities? She concludes, “how shall we answer Pablo Neruda’s question that is the title of this lecture?

“In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?”

“I’d say, without hesitation, in the Language of Translations”.³

Quddus Mirza

References:

¹ Smith Dead and Alive, Hamish Hamilton. London 2025. (p. 72-73).
² ibid (p.73)
³ Roy, Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction, Penguin Books. UK 2020 (p. 52)

Peter Szendy in his book, For an Ecology of Images (2025), suggests ‘Lets imagine, as Pliny proposes in his Natural History, that the first painted image was the outline of a shadow.’ Marcel Duchamp describes shadow being the fourth dimension. We are surrounded by shadows, receding, fleeting, fading and following us in our daily life. As per common perception, one or several shadows are cast by the presence of light; and add multiple dimensions, replicas, silhouettes, layers of a human being, a living specie, an object.

Human beings, aware of the phenomenon of shadow, comprehend, and control it; which if translated in the realm of knowledge is the capacity of being exposed to diverse sources of light, a scheme of including various facades of an individual’s self. It can be translated into a scheme/platform to connect with others; thus an archaic necessity, genetic code, and societal desire to be a swiss knife. A tool to survive in difficult jungles of ignorance as well as to cope with the luminous surroundings of a civilization.

This ability made humanity into a polymathic character. The dictionary of any language enlists multiple functions a person performs – from mundane and routine existence to complex exercises. Especially in the realm/light of knowledge, practice, creativity. In the glorious spans of Muslim Medieval Period, and European Renaissance, one comes across individuals who extended their thoughts, research, expressions in more than one area, including Al-Biruni, Al-Farabi, Averroes Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, to cite a few.

A tradition that continued to the latter ages too, in which a healer was also a poet, a historian, and a philosopher. Or a writer of fiction, additionally had a job in a post office, and toiled fields. (Two examples from this region can further illustrate this phenomenon: Jawahar Lal Nehru, a distinguished lawyer, the leader of Indian National Congress, and the first Prime Minister of Independent India penned books on India and world history while in the British prison; and Dr Allama Muhammad Iqbal, active in All India Muslim League, an advocate and a philosopher who wrote several volumes of poetry in Urdu and Farsi).

Polymathy was such an expected practice that its presence in one’s personality never ignited awe, surprise or appreciation, because it was reminiscent of the conventional methods of production in a community. For instance, a potter used to collect clay, turned a number of pieces on the wheel, painted and glazed them, before baking them. Once ready, packed, priced, and sold them. But with the industrial revolution, these roles were split and segregated, with the individual, instead of a maker, ending up an operator, a cog in the mega machinery of manufacturing and marketing. Resulting into an alienation with a person’s mode of livelihood. A scheme that evolved into the era of specializations; defined as ‘professions’ (different from another term, pursuits). For example in the fields of medical sciences, construction business, knowledge production, etc.

This illusion of excellence, this approach of a singular frame of mind, grasp on a subject, grip on a technique, if led to polarization in the society, embedding alienation among individuals, it also generated hegemonies of different levels. Conveniently converting a person into viewing universality through a single and limited lens, may be tinted by class, training, ethnicity, sexual demarcation, location, language, faith, sect. It could be traced in the ideal structures of pedagogy, popular in the twentieth century, primarily imported from the industrialized/colonialist nations.

In the colonized and global societies a person served a specific role, already defined and determined by the outsider/rulers, or market forces. Hence a minimum difference between mankind and machine. No matter if a doctor is famous in treating one organ, a lawyer has excelled in the corporate tax law, a singer is known for rap, they may still move ahead with a blinkered vision, practice. Following one path. Same applies to the fields of pedagogy, a seeker of knowledge acquires a degree in one discipline, but often is unable to interlink with other related – or even unrelated spheres of investigation and knowledge dissemination.

The supremacy of one discipline has been challenged in the twenty-first century, for multiple reasons. Access to information, ideas, examples, technology included, but mainly the mindset that the world does not end in the backyard of one’s studio practice, or inside the classroom, or within an operation theatre, which due to their routineness, comfort, and allure create the power for a person, who is unable to deviate beyond a specifically attained and acclaimed area of research, practice.

The Journal of Transdisciplinary Practices in Art & Design (IEDAs), in its first issue, initiates a sequence of inquiries, investigations and expressions about the world being transformed in the age of polymathy. Inviting or/and selecting texts by a variety of contributors, each viewing/exploring the concept of polymathy through historic, political, personal, social framework/s, hence the formats of their contributions, structure of their narratives, systems of their arguments vary.

The Journal, in its essence, represents the ethos and the strategy of Mariam Dawood School of Visual Art and Design that has been offering diversity, and facilitating polymathic approaches in its studios, lecture halls, and in the encompassing environment on campus. This leading institution of South Asia, in its philosophy and vision, through its first issue of journal reminds one of a quote by Walt Whitman “I am large, I contain multitudes”.

Quddus Mirza