Comforting Myths: Concerning the Political in Art

In this collection of brief essays (the first originally a lecture), Rabih Alameddine questions the premise of dividing politics and art into an either/or proposition. He points to the underlying political nature of most works of literature and reveals how a political dimension enlarges a work of art rather than making it less beautiful or reducing it to a polemic. And he ponders what makes art political to begin with: how essential is the artist's conscious political intent, and what does the reader or viewer contribute to the work's political capacity or significance? In exploring these questions, Alameddine engages intensely with his role as an immigrant and a gay author writing inside a globally dominant culture, and invokes the work of numerous writers, from Tayeb Salih and Aleksandar Hemon to Teju Cole and Salman Rushdie, who also struggle to be heard as something more than an "other".