Callum Tilley . . ‘All good art is political!’ Toni Morrison, arguably one of America’s most eminent writers, was emphatic about the political nature of art.
In an interview with Poets & Writers , she reinforced the idea that art is, through its innate connection to the world in which it is created, inherently political. Morrison continued, ‘All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS [..
.] the [artists] that try hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo.” An attempt to be apolitical is therefore, in itself, a political choice.
Not to tenuously tie Morrison to popular culture – although as a commentator on American politics and society, perhaps she would have appreciated the comparison – but this recalls Kamala Harris’ now-infamous line, ‘You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you’. Art is inextricable from its context, which is itself political. As such, all art is political.
This contextualism also applies to literature. Widely circulated and debated, novels perhaps represent the most commonly-circulated ‘pieces’ of art in the modern age. We buy them, borrow them, lend them, shelve them, and consume the words and stories contained within them.
We can ask the same questions of novels and literature relating to their political natures as we do of other art forms; are novels, as products of their contexts, political? Should they be? Or is it reductive to view art merely as an expression .