Quotes, Culture, and Politics

In Gregory MaGuire's Wicked, Glinda is asking Elphaba about her childhood, and in the telling Elphaba starts talking about the oppression of the Wizard. Glinda says, "We're talking about your childhood," and Elphaba responds, "Well that's it, that's all part of it. You can't divorce your particulars from politics." Now, I would say that you CAN divorce particulars from politics; people do it all the time. However, if they do so, they are taking a flawed view that is not helping them get any closer to "truth." Because everything everything that I am, everything I think, everything I believe, has something to do with my nationality, with my color, with my gender, with my class, with my region, with my education, with my occupation and the occupations of my parents, etc. There may indeed be something called "the human condition," but how is such a thing approachable without considering all the social, economic, and political factors? Simply put: it's not. Whatever we think it means to be human is influenced by class, race, gender, and all that. This is why an honest approach considers these factors. This is why John Fowles says that Nicholas Urfe, the main character of The Magus, takes on "if not the true representative face of a modern Everyman, at least that of a partial Everyman of my own class and background." Because THERE IS NO EVERYMAN. For our first and primary worldview comes from our class and background--it is the worldview we learn before we learn it is a worldview. This is why Helga's question in M. Butterfly is so narrow and ridiculous: she asks, "Politics again? Why can't they just hear it as a piece of beautiful music." What assumptions do we carry with us, because of class and background and culture, that makes something an apolitical piece of beautiful music? And what assumptions could somebody else, of a different class, background, culture, and personal taste hold, that makes something a political statement, or a piece of ugly music?

I believe in deep human experiences. I believe great literature functions to examine deep human experiences. I believe literature should help us examine what it means to be human: what it is to believe and to doubt, to love and to hate, to be brave and to fear, to laugh and to grieve, to hope and despair, to be born and to die. But to divorce one's experience of what it means to be human from politics...that is to examine humanity in a solipsistic vacuum.