Literary Theory and Teaching Democracy in a Post-Dictatorial Era

CAITLIN WEBB

A Supervisor from the Ministry of Education was visiting a class of first graders when one student asked an unusual question: “Sir, can elephants fly?” The Supervisor was somewhat surprised but answered, “No, dear, they cannot.” “But I heard the President say that they can,” said the child. “Yes, yes . . .” the Supervisor answered. “Of course elephants can fly, but just a little bit.”

The current intellectual community in Kurdistan is largely formed by a generation that has lived through two different political eras: one of a totalitarian regime and another that came to power as a result of revolution and uprising. While it is true that many aspects of the previous autocracy have changed, much still needs radical change, including an education system that helped sustain the previous dictatorship for some thirty years. In this, intellectual institutions played an important role. Their power to shape public taste and values served to maintain the preferred political, social and economic status quo and continues to function unchanged in Iraqi Kurdistan today, just as they did during Saddam Hussein’s regime twenty years ago.¹

Democracy in the current Iraqi and Kurdish governments is still questionable and educational institutions were and still are effective means for promoting government ideologies and desired practices and behavior. At the time of Saddam Hussein, the government could easily force all students and teachers to participate in demonstrations that supported a government decision like, for instance, the Iraq-Iran war or the Kuwait invasion. The current Kurdish government does the same. In the late 1990s, for example, when the ruling Kurdish parties brought the Turkish army deep into Iraqi Kurdistan, they forced people to demonstrate against the PKK² though not against the Turkish army, while in 2003, when Turkey threatened to interfere in matters relating to Kirkuk, all students, me included, were taken to the streets to demonstrate against the Turkish army. Students and teachers say that they do not dare to disobey such summons. Last March, when riots erupted in some cities because civilians supporting the Arab Spring and protesting corruption were killed, the ruling party in my city of Erbil had the university administration close the dorms and send students home to prevent protests.

Not surprisingly, thought and learning are themselves under government and party control. Textbooks are designed and centralized by committees from government institutions; books are chosen based on traditions and standards set by the previous dictatorship; history books change their “facts” when governments change; subjects may differ in some books depending on the power of a political party in a given province; and the English literature canon—a “great books” list established by Oxford and Cambridge universities back in the 1920s and established by the previous Iraqi regime—still rules today’s curriculum.

While books entering the current Kurdish markets from local or foreign publishers have become more diverse, the way they are approached, valued, and understood has not changed. Books are generally seen as products of an elite group called “writers,” controlled by political party-driven institutions and enjoying unquestionable authority over the meaning of their writing. As the Kurdish saying goes, “Meaning is inside the poet’s heart.” The ministries of culture, education, and higher education, among others, define the boundaries of culture and intellectualism in Kurdistan through censoring publications and canonizing textbooks and other reading material based on the same political, social and literary values that dominated culture before.

In a society where publishing is ruled by censorship, teachers go unchallenged, and selected (“great”) books are revered, there is no room for inquiry. We do hear voices here and there, especially from outside academia—voices that call for the return of such determining power to the public. Though these voices are considered by many to be the true representatives of intellectualism in Kurdistan, they are nevertheless a minority that only influences the politically marginalized youth.

In this context English Departments are no different. They, too, participate in enforcing government control. Their students are expected to learn and “master” the English...