[LINK] Statement Regarding the Veto of Literary Studies ARC Grants

[Stephen Loosley]

Statement Regarding the Veto of Literary Studies ARC Grants

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeDYfTcUgFjQvH9egPMVhUJSCKpDY6DCnQRRGMJv-pNBtsDfQ/viewform?vc=0&c=0&w=1&flr=0

**To add your name, please fill out the form below the signatures listed at the bottom of this statement. While this statement regards the targeting of the English discipline specifically, we welcome signatories from all disciplines and the wider public, including beyond Australia. Signatures are added manually and it may take a little while for names to appear.**

The decision by the acting Federal Minister for Education, Stuart Robert, to exercise his veto against four literary studies grants recommended to him by the Australian Research Council constitutes an attack on literary studies and literary culture in Australia. The only public justification that Robert provided for the apparently arbitrary process that led to this decision is that the projects “do not demonstrate value for taxpayers’ money nor contribute to the national interest.” That two-thirds of the six censored grants should be in literary studies demonstrates a dismissive attitude to the value of the imagination and creativity.
Nor is this an isolated occurrence. Four years ago, the former education minister Simon Birmingham rejected eleven ARC projects recommended to him, all in the Humanities, including four from literary studies. The actions of the government reveal that it is committed to defunding Australia’s literary culture by overriding academic autonomy and determining what kinds of knowledge can and cannot be pursued. This is especially ironic given its recent campaign to defend freedom of speech on Australia’s campuses.
Blocking literary grants not only negates a central tenet of academic freedom – that truth be pursued without interference from the state – it degrades Australia’s cultural fabric. Australia is home to the world’s most ancient enduring literary tradition: the song cycles of our First Nations people. Literary representations have always shaped and influenced who we are or might be and have done so for every culture on the planet across humanity’s history. Understanding this rich fabric of representations is critical to our respectful global citizenship and our own self-understanding.
Starving literary research projects of essential funds, terminating literary careers prematurely, and censoring Australia’s inveterate love of storytelling might make good copy in the Murdoch press, but it hits and hurts an element that allows our culture to thrive. For millennia, any society worth more than the sum of its toiling parts has embodied its values in images, stories, characters, monuments, and songs, which lift the monotony of history into a dimension worthy of human contemplation. That result is called literature, and without it, how would we speak to the past, inhabit the present, or project ourselves thoughtfully into the future?
Australians are buying books in record numbers, book clubs spring up everywhere with the rootless tenacity of orchids, English literature is a key subject in all our schools, and enrolments in tertiary literature courses are resilient despite new fee structures designed to penalise Humanities subjects. Without sustained investment in the institutions and frameworks within which intelligent and informed discussion can take place, however, this stubborn national commitment to literature is being asphyxiated.

We, the undersigned, categorically denounce the ongoing interference in our national research  council’s independent processes and call on the minister immediately to reinstate the defunded projects and commit to legislating the complete independence of the ARC from government interference and censorship. We also insist on an end to an ill-defined use of ‘national interest’ as a justification for intervention. All political parties should refrain from treating literary studies or the humanities more generally as pawns to be used for political purposes. Literature lasts longer than governments, longer than parties, longer than electoral cycles. The intellectual ferment caused by its discussion and criticism lasts longer, and lifts us higher, than any media release.

John Coetzee, Nobel Laureate
John Frow, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sydney
Alexis Wright FAHA, Novelist, Miles Franklin Award winner, Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature, University of Melbourne
Michelle de Kretser, Honarary Associate, English Department, University of Sydney
Ivor Indyk, Whitlam Chair and Giramondo Publisher, Western Sydney University
Brian Castro, Adjunct Professor, University of Adelaide
Helen Groth FAHA, Professor of English, UNSW Sydney
(follows many, snip)