APRiCot Garden 2025: Research as Regenerative Practice. "Dare to Know' versus 'Care to Know': Rethinking Knowledge in a Postcolonial World” by Nikita Dhawan

This lecture explores the tension between Kant's Enlightenment imperative "dare to know" and what might be called a postcolonial ethics of "care to know." Through examining linguistic colonialism—where Macaulay claimed "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia"—we'll consider how knowledge production intertwines with power. Rather than rejecting Enlightenment values wholesale or uncritically embracing them, we'll examine how concepts like Anekāntavāda (non-absolutism) might foster epistemic humility. Drawing on Morrison's "Beloved" as exemplifying artistic engagement with painful histories, we'll discuss how aesthetic practices can ethically approach historical injustice. We'll investigate how engaging multiple perspectives might create spaces where Zukunftsfähigkeit (future viability) and Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung (working through the past) can meaningfully coexist in our divided world.

About: Nikita Dhawan 

About: APRiCot Garden 2025: Research as Regenerative Practice