“In our age, the mere making of a work of art is itself a political act.”
To be a thinking, feeling, creative individual in a mass society too often unthinking and unfeeling in its conformity is to find oneself again and again at odds with the system yet impelled to make out of those odds alternative ends — to envision other landscapes of possibility, other answers, other questions yet unasked. Because that is what artists do, a certain political undertone inheres in all art. Chinua Achebe knew this when he observed in his fantastic forgotten conversation with James Baldwin: “Those who tell you ‘Do not put too much politics in your art’ are not being honest. If you look very carefully you will see that they are the same people who are quite happy with the situation as it is… What they are saying is don’t upset the system.”
