Art Invoked: A Mode of Understanding and Shaping the Political

Author(s): Girma Negash

Source: International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique
, Apr., 2004, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Apr., 2004), pp. 185-201
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1601676

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International Political Science Review (2004), Vol 25, No. 2, 185-201

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Art Invoked: A Mode of Understanding and

Shaping the Political

GIRmA NEGASH

ABSTRACT. There are several reasons why the arts, in all their forms and
productions, provide a site from where we can observe and experience
aspects of political life that we cannot possibly do in any other way. First,
art takes account of the intentions, motivations, and reasons for human
action. Second, art is a privileged medium in the sense that it imparts
knowledge about political life at both the abstract level and at a deeper
cultural level. Third, literary and other texts provide the site for political
discourse because they are influenced by historical circumstances both
temporally and spatially. Lastly, we seek the perspectives of art in
informing politics because of the innovative role played by intellectuals
and artists and their influence in the making of shared meanings. While
this investigation is primarily theoretical, it will be informed by the novels
of Biyi Bandele and the films of Gaston Kabor6.

Keywords. * Concept formation * Political agency * Political commitment

* Political theory * Political values * Politics and the arts

Introduction

Increasingly, political theorists and others are bringing works of art into the
classroom. At the same time, empirically oriented students of politics are revisiting
the much earlier attempt to explore the role and formation of political concepts
by borrowing from literary and artistic ideas and perspectives. These are signs of
an interdisciplinary research agenda in the making. Yet interest in investigating
why art media are facilitating teaching and potentially research in all areas of
political studies has not accompanied these efforts. What can we learn about the
nuances and reconstitution of political ideas emerging from textual and discourse
analyses of artistic works? Why do political theorists turn to literature for
illumination and teachers of politics to works of art for pedagogy? Making a
general claim in this article that artworks shape political ideas and actions and

DOI: 10.1177/0192512104041284 ? 2004 International Political Science Association

SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

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186 International Political Science Review 25 (2)

contribute to the further understanding of existing theories and practices of

politics, I suggest re-examining the nexus between the arts and politics in ways that
inform teaching, political theory, and concept formation.
There is a dearth of scholarly work in modem political studies committed to
building theory while at the same time bringing into relief the importance of art
in complementing the scientific enterprise of describing and explaining political
phenomena.' This does not imply that social scientists have ignored or failed to
appreciate the potential of works of art for enlightenment concerning aspects of
human life (Zuckert, 1995: 189).2 A number of political scientists have called
recently for the organization of a subfield in politics and literature. Along the
same lines, roundtable discussions and workshops have been held over the years
by educators in interdisciplinary studies on how to use literature in teaching
courses in history and the social sciences.3 Also, out of necessity, social scientists
have resorted to artistic texts and materials to make political phenomena more
intelligible to students, or have experimented with other phenomenological
methods.4 All these efforts to confront the problem of bridging the gap between
the analytical orientation and the perceptual life-worlds of students are both
symptomatic and suggestive of the need of a research agenda that addresses the
centrality of art to the world of politics.
The arts are often seen as the reflections of social and political conditions or as
they are defined by their spatial-temporal dimensions. They have been studied for
their catalytic powers in social control from above and social movements from
below, but they have yet to be systematically examined for the roles they play in
shaping and constructing political beliefs and values. Moreover, political studies
that have been dominated by institutional and behavioral approaches have been
impoverished by the undermining of the centrality of art to politics and society. Yet
as Edelman (1995) points out, "art is the fountainhead from which political
discourse, beliefs about politics, and consequent actions ultimately spring." And,
even though we cannot make simple causal relations here, as Edelman admits, we
can still explore the complex connections between the two. In a way, this is what
the new historicists did by demonstrating how artists embody and reflect the
ideologies they inherit from their societies (Cantor, 1995: 193). However, such
influential movements as post-structuralism have failed to examine the
independent role played by artists in the shaping of political values and beliefs.
Consequently, their partial influence on the elevation of the critic and criticism
over the artist and art impairs the project at hand (Aronowitz, 1994: 44-96). Just as
much as the latest critical schools have elevated literary criticism, it must be said
that they have also promoted critical and discursive practices enlivening political
philosophic discourse. Political theorists such as Michael Shapiro have resorted "to
fiction, to imaginative constructions rather than to ordinary thinking" to escape
"from the traps set by the search for certitude."5
The logical home to advance our inquiries into the nexus between politics and
art would be the subfield of political theory. Yet the identity of political theory has
been uncertain. There is the exclusively empirical political theory. There is also
"theory" as political philosophy, which is normally associated with the study of a
small number of the great texts. Even if political theory is shunned by both
philosophy and political science for being a hybrid, as Horton and Baumeister
(1996) claim, the subfield is being practiced and has a lot to gain by embracing
literature and the arts.6 Political theory or theory as political philosophy and
analytic philosophy has been charged with tyrannizing our "understanding by

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 NEGASH: Art Invoked 187

forcing it to conform to its presuppositions" (Johnson, 1988: 170). Hence the

recent trend by political philosophers to bring back the individual and narratives
into their work. This is a recognizable shift for political philosophy in the way it
looks at political morality, moving away from "formal contrasts between right and
good, duty and inclination, towards an analysis of the specific dispositions which
constitute human character" (Johnson, 1988: 170). To accomplish that agenda,
what better way is there than returning to the narrative which incorporates
character and contingency? Contemporary philosophers, including Hannah
Arendt, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Martha Nussbaum, have all used
literature along with the development of ideas.7 Both normative and empirical
political theories can benefit from such flexibility in the understanding and
shaping of political ideas and concepts.

Artistic Sites for Understanding and Constituting Political Ideas

In the constant challenge to understand phenomena that confound us, art offers
an alternative to scientific endeavors, or at least complements them. In political
studies, there has been a plethora of statements invoking the utility of artistic
insights, political imagination, and figures of speech to enhance understanding.8
In the preface to their The Political Imagination in Literature, the aim of Philip
Green and Michael Walzer (1969) was to make political science concrete through
the use of literary texts. Similarly, Ethan Fishman (1989) made a claim in the
introduction to Likely Stories: Essays on Political Philosophy and Contemporary American
Literature that "Socrates' use of fiction as a source of encouraging political
speculation is valid and, with suitable adjustments, applicable to today's
classrooms." With such testimonials and the increasing use of imaginative writing
and artistic works for pedagogical purposes, the verdict seems to be in as to the
usefulness of art for political understanding. What is still lacking is an attendant
seriousness in exploring the nexus between art and politics to construct modes of
analysis that will inform pedagogy, enhance interpretation, and facilitate theory
building in political studies. Maureen Whitebrook's contribution to this end is
notable. Among other suggestions, she advises us to go beyond the crude notion
of "politics and literature" and the "use of novels as source books for the social
sciences," and to read them "as fictions-works of imagination to be taken into
politics in terms of their own inherent qualities" (Whitebrook, 1992: 185-6).9 If
insights are to be gained from artistic works about political life, one has to provide
a more systematic answer to why this is. The appreciation and scholarly attention
given to the narrative form in the service of political theory and practice should be
extended to other fundamentals of the arts.
When it comes to my second claim (that of the evocative power of the arts to
shape political ideas) more substantiation is in order. Edelman (1995: 7) claims:

The catalog of conceptions and perceptions stemming from works of art and
forming political ideas and actions can be extended indefinitely. It is these, not
the appeals, fears, or enthusiasms of the moment, that exert the fundamental
influence on political maneuvering and its outcomes, for they shape the
meanings of everyday developments.

Edelman's ambitious argument is that political conceptions emerge as the result

of exposure to art forms both high and low over a period of time. If people
"perceive and conceive in the light of narratives, pictures, and images," then works

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188 International Political Science Review 25 (2)

of art become "the medium through which new meanings emerge" (Edelman,
1995: 7). This is only a suggestive notion that can be methodically exploited. The
cognitive advantage, in terms of providing details, and the role emotions play in
the intensification of experience both lend themselves well to the elaboration of
existing political ideas and the birth of new ones. Also, because artistic practice by
its very nature is public, at least for the most part, art is well suited to the shaping
of political ideas. Hence its power has made it historically complicit with and
subject to pedagogy, propaganda, censorship, control, and subversion.
Considering these qualities of art, few steps have been taken to go beyond an
appreciation of its mysterious potency to elucidate what in its characteristics helps
us better understand and shape political ideas and practices. Social scientists who
employ artistic texts for pedagogy on the side, like having an illicit affair, can
reconsider the legitimacy of such a project. I entertain here a narrow agenda that
would make a case for a mode of understanding and shaping of the political that
encourages a freer borrowing of the essentials of representation, expression,
symbols, and language of art in the service of political enquiry. To begin with, we
should ascertain aspects of political meaning that are inscribed in texts of
imaginative writing and in the arts.
There are several reasons why the arts, in their form and production, provide a
site from where we can observe and experience aspects of political life that we
cannot possibly achieve in any other way.'0 The first involves the role of human
agency, which takes into account the intentions, motivations, and reasons for
human action. Artistic works take stock of the discontinuities of the social life
process that a "science" of human life or generalizations about human behavior
cannot accommodate.11 Second, art is a privileged medium in the sense that it
imparts knowledge about life, in this case political life, at both the abstract level
and at a deeper cultural level of meaning. The third reason that literary and other
texts provide the site for political discourse is because they are influenced by their
historical circumstances in time and space.12 We cannot begin to talk about art and
politics in Africa, for example, without considering the impact of colonialism and
its aftermath, and without the insights of postcolonial criticism. This leads us to
the fourth and final reason for seeking the perspectives of art in informing
politics. In spite of the recent focus on underscoring the importance of readership
by deconstructionists, the innovative role being played by intellectuals and artists and
their influence in the construction of images are also part of the political realities
in the here and now.'3 Their class position, their ideologies, their perceived roles
in their societies, and how all these are articulated in their texts help us
understand more of the substance of politics, the making of shared meanings in
the common languages of those societies. Having established the importance of
looking into artistic texts and the perceptions of those who construct them, I now
turn to the examination of the two political values of identity and commitment as
an illustrative device. I will introduce these values as they are relevant to African
realities and then apply them to the works of two African artists.

Political Values and Textual Analyses

The first value is that of identity-the demand for centricity by African artists as a
group, and the challenges taken up by a great many African artists to redefine the
"self' as a reaction to the denigration of colonialism. Questions on what
constitutes "African," the validity of an African aesthetics and language use are all

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 NEGASH: Art Invoked 189

related to the question of identity. The second value is what is commonly

understood as political commitment.'4 This value is closely tied to the perceived roles
African artists have in their responsibilities to their communities. This question
cannot be dissociated from their position in society and consequently from their
class affiliation. While almost all "progressive" artists would deny their elite status
in society, they nevertheless hold privileged positions by the very fact of their
education and status as well as the consumption of the products of their work.
They have special positions to fill and roles to perform. Their perception on this
critical issue does not necessarily match what is ascribed to them by critics and
sociological categories. These two political values have been salient in defining
aesthetics in Africa, just as African arts have been in the shaping of common
conceptions of those values. The contribution of artists to national culture, the
moral and political models they have created, and the potential of their political
imaginations to expand freedom are all basic elements of political order and
change in need of re-examination.
The two values of identity and political commitment will be discussed here as
they are represented in the works of fiction and film of two African artists. The
analysis will involve a triangulation method including the responses of the artists,
the texts of their creative works, and my "political reading" of both, with the
intention of demonstrating below how the artistic imagination of these two artists
helps us better understand the two political values introduced above. Gaston
Kabor6 (Burkina Faso) will be associated with "identity" and Biyi Bandele with
"political commitment." After briefly discussing the works of these two African
artists and their contributions to our understanding of the political values of
identity and commitment, I will then elaborate upon the reasons why I assert that
such sites allow us to observe and experience aspects of political life.

Facets of Identity in Kabore's Cinematic Art

The three films of Burkinabe film-maker Gaston Kabor6, Wend Kuuni, Zan Boko,
and Buud Yam, praised for their aesthetic and ethnographic sensibilities to African
rural life, provide us with the opportunity of grappling with the ambiguities
involved in locating identity. A political reading of these films allows us to probe a
number of difficult questions about representation, identity, and agency.'5
The first film, Wend Kuuni (1982) tells us the story of a small boy who was left
behind by his mother who had died in the woods after fleeing a customary forced
marriage following the mysterious disappearance of her husband for more than a
year. A passing trader discovers the boy and takes him to a nearby village. The
village elders, who discover the boy is mute, find him a family who adopt the boy
and name him Wend Kuuni, a Gift of God. Together with their daughter,
Poghn6er6, they raise him until one day the mystery of the mute boy is unraveled
when a traumatic experience pushes him to utter his first word and then tell his
own story.
In the second film, Zan Boko, Kabor6's cinematic narrative is about a village
being encroached upon by the relentless imperatives of modernization. The main
character, Tinga, and his neighbors are being pushed off their ancestral lands to
meet the dictates of urban renewal. His wealthy neighbor is trying to buy him off
the land in order to construct a swimming pool. A journalist attempts to tell the
story of the plight of the villagers on television, but the government unplugs the
telecast. Kabor6's cinematic tale valorizes the rural African tradition, while it

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190 International Political Science Review 25 (2)

criticizes the government for its neglect of the needs of the villagers and its
repression of dissent.
Buud Yam (1997), Kabor6's more recent film, is a sequel to Wend Kuuni and a
story of self-discovery, transcendence, and yet more, of an exploration of identity.
Buud Yam's story picks up 12 years later, when Wend Kuuni has become a young
man. Loved by his adoptive parents and his sister, Poghneer6, he is, however, an odd
man out in the village and regarded with suspicion. His sister's sudden and myster-
ious illness and the need to find a legendary healer, send him on a long journey
(that constitutes a good part of the cinematic narrative) and involves encounters
with a trade caravan, the trader who saved him when he was left behind by his
dead mother, and even with the devil in the disguise of a beautiful woman.
The definition of the personal self in Gaston Kabor6's art and in his personal
reflections is complex and ambiguous because it is multilayered, with fluidity of
movement between those layers. Nevertheless, we can draw certain conclusions
from examining Kabor6's artistic expressions and stated positions. First,
identification with the universal is insinuated in Kabor6's works and thoughts: "I
consider myself both citizen of the world and of my country. Hence, all that affects
the survival of humanity, which involves the blossoming of the individual, concerns
me" (Kabor6, 1994). The second level, the cultural, establishes modes of
identification with the social realities of the subjects in his films while valorizing
the traditional past in a melange of historicism and neo-traditionalism. The third
level is the unavoidable political present reflected in the themes of his films. Lastly,
at the individual level the significant aspect of Kabor6's "self' is conditioned by the
choices he makes in the kinetic movement between all these layers, in his
awareness of himself and the position he assumes.

Political Commitnent in the Novels of Biyi Bandele

The question of art and commitment has brought forth endless debates among
artists and critics for generations. Commitment is perhaps too gross a concept,
and because of its long association with mostly leftist activism it has disappeared
from academic discourse and is therefore considered not worthy of clarification.
In the case of African Literature, especially the literature produced by the first
generation of writers after political independence, the question of whether liter-
ature should be committed dominated African literary criticism. Such episodic
debate and the more permanent role of the intellectual in African societies create
the appropriate context to re-examine the difficult concept of "commitment" as
used by French intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s, except that the French
preferred political "engagement." Engagement implies the artist's activism and
commitment to politics. Three elements stand out in Bandele's16 fiction as
politically engage themes: neocolonial conditions, dystopic images, and madness.'7
Biyi Bandele's first novel, The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond (Bandele-
Thomas, 1992), is a tale of murder, incest, revenge, and impotency-a story within
a story, into which the reader is plunged only to find out it was all fiction, a hoax,
leaving the protagonist dumbfounded. The central character, Bozo, has run away
from home after his mother is committed to an asylum for murdering her
husband who had committed incest with their daughter. Bozo lives a tumultuous
life as a drug dealer, an ascetic, and a rebel leader of an aborted coup d'etat. The
larger context of the story is the marginalized peoples in the Fourth World, and
Bandele's commitment is to speak for them.

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 NEGASH: Art Invoked 191

The second novel, The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams (Bandele-
Thomas, 1991), is the bizarre story of the narrator agent and his brother Rayo.
The narrator's normal adolescent life and school concerns contrast with the
brother Rayo, who is a rebel against authority at every level. His encounters with
school authorities, the police, and prison guards eventually lead him to a suicide
attempt. His mother intervenes in the end by taking him to an exorcist. It is at that
point that the reader realizes the narrator agent and Rayo are one and the same
and that he has gone mad. Both novels are written in a uniquely discursive style,
their characters and events held together in a meaningful puzzle that reflects
Nigerian political realities.
In The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond, images of "congested graves"
and a "confetti of flies" accompany descriptions of a Fourth World urban squalor.
The disintegration of families, the rise of crime and drug trafficking, make up the
fragmented pieces of the novel. The second theme of "dystopia" is represented in
expressions of disillusionment in the ideologies of the past and the birth of new
reactionary and nativist movements such as the Islamic Maitatsine rebellion. The
theme of "madness" is best articulated in The Sympathetic Undertaker. Biyi Bandele
personalizes the fragmentation and disorder of marginalized society in the
characters of his novels, who are for the most part dysfunctional and psychotic.
The theme of madness becomes a brilliant literary ploy that accommodates the
coexistence of two worlds and an escape from the harsh neocolonial realities.
Bandele's two novels are politically and morally engaged in that they condemn
marginalization and neglect, greed and political oppression.
From this discursive treatment of cinematic and literary texts and their
embedded political values as a preliminary illustration of praxis, I now turn to
discussing four explanations as to why the arts, in their form and productions,
provide the appropriate site from where we can observe and experience aspects of
political life we cannot fathom otherwise, and those are: art and artists, art and
historicism, political agency, and art as privileged media.

Art and Artists

Intellectuals and artists everywhere assume a critical role in society because of

their privileged position, and they possess the imagination and skills to create
narratives, pictures, and images that construct and reconstruct political ideas and
meaning. This is especially true of so-called Third World artists.
Postcolonial artists and intellectuals excavated their past to redeem their
culture and shed light on their present conditions. They responded to constructed
pasts and were complicit in those constructions. African artists, for example, used
their talents and skills to create the communities they identified with. Of African
novelists, Emmanuel Obiechina (1992: 17) writes: "In their roles as chroniclers,
custodians of the collective heritage, social critics, teachers and visionaries of their
people, novelists have illuminated the African situation and the forces that have
kept the continent in an endemic state of crisis.""8
Starting with the assumption that artists contribute wittingly or unwittingly to
political ideas and interpretations, we cannot ignore their role and responsibilities
in their societies. First and foremost the artist is an intellectual who innovates and
brings new ideas, as well as a craftsperson who creates new forms of
communication. Without a doubt artists and intellectuals have always been in an
advantageous and privileged position to chronicle events, preserve the collective

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192 International Political Science Review 25 (2)

memory, perform the role of teacher and seer, and become social critics.'9 These
are not exclusive categories and therefore artists may perceive themselves as
playing several roles (Obiechina, 1992: 17). Let us consider two of those roles
typically assumed by artists in Africa.
Artists record and chronicle the events and deeds of all time, construct and
reconstruct realities as they imagine them. Social realists in the past and magic
realists more recently mirrored realities and worlds previously removed from our
lives. It is these representations that become part of our experience. Many artists
aspire to go beyond the chronicling of events and previously held perceptions and
representations. As Biyi Bandele explains: "For me the job of an artist is to re-
imagine things, to re-invent, to take reality and fashion it into something new, into
another vision, basically to propose an alternative, a different way of seeing things"
(Bandele-Thomas, 1994). What gradually contributes to our understanding of
political ideas is every new, subtle treatment and nuance of abstract and not so
abstract conceptions of political life.
The artist as communicator helps us appreciate art's power to convey the truth.
Contrasting art with philosophy, Irwin Edman argues that the arts and the artist
have the means and imagination to bring home "the truth of things rather than
truth about them" (1967: 142). Both philosophy and science fall short of helping
us discern what people experience. Artists at their best have the craftsmanship and
imagination to have an impact on our feelings and imaginations. Through their
imagination, creativity, and the making of new forms these artists "open another
window for the soul upon another world, upon what seems to the absorbed sharer
of the experience, for the time being, the real world, a reality to which no other
discourse initiates him" (Edman, 1967: 143). Their productions reflect their
localities and times even though one can argue that their works are at once
historical and timeless.

Art and Historicism

In spite of the debates surrounding historicism old and new, we can accept the less
deterministic features of the idea that artworks are as much products of their time
and location as the artists who produce them are. As such, we cannot ignore the
spatial-temporal context within which artistic works are created and consumed.
We cannot possibly appreciate how art and politics meet in Africa without
acknowledging the impact of colonialism. In fact, art, like philosophy, looks into
the past, mirrors the present, and projects into the future. While art may not be
bound by time and space, postcolonial, utopian, and dystopian fiction and similar
works of art have been known to be consciously historicist. Of postcolonial writers
Elleke Boehmer remarks, "they established a restorative connection with that
which colonialist discourse had denied-the internal life of the colonized, their
experience as historical actors" (1995: 195). Undoubtedly, art can hardly escape
politics in societies in transition and amid political change. Even so, we need to
beware of overemphasizing historical context and determinism.
Kabore's films, especially Wend Kuuni, have been unfairly described as
romanticizing rural African life, while in fact Kabor6 was true to the customs and
social orders of time and space. In Wend Kuuni, patriarchal tyranny and ethnic
bigotry were the order of the day, just as other village practices such as fulfilling
obligations to neighbors and the counsel of elders represent communitarian
values. Zan Boko is set in more contemporary times, as it deals with urbanization

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 NEGASH: Art Invoked 193

and modernization. It is Buud Yam that perhaps defies historicity as it is tentative,

ambiguous, and pregnant with promising possibilities. Such ambiguities do not
exist in Biyi Bandele's novels, firmly situated as they are in postcolonial Nigeria.
More than that, the terrifying images of urban sprawls and nightmarish scenarios
are worse than one imagines in the poorest countries of the world. The fast and
uneven integration of the societies depicted in these novels into the global
capitalist economy, and the consequences at ground zero, are manifested in
shortages, hunger, malnutrition, hoarding, greed and corruption, debt, and petty
and high crimes. Historicity is not only undermined by the logic of globalization,
but by opposing, reactive, and revolutionary responses in which agency plays a
crucial role.

Political Agency
If politics is the realm of human affairs in which people take action rhetorically or
by other means, then understanding their intentions, motivations, or reactions is
by definition crucial. The socio-scientific wing of the study of politics has weighed
heavily on the side of observing such behaviors as voting and public opinion,
leaving out so much of what is needed to understand the gamut of what lies
between human consciousness (even unconsciousness) and the ultimate political
act-war. Our understanding of politically relevant human thought and actions is
often enhanced by works of art. As Murray Edelman points out, "works of art and
literature offer conceptions and perceptions that can be adopted or changed to fit
needs, fears, interests, or aspirations" (1995: 4). The extent of how art can
enhance our understanding or experience of political agency will be illustrated
using Gaston Kabore's three films. A multi-perspective approach to film reading,
as one would cut facets into a diamond to draw out its brilliance, yields insights
into the nexus between cinematic seeing and the complex webs of identity.
Agency refers to humans in action or what Anthony Giddens defines as a
"stream of actual or contemplated causal interventions of corporeal beings in the
ongoing process of events-in-the-world" (1979: 55). Political agency, which is at the
center of our examination, involves making decisions that have public impact.
Political agency is ideally represented by Hannah Arendt's (1958) notion of
political action in which men appear to each other through speech and action.20
is important to distinguish the many levels, from the status of the apolitical to the
highest level of commitment and all those in between, within the broad range of
political action. We also need to distinguish between "contemplated causal"
actions and those that are mere reactions to situations and events. These reactions
or contingencies were undermined by theorists in the past. As Maureen
Whitebrook writes, "where theory neglects contingency or only treats it as a
problem to be coped with, or brought under control, it fails, accordingly, to allow
for the effects of contingency in the lives of persons, including their identity as
political agents" (2001: 99-100). How do artists pick up from where the observable
and predictable have left off? Whitebrook is convincing about the novel's
contribution to political understanding in that "novels are particularly good at
showing how contingency and purpose can be reconciled" (2001: 106). The
literary narrative then accommodates the unpredictable side of life as well as
purposeful behavior-the fragmented and coherent at the same time. How do
other art forms elaborate upon political agency? While the narrative structure can
be extended to other art forms such as the cinema, other artistic elements besides

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194 International Political Science Review 25(2)

storytelling will add to the stimuli of the political imagination. I suggest here that
we add the role of images and symbolism to that of literary narrative in the
construction and reconstruction of political ideas.
In Wend Kuuni, Gaston Kabor6 gives voice to the marginalized such as women,
children, and those ostracized by archaic customs and traditions and, as such, this
film is distinctive as an evocative tale of empowerment. In the second film, Zan
Boko, in which the encroaching of modernity on a rural village forms the narrative,
the audience is drawn into empathizing with the main character, Tinga.
Crosscutting images flash between modernity and tradition, building up into a
collision course. Engineers and surveyors arrive from the city to plot out land for
new constructions. A servant is sent by the wealthy neighbor to talk Tinga into
selling his land. Scenes of bulldozers turning earth are inter-spliced with anxious
Tinga and his neighbors contemplating the new uncertainties. Kabor6's intention
is not simply to recount the disappearance of village life, but to valorize traditional
values. A young journalist takes up Tinga's cause by trying to expose the injustice
publicly on television, until his audio-visual expose is literally unplugged by the
state censors. The journalist's action represents the most dramatic reaction to the
dispossession of the villagers by the enclosing modernization and political agency.
Beyond the vagaries of modernization, class, and state oppression, Zan Boko
reflects the artist's immediate concerns, such as the rural-urban gap, the
disappearance of village life, and the preservation of the collective memory of a
people, all of which he says he is a witness of. It is these identifications, both
conscious and unconscious, with his imagined community that make up the
political self.
As the idea of political commitment is mediated through Biyi Bandele's fiction,
the two narratives also elaborate upon aspects of political agency that are not easily
discernible. In fact, in both novels, the main characters are not associated with
purposeful political behavior. Instead, they are all either vulnerable to the harsh
conditions of their environments or they are struggling to assert their autonomy.
None of the characters prevail in the end or achieve their political goals. In The
Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond, Bozo, the main character of the story
within the story, is beaten around by fate, forever discontented, and reacts
excessively and violently to every challenge. In the disorder and chaos created in
the narrative hardly anything is predictable, as are the characters' reactions to
them. In the other novel, The Sympathetic Undertaker, more of the same disorder is
vividly described as well as the resulting internal disorders in victims of a harsh
Fourth World environment. The schizophrenic character in this novel represents
the erratic behavior of individuals caught between a low sense of efficacy and
selective political action in a repressive political system. The discontinuities in
behavior, as portrayed in the characters' impotency and erratic political reactions
in these two narratives, fall short of agency in the Arendtian sense. It is worth our
while to revisit the epistemological reasons for the potency of art in understanding
all aspects of the political, including agency.

Art as Privileged Medium

Art is a privileged medium in that it reveals important knowledge about life, in this
case political life, at both the abstract level and at a deeper cultural level. In a little
known introduction to aesthetics, Arts and the Man, Irwin Edman (1967)
elaborates upon three functions that the arts fulfill. In the first place, they intensif

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 NEGASH: Art Invoked 195

experience "by the arresting of the sensations" (Edman, 1967: 27). In other words,
art arrests experience and makes us aware and engaged. The second function of
the arts goes beyond intensification to provide systematic insight and coherency.
In Edman's words, "in works of art sensations are more profoundly and richly
clarified through some deliberate and explicit pattern; emotions are given a
sequence and a development such as the exigencies of practical life scarcely or
rarely permit" (1967: 31). One can make a parallel between this clarifying
function and the descriptive and explanatory functions of social science. The last
function, interpretation of experience, goes beyond the response to external
stimuli, to meaning. The arts in one way or another interpret life (Edman, 1967:
33). Edman's ideas on art and experience are valuable in establishing the fact that
works of art are advantageously placed to elaborate upon human experience and
thereby enhance meaning.
To extend Edman's elegant apparatus, the intensifying, clarifying, and
interpretative functions of the arts have been invoked in some ways by certain
contemporary theorists who take pains to make our political world more
intelligible. In the first instance, I need only to recognize the power of the arts in
restoring our emotions, thereby intensifying our experience. Political philosophy
has lately rediscovered the importance and relevance of emotions to politics in
that "the honest embrace of feeling may evoke moral imagination" (Noddings,
1998: 135).21 In the service of the arts, to clarify, consider Alasdair MacIntyre's
discernment about the shortcomings of empiricism "to give an account for
personal identity, solely in terms of psychological state and events" (1984: 217).
MacIntyre maintains the solution to making the connection between
psychological states, events, and personal identity can be "provided by the concept
of a story and that kind of unity of character that a story requires" (1984: 217).
Peter Johnson comes to the same conclusion, pointing out that unlike empirical
data that provide evidence for biology, literature does not prove something to us,
but rather reveals "something which we did not previously see or understand"
(1988: 179). Lastly, the interpretative role of the arts in political life manifests itself
when philosophy is facilitated by what the arts can contribute to it. Artistic
imagination itself offers answers to political questions and new perspectives on the
perennial ones.22 If we apply this mode of inquiry to the artworks of Kabore and
Bandele, the potency of the arts in imparting knowledge becomes evident.
The film-maker Gaston Kabore, like all artists, uses the techniques of the trade
to intensify political experience. Cinematic strategies (shots, editing, and so on)
are employed to evoke certain sensations. Kabore's choice of "sociological time" in
Wend Kuuni, the crosscutting images in Zan Boko, and the flashbacks in Buud Yam
are all purposeful cinematic techniques aimed to intensify emotions and engage
the senses of the audience. The details of the cinematic narrative provide the
clarifications. One could point out, for example, the ugly scene of the villagers
setting fire to the hut of Wend Kuuni's mother in Wend Kuuni, Wend Kuuni's
encounter with the "river spirit" at a river crossing in Buud Yam, and the
memorable images of chalked numbers on the huts after a census in Zan Boko.
These and other images can eventually contribute to a clearer perception of the
meaning of bigotry, empowerment, self-discovery, and the ongoing clash of
modernity with tradition. The clarification of related political ideas comes from
the new facts gathered, the emotions generated or manipulated, and when one
politically sees and reads the cinematic narrative.
Bandele's fictions are also illustrative of the power of art to mediate and

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196 International Political Science Review 25 (2)

enhance experience and understanding. In form and content, the two novels have
a lot in common. Both narratives are set in urban Nigeria in landscapes that lend
themselves to brutal characters and dehumanization. The imagery is grotesque
with epithets that shock and revolt. The Man Who Came in from the Back of Bey
paints a surrealistic world with bizarre, phantasmic, and chaotic images. The
Sympathetic Undertaker stinks of corruption and oppression. Luckily for the reader,
these depressing narratives are rescued by wit, humor, and satiric language.
Beyond the sensations of shock and revulsion, the reader can perceive the strange
world at the margins of globalization and the subterranean spaces of the poorest
of the poor. The characters in both novels are representative of the various
responses to the disorder and contradictions of marginal societies. They are
idealists, rebels, ascetics, fanatics, and madmen. They are more or less survivors of
harsh realities. The satirical Sympathetic Undertaker is a political commentary on
their leaders, who are brutal and corrupt buffoons. While both narratives are
about urban poverty, authoritarianism, and corruption, the larger meaning they
both share is an indictment of man's cruelty against man.

Preliminary Conclusions: Invoking Art for Political Inquiry

I will draw three tentative conclusions on the usefulness of the arts in the
enterprise of constructing political ideas and concepts and the place of the arts in
the academic understanding of politics. Artistic works such as the two we discussed
by Biyi Bandele and Gaston Kabor6 can be of considerable benefit to students of
politics as complementary texts in these two endeavors.
First, the arts shape political ideas or help constitute politics. Aside from
making experience vivid, the arts "clarify and deepen for us emotional incidents of
familiar situations" (Edman, 1967: 29). It is these images, pictures, characters, and
narratives that have shaped our perception of the political world (Edelman, 1995:
7). Every time our senses are arrested by an artistic piece that gives us a virtual
political experience, there is that one more insight we can add to our previous
knowledge. Picasso's Guernica may have given you one more unforgettable facet of
the horrors of war, and you are likely to have further experiences from yet other
artworks. The benefit of these normally pleasant encounters with artworks is that
each encounter will bring life to abstract vision. Even empirically oriented political
studies can benefit from this advantage in the area of concept formation.
Second, the arts provide the fabric and setting from which political meanings
can be derived. The potency of certain works is such that the datum provided goes
beyond description to explain and give meaning. Although the artistic works do
not have to be exceptional, a particular encounter with one may result in a leap of
understanding or revelation of an element of a political idea. In the choice of the
appropriate text for teaching, reflection, and research, we need to consider the
criteria of insight and potency. Choosing an appropriate work is self-evident, but
the selection of a text for its potency requires an appreciation of what goes into an
artistic work.
Finally, the arts avail us of the essential tools for restoring emotions and
intensifying experience, thereby enhancing our understanding of the politica
Hence, harnessing artistic power serves to evoke our moral imagination, which
helps us tackle difficult political questions. An appreciation of the potency of art
will involve then recognizing at what junctures the arts complement scientific
endeavors to understand political life. The first consideration is in acknowledging

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 NEGASH: Art Invoked 197

that the power of art is such that it is able to accommodate the irrational, the
unexpected, and the unpredictable predisposition and acts of humans. We add to
the comprehension of political abstraction because of the vocabulary that is
availed to us in the tools and modes we have borrowed from myth, symbols, and
figures of speech. The details of the artistic (anti-)method that stimulate our
senses and challenge our imagination are found in the craft of the arts we
commonly take for granted. Those essentials of artistic communication such as
imagery, metaphor, and the artist's chosen mode of representation make artistic
power indispensable to the understanding and constitution of shared meanings
and political ideas. The consideration here is to acknowledge and understand
what approaches and techniques the artist has employed to stimulate the senses.
While political theory may be best placed to advance this enterprise of
developing more orderly ways of making connections between the political and
the arts, the other subfields of political science can complement their methods of
inquiry with devices that rely on vivid artistic tropes that concretize experience.
The hermeneutic use of the narrative structure across several disciplines attests to
the veracity of the powers of the artistic imagination. Political values and practices
can be re-examined with the benefit of details and insights that are to be gained
from artistic texts, as illustrated in this essay. In the same way, the arts are best
positioned to facilitate the construction of new political ideas and better
comprehension of old ones. Systematically invoked, the arts are most useful in
understanding and constituting the political.

Notes

1. See Sederberg (1984), The Politics of Meaning for an elaboration of this notion of the
value of art in complementing political science. Sederberg argues that through the arts
we better understand "the breakdown of shared meaning in the social life process"
(1984: 47). Critical-expressionist political theorists tend to believe "art may be that
which expresses obliquely what cannot be expressed directly" in any other way.
2. Zuckert (1995) argues that the subfield of literature and politics is not simply an
extension of politics into literary fiction. She says "The questions that led political
scientists to look to works of art for enlightenment concern the aspects of human life
that are most difficult, if not impossible to study and observe externally or objectively-
the attitudes, emotions, and opinions that shape and are shaped by people's
circumstances" (Zuckert, 1995: 189).
3. Panels addressing the approaches and techniques of using literature to teach social
science courses are especially enthusiastically embraced by those who teach comparative
politics courses. A common pedagogical theme discussed at these national and regional
meetings is making the life-worlds of distant peoples more familiar to American
students. Inspired by participation at such a meeting (the Southeast Research Group of
African Studies, 1988) the author developed a course, Politics and the Arts, at the
University of South Carolina Aiken.
4. Godtfredsen (1988: 65-6) proposes an application of a phenomenological epistemology
to introduce effectively the content and methods of politics to students at the college
level that may respond to their more immediate needs and at their level of
consciousness.
5. Michael J. Shapiro stands out in his contributions to the project that encourages
interaction between political imagination and artistic form by his critique of
mainstream political science and its methodologies, including logical positivism, and by
embracing critical modes of political inquiry by examining the texts of fiction, cinema,

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198 International Political Science Review 25(2)

and other imaginative constructions. For his reflections on alternative understandings

of social and political inquiry, see Shapiro (1981). Textuality is inherent in Shapiro's
following works of political practice: Reading Postmodern Polity: Political Theory as Textual
Practice (1992); The Politics of Representation: Writing Practices in Biography, Photography, and
Political Analysis (1988); International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World
Politics (Shapiro and Der Derian, 1989); Violent Cartographies: Mapping Culture of War
(1997); and Cinematic Political Thought: Narrating Race, Nation and Gender (1999).
6. Simons (1995: 682-97) contends that political theory has been exiled from its previous
homeland of legitimization of political orders as the result of contemporary conditions
in the advanced liberal and capitalist political order in which a media-generated
"imagology" of society as a communicative system has filled the role of a legitimizing
discourse.
7. For an excellent discussion of the interplay between literature and political philosophy,
see Horton and Baumeister (1996). Horton and Baumeister surmise that for MacIntyre
and Taylor, narrative is a major part of an "understanding of the self and of its
relationship to political morality" (Horton and Baumeister, 1996: 15). Both have their
critics, however, on the manner of their application of narrative to theory. Martha
Nussbaum and Richard Rorty are subject to a similar criticism: Nussbaum for limiting
narrative to the support of only one moral conception and Rorty, who makes a case for
the superiority of imaginative literature to philosophical argument, for the open-ended
and fragmentary nature of his narrative. See, in particular, the chapters by Whitebrook,
by Mendus, and by Horton in Horton and Baumeister (1996), as well as Taylor (1989),
MacIntyre (1984), and Nussbaum (1990).
8. A most insightful essay that elaborates on the special qualities of the arts as they relate to
human experience is Edman's (1967) Arts and the Man. See also the introduction to
Green and Walzer (1969), Barber and Gargas McGrath (1982), and Peckham (1967).
9. Whitebrook's other important works include: Identity, Narrative and Politics (2001) and
Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens: Narrative Accounts of Liberalism (1995). The Politics and
Arts Group coordinated by Maureen Whitebrook has brought together scholars
particularly interested in the nexus between politics and the arts and are prepared to
explore how the two combine in the understanding of the political.
10. Edman's (1967) description of art as it relates to experience is instructive here in
describing the power of art to intensify, clarify, and give meaning to experience.
11. See Peter Sederberg (1984: 51) for a discussion of art as a method wherein art
complements social science by "injecting back some contact with the anomalies, the
ambiguities and the tensions that, at times, impinge on shared meanings but are
excluded by the ordered perspective of social science."
12. While the importance of context in creative works is widely acknowledged, the so-called
New Historicism school emphasizes the role of social construction in creative works.
FrederickJameson's (1985) The Political Unconscious is among the most influential works
along this line. Political theorists in the more classical mode, however, are reluctant to
accept the more deterministic approaches. Paul A. Cantor (1995: 192-5) asserts that the
classical position is the more balanced and comprehensive one, in that "it recognizes
and embraces all the phenomena the historicist position points to, but it does not stop
there-it goes further and allows for other human possibilities, refusing to eliminate a
role for conscious human agency in history" (Cantor, 1995: 193).
13. Mukerji and Schudson (1991: 49) conclude that Foucault, unlike the structuralists,
"does not think we should ignore authorship altogether. On the contrary, he thinks the
author should be studied as a vital instrument of power that has been used in literary
criticism to restrict access to print and its power."
14. For discussions on the political values of identity and commitment I refer to my earlier
works, Negash (1999) and Negash (2000).
15. Readers who are unfamiliar with African cinema can appreciate Spike Lee's political
imagination in Do the Right Thing, a powerful representation of race and difference in
the USA.

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 NEGASH: Art Invoked 199

16. Biyi Bandele has dropped the last part of his earlier hyphenated name, Biyi Bandele-
Thomas. I will continue to use his old hyphenated surname in referring to his earlier
works.
17. Marginalized by the dominant ideology, politically committed writing has been
discarded to the attic in the West. The writings ofJohn Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, and
Sinclair Lewis come to mind, together with Balzac, Zola, and Dickens in an earlier era.
18. In "Parables of Power and Powerlessness: Exploration in Anglophone African Fiction
Today" Obiechina (1992) uses four novels to illustrate class, the uses of power, and the
military in Africa.
19. On the tug-of-war between artists and the guardians of the post-colonial states, see this
author's Resistant Art and Censorship in Africa (2003).
20. Through speech and action, Arendt argues, "men distinguish themselves instead of
being merely distinct; they are the modes in which human beings appear to each other,
not indeed as physical objects, but qua men" (1958: 175-81).
21. In the same volume as Noddings (1998), see in particular Solomon (1998), Rorty
(1998), Sherman (1998), and Slote (1998). See also Martha C. Nussbaum (1990:
35-53). In her argument for a more human philosophy, Nussbaum writes, "in pursuit of
human self-understanding and of a society in which humanity can realize itself more
fully, the imagination and the terms of the literary artist are indispensable guides"
(1990: 53).
22. As a pedagogical tool, I had my students read Glenn Tinder's (1970) Political Thinking.
The Perennial Questions as an introduction before examining texts from different media
for their power of representation and insights regarding such questions.

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Biographical Note

GIRMA NEGASH is Professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina

Aiken, USA. His research interests include politics and the arts and apology and
forgiveness. He is a member of the international Politics and the Arts Group. His
most recent publications are: "Resistant Art and Censorship in Africa" in Peace
Review and "Apologia Politica: An Examination of the Politics and Ethics of Political
Remorse in International Affairs" in International Journal of Politics and Ethics.
ADDRESS: USC Aiken, 471 University Parkway, Aiken, sc 29801, USA [email:
girman~usca.edu].

Acknowledgment. An earlier version of this article was originally presented at the Politics and
the Arts Group Symposium entitled "Politics and the Arts: Making Connections in Theory
and Praxis," Finnish Institute, Berlin, May 23-25, 2002.

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