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The writer is a researcher from Azad Jammu and Kashmir. She tweets at @maryumtaimoor
Have you ever wondered why examination papers are checked after removing the sheet containing your details? Probably because, since humans are born with a plethora of biases, and perhaps institutions recognise they cannot overcome them, they attempt to conceal them instead. Thus, anonymity becomes a means to prevent the inevitable bias that accompanies recognition.
The quote attributed to Hazrat Ali (RA) suggests that one should not focus on who is saying it, but rather what is being said. Yet today, a culture has emerged where one needs a background or a brand name to get published or have one’s ideas heard. It is often not important what is written, but rather who has written it.
Of Gust de Backer’s motley of 151 biases, more than 15, such as identity and recognition bias and authority bias, signify the tendency to focus on who rather than what in the content. It is not always the argument itself that commands attention, but the identity behind it. Media and academia are both complicit in perpetuating this pattern. The media cries about the monopoly of certain institutions, while practising selective amnesia itself. Among the many monopolies that exist, one causing a paucity of new voices is the media monopoly, where name value determines worth. As the channels of communication, the media have long closed their doors to those outside the established circles.
This very condition dissuades young and novel voices from even trying. Among the younger generation, fatigue is palpable due to the gates of creativity guarded by bureaucracies prizing brand over brilliance. They have laid down their pen, realising that without a ‘brand value’ every road loops back to an endless cul-de-sac. When their thoughts are reflected in the arguments of anointed figures, it encourages some, but for most, the pendulum swings toward discouragement, withdrawal, or falling prey to intermediaries.
The publishers’ usual defence is that a torrent of submissions cannot be responded to; they accept only ‘solicited’ pieces or prioritise certain content, mirroring Noam Chomsky’s ‘manufacturing consent’ and Erving Goffman’s ‘framing’. However, it falls flat when mediated writings, through the intermediaries with the right ties, walk through while other submissions keep on knocking.
In academia, the ‘tyranny of the teachers’ personifies this practice, where the student’s labour becomes the legacy of the teacher. The same culture permeates everyday bureaucracies and institutional setups, where reputation speaks louder than reason and title precedes talent. It may seem painless, but it leaves its mark in the form of “quiet quitting” and perpetuation of sinecures. Such an ethos has also prompted the commercialisation of opinions: a money-making business of buying and selling ideas. It has become an industry thriving on the death of the author and the birth of the brand.
History is replete with posthumous prodigies born of this culture. Franz Kafka, whose writings now echo through every crucible once wrote into a void; Emily Dickinson, who rose to fame after being swallowed by silence; Oscar Wilde, never fully appreciated, lives today via social media snippets; Sylvia Plath talked to her world through Esther Greenwood, yet her haunting words never found any ear, and Sadat Hasan Manto, then ostracised, now even stitched in fabric and fashion. This list could hit its limit, but not the names.
Like everything else, writing has become a commodity. Social position has become a ‘currency’, making the famous more famous and keeping the unknown concealed in the shadows. In such times, when writing has become the Hunger Games of publishing, with approvals, purchases and sales, the birth of a writer lies in the little silent deaths each day in the face of visibly invisible walls and the monopolies of biases. Until the moment when the voice of the lamb pierces through the silence, transforming the death of the author into the resurrection of the name on the byline, the unheard is finally heard only to be drowned in the same ocean where ‘who’ matters more than ‘what’.
