Epistemology and power

The creation of knowledge (and literature) is never or seldom apolitical and non-contextual of socio-cultural myths or paradigms. While the scholarship on epistemology or generation of political and socio-cultural knowledge is academic and often informs the hegemony and rationalizes oppression in subtle and non-perceptive ways, the motifs created and perpetuated through literature are more direct. They also are more intimate in a way that we engage with fiction and characters on the level of empathy and not through the critical eye of intellect. In that way the 'epistemic violence' can be more dangerous and it does complement the earlier project of sustaining a socio-political structure.

Few examples in order here. The first can be taken of "To kill a mockingbird". It came just the right time when the civil rights debate was opening up and the white folks had a white woman writing about the altruism and magnanimity of a white man toward a black man. And it became a textbook! The structural problem of racism and oppression thus been reduced to 'not killing mockingbirds' (mockingbird being the Tom Robinson) while not challenging the white privilege. Also, see how much in that book Tom Robinson or any other black person is a one-dimensional being who has to act as a backdrop for the actions and lives of the white folk. But instead of teaching the history of rapes, violence, slavery and all the torture, the white America chooses to teach the race relations through the lens of magnanimity of an elderly white man.

Let's take Anna Kerenia by Tolstoy. Yes, Anna comes as the one being overtaken by passion and mad in love and strong enough to shelve the dignity and prestige of high society and instead take the rebellious cause for the sake of love. But she also comes across as whimsical, fidgety, one dimensional (in that she only care for Vronsky). Other characters of the book, Dolly and Katty just are props, the former a housewife who like a good woman suffers the excesses of her husband for the sake of her kids, and the later the gossip girl. Countess Lydia serves another trope of women being the 'hypocrite' and 'cunning'. Women are one-dimensional beings who are reduced to one aspect of human existence throughout the book. The book is not about the human condition of love but it is about the love as understood by women and how men think women are or should be. The reduction of women into ploys is often missed in singing the glory of the book.

The misogyny, bigotry, myopia and half-truths in the works of Qudratullah Shahab, Ashafq Ahmad, Banu Qudsia and co are perhaps well talked about. These books are often passed as not great works of literature but moralizing manuals (mostly for women). (I will have to write separately on the work of these writers.)

We must critically engage with what we consume. The myths and half-truths always first are expounded in books and they later become the basis of atrocities. Absurdities and atrocities go hand in hand. And I believe as readers it is our responsibility to deconstruct the myths. the stereotypes and half-truths contained in any text that we read.