Nice piece. Haven't read the Suleiman book but is the point of using roman à thèse just that propaganda is too pejorative? You could probably call Dante's Comedy an epic à thèse but calling it propaganda would, I feel, give the wrong idea. Or do you think that, in the case of the novel, the pejorative implication is warranted?
Squirrel Nutkin as capitalist allegory: interesting, and possibly not unexpected from the bourgeois Potter, who certainly is interested in property, power, discipline, thrift, prudence, and hard work. But I think it's much more natural to read Owl as the feudal lord of Owl Island (I had always read Owl Island as named after Owl but if you take allegory of lordship seriously you might infer the reverse; "Owl" as in "Surrey" or "York."). The squirrels give gifts, tributes, rather than strict payment, there's no capital or markets involved, and Nutkin's crime isn't primarily idleness but lèse-majesté. Of course, in a country controlled by a landed but capitalist gentry, I can see where it could be hard to tell the difference. Now Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: there's a children's book that naturalizes capitalism!
Suleiman uses roman à thèse because she's focused on the more specific genre of French novel--her analysis is really more niche than I'm presenting it as here! And at least in this book she's not the hugest fan of the roman à thèse because she sees its attempt to close itself off from multiple interpretations to be "authoritiarian"--not an assessment that I agree with, but the book's great nonetheless.
I don't think the pejorative implication is warranted--lots of overtly didactic art is great! (And, like "realism," didacticism is a feature that is present to some degree in just about every text, to your point about Dante.) But it's hard to find a word that means "novel that's overtly trying to convince the reader to hold a moral/political view" that is non-pejorative and easily understood by most readers. Perhaps you have suggestions? I've been fretting over the right word to choose for a while! "Propaganda" is used by Foulkes, but not Suleiman or Booth (who uses "rhetorical," which is a term that when used opens up its own cans of worms), and it's a hard word to use because of the connotation of authoritarianism or dishonesty--but it's also a word that pretty much everyone recognizes and understands, which is why I've sort of reluctantly opted for it.
(Also--I had the same reaction to the reading of Squirrel Nutkin!! It's feudalism!!)
Didactic novel and propaganda novel and ideological novel, with qualifications, along with many other labels, are all accurate to describe novels that are meant to be pointedly persuasive, enlightening, or ideological, though these terms have all been propagandized to sound "off" in "respectable" literary circles.
Partisan novel is also accurate though has been belittled to indicate genre. Same as government novel or even political novel and reform novel, etc.
"Novel with a purpose" might be the most neutral sounding descriptor, partly because it's so vague, and would need to be heavily qualified with "overt" or "explicit" or "specific" purpose.
Antiwar novels or revolutionary novels or anarchist novels and so on are types of all those.
The abuse of even the notion of antiwar novels is notable as well.
I don't have any further reading, but I do have an anecdote from my experience as a middle/high school English teacher.
I used to teach Animal Farm (I've taught this to both 8th and 9th graders), and the thing I found that really made the unit of study "work" was somewhat counter-intuitive: I outlawed any discussion of soviet Russia until the last day of the unit. I took a dictatorial hand to this, too. Whenever a student tried to bring it up (and they did, they knew how to use Wikipedia) I would shut that down. Until the last day, we were only allowed to talk about this as a simple story of the animals who rebelled against Manor Farm and what happened to them next.
An interesting thing happens when you take the novel on its own terms, rather than the one-step removed meta context that we all know is there: we start to actually talk about the characters -- what they want, what happens to them, how it could happen to them, what it all means, if it could happen to us and how, etc. Approaching it indirectly, even just a little bit, allowed for 8th graders to read it much more deeply, rather than just figuring out the right answer.
Animal Farm has a lot of depth, but for me, the "propaganda" perspective makes that hard to see sometimes.
Of course, there's another conversation to be had about Animal Farm as propaganda, and how malleable it's been over the years. It started as an anti-totalitarianism fable (written by a socialist), then became a CIA-funded anti-Russia film. In the 90s it was turned into a Francis Fukuyama "end of history" movie (filmed in the style of Babe!). Since then, more than one author has written unlicensed sequels (loosely framed as parodies to skirt copyright law, but we all know better), including one that was a post-9/11 war on terror fable.
I don't know how relevant any of that is, but I love this progression and try to share it as often as I can. It's also possible that Animal Farm isn't a propaganda book at all (it doesn't end with an explanation of the point in the way you describe). Maybe fables are a different thing altogether.
I really love that as a teaching strategy--taking the novel out of historical context probably adds a ton to students' readings of the text, especially once you reintroduce the historical context. I would use that for my college students, too! You should write some of these lesson ideas in longer posts so that I can steal them :)
Your point about the malleability of propaganda (I mean, heavens, think of the uses to which Rosie the Riveter and Uncle Sam have been put...) puts an interesting kink in the gears of Suleiman's argument. I'm going to have to think about that more!!
Haha, thanks! I keep thinking about putting some of these thoughts into longer, more thought-out essays... time is the issue. That and perfectionism -- somehow, with comments I don't mind just hashing something out and pressing "post," while with a full stand-alone blog/essay I get bogged down in trying to make it perfect.
I have thought before about doing a series called "The Syllabus" or something where I do an in-depth essay on each book I taught during my 10 years in the classroom. That would be fun. I guess I have the start of my ANIMAL FARM essay above.
His introduction to Animal Farm was suppressed for decades after the book came out. Here's a telling passage in it - which of course applies to America as well, right up to the present:
"The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.
"Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
Oh dang! I had forgotten all about that intro. I used to read portions of that with my students... funny how this stuff falls out of my brain after being out of the classroom for a while...
Probably you've already read it but my thinking on this subject has probably been most shaped by Lionel Trilling’s essay “The Meaning of a Literary Idea.”
Heart of Darkness would be an interesting case study. On one level an encomium of Roger Casement and a literary exposé of the cruelty of Leopold's Belgian Congo. On the next, overlaid, Conrad's native, natural, personal ambiguity. He never came down on the side of an idea without unease. And then, take readings of it--Achebe using it to call Conrad a racist, when it feels rather more like Achebe is missing the irony. But Conrad could have been more explicit, less ambiguous, less ironic. And then it'd've been a worse novel--but a greater propaganda tool?
Haven't read Heart of Darkness for a few years, so I hesitate to comment on it in much detail--but I think Foulkes would say that every book is propaganda--the question isn't whether it functions as propaganda but what values it promotes. To gaze upon Belgian Congo and see ambiguity--or to see the novel as a genre that gives readers wisdom or enlightenment by introducing irony and ambiguity--that's a political stance in its own way, too, right?
It seems that our idea of what makes a good novel--complexity, ambiguity, irony--is not apolitical but a certain kind of politics. (And very often it's a political stance that is salubrious--it's often really important to deal with ambiguity, complexity, etc!)
I don't think Achebe misses the irony or the point, he just thinks the book is racist nonetheless. Personally, I like HEART OF DARKNESS and I also find Achebe's critique highly valuable.
great post! a huge evolution in my thinking on this topic was reading Trotsky's 'Literature and Revolution.' he's coming at this from the other side, not just defining what literature is propagandistic, but thinking about how can art serve a practical political purpose. he dismisses didactic works as being mere propaganda, but praises more nuanced and complicated writing that is able to speak to the contradictions and historical significance of political struggle.
as I've been mulling what this looks like, I've been thinking in particular about the films the Zone of Interest and The Brutalist. they both present critiques of zionism, but ZOI is much more didactic and clear about it. some will even interpret the Brutalist as a pro-zionist film, a characterization that I think doesn't bear scrutiny. for me, the Brutalist is more effective in it's aims because it's complicated and enigmatic and makes you really think about it. ZOI is useful as a sort of reference point (when people are living large off the suffering of others, it's easy to just say 'Zone of Interest' and people know what you mean) but for me it's less deep as art and therefore less influential in the long-term.
I still loved both movies! And my thinking might still evolve on this.
Thank you for the reading suggestion! Some of the reading I've done so far--the Foulkes in particular--has been sort of haunted by the specter of Soviet propaganda art, Nazi propaganda too. But I'd bet that there are pretty clear similarities between Trotsky's essay and, say, Frederick Douglass, who wrote a short novel with the express intent to produce propaganda. ("The Heroic Slave.") Without having seen either of the films you're talking about, I take your point--didactic/propagandistic art still needs to be good!
Great piece! I’m taking a course on the philology of the Nazi language, so this feels especially pertinent. Just placed an order for Authoritarian Fictions too
Authoritarian Fictions has been great for me, and is really helping with my dissertation! I just kind of pass over the parts with diagrams, but Suleiman is a good prose stylist. I hope you enjoy it--let me know what you think. The A.P. Foulkes book is short and readable and spends more time talking about Nazi propaganda, so you might wanna check that one out too
That's a helpful distinction! I have always drawn a mental line between art and propaganda, but that's not the same thing as a definition. The idea that a propagandistic novel tries to tell you how to think about it rings true. It seems to me that the least "propagandistic" novels are the ones that reflect something of the mystery/obscurity/subtlety of our lived reality, rather than explain it away too handily.
I'm glad you found it useful! I do think, though, that we should be wary of dismissing propagandistic novels out of hand. (I think Suleiman does this, a little bit.) Sometimes, propaganda can be excellent art! There's a lot in our world that is mysterious and obscure and subtle, and I love novels that explore this. But moments of moral clarity and moral certainty--the sense of good and evil--are also part of the human experience, and as such worth representing and responding to!
I agree that there are some very good novels that make bold claims about good and evil. I'm just not sure that I'm comfortable classifying them as propaganda. Propaganda feels distinctly manipulative or forceful in a way that I suspect undermines, at least partially, its artistic merit. Like an argument made in bad faith. I think I'm working with a narrower definition of propaganda that you are--not to say I couldn't be persuaded! I do find myself thinking of it as more of a gradient thanks to your article. Do you have an example of a propaganda piece that you find to be excellent art?
Yeah, that's the problem with "propaganda" as a term--it's so often used to describe dishonest, manipulative acts of persuasion that people react negatively to it... there's another thread in here discussing how very difficult it can be to choose the right word.
The great propaganda novel, imo, is Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Naomi Kanakia has a great post on here praising the book. Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward's A Singular Life are less propagandistic (if I may use the term) than Stowe, but still pretty heavy-handed and good nonetheless. In his day, lots of Charles Dickens readers considered his novels to be didactic, and like the others, I don't think he's quite on the level of Stowe, but a novel like Little Dorrit is pretty clearly trying to teach a political lesson without suffering as literature.
This reminds me of the recent (as in, 21st century) arguments about "political art." In regards to literature, I think this is best exemplified by Viet Trang Nguyen's various essays and speeches pushing for the full politicization of art/the novel, and various critics responding to him. (I think a lot of these critiques are in bad faith, or in any event, I adore "The Sympathizer," and think its very existence is an excellent argument for the political novel. I digress.)
The modern question -- "should art be political?" -- of course presupposes that politics can be separated from art. "Politics" are conceptualized as the realm of the "politician," an unsavory figure which no one wants to be associated with, and so of course novelists avoid putting politics in their novels, lest they be smeared as politicians.
I knew that Nguyen had made those critical arguments but I had forgotten about it! "Critical fiction" I think he called it? That's a good lead--I'll check it out.
And to your point about the "should art be political?" question--I absolutely agree, and find myself kind of banging my head against the wall when I hear people say that art shouldn't ever be political. Political life IS human life! Maybe art shouldn't be clumsy, or overbearing, or simplistic, or reactively partisan, or a merely tool for electioneering, or whatever, and I think that's what is often meant by the phrase.
I find myself split on this. On the one hand, I am very sympathetic to the idea that everything is political, because the whole point of politics is that it influences systems that affect all of our daily lives in innumerable and often invisible ways.
On the other hand, it feels like the kind of expanded definition that becomes so expansive as to be meaningless. If every novel is political, then what's the point of having the conversation? There has to be a meaningful sense where some books are political and others aren't. Like, some books (PRIMARY COLORS) are explicitly about the political process. Others (THE JUNGLE, MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE) are a story that's explicitly written to raise support for a specific political cause. Those two types are clearly, unambiguously political. But then others are written with strong awareness of political/social issues (most anything by Steinbeck), but not nearly as targeted as THE JUNGLE. A step removed from that are all the other novels (PASSING, THERE THERE) which consciously reflect the real world and its social/political issues, but don't seem to point directly to a political issue -- there's not, like, a congressional bill that could come out of them. Are those novels political? Another step removed are those (Agatha Christie mysteries, David Foster Wallace) that may not be consciously doing that at all, but fall into it anyways because the authors are observant and anyways how could they not? Are these still political, and if so, what does that even mean?
I think that all dovetails with the examples you give (overbearing, simplistic, partisan, electioneering tools) though I wouldn't say that novels necessarily shouldn't be that. But I do think we need better and more precise terms for discussing "political" novels.
Yeah, this seems right to me: if every book is political, identifying that a novel is political seems a little banal: like saying "this novel uses words!" Well, if all of them do, it's not a very interesting observation, is it?
This is why I think Suleiman's definition is so useful: it acknowledges that, on some level, all fiction might be political, but she still says, "this doesn't mean we can't distinguish between KINDS and LEVELS of politicalness." But you're right to say that we have clumsy and impoverished words for talking about this stuff, and I think the lack of clear vocabulary is what leads to people insisting that art is "apolitical." It's enough to make a fella want to coin a term.
In addition to considering the millennia-old Horatian platitude to "instruct and delight" in Ars Poetica, I would add a few ideas when I have a chance.
Meanwhile, as for additional readings on propaganda and lit, art and social change:
Unfortunately I can't paste an image here of a cover of a book of political fiction I DIY published 20 years ago, on which I listed many different terms for political novels. So here's the link to it - if you expand the image you can barely make out the various terms:
Once you get past the generic terms like political, propaganda, didactic, purposive, and so on, and get to the specific type of fiction with a purpose, then things get more interesting, I think, and telling.
Nice piece. Haven't read the Suleiman book but is the point of using roman à thèse just that propaganda is too pejorative? You could probably call Dante's Comedy an epic à thèse but calling it propaganda would, I feel, give the wrong idea. Or do you think that, in the case of the novel, the pejorative implication is warranted?
Squirrel Nutkin as capitalist allegory: interesting, and possibly not unexpected from the bourgeois Potter, who certainly is interested in property, power, discipline, thrift, prudence, and hard work. But I think it's much more natural to read Owl as the feudal lord of Owl Island (I had always read Owl Island as named after Owl but if you take allegory of lordship seriously you might infer the reverse; "Owl" as in "Surrey" or "York."). The squirrels give gifts, tributes, rather than strict payment, there's no capital or markets involved, and Nutkin's crime isn't primarily idleness but lèse-majesté. Of course, in a country controlled by a landed but capitalist gentry, I can see where it could be hard to tell the difference. Now Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: there's a children's book that naturalizes capitalism!
Suleiman uses roman à thèse because she's focused on the more specific genre of French novel--her analysis is really more niche than I'm presenting it as here! And at least in this book she's not the hugest fan of the roman à thèse because she sees its attempt to close itself off from multiple interpretations to be "authoritiarian"--not an assessment that I agree with, but the book's great nonetheless.
I don't think the pejorative implication is warranted--lots of overtly didactic art is great! (And, like "realism," didacticism is a feature that is present to some degree in just about every text, to your point about Dante.) But it's hard to find a word that means "novel that's overtly trying to convince the reader to hold a moral/political view" that is non-pejorative and easily understood by most readers. Perhaps you have suggestions? I've been fretting over the right word to choose for a while! "Propaganda" is used by Foulkes, but not Suleiman or Booth (who uses "rhetorical," which is a term that when used opens up its own cans of worms), and it's a hard word to use because of the connotation of authoritarianism or dishonesty--but it's also a word that pretty much everyone recognizes and understands, which is why I've sort of reluctantly opted for it.
(Also--I had the same reaction to the reading of Squirrel Nutkin!! It's feudalism!!)
Didactic novel and propaganda novel and ideological novel, with qualifications, along with many other labels, are all accurate to describe novels that are meant to be pointedly persuasive, enlightening, or ideological, though these terms have all been propagandized to sound "off" in "respectable" literary circles.
Partisan novel is also accurate though has been belittled to indicate genre. Same as government novel or even political novel and reform novel, etc.
"Novel with a purpose" might be the most neutral sounding descriptor, partly because it's so vague, and would need to be heavily qualified with "overt" or "explicit" or "specific" purpose.
Antiwar novels or revolutionary novels or anarchist novels and so on are types of all those.
The abuse of even the notion of antiwar novels is notable as well.
I like the use of “propaganda” for the sake of this post, but don’t you really mean something more like “value-laden” or “ideologically charged”?
Had the same thought
I don't have any further reading, but I do have an anecdote from my experience as a middle/high school English teacher.
I used to teach Animal Farm (I've taught this to both 8th and 9th graders), and the thing I found that really made the unit of study "work" was somewhat counter-intuitive: I outlawed any discussion of soviet Russia until the last day of the unit. I took a dictatorial hand to this, too. Whenever a student tried to bring it up (and they did, they knew how to use Wikipedia) I would shut that down. Until the last day, we were only allowed to talk about this as a simple story of the animals who rebelled against Manor Farm and what happened to them next.
An interesting thing happens when you take the novel on its own terms, rather than the one-step removed meta context that we all know is there: we start to actually talk about the characters -- what they want, what happens to them, how it could happen to them, what it all means, if it could happen to us and how, etc. Approaching it indirectly, even just a little bit, allowed for 8th graders to read it much more deeply, rather than just figuring out the right answer.
Animal Farm has a lot of depth, but for me, the "propaganda" perspective makes that hard to see sometimes.
Of course, there's another conversation to be had about Animal Farm as propaganda, and how malleable it's been over the years. It started as an anti-totalitarianism fable (written by a socialist), then became a CIA-funded anti-Russia film. In the 90s it was turned into a Francis Fukuyama "end of history" movie (filmed in the style of Babe!). Since then, more than one author has written unlicensed sequels (loosely framed as parodies to skirt copyright law, but we all know better), including one that was a post-9/11 war on terror fable.
I don't know how relevant any of that is, but I love this progression and try to share it as often as I can. It's also possible that Animal Farm isn't a propaganda book at all (it doesn't end with an explanation of the point in the way you describe). Maybe fables are a different thing altogether.
I really love that as a teaching strategy--taking the novel out of historical context probably adds a ton to students' readings of the text, especially once you reintroduce the historical context. I would use that for my college students, too! You should write some of these lesson ideas in longer posts so that I can steal them :)
Your point about the malleability of propaganda (I mean, heavens, think of the uses to which Rosie the Riveter and Uncle Sam have been put...) puts an interesting kink in the gears of Suleiman's argument. I'm going to have to think about that more!!
Haha, thanks! I keep thinking about putting some of these thoughts into longer, more thought-out essays... time is the issue. That and perfectionism -- somehow, with comments I don't mind just hashing something out and pressing "post," while with a full stand-alone blog/essay I get bogged down in trying to make it perfect.
I have thought before about doing a series called "The Syllabus" or something where I do an in-depth essay on each book I taught during my 10 years in the classroom. That would be fun. I guess I have the start of my ANIMAL FARM essay above.
I would personally get a lot of value out of "The Syllabus." It might be interesting to Substack autodidacts, too. I say try it out!
Orwell's Animal Farm is a propaganda fable, no?
His introduction to Animal Farm was suppressed for decades after the book came out. Here's a telling passage in it - which of course applies to America as well, right up to the present:
"The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.
"Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
Oh dang! I had forgotten all about that intro. I used to read portions of that with my students... funny how this stuff falls out of my brain after being out of the classroom for a while...
Probably you've already read it but my thinking on this subject has probably been most shaped by Lionel Trilling’s essay “The Meaning of a Literary Idea.”
I have not! I'll get to it, thank you!
Heart of Darkness would be an interesting case study. On one level an encomium of Roger Casement and a literary exposé of the cruelty of Leopold's Belgian Congo. On the next, overlaid, Conrad's native, natural, personal ambiguity. He never came down on the side of an idea without unease. And then, take readings of it--Achebe using it to call Conrad a racist, when it feels rather more like Achebe is missing the irony. But Conrad could have been more explicit, less ambiguous, less ironic. And then it'd've been a worse novel--but a greater propaganda tool?
Haven't read Heart of Darkness for a few years, so I hesitate to comment on it in much detail--but I think Foulkes would say that every book is propaganda--the question isn't whether it functions as propaganda but what values it promotes. To gaze upon Belgian Congo and see ambiguity--or to see the novel as a genre that gives readers wisdom or enlightenment by introducing irony and ambiguity--that's a political stance in its own way, too, right?
It seems that our idea of what makes a good novel--complexity, ambiguity, irony--is not apolitical but a certain kind of politics. (And very often it's a political stance that is salubrious--it's often really important to deal with ambiguity, complexity, etc!)
v good point. perhaps the more nuanced the novel the more politically convincing, tho less overt
I don't think Achebe misses the irony or the point, he just thinks the book is racist nonetheless. Personally, I like HEART OF DARKNESS and I also find Achebe's critique highly valuable.
interesting q arises then: can the book be politically on the side of X (anti-colonial/anti-racist) cause propagandistically while also being racist?
I would say so, yes. A lot of people would describe HUCK FINN that way as well.
great post! a huge evolution in my thinking on this topic was reading Trotsky's 'Literature and Revolution.' he's coming at this from the other side, not just defining what literature is propagandistic, but thinking about how can art serve a practical political purpose. he dismisses didactic works as being mere propaganda, but praises more nuanced and complicated writing that is able to speak to the contradictions and historical significance of political struggle.
as I've been mulling what this looks like, I've been thinking in particular about the films the Zone of Interest and The Brutalist. they both present critiques of zionism, but ZOI is much more didactic and clear about it. some will even interpret the Brutalist as a pro-zionist film, a characterization that I think doesn't bear scrutiny. for me, the Brutalist is more effective in it's aims because it's complicated and enigmatic and makes you really think about it. ZOI is useful as a sort of reference point (when people are living large off the suffering of others, it's easy to just say 'Zone of Interest' and people know what you mean) but for me it's less deep as art and therefore less influential in the long-term.
I still loved both movies! And my thinking might still evolve on this.
Thank you for the reading suggestion! Some of the reading I've done so far--the Foulkes in particular--has been sort of haunted by the specter of Soviet propaganda art, Nazi propaganda too. But I'd bet that there are pretty clear similarities between Trotsky's essay and, say, Frederick Douglass, who wrote a short novel with the express intent to produce propaganda. ("The Heroic Slave.") Without having seen either of the films you're talking about, I take your point--didactic/propagandistic art still needs to be good!
Great piece! I’m taking a course on the philology of the Nazi language, so this feels especially pertinent. Just placed an order for Authoritarian Fictions too
Authoritarian Fictions has been great for me, and is really helping with my dissertation! I just kind of pass over the parts with diagrams, but Suleiman is a good prose stylist. I hope you enjoy it--let me know what you think. The A.P. Foulkes book is short and readable and spends more time talking about Nazi propaganda, so you might wanna check that one out too
That's a helpful distinction! I have always drawn a mental line between art and propaganda, but that's not the same thing as a definition. The idea that a propagandistic novel tries to tell you how to think about it rings true. It seems to me that the least "propagandistic" novels are the ones that reflect something of the mystery/obscurity/subtlety of our lived reality, rather than explain it away too handily.
I'm glad you found it useful! I do think, though, that we should be wary of dismissing propagandistic novels out of hand. (I think Suleiman does this, a little bit.) Sometimes, propaganda can be excellent art! There's a lot in our world that is mysterious and obscure and subtle, and I love novels that explore this. But moments of moral clarity and moral certainty--the sense of good and evil--are also part of the human experience, and as such worth representing and responding to!
I agree that there are some very good novels that make bold claims about good and evil. I'm just not sure that I'm comfortable classifying them as propaganda. Propaganda feels distinctly manipulative or forceful in a way that I suspect undermines, at least partially, its artistic merit. Like an argument made in bad faith. I think I'm working with a narrower definition of propaganda that you are--not to say I couldn't be persuaded! I do find myself thinking of it as more of a gradient thanks to your article. Do you have an example of a propaganda piece that you find to be excellent art?
Yeah, that's the problem with "propaganda" as a term--it's so often used to describe dishonest, manipulative acts of persuasion that people react negatively to it... there's another thread in here discussing how very difficult it can be to choose the right word.
The great propaganda novel, imo, is Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Naomi Kanakia has a great post on here praising the book. Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward's A Singular Life are less propagandistic (if I may use the term) than Stowe, but still pretty heavy-handed and good nonetheless. In his day, lots of Charles Dickens readers considered his novels to be didactic, and like the others, I don't think he's quite on the level of Stowe, but a novel like Little Dorrit is pretty clearly trying to teach a political lesson without suffering as literature.
Yes, that makes sense. Thanks for the examples and the reading suggestions. I was thinking of Dickens as well!
This reminds me of the recent (as in, 21st century) arguments about "political art." In regards to literature, I think this is best exemplified by Viet Trang Nguyen's various essays and speeches pushing for the full politicization of art/the novel, and various critics responding to him. (I think a lot of these critiques are in bad faith, or in any event, I adore "The Sympathizer," and think its very existence is an excellent argument for the political novel. I digress.)
The modern question -- "should art be political?" -- of course presupposes that politics can be separated from art. "Politics" are conceptualized as the realm of the "politician," an unsavory figure which no one wants to be associated with, and so of course novelists avoid putting politics in their novels, lest they be smeared as politicians.
I knew that Nguyen had made those critical arguments but I had forgotten about it! "Critical fiction" I think he called it? That's a good lead--I'll check it out.
And to your point about the "should art be political?" question--I absolutely agree, and find myself kind of banging my head against the wall when I hear people say that art shouldn't ever be political. Political life IS human life! Maybe art shouldn't be clumsy, or overbearing, or simplistic, or reactively partisan, or a merely tool for electioneering, or whatever, and I think that's what is often meant by the phrase.
I find myself split on this. On the one hand, I am very sympathetic to the idea that everything is political, because the whole point of politics is that it influences systems that affect all of our daily lives in innumerable and often invisible ways.
On the other hand, it feels like the kind of expanded definition that becomes so expansive as to be meaningless. If every novel is political, then what's the point of having the conversation? There has to be a meaningful sense where some books are political and others aren't. Like, some books (PRIMARY COLORS) are explicitly about the political process. Others (THE JUNGLE, MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE) are a story that's explicitly written to raise support for a specific political cause. Those two types are clearly, unambiguously political. But then others are written with strong awareness of political/social issues (most anything by Steinbeck), but not nearly as targeted as THE JUNGLE. A step removed from that are all the other novels (PASSING, THERE THERE) which consciously reflect the real world and its social/political issues, but don't seem to point directly to a political issue -- there's not, like, a congressional bill that could come out of them. Are those novels political? Another step removed are those (Agatha Christie mysteries, David Foster Wallace) that may not be consciously doing that at all, but fall into it anyways because the authors are observant and anyways how could they not? Are these still political, and if so, what does that even mean?
I think that all dovetails with the examples you give (overbearing, simplistic, partisan, electioneering tools) though I wouldn't say that novels necessarily shouldn't be that. But I do think we need better and more precise terms for discussing "political" novels.
Yeah, this seems right to me: if every book is political, identifying that a novel is political seems a little banal: like saying "this novel uses words!" Well, if all of them do, it's not a very interesting observation, is it?
This is why I think Suleiman's definition is so useful: it acknowledges that, on some level, all fiction might be political, but she still says, "this doesn't mean we can't distinguish between KINDS and LEVELS of politicalness." But you're right to say that we have clumsy and impoverished words for talking about this stuff, and I think the lack of clear vocabulary is what leads to people insisting that art is "apolitical." It's enough to make a fella want to coin a term.
The "social novel" of the 19th century became the "culturally critical fiction" of the late 20th century.
(psst... the second-to-last big paragraph cuts off mid-sentence... I want to know what Suleiman's example is!...)
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I went in and fixed it! But Suleiman's example is Christ's parables. She does some readings of a few parables that are great fun to read!
In addition to considering the millennia-old Horatian platitude to "instruct and delight" in Ars Poetica, I would add a few ideas when I have a chance.
Meanwhile, as for additional readings on propaganda and lit, art and social change:
https://fictiongutted.substack.com/p/art-and-social-change
Unfortunately I can't paste an image here of a cover of a book of political fiction I DIY published 20 years ago, on which I listed many different terms for political novels. So here's the link to it - if you expand the image you can barely make out the various terms:
https://www.amazon.com/Political-Fiction-Ganoga-Homefront-YouthTopia/dp/0595341217
Once you get past the generic terms like political, propaganda, didactic, purposive, and so on, and get to the specific type of fiction with a purpose, then things get more interesting, I think, and telling.