MCLC: Censorship and salesmanship at US book fair (14)

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Censorship and salesmanship at US book fair (14)
On the relationship between cliquish social pressures and state sanctions, Mr. Abrahamsen is trying to have it both ways.  "Yes, the government is ultimately behind much of it. But not all of it."  Then, four sentences later, "The government is not the problem, it is an extreme symptom of the problem."  It is curious to hear a symptom of a problem described as lying behind much of the problem.  When Mr. Abrahamsen writes that "if the Chinese government were removed tomorrow this [literary] establishment would still be in place, still choking China's literary production" he raises an interesting question.  It is not necessary, of course, to hypothesize the removal of the government, only the relaxation of its sanctions in restraint of speech.  I wonder if one could turn up some suggestive data by comparing the tone of literary society shortly before and after 1989.  I find Dr. Admussen's argument persuasive.  The state provides the motive force behind social pressures within the guild to avoid sensitive topics.  To minimize the state's role in this process is a fallacy, like that of a visitor to a water-powered mill who concludes that since the millstone is seldom wet, the flow of the river must play little part in the grinding of the grain.
On the relationship between politics and art, in his most recent post Mr. Abrahamsen strikes a reasonable tone:  "All I said was that political art should also be good art." But that is not all he has said.  He said that no one has been imprisoned -- or even "molested" or subjected to "a slap on the wrist" -- on account of his art.  Since a number of writers have been molested, some quite harshly, he recognized that an explanation was in order.  The first explanation was that they were punished for their "political activities."  The second was that whatever they wrote has not been, in Mr. Abrahamsen's judgment, art.  As a guideline for understanding this judgment, he offered the "politics poking through" test.  This metaphor calls for careful interpretation.  I suggested that Mr. Abrahamsen was asking us to consider shallow and merely vehicular works of art, in which politics is the message; but that there are also great works of art with strong and inescapable political themes; and that in principle an authoritarian government which has developed an elaborate machinery of suppression will abhor either kind of work -- or a work anywhere along the spectrum of artistic merit --  if it threatens to inspire significant resistance or dissent.  This raises the question whether any of the works whose authors have been sanctioned do in fact have artistic merit.  I understand Mr. Abrahamsen to be answering in the negative.  Let me call attention once again to the coincidence that Mr. Abrahamsen finds no artistic merit in those who have suffered the wrath of the state, but much in some who have not.  Seeking an explanation that would not be injurious to Mr. Abrahamsen, I wondered if some of the stylistic values which are esteemed among Western critics might also render a work relatively innocuous in the eyes of the regime.  This would help explain the coincidence -- but it is only speculation.
Mr. Abrahamsen is right to regret the predominance of criticism in the responses, for his article made good points about the role of social pressure and the ambiguities with which authors must deal.  But he invited that criticism by minimizing the role of the state and dismissing as artless the critical work of independent writers.
Call me overheated.  我是流氓我怕谁.
A. E. Clark <aec at raggedbanner.com>
by denton.2 at osu.edu on June 24, 2015
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