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In its many shapes and forms it is not usually a struggle to find an argument to link literature to politics, whether a novel’s political intentions are working silently in the background or being explicitly expressed. From deliberate reporting on an election, to subtle political commentary in a fictional dystopian novel, literature is dense with political musings and criticism. The question on politics and literature seems not to be whether they are interlinked, but of the possibility of being separated at all.
To define literature in nonelitist terms, I consider literature to be any published written work, factual or fictional, in all written forms. At first glance, it is easy to consider the concept of a text without political ties. There are many texts, especially academic pieces, that are explicit in their political meditations and motivations. These texts explain their stance, arguments in support of their position, and the thought process that led them there. However, deeper inspection into the politics of literature will find more subtle political fingerprints covering other texts that are not immediately obvious. Arguing that the political background of a written work has to be explicitly stated and explained is a harsh demand and would unjustly end the question of whether literature and politics are separable, finding too quickly that they most definitely are. Most texts, particularly modern fictitious ones, are subtle with their approach to political commentary, and the impact of their criticism is usually measured in the delicate handling of these issues.
However, there must also be limits to our freedom to read into the political shadows of a text, otherwise we would not only be able to label everything as political, but have endless arguments over what exactly these politics are. Perhaps the most reasonable suggestion would be to have realistic evidence to prove the political points you believe a text is trying to make. This evidence could be sourced in how positively, or negatively, certain political beliefs are portrayed in a text. In a satire this can mean the societal values of a social class, gender, or religion are mocked. These genre theories can become more plausible when proven to correlate with the known political beliefs of the author. Though a sound argument is needed to determine the right or wrong political connections a text holds, this does not suggest that a text can exist free of political influence. This idea requires that a political direction must be supported in a text before being accepted. The question seems to be what political connections lie in a text, assuming that they are present in the first place.
Politics are not only limited to the structure of a government and the rules and policies it implements, but extends further to the discourse around the real-life effects of them, including the differing opinions and perspectives of those whose lives are directly and indirectly influenced by these structures and decisions. Being political is not restricted to simply caring about the decisions that your government is making, it includes your contribution in the form of personal opinions on the arguments that are being made for or against certain decisions based on the effect they have on you and those around you. As these politics and the different attitudes towards them have direct and indirect consequences on our lives, being completely politically neutral may not only be irresponsible, but impossible. Truly having no opinion on a topic you have heard about is difficult, and even if this were the case, it would still say something to contribute to the existing discussion. Why and how is this topic something that people choose to stay neutral about, and what are the implications of this neutrality? Political involvement, whether conscious and unconscious, is littered with decisions. Though it may seem like a juxtaposition, staying neutral is still a loaded decision to make.
Our lives are so dense with political discussion and power that it makes sense for literature to be infiltrated by this on a fundamental level. After all, do our beliefs not shape everything we do? Perhaps this is not so much an instance of politics having a hold over literature, but rather a hold over society in general, with political influence in literature becoming a natural subsequent outcome. It could be argued that even something seemingly unambiguous, such as a lab report, could have ties back to the author’s political background as to why they were investigating and the conclusion they reached, should we have no limits of investigation ourselves. One of the most significant places an academic will look when studying a text is the author’s background, especially in regard to their socio-economic class, gender and political values. Potential layers of insight can be revealed by forming an idea of the writer’s thought process and can push discoveries of potential hidden messages to the surface, including biases held unconsciously. Knowing the social and consequent political background of a writer can narrow down theories of the political agenda of a text. This can help in eliminating a question of whether a text is praising or mocking a certain social class for example, or for determining whether the author intended to create a harsh satirical piece of an out-of-date idea, compared to a misguided but genuine defence of one. Separating authors from their texts may be possible, but surely naïve when studying the layers of a text.
Bearing this in mind, the jokes about literature students and academics finding far-fetched meanings out of nothing present something to consider: must every text have all of these layers of social commentary that academics claim? It is hard to imagine what literature without any political influence would look like at all. Even superficially neutral pieces are written by individuals with specific life experiences and beliefs that lead them to create it. Conceivably, we are political beings, vulnerable and malleable to the influence of opinions and governmental decisions that dictate our society, whether we acknowledge this reality or not. This considered, it is not ridiculous to suggest that all art we create will be influenced by our political background and beliefs that are notably alive in our written expression..
If we were able to separate literature from its political context there begs the question of whether or not this would be a desirable literary environment. Do we not need art to say things? The fact that non-political literature examples are hard to think of, or at least extremely difficult to identify an apolitical example that had a significant impact on its time, says something about how necessary politics are to literature. Additionally, this points to the importance of literature to politics, by its use for debate and theorization of political discourse. Maybe literature can exist without politics, but it is difficult to imagine what it would look like, and the type of person who would be able to write such a thing, considering even the conscious choice to write something absent of politics is a political action itself.
In any case, one of the main reasons literature is studied is to gain insight into the political views and beliefs of a time. Literature can be looked to for insights into the minds of those currently writing and of those who lived through certain historical periods, revealing the historical period’s societies and values. If we intentionally created literature devoid of political shadows, we could nonetheless assume that it would be studied in the future to understand our time that we lack enough of a distance to properly comprehend. In the end, can a text ever be truly free of political meaning, if political meaning is going to be forced upon it anyway?
