Poetry and Manufacturing Consent

Andrew Duggan
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read
International Brigades fighting in the Spanish Civil War

I have a friend who considers himself ‘political’ in that he is ‘actively’ concerned about government policy, public affairs as well as ideas or strategies of a particular party or group in politics. With my encouragement he reads poetry. However, his view is that ‘most poetry’ is passive and that most poets have become preoccupied with obsessing about the nature and characterization of their own existence and ‘personal politics’. In this context rather than address the major political, economic and social issues that we face around the world, poets and their poetry contribute to the continued status quo.

In his view poetry is not about ‘doing things’ or changing the world (which he thinks it should be), it is more about persuading the poet themselves, as well as the general audience that poetry should focus on interpretations of personal experience and existence.

So I thought about what he said.

My view is that the English Language is political in that it is used to convey a dominant ideology. Any analysis of the political inclinations of many of the ‘great’ English Language poets would conclude a political bias in favour of a ‘ruling elite’.

In his essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946), the British writer George Orwell focused on political language, which, according to Orwell, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.

On the Medium site most of contributors seem to be American. Most of the active poets seem to be American. Most of the subject matter seems to be about concepts of ‘the divided self’ — with narrow cultural interpretations of these concepts. A conclusion could be drawn that modern poetry like modern politics is not democratic. That poetry in general represents a poetic language that is not only vague or meaningless, to many outside of the narrow confines of some western countries and poetry forums, but represents a language that expresses a particular experience and characterization of poetry and life.

This characterization reminds me of Noam Chomsky’s concepts outlined in his book ‘Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988). In the book he argued that mass communication media in the United States “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function’. It could be argued that that poetry and forums like Medium are part of this continued process.

Of course I told my friend that there have many ‘political poems’. I gave him a collection of poetry from the Spanish Civil War as well some of the poetry from the First World War. But part of the problem is that many people (and poets) are not sure what the purpose of poetry is. Assuming of course that there is such a purpose?

Plato wanted to banish poets from his Republic because he felt ‘they can make lies seem like truth’. Shelley thought poets were “the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” and Auden insisted that “poetry makes nothing happen.” In the end my concern is the narrow focus of poetry as it is represented in some countries and some forums. In this respect I felt my friend has a point. In other respects…we will have to continue to discuss our opinions.

Andrew Duggan

Written by

Medical English Teacher

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