Tribune. Art is essential. Necessary. The fruit of a deep, ineradicable human need, art has been an integral part of society since the times when human beings sought refuge in caves. And since then, art has also been a means of exercising subtle or ostensible social control. In ancient Egypt, the architectural marvels of the pyramids were also designed to command the admiration of the slaves who carried the bricks; they thus confirmed their place – lower – and made them more docile. The Renaissance popes called in their service all the artists capable of handling a brush and made them work for the exaltation of Christian cosmology. Stalin, he gathered all the writers (a notoriously rebellious group) who wanted to live by their pen in the Union of Soviet writers, where their raison d'être was the glorification of the state.
America had to be different. It was to be a beacon for people who fled dogmas, a place where the collective project was to create a society where everyone could be an individual – nirvana for an artist. From the poet Walt Whitman (Song of myself !) up to the painter Georgia O’Keeffe, via the photographer Robert Frank, in the United States, the artists were free to express their personal vision of things. If they choose to sing the status quo, like Steven Spielberg, they win Oscars. If they want to shatter it, like an Allen Ginsberg, they are given the National Book Award.
But something fundamental has changed and, these days, art in the United States must serve a moral or didactic purpose. I'm not saying that artists can no longer write, paint or photograph what they want. But if artists and writers do not follow certain precepts, they are less likely to have their work mentioned in the mainstream media, mentioned in good circles in society and considered as part of well-meaning cultural discourse.
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It’s the grain of sand in the oyster that creates the pearl
It’s risky for me, an American novelist, to write the sentence you just read. Why ? It's no secret that the American Cultural Temple is a progressive project. And I think it's a good thing. If someone has to control the culture, I prefer it to be progressives rather than the National Rifle Association (powerful lobby defending the right of Americans to carry a weapon). Unfortunately, there is a price to this: homogeneity. As Hegel would say (thesis, antithesis, synthesis), when people agree, it becomes more difficult to make progress. How can art exist if everyone has the same ideas? Art goes against the grain. It is the grain of sand in the oyster that creates the pearl.
Take the example of Hollywood. It’s a truism to say that Hollywood’s culture is progressive. Perhaps you are thinking of writing a screenplay. Knowing the political orientation of the producers to whom you will try to sell it, what are you going to do? Obviously, there are quite a few producers who value complexity, but what you will probably do, because almost everyone does, is to put complexity aside and write something that reinforces vision of those who will sign the check.
"Radical inclusion"
We observe a similar phenomenon in publishing, in any case in the field of literary fiction. If an author creates a main character who questions progressive values (I don't say "condemn", no, just "questions"), he risks penalizing his work when it is subjected to criticism. However, in a world where critical approval is required to sell books, the business is off to a bad start. And if by chance the author decides to shed light on the inner life of his protagonist, the problems worsen exponentially. There is no Michel Houellebecq in contemporary American literature, because current conditions do not allow it. A New York publisher will flee an author who writes what Houellebecq writes about Islam; critics would ignore it or twist it. A novel like Submission (Flammarion, 2015) can only be published by a large American publisher because Houellebecq is not American.
Progressivism today has another major aspect, and from a cultural point of view it is perhaps the most important of all: progressivism favors groups formerly excluded from power – women, blacks, Latinos, Asians, gays and other historically marginalized groups. On the surface, it looks like a very positive development. Let us call this phenomenon "radical inclusion". However, it is this trait of the current progressive project that greatly harms art. According to an unspoken cultural law, writers have permission, or not, to write this or that story. An inverted hierarchy has been set up, where those who were previously excluded now find themselves at the top, and where those who have excluded (metaphorically, at least; it is assumed that these artists have not excluded anyone in particular) are found below.
Take the example of Chinese-American author Amelie Wen Zhao, who postponed the publication of her novel. Blood heir when she was accused of racism for writing about slavery without dwelling on her horrors. Another example: Kristine Kathryn Rusch, a multiple award-winning white author, has been so discouraged by traditional publishers to write about a black character that she has come to self-publish the novels she devotes to an African American detective .
Self flagellation
In mid-January, controversy rages over the novel American Dirt, written by Jeanine Cummins, an Irish and Puerto Rican writer (one of her grandparents is Puerto Rican) who describes herself as white. The book, for which the author received a million dollar advance, recounts the journey of migrants through Mexico to the United States border.
Despite her extensive research, Cummins feared that she would be insufficiently qualified to write this book that she expressed this fear in her afterword. "I wish someone with darker skin than me wrote this book", she writes regretfully. Much of the literary world agreed with her and Cummins has been the target of terrible attacks on social networks because she had the audacity as a white woman to write about what they experience migrants. Appeared, its publisher decided to cancel the promotional tour initially planned.
Novelist Lauren Groff, who wrote a favorable review of this novel in The New York Times, confessed "I was sure I was not the right person to review this book, I could never say if it correctly represents Mexican culture or the plight of migrants, I have never been Mexican or migrant ". If the goal is to create an open literary culture, self-flagellation by authors to find out who has the right to write does not create optimal results.
Authenticity trumps talent
At an Australian literary festival, white author Lionel Shriver gave a speech wearing a sombrero to denounce the injustice of the principle that only group members should be allowed to write about it. If it’s difficult to approve her choice of dress, I fully agree with Shriver’s thought. Today, nothing is more prized than authenticity, which takes precedence over talent. You see the problem. Or maybe not. We may disagree and yet coexist, this is how democracy works.
But why is all of this happening today? Much of the arts community perceives attacks on progressive values embodied by the sinister presidency of Donald Trump as life threatening. The nervous systems of each other being on red alert, all this leads us, not surprisingly, to a good dose of reducing thought. In this struggle, the artists are not ready to give up a millimeter of land. Groups who feel threatened withdraw into their own communities, where they comfort each other in the company of like-minded people. If the American melting pot has always been something of a myth, for much of the period following the Second World War, it represented an aspiration, an ideal of society.
In America today, if we make ethnicity the main feature of our identity, the danger we run is that we will no longer identify ourselves primarily as Americans. However, ironically, progressism will suffer; and when progressivism suffers, non-didactic art, art that exists for purposes – yes, I know, it sounds silly – of beauty and truth, finds itself under the knife.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with a creation shaped by identity or politics, but in my view, in any case, the most powerful art is that which is shaped by the humanity of the artist.
(Translated from English by Valentine Morizot)
Seth Greenland is a writer. The one we call "New Tom Wolfe" was born in New York in 1955. After many odd jobs, including that of "crab killer", he started writing as a screenwriter and novelist. Among his books, published in France by Liana Levi, we can cite Mister Bones (2005) A model boss (2008) An angry Buddhist (2013) or, Mechanics of the fall (2019).
