Literature's Ability to Agitate and Unite

Earlier this semester I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Mahmood Karimi-Hakak on the subject of Peace-building through the arts. I was taken by the notion of revising age-old canonical literature inorder to represent today’s political clashes in an artistic format.

“Humanity is living in one of its darkest periods in history,” said Karimi-Hakak. “This darkness is more apparent than ever because there are no longer any borders.”

Does this vast expanse of borderless communication make us more vulnerable or responsible? Peacebuilding requires cultural understanding, and the arts are really the best way to achieve cultural understanding. Karimi-Hakak advocates that artists use their work as a means of cultural communication to peacebuilding. However, quoting the Persian aphorism that such a venture is impossible, like carrying water in a sieve, he stated that it is the artist’s job to struggle, to challenge the impossible.

“During the Shah’s time (in Iran in the late ‘90s), our job as artists was the fight the tyranny of a dictator — we learned about peacebuilding, we learned about agitating the public,” said Karimi-Hakak. “After the revolution, one dictator was replaced by the other and my colleagues and I continued to use art as a means to agitation.”
This notion of art as a means of agitation really has stuck with me. What does it mean to agitate a public? To arouse concern about an issue in the hope of prompting action. In this sense, I'd say some of the best literature is agitating and, in fact, I think its the duty of alot of literature to be agitating. I think that poetry and prose that is partially documentary with the intent to agitate their readers into action is some of the most responsible writing an author can do. But, in 1999 Karimi-Hakak staged a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The play was eventually raided and shut down. Karimi-Hakak was forced to leave the country after many court appearances and a threat directed at his wife and young daughters.

“Perhaps agitation may not work as the best tools for bringing people together. Maybe cultural understanding could do it,” he stated about what he learned from the experience.

Enter Ralph Blasting, current dean of Fredonia’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, former dean of Liberal Arts at Sienna College in Albany where Karimi-Hakak is a professor. In 2010, Blasting worked as the dramaturg on a production with Karimi-Hakak titled HamletIRAN. The idea was that of placing Hamlet within the Iranian Green movement, which emerged after the apparent vote fraud that reelected Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency in 2009.

This movement eventually triggered the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt, leading to similar movements in Greece and eventually inspiring, in part, the Occupy Wall Street movement and all of its extensions. A famous haiku poem of the green movement, translated to English, reads simply “where is my vote?”

Kirimi-Hakak and Blasting collaborated to create a production in which Hamlet’s pursuit of the truth and his receiving of all testimonies in the case of his father’s death, is putting forth the concept of a grassroots democracy. Each citizen, one vote. I think that this change from agitating work to work that promotes cultural understanding was necessary for Karimi-Hakak, but not for everyone. I don't believe that agitation is "not the best tool for bringing people together". I do 100% believe that cultural understanding is THE best tool for such an endeavor. But, when one is priveledged enough to be a citizen of, and live in, the united states or Europe, they have more opportunities to agitate. Our government does not intervene in matters of public opinion so harshly as was the case with Karimi-Hakak in Iran.

Karimi-Hakak stated that when he was young he realized “that art can be used as entertainment, as a happy way of releasing the tension, or as a political tool, in which case it will create the tension.” An artist’s job is to be an agent of change, to hold up a mirror to society.

“Politicians cannot bridge that gap,” he said. “We know academics cannot bridge that gap, now perhaps is the time for artists. But we cannot do that without you, the audience. What you think of as you walk out of the building, that is what theater is.”