A seminar was organized on “Modernity and Post-Modernity in Urdu Literature” in the Department of Urdu (Abdul Haq Campus) of the Federal Urdu University of Arts Science and Technology. Head of Urdu department Dr. Yasmeen Sultana presided the event.MPhil students managed the administrative matters of the seminar.
The seminar was started by ArifSabri, a student of MPhil, who recited the Holy Quran, while Maher Al-Nisa presented a Persian naat. Among the guest speakers of the seminar were well-known poet and intellectual FarastRizvi and poet and researcher Dr. Salman Sarwat.
FarastRizvi in his keynote address highlighted the beginning of the terms modernity and post-modernity. He said that modernization started from Europe, which introduced a new system of life by challenging outdated beliefs and traditions.
He also said that there is an influence of “Existentialism” on modernity according to which the universe itself is meaningless and man adds meaning to it.Dr. Salman Sarwat, in his keynote address, said that before the rise of Europe, God was the center of the universe.
Modernity made man the center. Salman Sarwat said that modernity emphasized individualism and progressivism emphasized collectivity. He said that a poet cannot create modern literature until his point of view is modern. Compared to modernism, the movement of post-modernism rejected all kinds of meta-narrative.
Post-modernism showed the way of reader-based criticism and according to it the creation is separate from its creator, the meaning of a text is only what a reader derives from it. At the end of the seminar, Dr. Yasmin Sultana, thanked the guest speakers and presented them with honorary shields and bouquets. In addition to all the teachers and students of the Urdu department, the chairperson of Chalk Literary Forum Ms. SaimaSuman and RahmanNishat participated in the seminar.
