Speaker Touts Fundamental and Creative Knowledge

Speaker Touts Fundamental and Creative Knowledge

BY ROBERT STANTON
Special to the Rice News
November 4, 1999

The world cannot afford to remain complacent if humanity hopes to reach its fullest potential in the creative and economic arenas, one of the world’s leading literary artists said.

Nawal El-Saadawi, an Egyptian feminist, physician, human rights activist and novelist, shared her candid views Oct. 25 as the first speaker of the 1999-2000 President’s Lecture Series. The series is sponsored by the Office of the President with support from the J. Newton Rayzor Lecture Fund.

El-Saadawi, who has written 27 books focusing on women, particularly Arab women, pointed to a direct link between societal fragmentation and the decline of creativity in all areas of life.

“Schools provide fragmented knowledge,” said El&endash;Saadawi, who was fired from her job as Egypt’s director of public health because of her outspoken views and writings. “There is separation between the sciences and the arts, between the mind and body S the spirit and the mind.

“We graduate from universities and become very good physicians and technicians, but not good human beings,” she added. “This fundamental knowledge in universities kills our creativity, which is very much related to having a global, holistic vision of ourselves and of the world.”

The mother of two, who was imprisoned by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for her outspoken views and released after his death in 1981, said world political systems attempt “to fragment our knowledge so we don’t link and connect the different domains in life. The more we specialize, the more we lose this specialized, holistic look at knowledge.”

Although she was denied pen and paper, El-Saadawi continued to write in prison using an eyebrow pencil and a roll of toilet paper. She was released in 1982 and the following year published “Memoirs from the Women’s Prison,” in which she continued her attacks on the Egyptian government.

El-Saadawi pointed out that creating change often is perceived as a threat to those in power, who will do whatever it takes to quash the dissent. “Of course, creative people are (considered) dangerous. Political systems don’t welcome change. They want the status quo because they benefit from that.”

From the start, El-Saadawi’s books were considered controversial and dangerous for society and were banished in Egypt. As a result, she was forced to publish her works in Beirut, Lebanon.

In 1977, El-Saadawi published her most famous work, “The Hidden Face of Eve,” which addressed an array of topics critical to Arab women–sexual relationships, marriage and divorce, aggression against female children and female genital mutilation.

El-Saadawi had harsh words for pundits who try to segment the world into the so-called Third World and industrialized nations. “We live in one world, and we live in one international global system that oppresses all of us,” she said.

El-Saadawi said she tries to create dissatisfaction wherever she teaches. She has taught as a visiting professor at Duke University, the University of Washington and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

She has won numerous national and international literary awards, and her works have been translated from Arabic into more than 16 languages.