Identity Politics Viewed As A Threat To Fiction

During the recent presidential election, America arguably shifted significantly from policy-based political affiliations to affiliations based on cultural and racial identities.

Most notably working class whites living in the so-called Rust Belt states switched in significant numbers from the Democratic candidate for president to a man running as a Republican even though he had attacked the GOP establishment as aggressively as he was attacking the Democrats.



Some observers said that the reason they did is because many voters viewed president-elect Donald Trump's call to "make America great again" as code for "make America white again," or at least as a call to preserve a culture where whites hold the reins even as changing demographics work against them.

To some, identity politics -- a situation where most voters line up with people who look like themselves -- promotes "political correctness" even though Donald Trump, the winner of the election, repeatedly indicated he was unwilling to play that game. But in not playing it, he was clearly courting the white vote since majority whites have so far been the one 'unprotected' group.

Last September, as the U.S. election campaign was in progress, London-based American writer Lionel Shriver addressed the Brisbane, Australia, writers conference on "fiction and identify politics."

"Taken to their logical conclusion, ideologies recently come into vogue challenge our right to write fiction at all. Meanwhile, the kind of fiction we are 'allowed' to write is in danger of becoming so hedged, so circumscribed, so tippy-toe, that we’d indeed be better off not writing the anodyne drivel to begin with," she said.

In the name of political correctness, "any tradition, any experience, any costume, any way of doing and saying things, that is associated with a minority or disadvantaged group is ring-fenced: look-but-don’t-touch. Those who embrace a vast range of 'identities' – ethnicities, nationalities, races, sexual and gender categories, classes of economic under-privilege and disability – are now encouraged to be possessive of their experience and to regard other peoples’ attempts to participate in their lives and traditions, either actively or imaginatively, as a form of theft," Shriver maintained.

"The author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University who for the record is white, defines cultural appropriation as ' taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.'"

"What strikes me about that definition is that 'without permission' bit. However are we fiction writers to seek 'permission' to use a character from another race or culture, or to employ the vernacular of a group to which we don’t belong? Do we set up a stand on the corner and approach passers-by with a clipboard, getting signatures that grant limited rights to employ an Indonesian character in Chapter Twelve, the way political volunteers get a candidate on the ballot?"

"I am hopeful that the concept of 'cultural appropriation' is a passing fad: people with different backgrounds rubbing up against each other and exchanging ideas and practices is self-evidently one of the most productive, fascinating aspects of modern urban life."

"But this latest and little absurd no-no is part of a larger climate of super-sensitivity, giving rise to proliferating prohibitions supposedly in the interest of social justice that constrain fiction writers and prospectively makes our work impossible," the novelist said.