“Apolitical” is simply a word from the dictionary. Perhaps that is a standard we humans have created in a state of delusion, to celebrate a prospective position that allows us a vague sense of triumph (again, all in the head) over the very power-principles that shape our life through metaphors like family, office, promotions and premonitions. It is also a kind of refuge for us who do not understand politics and therefore must avoid the ununderstable. But what kind of politics am I talking about?

To be unashamedly direct, there can be nothing outside politics. It is in the very texture of reality and it can be read in between the lives and our actions that somehow bear the testimony of power. We live in a certain way because we are allowed to live like that, just like we do not allow our kids to be outside after sundown. The constant drills of our civil life are the policies of politics, and they are there to code our core with programs that compliment power. We are through whom they outsource their plans. We are trained to repeat what is authorized; we are bound to go through certain tunnels at the end of which lies the fiction of satisfaction. Thus, we are condemned to be political.

If nothing can be outside politics, then literature too is influenced and even often determined by it. But maybe that is something everyone already knows – everyone with some ideas about the politics of representation, poetics of politics, postcolonialism, Orientalism, Marxism, Feminism, Historicism (if we consider the political events as the development of history) and all that. If you are wondering, out of everything why literature, I would say- why not, since it has the potential to reach the very private parts of our lives and incept ideologies, for which we have absolute respect, that are powerful and hence full of diverse potentials.

Beyond the mere spellings of the words, the words have spells too that can enchant a soul into adopting ideologies. But ideology is the recurrent inversion of the constant of change. It is the sediment of thoughts that is left by an oppositional stance taken carefully or under influence. Therefore it is always this- from the affected reader to the author (who too is a reader of reality) to the culture that generates “meaning” under the supervision of political power.

I am talking about politics of the pure, theoretical kind. In literature departments, if our approach can be eclectic and if we can adopt different disciplines like history, philosophy, media-studies, cultural studies, gender and class studies to understand literature or the intention behind that literature a bit better, then it is high time to incorporate pure political theories to our curriculum so that we can trace the cause of the chaos that leaves an imprint on the mind of a thinker and ultimately on the pages of a book.

What political theories are our politicians driven by? Although we do not have our own political theories per se, we have rather always depended on our practices of the western ones. The decolonization prompted an investigation on a large scale. It was the investigation of the western ways of life because the “white circus” was simply marvelous. It was an investigation of the source of imperial power. It was an investigation to know- how to dominate. That is and has been the only aim, either for a positive or a negative change.

The legacy of western political theories underlines our existence here in South Asia. The legacy, through actions and reactions in the reality, reaches into literature as well. When literature reflects a political event, and when the event is a direct outcome of an ideology based on solid theory, we are bound to find a new scope to see what lies behind the lines.

Understanding the deeper meanings and the aesthetics of a text, that is either dealing with a historical political event or any event that addresses serious social issues, is possible through the critical theories of literature that are already there. But the value of that understanding will be limited to a particular circle of academics and might not benefit others. Even understanding the politics through theoretical frameworks of power-relation is possible through literary theories and criticisms known to all. But a disciplined knowledge of the pure political theory will help us trace the origin of an ideology found in a text – an ideology that moulds the mind and codes the core.

We need “Political Literary Criticism” that will give us a scope to understand and assess literature from the perspective of political theories. We should seek the patterns of political thoughts in literature as well because often it is literature that conveys them more convincingly and more covertly.  Moreover, to understand a bit better the modern world that is always defined and designed by political ideologies, we more than ever need to unravel the core and witness the principles of change in their raw formative stage, so that we can identify literary pieces that are either advocating or denouncing these principles in a raw or refined way.

If we believe that literature is revolution of the sophisticated sort—is a kind of extended slogan—then we have to be careful about it so that the dissemination does not go unchecked. This “Political Literary Criticism”, along with other supporting cultural theories and literary criticisms, will help us weld, exclusively, the hitherto separate fields together and create yet another stronger tool that will not only clarify fiction, but also fact, and then fiction a bit more. A deeper awareness about politics that determines social structures will only help us determine the merit of a text that is claiming to be “conscious” of those structures. The affinity of the ideas in the text with the political theories/ideologies and the way the outcome of those ideologies are depicted will determine the intention of an author; whether they want to deconstruct of destroy.  

The writer is Assistant Professor, Department of English,

Varendra University