The Politics of Fiction
By Rheea Mukherjee | November 4, 2022 |
I’ll start this post with a disclaimer. As a fiction writer, I am drawn to writing stories that work within the realities we exist in. I’ve rarely worked with magic, fantasy, alternate world histories, or creating imaginary worlds.
Primarily, I enjoy stories of humans living in contemporary urban realities. I wanted to expand the way I wrote, but it always seemed like a struggle. Over time I made peace with it and plunged further into the kind of writer I wanted to be. I wondered why I related to books that told stories about our times, struggles, pop culture, gender roles, and other political realities.
My upbringing between two countries (U.S and India) possibly shaped how I read. The sense of displacement and mixed ideas of identity had imprinted a curiosity for people and how they could adapt to very different realities depending on circumstances. The idea that the world we relate to can be so stunningly different for another person in another country or even another city or village in the same world compelled me.
Writing in real life meant a lot of my work started to blend into prominent political stories that pointed to the limitations of colonized worldviews. The most important revelation in my writing was the understanding that all writing (whether you mean to or not) is political.
Our writing points to our worldview; who published what, and what gets published? It demonstrates our cultural imaginations, both in their glory and limitations. When I talk about this, a lot of people get uncomfortable. The idea that one is bringing ‘politics’ into writing is something only some types of writers desire. I think this discomfort exists because the concept of politics has been largely misconstrued. We believe ‘political writing’ takes a particular stance and label. It is motivated by fear that certain writing will offend some people.
To me, politics means growing awareness of how humans experience and construct cyclical systems of oppression. Why are some stories boring to us and others amazing? For example, in a western mainstream imagination of books, main characters living in a country we know little about can be boring or not relatable unless it caters to a sense of exoticness that satisfies the way we imagine alien life to be. Indian diasporic writing was limited to only first-generation struggles for a long time. In contrast, stories set in India were limited to exotic ideas of clothing and food.
Books written from a non-first-world perspective have only a few readers who praise them for their international qualities.
Most of the world has set American pop culture and markers of the ‘good life’ as the gold standard. Most of the world is familiar with American books, movies, and music, and many know more about American politics than their own countries (and in many cases, more than Americans). Globally, there is already a pre-existing bias for us to relate to the features and realities of this culture. This isn’t so much a problem; it is a loss for us to examine the world from perspectives and storytelling styles that might take more adjustment to enjoy. I believe that reading and writing things that might seem unfamiliar to us can broaden the way we understand humanity.
I remember reading excerpts for Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha in grad school. I remember the density of the text that talked about the ramifications of imperialism and the loss of home and language. The text was purposefully inaccessible in parts, yet the number of discussions we had around it was vast, nuanced, and vulnerable. Even though the reading of it wasn’t enjoyable in parts, it remains an impressionable text in my mind.
I have come to understand that fiction can illustrate how we oppress ourselves through our feelings and how those oppressions are linked to cultures, families, and communities as a reflection of institutional and cultural norms. I have learnt to enjoy sitting with discomfort through fiction. Over time, it has eroded my need to have a stance or a dogmatic idea of right and wrong. Instead, it’s opened me to imagining new ways of thinking about old things. It has recreated my assumptions of humanity and its possibilities.
Writers can show us a mirror in diverse forms of countries, places, and identities. In a way, I think fiction has a better chance of showing how we are connected in collective violence, shame, joy, and the hopes we all carry in life. The didactic reporting of histories can seem more threatening for people to sit with because it demands you take a pro or anti stance. Fiction merges into the grey; it wraps around the flaws of our characters and allows a new way of looking at things without feeling the need to label a political stance. Fiction remains one of the gentlest ways to negotiate our larger world with its powerful ability to let us see how we’re all connected.
How do you look at your writing? Have you considered that our words are always political, no matter the type of fiction we write? Does this idea liberate you or make you comfortably uncomfortable?
Rheea Mukherjee is the author of The Body Myth, (February 2019/ Unnamed Press). Her fiction and non-fiction have been published in several publications including Scroll.in, Southern Humanities Review, Out of Print, QLRS, and Anti Serious among others.
She is the co-founder of Write Leela Write, a design and content laboratory in Bangalore, India.
She spends most of her spare time eating and making vegan hipster things.
Learn more at www.rheeamukherjee.com, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Great post! Yes, absolutely. Our words are inescapably political. I was a little surprised by what I read as an inferred exclusion of fantasy as a viable examination of cultural values, political power structures, and the dynamics of community. For me, it’s the perfect medium for that. Which simply proves that every author finds a unique path to what’s important to them.
Many years ago I came to understand that fantasy is the perfect (for me) medium to be political: I was re-reading LeGuin’s The Word for World is Forest (with its painful examination of the limitations of a colonized world view!). That understanding continues to excite and liberate me.
More recently I’ve been moved to explore the worldview that claims the right to colonize nature, even though nature has demonstrated over and over again that it will not agree to be subdued or oppressed for long.
I agree with you completely that fiction remains one of the gentlest ways to negotiate our larger world and how we’re all connected.
I agree that our words are always political, whether the writer is aware of it or not, because everything in life, even the fact you have life, is political. I don’t think it matters what genre you write – your values, and your true colors are going to show, along with the values of the era and culture you live.
I write with that in mind, yes. You can’t hide when you write, so go ahead and own it.
Thank you so much for your post.
This.
I write to understand why people do the things they do. It is, above all, an act of hope. It reminds me of a quote by Isabelle Allende: “A book is not an end in itself; it is only a way to touch someone. The writer of good will carries a lamp to illuminate the dark corners.”
Rheea, I really resonate with this: “I have learnt to enjoy sitting with discomfort through fiction….it’s opened me to imagining new ways of thinking about old things. It has recreated my assumptions of humanity and its possibilities.” I definitely enjoy books that take a little work to connect with because the author or main character is coming at life through a different history/worldview/political lens.
As far as my own work, I wouldn’t use the word political (because I have so much hatred for what passes as politics today, there is just a visceral negative reaction to the word). I might simply say that I tell stories that are both coming from my worldview and gently questioning assumptions that readers who are similar to me (from similar upbringings, places of origin, religious beliefs, etc.) might not have thought to question. I want to get to the root of why we believe the way we do, I want people to struggle with the logic of their worldview so they can understand the why rather than focusing exclusively on the what (which I think is a fundamental failing of both the left and right when it comes to American politics–the blind following of certain people, programs, and policies).
But there’s no pressure or manipulation on my part to get the reader to come away with a certain belief, which I think you rightly identified as the reason people are squeamish about the declaration that all work is political–they don’t want to be preachy. I am usually using the narrative to wrestle with my own sometimes incongruous thoughts and beliefs, struggling with things I am not completely comfortable with, with those beliefs we hold in tension and cannot completely reconcile. And at the end of the book…the problem is not necessarily solved. :)
Rheea, thank you for your thoughtful reflections. Like you, I prefer the here and now. I also do my best to stay true to the known laws of physics (no bug-eyed monsters, mother-of-dragons, intergalactic visitors, etc). Your post is loaded with stimulating issues for me. For instance, being an old person, I am experiencing an ever-growing sense of estrangement in my own corner of the world. Not so much because of racial and ethnic changes in American society, but because of the widening gaps between young and old. I am now in the minority as a function of age. I now find myself embedded among people whose skills and interests are very different from mine.
But you are talking mostly about one of the third rails in fiction writing, politics. To some degree, wokeness, the pop term for heightened awareness, has made politics all the more risky for writers. Taking on political issues directly is threatening: how many readers are sure to be offended/turned off/etc?
But what is perhaps a greater influence resulting from an expanded worldview is the reflexive, self-regarding effect it generates on writers. You could call it the Selfie Effect. What writer any longer works without looking over her shoulder? What is the political messaging that her topic and treatment of it, her tone and slant reveal about herself? That pronouns have become loaded with signals proves this point. So the question is this: does sensitized, heightened consciousness result in stories that are more wise, or just in heightened self-consciousness and self-censorship? It’s a tricky place to be.
Thanks again for a valuable post.
Here’s are some questions we can think about: Is politics a struggle over power or is it the establishment of what is good? Is politics the assertion of ideas? Does that mean that one idea is more right than another? Does politics determine who gets what?
Fiction influences–sometimes heavily–how we see the world, think about things, and believe is right or wrong. So yes, fiction is political. What I wish is that the values underlying stories were less often automatic and more often deliberate or questioning. Fiction gains power when its authors own that power.
Thought-provoking post. I don’t write about this world, though I sometimes write about this time. I hope what I write reflects my values, and, at the moment, all values are politicized.
I was particularly moved by your discussion of discomfort, Rheea.
The connection between politics and identity has been researched extensively the past few years, especially in the context of how intractable political divisions have become. It turns out thst trying to see things from the perspective of someone who disagrees with you politically can seem like a violation of your selfhood. People have a distinctly physical reaction to views (or information) that counters, refutes, debunks or otherwise challenges their own deeply held political convictions.
This is where fiction can, I believe, make a difference — as long as authors can withstand the discomfort of imagining the inner lives of characters whose political beliefs are not just different from their own but directly opposed. This is easier said than done. It’s just so easy to fall into the easy trap of villainizing, over-simplifying, judging rather than justifying, rather than feeling deeply the position of someone whose beliefs strike at the very heart of who we believe ourselves to be, our sense of justice, our awareness of power, our openness to others.
Stories are often variously called conscience experiments or empathy experiments precisely when an author attempts to show us how others quite different from ourselves might act or feel. And how cannot such efforts be political if they deal with power, justice, community — on who deserves what, and why?
Thank you opening the door to this discussion.
My writing is political. I am a former activist and organizer, but I choose to take my work into other worlds, both fantasy and future, rather than write about our mundane world. Why?
Because it is possible to be much more explicit about what happens next, what could happen, and how it might be possible to remediate problems. In my science fiction, I often throw characters into a bind between the development of technology, political power, and family dynamics. My fantasy allows me to deal with power dynamics in a way that differs from the history of this world. I can explore matriarchy. I can speculate on what might happen if certain turning points went in a different direction.
But–I can also infuse hope into my work, in a manner that I just don’t see in contemporary non-genre fiction outside of overtly religious writing. I can present the possibility of a solution to a significant political problem.
Ursula K. LeGuin and Octavia Butler wrote extremely powerful political works within the speculative fiction genre. Any of those who would disdain the power of well-crafted speculative work needs to read (or reread) these women.
(Note: another reason why I prefer to write about activism and organizing in a speculative fiction setting? Easier to get around suspension of disbelief. Even in the context of today’s politics, I saw and did stuff that might be unbelievable to those who have never worked in campaigns or legislatures.)
Ah yes, I didn’t comment about this aspect of “political” writing, but I absolutely agree that genre fiction — especially sci-fi and fantasy — can offer an incredible view of contemporary political issues. Star Trek (the original 3-4 TV series) were great at that, especially Deep Space Nine. The same head writer for that show went on to remake Battlestar Galactica, which is just an incredible work of art and also unfortunately on-the-nose (without being preachy or obvious) about so many issues that we were facing in those times (late 2000s).
Melina Marchetta’s FINNIKIN OF THE ROCK is also a beautiful YA fantasy about refugees, but it’s not something you consciously think about when you’re reading. She just gently stretches your empathy muscles without needing to tell you that’s what she’s doing.
Rheea, an insightful post that should make all writers realize the impact that STORY has on we humans. For fiction allows the reader to look into a life, a character’s thoughts, a character’s decisions. Fiction has the power to change a reader’s mind, or at the very least, question a reader’s pre-conceived ideas–even more than nonfiction. Because fiction provides inner thoughts, struggles and decisions characters must make based on life experience. Though non-fiction allows us to question, it is often built on a thesis the writer is eager to promote. While fiction also does this (characters arguing, struggling with one another) it provides the reader a bigger space for understanding…and that one amazing word, EMPATHY. Your words are worth considering and remembering.
This *is* a thought-provoking post. My starting perspective is that “politics” is neither good nor bad: It’s just the system we develop to allow us to handle matters of the *polis* — the city or community. A simple example is the “talking stick” of some tribes, or the conch in Lord Of the Flies. Once a majority rejects the authority of the talking stick, you have war, or “politics by other means,” until a new political system arises. Probably involving an idiot with a crown.
What a beautiful post, Rheea, thank you. So much of this resonated with me (also a mixed-culture writer!) and the reasons that I’ve primarily been drawn to fiction.
— “The text was purposefully inaccessible in parts, yet the number of discussions we had around it was vast, nuanced, and vulnerable. Even though the reading of it wasn’t enjoyable in parts, it remains an impressionable text in my mind.”
This reminded me that even though a lot of us didn’t love assigned readings in school, there was value to the work we did.
— “I have learnt to enjoy sitting with discomfort through fiction.”
Only in the past decade or so, as a mature grown up, have I realized how important being able to sit with discomfort is, in all areas of life.
— “Fiction merges into the grey; it wraps around the flaws of our characters and allows a new way of looking at things without feeling the need to label a political stance. Fiction remains one of the gentlest ways to negotiate our larger world with its powerful ability to let us see how we’re all connected.”
Yes. Beautifully put, and so true.
The politics of the present are why I’m happy my novels are set in the 2005/2006 time frame – which has more or less settled down into a given value of the past.
I can ‘know’ that world, create characters who live in it, interweave their lives and story with a relatively fixed background. The funny part is that I originally planned it all – in the present. I’m just too slow, due to illness, to have finished writing while it was still relevant, and I think it worked out much better because of that distance in time. The ‘present’ is too unfinished.