Art (and life) as politics

J Clive Matthews
PostEuropean

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In the spirit of all tactics have a place (and art most certainly has an important place — one that’s been under-utilised by liberals and the left of late), this is worth a read: On the politics of Europe’s new literary superstars: Edouard Louis, Yahya Hassan, and Athena Farrokhzad take on class, race and politics

What we are going to do about it. That’s the issue. These three writers all seem to take it for granted: It is up to them as citizens, it is up to art as a form, and it is therefore up to them as artists, to change things…

They speak of the necessity of looking critically at political language — who gets to talk and from where — as essential to their literary projects. All three challenge stereotypes and resist simple identity politics. All three take on big issues — gender, class, race, religion — through fiercely individual forms of expression, while advocating collective change with a 1960s-like energy that treats the everyday as highly political and infused with meaning. While Hassan and Louis are explicitly biographical in their approach in a way that Farrokhzad is not, all seem to embrace, in updated fashion, the idea of the personal as political…

They also seem more concerned with the kind of belonging that takes place within a tradition of thinking or writing or art, than the kind that comes from being born in one place or into a particular social group.

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J Clive Matthews
PostEuropean

Once tweeting European politics, but now looking both more global and more personal. Politics is no longer just theory— so how to respond?