MCLC: politics, literature, and culture (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: A. E. Clark <aec at raggedbanner.com>
Subject: politics, literature, and culture (1)
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Thomas Pickering is right that there is something odd about the frequency
in MCLC of discussion addressing the legitimacy, motives, and impact of
actions taken by the Chinese government.  But I would trace this
abnormality not to the prejudices of forum participants, as he suggests,
but rather to the circumstances of Chinese literature and culture today:
the State is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. In a land of high culture
where there is censorship, and where PEN maintains a list of writers
imprisoned for writing; in a nation of multiple ethnicities where
expressions of minority religious culture are tightly restricted; and
among the heirs of an ancient scholarly tradition, where professors like
Ilham Tohti can be taken away in the night for transparently political
reasons: in this context I doubt one can honestly discuss culture while
humming one's way past the political situation.

I object, also, to Mr. Pickering's characterization of Wang Lixiong.  To
seek to understand the causes of hatred is not to condone actions that
spring from that hatred. The Black Panthers were known (perhaps I am
painting with a broad brush, but this was surely implied in Mr.
Pickering's comparison) for fomenting violence, and at times organizing &
committing it.  If an American parallel must be found for Mr. Wang, it
would more plausibly be to the sociologists who said in the 1960s that
without better recognition of rights and better provision of
opportunities, the racial violence in US cities was unlikely to stop.

A. E. Clark