Pens and Swords

We Must Bear Witness

James Joyce famously suggested that an artist functions as the conscience of his race. Filipino National Artist F. Sionil José declared that writers must serve as a nation’s memory. My own belief is that the writer’s task, his role, is to bear witness—to see what others cannot, or will not, see, and to show it to them.

A writer draws on his world—whether external or internal—for material. Both inform and color each other, and are shaped by the imagination, which is the creative force of a writer’s mind. When a writer lives and moves within a conflict zone, his imagination must work with such material, even when the inner world takes him far away from reality.

The idea of conflict need not be limited to armed political conflict, which might be thought of as active conflict. Continuous, consistent background problems such as poverty, lack of education, and racism qualify as conflict, though of a passive, potential sort. Their omnipresence in certain societies renders them status quo, and even active struggle against them becomes “the way things are.”

Given these, the real question at the heart of this discussion must be: Is it an imperative for a writer to engage the conflicts, whether active or passive, in his writing?

I began this piece believing (in politically correct, knee-jerk fashion) that the answer must be yes, if a writer is to be moral and honest. This flies in the face of my own experience of writing left-leaning pieces in my youth, prose and poetry that verged on propaganda and was embarrassing, to put it mildly. That experience led me to reassess my own principles, and I came down squarely on the side of artistic freedom—to choose one’s subject matter and style as befitting one’s temperament and worldview. Only that which moves the writer can ever hope to move anyone else, and even the most sincerely crafted social realism will seem hollow if the writer’s heart is not in it. The writer must be free to write fluff and froth, escapist fare, the most self-indulgent navel-gazing, just as readers are free to accept or reject his writing.

Therefore, the only way I can think of at present to resolve these opposing tendencies is this: a writer’s imperative in a conflict zone is to be attuned to his external reality. To keep his eyes open and watchful, and not to turn away; to be aware. A writer’s politics need not always find their way into his writing; nor do they have to. Often they seep in anyway, and the writer’s deliberate omission can constitute his stance. But the omission must be deliberate. It cannot be born out of ignorance, or inattention; it must be an informed, conscious choice.

Because the reverse is perverse—for instance, the expectation, in Western film festivals, that Philippine cinema showcases the squalor, misery, and grotesquerie of third-world life; that there is no place in Philippine culture for abstract philosophizing or the examination of middle-class minutiae and ennui. Because such ennui, so Western a trope, can and does exist in the Philippines—even a horribly war-torn developing country is as multifaceted as any American city, and no single tableau can stand for the whole culture. To be pigeonholed as a “writer from a country in conflict” is as damning as any neat categorization, because it denies the messy multiplicity of life.

(This brings up a corollary question—does one write for one’s countrymen, or for the rest of the world? Too often, artists are embraced by the world for being informants on their culture, while being ignored in their own countries, perhaps because their vision conforms only to a foreigner’s idea of their culture, or gestures towards an idea of the universal; and artists celebrated by their own people are not understood and ignored by the rest of the world.)

Vigilance and awareness, as a writer’s imperatives, can be uneven terrain as well. The great illusion of nationhood lies in the conviction that a disturbance in one of a country’s regions, or even outside its borders, is a national disturbance, affecting the whole geographical unit. And yet it is very easy to forget that one’s country is at war, if one’s immediate surroundings are pleasant, safe, and peaceful. Under such circumstances, war is reduced to an abstraction.

As I write this, yet another story of horrific, atrocious, and brazen violence unfolds in my country. The Maguindanao massacre, as it has come to be known, continues to command national and international attention: 57 people, including at least 34 journalists, were slaughtered on the morning of November 23, 2009 and buried in shallow graves. The primary suspects belong to a political clan that has held power in that province for two decades.

Filipinos need no prompting to be shocked, horrified, and outraged at these events, at least initially. And yet too often these reactions are diminished by other, later responses.

Maguindanao is located in the deep south of the Philippines, on the island of Mindanao, where the war between the government and Muslim rebels has rumbled on for centuries. Geography, time, and repetition dull the impact of this ongoing conflict, and of other news from that region, such as the recent massacre. In an archipelago of some 7,100 islands, the immediacy of events has trouble crossing water and land. Even cities on the northern coast of Mindanao rarely see signs of violence or war.

It is also possible to be completely cocooned from current events. With each generation, newspaper readership and television news viewership diminish. Only when an event is widely discussed (the oral tradition remains strong in the Philippines, where gossip is a favored mode of communication) can it garner sufficient attention. Even then, it is possible to insulate oneself from this reality, by pushing it aside and ignoring it. Whether geographically or psychically, out of sight remains out of mind.

Such indifference or apathy could be born out of a lack of concern for one’s society, but it is likelier to emanate from a defeatist, cynical stance, one which maintains that such fresh horrors are nothing new, and will play out as they have in the past, resulting in no real change, so what is the point of getting worked up? One’s life trundles on, despite the suffering of others, so one may as well mind one’s own business. Already, many Filipinos can predict a plausible outcome to the Maguindanao affair: some fall guys will be imprisoned (if at all) while the masterminds go free, and may even be rewarded with more political power; semblances of due process and an uncorrupted judicial system will lend this outcome some legitimacy, despite glaring evidence pointing to an opposite verdict; political murders will continue to occur, their frequency rising and falling in relation to the proximity of election season.

Ignorance, indifference, and resignation are history’s enemies, and therefore the writer’s as well. Here the writer’s imperative comes into play, and the writer must make a moral choice whether or not to see, and whether or not to relay what he sees. I am not necessarily advocating a slew of fiction or poetry about the Maguindanao massacre, although writer’s organizations have released statements, journalists continue to write and blog about the tragedy, and it is not inconceivable that an independently published anthology of such writings will be in the offing. All that is necessary is that a writer pays attention, allows information to work on him, and remembers.

A strong tradition of social realism runs through Philippine literature, based on the belief that literature must be committed to fostering positive changes in society. So strong and dominant is this tradition that it has spawned a backlash in the last decade, with both writers and readers embracing writing that appeals primarily to aesthetic or entertainment considerations. In Philippine fiction, this has manifested in the rise of genre fiction and experimental fiction, the former enjoying better print sales, the latter finding audiences via the Internet. The spirit of social realism survives on the bestseller lists in the form of nonfiction and humor, which use current events and contemporary life as fodder for commentary, or satire and parody. For better or worse, writers make a choice; must be allowed to make a choice.

A final question comes to mind: is writing enough, if one comes from a nation in conflict?

At a recent PEN Philippine Center meeting, I listened to a spirited discussion among some writers in their 20s, one of whom insisted that writing was not enough, that it was a cop-out, a form of laziness or cowardice; that if a writer truly wanted to effect change in a society, he had to get his hands dirty with substances other than ink. He described his experiences volunteering for organizations that helped educate the rural poor, hinting that such activities validated or legitimized his writing.

Although “getting involved” need not be violent, the history of Philippine literature is littered with the corpses of writers who turned to armed struggle when writing proved insufficient to them, or who were martyred for a cause as a result of their writing. Our national hero José Rizal, selected by the U.S. government for his pacifist and reformist tendencies, was executed by Spanish authorities for sedition on the basis of two novels,¹ now regarded as Filipino classics. Since 2001, literally hundreds of Filipino activists and journalists have disappeared or been murdered in a slow-motion massacre, and scores more jailed, for standing up for their principles.

And yet writers, by definition, write. When they volunteer, or take up arms, or rally countrymen to a cause, they are no longer writing. While it is certainly possible to do both, it should not be an imperative, for writing is enough, or should be enough. I return to my conviction that the writer’s role is to bear witness, and this is his domain. His testimony need not be unpleasant, but in developing countries besieged by active and passive conflict, the writer’s truth cannot help but be harsh and unflinching. Should the writer wish to proceed beyond this, to do more, he may, and the matter becomes prerogative, and not imperative.

January 27, 2010

Responses

Sehba Sarwar

Vicente’s articulate reminder that the role of writers is to “bear witness” and remember history underscores a writer’s role in society. Vicente emphasizes that “conflict zone” can refer to not just armed political conflict, but also to other social issues such as economic inequity, illiteracy, and racism. At the same time, while a writer / journalist in the Philippines cannot ignore the Maguindanao massacre, or other events that unfold over the course of history, Vicente reminds his readers that it’s urgent to recognize the fine line between “bearing witness” versus sensationalizing events for personal gain.

I also appreciate Vicente's reminder that “even a horribly war-torn developing country is as multifaceted as any American city,” and that no one “space cannot be depicted as a reflection of a whole culture.” Vicente questions being pigeonholed as a “writer from a country in conflict” since “it denies the messy multiplicity of life,” and this statement certainly resonates with what I’ve expressed in my essay and my response.

*

Both Tolu and Vicente do an excellent job of revisiting history in their countries, and reminding readers of lives lost, and indeed, of the courage it takes to speak out. Ultimately, choosing to speak out and resist censorship is a choice writers make. Pakistan certainly has a strong history of literary resistance, with poets such as Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ahmed Faraz, Kishwar Naheed and many more.

The question does arise: Is there more risk in speaking out while living under dictatorship? Living in more democratic spaces, there is less danger, and one has the luxury to choose what conflicts one wishes to explore through one’s writing. However, if a writer is working in a space where there is war unfolding, or freedom being directly repressed, then a writer’s choices are limited, and choosing not to address conflict becomes a political act in itself. But does this mean that writers who are not living in spaces where there is immediate danger are off the hook? And ultimately, isn’t it incumbent upon all of us to explore deeper issues around us that exist in all societies?

 

Shaun Randol

Recently, violence in the Philippines has gotten much attention. I refer to the Maguindanao massacre specifically. How have writers in your country responded to this violence? How have you responded? Is the incident being discussed by writers in newspapers, magazines, or in public? How is the public responding to the writers’ commentary?

Vicente Garcia Groyon

Apart from responses in the media by opinion columnists and commentators as well as university-based organizations and other non-government organizations, I can point to three responses from writers/artists that I know of. The PEN Philippine Center released a statement condemning the Maguindanao massacre at its annual conference last December;¹ the writers’ group High Chair is devoting a series of issues of its online journal to writers’ responses to the massacre² and the Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz (who is originally from Maguindanao) has addressed the longer history of conflict in Mindanao in interviews and his works-in-progress.³ Writers and artists can’t help but discuss the tragedy, whether in private or in public, but because the audience for Philippine writers and artists is composed largely of other Philippine writers and artists, one can’t really see a public response to the commentary coalescing; at least not yet. There has been a lot of outrage, but as High Chair points out, outrage has a shelf life in the Philippines. Bigger, splashier news, or an especially long holiday, can quickly eclipse even the most horrendous events. Continued vigilance quickly becomes exhausting and pointless when no one is listening. Because the story is still unfolding, responses in the form of creative writing are slow to come—for instance, High Chair has opted to take on the issue step by step, most likely because it will take time before the enormity of the massacre can be processed and transformed into literature.

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1. Philippine Daily Inquirer. "PEN Writers Conference Condemns Maguindanao Massacre , Harassment of Writers" (December 7, 2009).

2. High Chair, Issue 12. http://www.highchair.com.ph/issue12.htm.

3. Ni Lav Diaz. Mindanao. "A Work in Progress" (December 1, 2009); Vinita Ramani. "A Dialogue in Progress - Social/Personal Memory Before Heremias" (undated). 

 

Shaun Randol

High level corruption is a very real concern for Filipinos. Is it also the responsibility of the writer to tackle corruption? And if so, must they do so with the same vigor with which they discuss more overt forms of conflict?

Vicente Garcia Groyon

Corruption is a passive sort of conflict, but conflict nonetheless, because it violates justice, and demands the same sort of response. However, because of its having become status quo, part of the mindset, it tends to be represented matter-of-factly in fictional narratives, sometimes played for laughs (Filipinos joke about the grimmest circumstances, perhaps as a survival strategy), with only a very low level of outrage. An honest politician character in a piece of fiction or cinema, for instance, is a sure set-up for tragedy, or for surrealism.

Shaun Randol

You say it is necessary for the writer to engage conflict (whether it is passive or active conflict). If a writer lives in a place where active conflict is a constant (e.g. Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Sudan), must the writer engage this conflict constantly? If so, does this inhibit creative elements that might come out in more stable environments?

Vicente Garcia Groyon

Yes, inevitably, and perhaps sadly. To return to an example I cited in my essay, the introspective travails of the Philippine upper classes continue to be under-represented, or unexplored in cinema (except as melodrama) because of the imperative to engage the large socio-economic conflicts that beset Philippine society. In a country like the Philippines, where strong Marxist undercurrents continue to run through cultural production and criticism, art is a luxury that must prove its usefulness to society before anything else, or a tool/weapon for the attainment of justice. To concentrate on upper-class problems is seen as giving a voice to a social group that already has enough power and representation, and as frivolous and trivial—for instance, what are issues of identity and angst when set beside war, poverty, malnutrition, lack of education? There are losses, to be sure, which might be written off as collateral damage in the struggle towards better lives for all Filipinos.

Shaun Randol

How is the next generation of Filipino writers taking on conflict in their writings? Are they taking up the slack of their older mentors? Carrying the torch of taking conflict head on? Is it absent from their writing?

 

Vicente Garcia Groyon

Older surviving generations of Filipino writers, who survived the conflicts of World War II and the national strife in the succeeding decades, particularly the Martial Law years of the 1970s and early ‘80s, often lament that the younger generations are soft, having grown up in relative peace and ease of living, or are indifferent or oblivious to the issues that their parents and grandparents grappled with. The new generation is post-everything (post-colonial, post-feminist, post-Marxist, etc.), and they seem to wear the multiple legacies lightly, and they arguably have a very limited sense of history.

Tentatively, I would suggest that they are starting from an assumption that things which were labeled wrong by previous generations (injustice, corruption, violence, poverty, etc.) are givens (as a quick look around their immediate vicinity would demonstrate). They therefore proceed with their lives and the pursuit of their individual happiness with these givens (morally wrong as they may be) factored in. Thus, their behavior is easily characterized as trivial, apathetic, and apolitical. I would not say that they are willfully unaware of conflict, just that they are unable to imagine a society functioning without it, or an ideal society as envisioned by previous generations. (Like all sweeping generalizations, this assessment has many exceptions.) There is also the considerably stronger influence of the new “global” (read: “Western”) culture to which the new generation greedily aspires, even as their external realities continue to lag in terms of socio-economic development. But certainly, socially committed art has seen increasingly stiff competition from the art-as-escapism and art-for-art’s-sake camps. In Philippine fiction, this has been manifested by the increased popularity and availability of genre fiction and humor, as well as of experimental fiction. It is probably more generous to say that the present generation perceives the world differently and engages with it according to that perception.

Shaun Randol

You claim that a writer must “bear witness.” And you state, “All that is necessary is that a writer pays attention, allows information to work on him, and remembers.” But what good is bearing witness and remembering if the perspective and opinion of the witness (the writer) is not disseminated? Mustn’t the writer witness, remember, and write about these events?

Vicente Garcia Groyon

Bearing witness and remembrance enable the writer to make an informed, conscious choice whether or not to engage conflict in their writing; that is all, and that is enough, simultaneously. I uphold writers’ freedom to choose their individual responses to conflict. Sehba Sarwar and Tolu Ogunlesi both advocate active engagement, and I persist in my faith that a moral, intelligent writer cannot help but engage conflict inevitably, by default, when living and working in a conflict zone. However, silence or aloofness should remain an option. Time and history will assess the good that a response has done, whatever that response is.

 

Art is a Debt We Owe

No writer could possibly exist in isolation. Even if she succeeded in engineering a spatial isolation (think of the farthest reaches of outer space), psychic isolation from the rest of humanity would be impossible. At the very least a writer is also a citizen—with all the requisite responsibilities: paying tax, participating in local politics, and obeying the rules and regulations established by the state. She is a mélange of family ties, societal status, religious beliefs (or lack of them), biases, memories, romantic impulses, political affiliation and imaginative capacity. A writer is a human being first, and then a creative force, and therefore far more than the sum of his writing.

This applies everywhere, and in times of peace and conflict. Having established this, let us proceed to the all-important question: What is the role of the writer in a conflict zone?

Perhaps one should start by considering the options available to a writer in a conflict zone. (For the purposes of this article, I have chosen “war” as synonym for conflict). A writer’s choice of role(s) in conflict is admittedly limited. Aloofness is one possibility; this would mean an artistic disconnection from the conflict (“I will not / cannot write”). The other choice would be to “engage,” which would manifest as an artistic engagement (writing) or a militaristic one (taking up arms), or both.

*

The Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, was a watershed moment in the history of the Nigerian republic. Erupting only seven years after independence from Britain, it was merely the final breakdown at the end of a series of smaller (but progressively worsening) failures— widespread violence in the Western region, necessitating the declaration of a state of emergency; two violent, bloody coups that overthrew the central government; and the massacre of Eastern Nigerians living in the predominantly Muslim North. It is interesting to observe the responses of Nigerian writers to the war, and to try to draw patterns from the actions of five of them:

Wole Soyinka, who, two decades later would win the Nobel Prize in Literature; Chinua Achebe, who has come to be referred to (against his will by the way) as the Father of African Literature; Christopher Okigbo, arguably the most influential and most famous poet to come out of Nigeria; John Pepper (J. P.) Clark, poet, playwright and dramatist; and Ken Saro Wiwa, who would go on to become a world-famous environmental rights activist, and who, three decades later, would be hanged by Nigeria’s military dictatorship on the basis of unsubstantiated charges (of inciting murder).

A background to the war is necessary here. The killings of Igbos (the predominant ethnic group in Eastern Nigeria) living in Northern Nigeria compelled the military governor of the Eastern region to declare independence from Nigeria, and proclaim the breakaway nation the Republic of Biafra. The Government of Nigeria (headed by a Northerner) would have none of the declaration. Efforts at dialogue and negotiations of a peaceful settlement failed; in May 1967 war was declared. The war therefore pitched Nigeria (the Western and Northern regions) against Biafra (the Eastern region). It lasted for 30 months, ending in 1970 with the surrender of Biafra. For his attempts to negotiate with the Biafran authorities, the Nigerian government arrested and jailed Soyinka.

In a 2006 interview, Wole Soyinka (whose ethnic group, the Yorubas, are from Western Nigeria) said: “I didn’t believe in that war. I felt it was an unjust war on the part of the Federal Government, because the Biafrans had suffered a great deal... and while their action was politically unwise, I did not find it morally reprehensible, and they certainly did not deserve that they should be clobbered anew by the full Federal might when they were the immediate past victims.”¹  Being Igbo, Chinua Achebe had the path of his allegiance clearly cut out. “I cannot possibly leave Biafra while [the war] goes on. I have to be here and do whatever little I can to help this terribly wronged country,” he wrote in a reply to an invitation from the Africa Studies Program at Northwestern University, Illinois.²  He spent the war years as a spokesperson for the government of Biafra, traveling to America and Europe to seek understanding allies for the Biafran war effort.

Achebe, pained by bosom friend J.P. Clark’s decision to join the Nigerian side (he saw it as nothing short of a betrayal), cut all ties with him. For years afterwards the two men were not on speaking terms.

Christopher Okigbo (also Igbo) sketched, in poetry full of an unnerving urgency and startling symbolism, the descent into anarchy (these poems were written before the war started):

Eventually, it seems Okigbo decided that poetry was not enough, and he threw himself into the war. Down went the pen, and in its place emerged the gun. He was killed in 1967 in battle at the beginning of the war. There are those who will never forgive him for sacrificing his life and talent for the cause of war. Ali Mazrui’s novel, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo (Third Press, 1972), is essentially a posthumous denunciation of the poet.

Ken Saro Wiwa was from the minority Ogoni tribe, which fell into the Eastern region, and was thus forcefully co-opted into the breakaway republic. Feeling no solidarity with the Biafran cause— which he saw as another man’s war— Wiwa escaped to the Federal side and was appointed administrator of one of the regions in the liberated areas.

*

All of the writers mentioned above wrote extensively about their wartime experiences. From Soyinka’s sojourn in prison came The Man Died (Africa Book Centre, 1972). Achebe turned to short story, and poetry, and wrote the poems that would be published, after the war, in the collection Beware Soul Brother (Heinemann Educational Books, 1972), and some of the stories that would be collected as Girls at War and Other Stories (Doubleday, 1973). J.P. Clark published, in the final year of the war, a collection of poems titled Casualties: Poems 1966-68 (Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1970). Ken Saro-Wiwa also wrote a novel, On a Darkling Plain (African Books Collective, 1998), detailing his war experiences.

Two threads, therefore, run commonly through the wartime experiences of these writers: the losses they suffered (of friendships, of homes, of personal freedom and, in Okigbo’s case, of life) and the books they wrote. The Loss and the Art.

The Loss is a given. The Art ought to be as well. The act of turning to the written word, in a bid to make sense of tumultuous political circumstances, is—for me—what should be the primary role of any writer in a conflict zone. In war, Art is a debt we owe, over and above everything else. It is the gilded mirror in our possession that should be turned both inward and outward, at ourselves and at the society. It is the most important weapon we wield, to inform, reform, un-form and transform. The Loss turns us into “Bearers of Scars;” with the Art we turn ourselves into “Bearers of Witness.”⁴ War turns us to prey, we can fight this by seeking to turn ourselves into Priest, Prophet and Plea. But it is also important for me to speak of my strong belief in the fact that a writer has a responsibility to write from what I call a “Platform of Conscience,” which recognizes that the particularities of war notwithstanding, certain truths remain sacred:

• That war is Evil.
• That nothing can justify the pain and suffering that war brings.
• That (quoting Wole Soyinka) “Justice is the first condition of humanity.”
• That Peace and Justice should not have to be sacrificed for each other.
• That in war, there are no neutral forces. Objectivity can exist only as a fictional construct. The fence offers no space for sitting. There is no life to be lived atop the Berlin Wall; every individual must (by choice or the compulsion of circumstances) occupy a position on either side of the wall.
• That there is no such thing as “non-political” art. In their introduction to the book, Writers, Writing On Conflicts And Wars In Africa (Adonis & Abbey Publishers, 2009), editors Okey Ndibe and Chenjerai Hove write: “The idea of pure art, an art uninfected or uninflected by the surrounds of political upheavals and pervasive social misery, is a myth.”

Within this framework, different writers will definitely have different artistic approaches. And in truth that is how it should be. Writers are typically individualistic personalities, or at least like to think that they are. In a conflict zone every writer should be free to evolve their own response. But whatever we do, or say, or write, silence is a luxury that we cannot afford. In The Man Died, Wole Soyinka declared that “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.”

And in the words of one of the characters in Okey Ndibe’s novel, Arrows of Rain (Heinemann, 2000), “Speech is the mouth’s debt to a story.” In truth, art is the artist’s debt to conflict. We write—in and out of conflict—therefore we are. But I will also be the first to publicly resist any attempt to be simplistic. In attempting to answer the question: “What is the role of the writer in a conflict zone?” it is inevitable that new questions will arise, that will demand their own answers. For example, at what point does art become impotent in conflict? At what stage will blood have to displace ink as the lubricating fluid of peace / justice / struggle? And what should our response be to a writer who has come to believe that blood is thicker than ink?

For these new questions I have no answers.

Responses

Vicente Garcia Groyon

The sense-making function/effect of art (both its creation and appreciation) that you pointed out highlights the fact that artists need not always provide answers or solutions; sometimes shaping a question (with or without asking is outright) is all that an artist can do in the face of forces beyond his control.

Your examples from Nigerian literary history, of writers responding to conflict, also seem to demonstrate that engaging the conflict is inevitable when the conflict intrudes upon the personal sphere. This is a theme that runs through many a Philippine social realist novel, and through much of world literature, I believe. (The only exceptions that come to mind are from Soviet social realism, in which characters are individualized only as far as being representatives of the social class they belong to.) Despite their socio-historico-political engagements, protagonists are ultimately driven by personal motivations on a small scale—that of the individual, or the family. In realist fiction, the need to provide believable, logical motivation for characters’ decisions often involves the disruption or destruction of their lifestyles or their boundaries, or those of close friends or relatives. Without such personal motivations, these characters’ convictions tend to seem hollow or ill-conceived, and the narrative begins to veer into propaganda.

Given this, one might also argue that art is a luxury in which an artist might indulge until the personal sphere is breached by conflict. When the artist’s immediate equanimity, safety, and way of life are threatened, art then comes to seem impotent in the face of conflict, and it is at this point that a writer could opt to trade a sword for a pen.

Since I’ve already hazarded an answer to a question you raised at the end of your essay, I may as well venture further into dangerous territory by attempting another answer to the question of public response to an artist who stops making art to take up arms. It is all too easy to lament the art that could have been produced by artists-turned-warriors, or to condemn them, especially if the cause appears foolish, trivial, or downright wrong. A reasonable response could be, first, to recognize that the artist’s personal sphere has been breached in some way. Such a recognition must result in even the slightest twinge of empathy, and vociferous, even violent disagreement should begin with the acknowledgment that such a breach could happen to oneself and move one to abandon things once valued above all else.

Sehba Sarwar

Tolu’s essay is engaging. I appreciated revisiting the stories of Chinhua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, and the reminders of how closely each engaged with the Biafran War, and how Soyinka experienced imprisonment because he spoke out against the Nigerian government. I did not know about the work of Christopher Okigbo and it was interesting to learn about how he discarded his art and lost his life while engaged in the path of active war.

Tolu asks very valid questions at the conclusion of his essay by questioning the stage at which shedding lives should replace “ink as the lubricating fluid of peace / justice / struggle” and “what should our response be to a writer who has come to believe that blood is thicker than ink?”

These are difficult questions. Ultimately, I agree with Tolu that “silence is a luxury that we cannot afford”—whether we are living in a space that is engaged in direct war, or in spaces where conflict exists, but one has to explore deeper.

*

Both Tolu and Vicente do an excellent job of revisiting history in their countries, and reminding readers of lives lost, and indeed, of the courage it takes to speak out. Ultimately, choosing to speak out and resist censorship is a choice writers make. Pakistan certainly has a strong history of literary resistance, with poets such as Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ahmed Faraz, Kishwar Naheed and many more.

The question does arise: Is there more risk in speaking out while living under dictatorship? Living in more democratic spaces, there is less danger, and one has the luxury to choose what conflicts one wishes to explore through one’s writing. However, if a writer is working in a space where there is war unfolding, or freedom being directly repressed, then a writer’s choices are limited, and choosing not to address conflict becomes a political act in itself. But does this mean that writers who are not living in spaces where there is immediate danger are off the hook? And ultimately, isn’t it incumbent upon all of us to explore deeper issues around us that exist in all societies? 

Shaun Randol

Is all fiction and poetry inherently political?

 

 

Tolu Ogunlesi

Yes. Because all of life is political.

I think we should go back to the definition of politics. I found two definitions online that I think capture the essence of the word. The first line of Wikipedia’s entry says: “Politics is a process by which groups of people make decisions.” Whatever doubts one may have about the quality or integrity of Wikipedia’s content, this is one definition that I think says a lot more about politics than all the definitions that attempt to restrict it to the “state” and the “government.” 

http://dictionary.die.net defines politics as “social relations involving authority or power.” Politics in my opinion is essentially about Power, Powerlessness, Authority, Choices / Decision-making, and Negotiation – and the Conflicts arising therein.

Going by that view, everything in life is therefore political; every debate has the potential to be widened into something bigger.A fine example would be an Executive MBA ad that appears regularly in The Economist. It shows a single ear of corn, and then declares that the image “IS NOT CORN,” that instead it is all of the following: “Global warming, Government subsidies, Foreign policy, Global supply chains, Energy consumption, Price volatility, Futures, Environment.” We can—and should—extend the analogy to art: Art is never merely “art.” It is so many other things, overt and covert. It is almost always “politics” of one form or the other, whether intended as such or not.

Sehba’s essay brilliantly shows that even in matters as “personal” as a woman’s relation to her own body, politics is present. The essay begins with a telling quote from a pro-life activist protester, one of many picketing outside the Planned Parenthood headquarters in Houston: “A woman’s body is no longer her own after she becomes pregnant.”

And not only is poetry and fiction inherently political by virtue of what it chooses to focus on or NOT focus on, even the very act of creation is political: involving the choices – of word, genre, style – that shape the final output.

Shaun Randol

Is it also the responsibility of the Nigerian Diaspora (or other Diaspora) to engage the conflicts of their homelands?

 

Tolu Ogunlesi

I’m becoming wary of speaking in terms of “responsibilities.” Here I am in full agreement with Vicente, who writes about “[coming] down squarely on the side of artistic freedom—to choose one’s subject matter and style as befitting one’s temperament and worldview… [t]he writer must be free to write fluff and froth, escapist fare, the most self-indulgent navel-gazing, just as readers are free to accept or reject his writing.”

It is not the “responsibility” of a writer in Diaspora to engage the conflicts of their homelands. But it is often an inescapable fate. This is what I believe the Nigerian poet, Olu Oguibe, is saying in his long poem, “I am bound to this land by blood:”

 

I am bound to this land by blood / That's why my vision is blurred / I am rooted in its soil / And its streams flood my veins…

 

When a writer is bound to a land by blood, it doesn’t matter where they go, the magnetic pull of Home will always be undiminished, undiminishable. Even when the body is in the Diaspora, the heart will be at home, engaged, disturbed, enraged, committed. It is often not a matter given to choice.

Shaun Randol

Nigeria is ranked #158 (of 182), right behind Uganda and ahead of Togo, on the UN Human Development Index. Violence, especially in urban centers like Lagos, is a constant. This type of conflict stems not so much from war, but from poverty. Is it the writer’s responsibility to engage this kind of conflict as well? To either take a militantly vocal stance about ending poverty or to weave into the story making like, for example, Chris Abani does with Graceland?

Tolu Ogunlesi

Absolutely. I insist that a writer cannot possibly disengage from the social and material circumstances surrounding him. I live in Lagos, which is one of the world’s most populated cities. Every day I see wild extremes of poverty and wealth jostling with each other. I cannot escape the city’s many oppressions, personal and institutional. Neither can my writing, if and when I choose to write about Lagos. I doubt that my art – or anyone else’s – can succeed in separating the “conflict” from the City. The growing genre of “Lagos literature” (fiction and poetry) is a testament to this. From Cyprian Ekwensi’s fictional explorations of the City five decades ago to Sefi Atta, Maik Nwosu, Helon Habila, Toni Kan, Teju Cole and Chris Abani (certainly not an exhaustive list) today, wherever Lagos shows up it cannot but reveal itself (even in fiction) in all its grime and glory.

Shaun Randol

You say it is necessary for the writer to engage conflict (to develop their own response). If a writer lives in a place where active conflict is a constant, must the writer engage this conflict constantly? If so, does this inhibit creative elements that might come out in more stable environments?

Tolu Ogunlesi

No, there is no imperative duty. Sometimes we will choose to write about bullets, other times about flowers. And sometimes about bullet-ridden, but still-living, flowers. That element of choice is part of what makes us artists.

Shaun Randol

How is the next generation of Nigerian writers taking on conflict in their writings? Are they taking up the slack of their older mentors (like Achebe, Soyinka, etc)? Carrying the torch of taking conflict head on? Is it absent from their writing?

Tolu Ogunlesi

The emerging generation of Nigerian writers (actually there has been more than one generation since the Soyinka-Achebe generation) is still as political as ever (Nigeria’s situation hasn’t changed that much between that time and today; if anything it has worsened).

Sometimes the argument is that the new generation is too political, in the sense that their work has been an attempt at Truth with no consideration for Beauty. Which I think is often true. Soyinka is recognized today not merely because his writings explored and challenged oppression, but because he wrote as one with a unique mastery of the language in which he worked. Politics can – and should be – be leavened with artistic beauty (craft and language). Bad governments should not be reacted to with Bad Literature. This is the lesson I think my generation is yet to learn. But we remain as angry, and as committed (at least in writing) as our forebears.

Shaun Randol

You write that in a conflict there is no room for fence-sitting, that writer’s must choose a side. Does a writer who chooses to advocate (by writing) for the side of the oppressor/conqueror cease to be a writer? If a writer writes to propagate war, and war is evil, has the writer violated an artistic ethic?

Tolu Ogunlesi

I doubt that there are clear lines or guidelines that mark or demarcate oppressors and conquerors. In the war in Iraq, who is the oppressor? George Bush, who decided to invade, but who is no longer in any position of authority regarding the war? Barack Obama, who as U.S. President is now the face of an invasion he didn’t authorize? U.S. Marines, who are bound by loyalty to their country, to be in Iraq, despite whatever personal feelings they have regarding the war? Iraqi suicide bombers who regularly kill U.S. Marines as well as hundreds of their fellow countrymen?

Nelson Mandela was, depending on whom you talked to, a terrorist, or a freedom fighter. In saying we must take sides, I am not insinuating that all conflicts should be seen from a binary perspective (of good versus bad, oppressor versus oppressed, victors versus victims). That way of thinking is simplistic, and unrealistic. The lines of good and evil in any conflict are hardly ever drawn in black and white. There are oppressors and oppressed on every side. And there are usually more than two sides.

Having said that, writing to propagate war should not automatically mean that a writer is violating an “artistic ethic.” It is true that there are writers who defend cruelty, who descend into the arena of propaganda, and who prop up evil regimes. It also remains true that War is evil. But there are also wars that cannot be avoided.

I will end with a quote from Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:

 

Make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

 

For Choice

“A woman’s body is no longer her own after she becomes pregnant,” says the protestor as she pickets outside the Planned Parenthood headquarters in Houston, USA. “It’s our job to give women other options.” She looks straight in my eyes. “I know a girl who went into Planned Parenthood for a pregnancy test, and she was forced to have an abortion.”

The woman pauses. When she speaks again, her voice is lower. “I mean, we’re here to tell women there are other choices. If they choose to go with us, we take them to get tested. We walk them through their pregnancy. Once the child is born, we make sure that a healthy family adopts the child. And the woman can go on with her own life. That’s our duty. And that’s the duty of the mother who bears a fetus.”

“And what if the woman was raped?” I ask.

The protestor widens her eyes: “Like I said, we promise to look after the woman until the child is born. After that, she can carry on with whatever she was doing before. Just because wrong was done to her doesn’t mean that she takes another life.”

The protester is part of a group of Christian extremists who gather each year for 40 days prior to Easter to protest against Planned Parenthood. On this particular Tuesday morning, there are only a dozen or so men and women holding up posters and walking the sidewalk outside Planned Parenthood’s fenced entrance on Fannin Street. Most Saturday mornings—when many of the abortion services are provided—the protestors assemble in large droves, and patients have to be escorted through epithets and rants before they can reach the building safely. Planned Parenthood is one of the few health agencies that provides not only abortion services (which comprise only five percent of their overall health services), but also affordable health care for everyone. All Planned Parenthood clinics, however, are subjected to extremist protestors.

Almost 40 years ago, a landmark ruling was issued by the U.S. Supreme Court; it gave women in this country the right to choose to bear a child. Today, the battle is still not over, as each year more doctors who provide abortion services have either been killed, threatened to be killed, or have simply been pushed out of communities. Over the last decade—nearly all of which was presided over by former President George W. Bush—providing abortion services became an increasing challenge. In Texas, abortion services are only available in seven percent of the state’s 254 counties. Each year, across the U.S., abortion laws are getting increasingly tighter, and slowly, the battle won in 1973 is losing ground, as has been seen in recent months with the so-called Stupak “amendment.”¹

This past fall, I was invited to serve on the Board of Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas. It was a difficult decision to make, mostly because my life is very full: I have an active writing career; I serve as Founding Director for Voices Breaking Boundaries (VBB), an activist arts organization in Houston for which I create multidisciplinary arts productions, fundraise, and do everything else that goes with running a non-profit; I maintain strong roots in my home country, Pakistan where I was born and raised, and where I spend several months each year; and I have a demanding family life with a five-year old daughter. I am also involved with Houston’s Pacifica Radio Station where I host monthly programs. After deeply weighing the decision, I chose to accept the invitation. My choice rested heavily on my commitment to fight for women’s rights wherever I happen to be, and because I believe that women’s sexual and reproductive issues are at the heart of women’s struggles around the world.

As a teenager growing up in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, I marched on the streets with the then fledgling Women’s Action Forum—or WAF as it is known—which recently celebrated its 25^th anniversary. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, WAF was one of the grassroots organizations that spoke up against the dictatorship of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (supported by the Reagan administration, which was also engaged in a covert war in Afghanistan—the impact of which continues to have global ramifications thirty years later). In 1979, General Zia succeeded in passing the Shari’a law-inspired Hudood Ordinance, under which many women were falsely imprisoned for adultery and faced the punishment of death by stoning.² In cases of rape, women had to produce four male witnesses who were willing to testify on their behalf.

During that time (and after completing my secondary education), I interned for nine months at a radical, now defunct, English evening newspaper, The Star. Much of my political writing emerged during those months. All publications were subject to government overview prior to going to press, and often censors removed entire sections. There was a sense of danger, and even at a young age, I learned how important it was to strategize when speaking out. I also learned the urgency and importance of using one’s words to express protest and to share information.

I was raised in a home that was the hub of much literary activity. Many prominent Urdu poets of our time—Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Fehmida Riaz, Ahmed Faraz to name just three—visited our home to give readings, or simply dropped by for a visit. Most of those same poets and writers spent time in prison or in exile for speaking out against military dictatorships. My models for living were also forged by my mother, an educator, who founded her own non-profit organization to train teachers; my aunts and cousins who pursued higher education and professional careers; my sister, a recognized journalist; and my father, who spent a year in a Karachi jail during the 1950s for leading a student movement.

After completing my internship in Karachi, I arrived in the United States to obtain a bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College, one of the first women’s higher education institutions in the U.S. It did not take me long to join an international community of women activists. Together, we participated in anti-apartheid protests and were able to push our college to divest funds from South Africa. I remember intense 4:00 a.m. conversations when we debated whether those of us with international visas should step back if police were to arrive, or risk deportation by remaining on the frontline. That fear did not stop us from participating in Take Back the Night rallies in New York City, or picketing in Springfield, Massachusetts against President George H.W. Bush’s bombings of Libya.

Since graduating more than two decades ago, I have been moving back and forth between the U.S. and Pakistan. In recent years, I have noticed that every time I return from Pakistan to the U.S, I am asked the same question: “How is everything over there?” And the follow-up question is usually: “And how are things for you as a woman?”

While I appreciate people’s concern and interest, I find it draining to explain that Pakistan is a large country. My home, Karachi, is on the coast, 800 miles away from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border where most of the violence is erupting. Today, insurgencies are penetrating deeper into the country, and there is a larger sense of fear. In Karachi there was a major suicide attack on December 28, 2009, where more than 35 people were killed, and hundreds of shops burned. At the same time, it is critical to recall that Karachi has endured enormous turmoil: During the 1990s, the city was torn apart by a civil war between the Muhajirs, who relocated to Pakistan after the 1947 splintering of the subcontinent, and the indigenous Sindhis, but that information went unreported by international media.

And when it comes to freedom for women, again, it is exhausting to explain that just as in the U.S. where gender equity remains a struggle, in Pakistan there is a continuous struggle. But there are also many progressive women—Anita Ghulam Ali, Rehana Hakim, Salima Hashmi, Asma Jahangir, Sheema Kirmani, Mukhtar Mai, to name just a few—who have paved the path for future generations in the judiciary, education, government, arts, media, social services, and activist communities. This said, it is important to recognize that educated women move through society without experiencing the same limitations that affect those from lower-socio economic brackets. In Pakistan, just as in other countries, the struggles for class, gender, and ethnic equity are multi-layered and there are no simple solutions. For example, abortion is illegal in Pakistan, and it is reported to be widely practiced in back alleys. But the issue is not on the front burner, since other struggles take priority. (Across the border in India, abortion is legal, and ultrasounds are banned because families were choosing to abort female fetuses—but families with wealth continue to have access to illegal gender screenings.)

Today, however, because Pakistan is at the frontline of conflict, there is much interest focused on events unfolding in the country. The country is projected onto the world through a Western lens, one that expresses fear that the country will be overtaken by “terrorists” and that all women are oppressed. What is not reported in the media is that Pakistan is largely a secular country, with only a small percentage of followers of extremist Wahhabi Islamic practices. The general public, especially as suicide bombings and violence increase, largely supports the elected government’s actions against the Taliban, and believes in education for men and for women.

Early in our lives, my parents made sure that my siblings and I understood that conflict is a part of life, emphasizing that no matter where one lives, there are issues to expose, address, and a need to organize. I choose to engage with the world around me, and I choose to recognize that there is conflict no matter where I am based. And ultimately, I choose to tackle women’s issues, no matter where I am—Karachi and Houston where I have already lived and worked, or Palestine, or the Juarez-El Paso border where I hope to take VBB productions—through my art and my writing.

Responses

Vicente Garcia Groyon

Sehba, your account of having to explain to non-Pakistanis the specifics behind the media coverage of events in Pakistan resonates strongly with me (as you can probably tell from my essay). Too often, on an international stage, representatives from different countries must first perform the role of informant on their histories and cultures before progressing to more immediate tasks. Often this is at the risk of, for example, using up the limited time allotted for a presentation, or foregoing aspects of a narrative in an endless exposition. I sense a frustration at this, which I recognize and empathize with. It’s a frustration that stems from the one-sided flow of information between powerful and less powerful countries, as well as the limitations of human abilities to receive and process information. Philippine media are inundated with news and popular culture from the U.S., for instance, but very little goes in the opposite direction, and usually in the form of information on the violent or catastrophic, which is then burdened with signifying “Philippines” in a foreign consciousness.

The global village is proving not to be as viable as it once seemed to be. Not even a super-medium like the Internet is able to transcend the human dimensions of knowledge transfer and preservation—one might be able to put a lot of information “out there,” but people will still pay attention to only what is useful and important in their personal contexts.

This brings me to some questions that occurred to me while reading your piece. How much of your writing and activism is directed towards a Pakistani public, and how much to an American or international public? Is this an immaterial distinction, or is it dependent on where you happen to be working at a certain time? These questions are, I suppose, related to the challenges of extending oneself psychically in a world that still operates in small-scale, human dimensions, and the burden of representing one’s culture to a foreign public.

Shaun Randol

Sehba, two questions: is all writing political?

And, is it the responsibility of the Pakistani Diaspora (or other Diaspora) to engage the conflicts of their homelands?

Sehba Sarwar

I believe that we experience conflict no matter where we live. Sometimes, the conflict around us is louder in situations of open war, and at other times, the conflict is more subtle. I certainly recognize that after I attend a Planned Parenthood Board meeting I emerge from the experience feeling as if I am exiting a war-zone; it’s clear in those moments that there is a daily war being waged around the freedom of a woman’s body. Certainly, in the U.S., the demography of prisoners in U.S. cells reflects race inequities, since most prisoners are from communities of color. This race divide is also seen in most large cities where “gentrification” is pushing out older communities, and there is a tearing down and pushing away of history.

Pakistan has its own conflicts, its own wars, both internal and external. There are blatant divisions between the educated elite, the middle class and the working class / rural populations (who comprise majority of the country’s population). And of course, today, one cannot mention Pakistan without making reference to the proximity of Afghanistan, the increase in suicide bombings around the country, and last year’s militant takeover of the valley of Swat. Over the last thirty years, since the start of the Soviet-U.S. war, machine guns have become part of the landscape all around the country: they are wielded by security guards who are hired by multinational corporations to stand outside buildings, they are visible at airports, and they are held by police rangers who patrol street corners.

If a writer’s role is to depict the reality around herself, then it’s important to be truthful. We owe it to our readers to explore and reflect conflicts around us—and in that sense, all writing is political. It is our job to describe what we see in neighborhoods, in homes, in schools, and in war-zones. We cannot invent these situations. We must witness and reflect.

However, labels can be tricky. In a recent assignment that I conducted with a group of young Pakistani women, I asked them to identify themselves by listing nouns and writing them down in order of importance. Most used “Pakistani” somewhere on their lists, but very few listed nationality as the primary way they define themselves. So being tagged as “Diaspora” can be rather limiting. My writings cannot be defined or used as representative of Pakistanis at large or as reflective of the views of the Pakistani Diaspora—or for that matter, cannot be viewed as reflective of a “woman’s perspective.” We are all multifaceted human beings. The conflicts that I witness in spaces where I’ve lived are based on my life experiences, and therefore, my words cannot be viewed as representative of one particular group.