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Priyamvada Gopal

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Priyamvada Gopal
Born (1968-08-28) 28 August 1968 (age 56)
TitleProfessor in Anglophone and Related Literature
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of Delhi
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Cornell University
Academic work
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
Churchill College

Priyamvada Gopal (born 28 August 1968) is a Professor at the Faculty of English at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Churchill College. Her main teaching and research interests are in colonial and postcolonial literature and theory, gender and feminism, Marxism and critical race studies.[1]

She has written three books and regularly contributes to several newspapers and publications, including The Guardian, The Hindu, The Independent, Medium, New Statesman, Open Democracy, Outlook India, India Today, Open, HuffPost, New Humanist, Al Jazeera, The Nation, and The Times Literary Supplement.

In June 2020, Gopal found herself in the middle of a controversy after she tweeted "White Lives Don't Matter" and "Abolish Whiteness". She was immediately accused of racism and a petition was launched to get her fired. Gopal answered that signing the petition was an act of "harassment". Cambridge University defended Gopal by stating "The University defends the right of its academics to express their own lawful opinions which others might find controversial".[2] Two days after her controversial tweets, Gopal was promoted to full professorship by Cambridge.[3]

Early life

Gopal was born in Delhi, India. The daughter of an Indian diplomat, she spent her childhood moving between India, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan, and attended an international high school in Vienna, where her father had served as a diplomat in the mid-1980s.[4][5]

Education and career

Gopal received a BA from the University of Delhi in 1989 and an MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1991. After finishing her studies in India, Gopal moved to the United States, where she taught at different institutions and completed her PhD in colonial and postcolonial literature at Cornell University in 2000.[6]

In 2001 Gopal moved to the University of Cambridge, where she is a Professor in Anglophone and Related Literature and a Teaching Fellow at Churchill College. She supervises and teaches in the areas of literary criticism, modern tragedy, 19th-century and modern British literature, and postcolonial and related literatures. Her primary interests are in colonial and postcolonial literatures, with related interests in British and American literatures, the novel, translation, gender and feminism, Marxism and critical theory, and the politics and cultures of empire and globalisation. From 2006 to 2010, she was Dean of Churchill College.[7]

Commentary and analysis

As a literary critic, Gopal explores a range of issues and ideas, with a focus on race, empire, and decolonisation.

Empire

Gopal has written extensively about the impact of empire on contemporary culture in Britain and South Asia and examined how colonial systems continue to reproduce and remap themselves in parts of the world today.

In her book Insurgent Empire, Gopal examines traditions of dissent on the question of empire and shows how rebellions and resistance in the colonies influenced British critics of empire. She argues that ideas of freedom, justice, and common humanity had themselves taken shape in the struggle against imperialism.

Gopal has also written about Britain's imperial amnesia and has called for a more honest account of how the country came to be what it is today.[8] She argues that developing a more demanding relationship to history is essential for moving beyond institutionalised amnesia about the past.

Decolonisation

Gopal has been a long-standing advocate for the decolonisation of Cambridge’s English curriculum. In October 2017, a group of Cambridge students had called for the university to include more black and ethnic minority writers in its English literature curriculum, an initiative strongly supported by Gopal. She argues that decolonisation, in the context of the curriculum, is about having access to information and narratives, which reframe our understanding of how to relate to other peoples, other countries and different cultures.

Race

Gopal has written and commented extensively on the subject of race and how it operates in contemporary society. She argues that whiteness is primarily a cultural category, not a biological one, and is useful for explaining how western societies work in terms of how society is structured, and how such structures determine power relations between dominant and non-dominant groups.[9]

In the context of racial discrimination in the United Kingdom, Gopal has discussed white fragility, suggesting that a "way of deflecting engagement with race is to personalise matters".[10] In October 2019, Gopal criticised the Equality and Human Rights Commission report "Tackling racial harassment: Universities challenged" for the language it used and for not addressing the systemic disadvantages faced by black and minority ethnic students or the ways whiteness dominates power structures and pedagogy.[11][12]

Public controversies

BBC Radio 4: Start the Week

In 2006, Gopal took part in a debate on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week.[13] There she found herself in opposition to the conservative historian Niall Ferguson, who argued that the British Empire was, by and large, a benevolent and virtuous enterprise. Gopal challenged Ferguson's account of Britain's imperial project.[14]

The programme became a matter of much controversy, so much so that that evening the BBC took the trouble to invite another Indian woman onto their programme to say Gopal had been wrong and not all young Indians thought in the way that she did. Gopal later accused the BBC of pushing an agenda and playing off natives against each other.[15]

Gopal said that it was this experience that galvanized her to write and think more publicly about empire.

King's College racial profiling row

In June 2018, Gopal alleged racial profiling by college porters at the gate of King's College, Cambridge. Gopal said that she was subjected to racial profiling and aggression by the porters and gatekeepers of King's and claimed porters frequently hassled non-white staff and students at the gates.[16][17] Gopal also announced that she would no longer teach at King's until there was a resolution to the long-standing problem.[18][19]

As a result of the attention the issue received, students of Cambridge University came forward describing similar experiences. Students of English at King’s also issued an open letter in support of Dr Gopal, urging the college to offer her a "proper apology": "The many testimonies from black and minority ethnic students that have come in the wake of Dr Gopal’s statement make apparent that her treatment is not unique or isolated. We strongly condemn the actions of the college and fully support Dr Gopal in her decision to boycott it."[20] Gopal said that she received hate mail following her announcement.[21]

In October 2018, King's College, Cambridge issued a statement accepting that there have been several reports of discrimination and racial profiling.[22] Gopal said that senior members of the college had also conveyed their private apologies and assured her that the problem was being taken seriously. Shortly after, Gopal rescinded her decision to withdraw her labour from the college.

"White lives don't matter" tweet

In June 2020, in the context of recent Black Lives Matter protests,[23] Gopal tweeted that "I'll say it again. White lives don't matter. As white lives." followed by "Abolish whiteness".[24] The tweets caused a wider online backlash with Gopal subject to personal abuse and death threats and her twitter account temporarily suspended under Twitter's 'hateful content policy' after the social media platform upheld several complaints made against her.[24] Cambridge University, Gopal's employer, made a statement on the university's official twitter in support of her "to express their own lawful opinions" and denounced "in the strongest terms" the "abuse and personal attacks" Gopal had been reportedly receiving.[25]

Bibliography

  • Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence (Routledge, 2005)[26]
  • The Indian English Novel: Nation, History and Narration (Oxford University Press, 2009)[27]
  • Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (Verso, 2019)[28]

Selected publications

  • 'Another rightwing strongman has won – but there is hope for a different future', The Guardian, 17 December 2019[29]
  • 'If we can’t call racism by its name, diversity will remain a meaningless buzzword', The Guardian, 8 October 2019[30]
  • 'Britain’s story of empire is based on myth. We need to know the truth', The Guardian, 6 July 2019[31]
  • 'To accept an OBE is to condone the brutality of empire', The Guardian, 8 January 2019[32]
  • 'Response to Mary Beard', Medium, 18 February 2018[33]
  • 'Yes, we must decolonise: our teaching has to go beyond elite white men', The Guardian, 27 October 2017[34]
  • 'On ‘Love’ and Sex in Academia and Beyond', Wildcat Dispatches, 25 October 2017[35]
  • 'Reducing rape to a generic Indian male mindset fails its victims', The Guardian, 4 March 2015[36]
  • 'Much of Britain's wealth is built on slavery. So why shouldn't it pay reparations?', New Statesman, 23 April 2014[37]
  • 'Humanism for a globalised world', New Humanist, 2 December 2013[38]
  • 'The story peddled by imperial apologists is a poisonous fairytale', The Guardian, 28 June 2006[39]

References

  1. ^ https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/people/Priyamvada.Gopal/
  2. ^ "Cambridge University defends professor who tweeted 'abolish whiteness'". Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  3. ^ "Priyamvada Gopal promoted to Professorship, as online abuse continues". Varsity Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  4. ^ Manral, Kiran (7 November 2019). "Xenophobia Is Not Exclusively A Western Practice: Dr Priyamvada Gopal". SheThePeople.
  5. ^ Ross, Elliot (5 February 2020). "First rule of fight club: power concedes nothing without a struggle". The Correspondent.
  6. ^ "Churchill College Profile". www.chu.cam.ac.uk.
  7. ^ "Gopal's website at the Faculty of English". www.english.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 13 April 2019.; "Gopal's website at Churchill College". www.chu.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  8. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (31 July 2012). "Mau Mau verdict: Britain must undo its imperial amnesia". The Guardian.
  9. ^ Podcast, Why do we need to talk about whiteness (2019). "The enduring whiteness of Empire - with Dr Priyamvada Gopal". Why do we need to talk about whiteness.
  10. ^ "If we can't call racism by its name, diversity will remain a meaningless buzzword". The Guardian. 8 October 2019.
  11. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada; Rollock, Nicola (24 October 2019). "'Monolithically white places': academics on racism in universities". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  12. ^ "Tackling racial harassment: universities challenged | Equality and Human Rights Commission". www.equalityhumanrights.com. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  13. ^ BBC Radio 4, Start the Week (12 June 2006). "Start the Week: The Legacy of Empire". BBC Radio 4.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  14. ^ BBC Radio 4, Start the Week (12 June 2006). "Start the Week: The Legacy of Empire - Archived Programme". BBC Radio 4. Archived from the original on 14 June 2006.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (13 June 2006). "Open Letter to Andrew Marr, Presenter, Start the Week on Radio 4, the BBC". Lenin's Tomb.
  16. ^ BBC, News (21 October 2018). "King's College racism row: Students support academic". BBC News. {{cite web}}: |first1= has generic name (help)
  17. ^ Ferguson, Donna (23 June 2018). "I want to see Cambridge University breaking the silence on race". The Guardian.
  18. ^ Oppenheim, Maya (20 June 2018). "Cambridge academic says she will not work for university after accusing porters of racist abuse". The Independent.
  19. ^ Troup Buchanan, Rose (20 June 2018). "This Top Academic Is Refusing To Supervise Students At A Cambridge College, Citing Repeated Racial Profiling". BuzzFeed News.
  20. ^ "King's College English Undergraduate Students Statement of Solidarity with Dr. Priyamvada Gopal". docs.google.com.
  21. ^ Mirsky, Hannah (21 October 2018). "Meet Priyamvada Gopal - the academic fighting racism at Cambridge University". Cambridge News.
  22. ^ Proctor, Michael (16 October 2018). "Statement about entry through main Gates of King's College". www.kings.cam.ac.uk.
  23. ^ "A timeline of the Black Lives Matter movement". Cosmopolitan. 19 June 2020. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  24. ^ a b https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/death-threats-sent-cambridge-university-18483984
  25. ^ https://au.news.yahoo.com/cambridge-university-professor-abolish-whiteness-120820583.html
  26. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (9 March 2005). Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence. Routledge. p. 192. ISBN 9780415655453.
  27. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (29 January 2009). The Indian English Novel: Nation, History and Narration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 232. ISBN 9780199544370.
  28. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (14 June 2019). Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent. Verso. p. 624. ISBN 9781784784126.
  29. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (17 December 2019). "Another rightwing strongman has won – but there is hope for a different future | Priyamvada Gopal". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 18 December 2019.
  30. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (8 October 2018). "If we can't call racism by its name, diversity will remain a meaningless buzzword". The Guardian.
  31. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (6 July 2019). "Britain's story of empire is based on myth. We need to know the truth". The Guardian.
  32. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (8 January 2019). "To accept an OBE is to condone the brutality of empire". The Guardian.
  33. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (18 February 2018). "Response to Mary Beard". Medium.
  34. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (27 October 2017). "Yes, we must decolonise: our teaching has to go beyond elite white men". The Guardian.
  35. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (25 October 2017). "On 'Love' and Sex in Academia and Beyond, Wildcat Dispatches". Wildcat Dispatches.
  36. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (4 March 2015). "Reducing rape to a generic Indian male mindset fails its victims". The Guardian.
  37. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (23 April 2014). "Much of Britain's wealth is built on slavery. So why shouldn't it pay reparations?". New Statesman.
  38. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (2 December 2013). "Humanism for a globalised world". New Humanist.
  39. ^ Gopal, Priyamvada (28 June 2006). "The story peddled by imperial apologists is a poisonous fairytale". The Guardian.


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