The first of Wole Soyinka's 2004 Reith Lectures is online at BBC Radio 4.
After they are broadcast, each lecture will be posted as printable text and a downloadable .mp3 sound file.
In his first lecture Wole Soyinka considers from his viewpoint as a poet and drawing on his personal experience as a political activist the changes since the Cold War in the nature of fear and its impact on individuals and society. Fear can be bearable, even a force for good, for example bringing a community together to fight a common threat from the natural world like a forest fire, "a kind of fear one can live with, shrug off, one that may actually be absorbed as a therapeutic incidence".
Other kinds of fear, though, are "downright degrading". Crucially, they involve a loss of human dignity and freedom to act. First we had the fear of nuclear war between the superpowers, now "the fear is one of furtive, invisible power, the power of the quasi state, one that is not open to any negotiating structure."
After they are broadcast, each lecture will be posted as printable text and a downloadable .mp3 sound file.
This entry was posted by eeksypeeksy
on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 at 3:37 PM.
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