Writing and Politics

I had a meeting with my supervisors the other week and they seem pleased with the writing so far - so that's good. Perhaps a little more writing at this point wouldn't have gone amiss, but I've managed to rope myself into collectives for an Anarcha-feminist event in Manchester and the Merseyside Mayday Festival, so not much chance of writing anything fictional until at least May 2nd.

Just so this blog doesn't die before it's begun, though, I decided that, since my politics is clearly getting in the way of my writing, I'd do a post about why my politics doesn't get in the way of my writing.

I'll start by mentioning a thing that annoys me. I am explaining an idea for a story, or something that happens in the story, or even showing an extract of my story to somebody who happens to know my politics. People don't know me for any length of time without finding out about my politics, so I may as well make my politics known here: I am, in no particular order, an anarchist, a communist and a feminist. I probably count as a few other things, but that's my conspicuously secular trinity (in that I tend to a belief that the three are actually one and the same, as the core values of any one of those ideologies implies the necessity of the others, but that's not what I want to talk about here.)

So, it may come to the attention of somebody viewing my writing, and knowing my politics, that elements of my politics can be detected in elements of my writing. What I want to know from the reader of an early draft is what every writer wants to know: does the plot work? Are the characters engaging? Are the outcomes plausible? Does the language sound right? Am I a worthless peddler of purple prose? Should I burn every word I've ever written and never show my face in polite society again? But all that person wants to tell me is: "That bit, there, with the anarchist/feminist/communist thing...You're just writing that in because you're an anarchist/feminist/communist." It's the qualifier that irks me rather than the observation. Why "just"? Why should the presence of political thought preclude other narrative concerns? The implication is that visible ideological bias is inherently damaging to the quality of creative writing, and this assumption is expected to hold without the need for any solid objections to either the ideology or the writing.

There's a misconception that if radical political thought and narrative collide, the only possible result can be propaganda, often described as "thinly veiled" to compound the crime, as if hiding the ideology behind heavier drapes would make it more acceptable. Now, if what's actually meant by "thinly veiled" is "badly integrated" or "inconsistent with the plot and characters" or "The plot and characters are insubstantial enough that there's nothing to this story except the ideological message", then those are all valid criticisms, but the presence of an ideological theme does not, in itself, turn a well-written story into "mere" propaganda. In fact, it's difficult to imagine well-written fiction that doesn't have political or ideological themes going on somewhere.

What separates good fiction from propaganda is not how well-hidden, or even how valid the politics are, but how good the fiction is. William Morris' News from Nowhere, for instance - much as I can get behind its aims and principles, and enjoy it for its visionary passion - is a dull story. The characters are not characters but devices, the questions don't ever challenge the explanations the protagonist is given, and nothing really happens - no changes in pace, no tension, no conflict, no plot. Something like Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, on the other hand, despite some politics I find elitist and objectionable, is a good piece of fiction. It has characters who change, develop, make decisions, take risks, ask awkward questions of themselves, each other and the reader. It has twists and turns that make me want to know how it ends. I may not accept Bradbury's assertion that a society seeking after equality for all will attempt to eradicate innate intellectual advantage by burning all the books, but the readability of the novel allows me to suspend my disbelief - if not my disagreement - enough to enjoy it as a good read. This doesn't only apply to overtly political utopian and dystopian fiction, either.

The idea that fiction can be apolitical fails to take into account that every fiction writer is the de facto dictator of their own world. More than that, writers are gods, with ultimate power over cause and effect. I not only decide what dilemmas my characters will face, and how they will react to them, but what the outcome of their reactions will be. It's a mighty responsibility, but I don't shirk it. Many writers do. They claim not to be political or, worse, politically neutral. My favourite debunking of this attitude comes from Yonmei on FeministSF, who says:

I cannot make a decision politically neutral by declaring I have no interest in politics or that I am not a political writer: that statement just means a writer who is [not] prepared to think about the politics of their fractal selection - or at least that they’re not prepared to acknowledge any political thought. The only political decisions/political thought that appears neutral is the politics of the dominant majority. If, without thinking about it, a writer strives to appear politically neutral, the kind of political writing they will do is the promotion of the dominant narrative.
Yonmei, 'What is a Writer's Job?'

Nobody, and certainly no fiction, is politically neutral. Espousing the dominant politics of one's own time and place is not neutrality, but it is safe, practically invisible and highly unlikely to get you labelled a propagandist. This is illusory, though. Failing to question the status quo is as good as tacitly approving it, and besides, characters who don't question are boring. Attempts at political neutrality are, therefore, far more likely to lead a story into both bad politics and bad writing than a committed, well-integrated ideological component to the narrative.

So, when it is pointed out to me that my writing reflects my politics, I can only look puzzled and ask: "Whose politics were you expecting it to reflect?"