# Art imagines a better society Najwan Darwish says, "The library is the archive of the human soul. Art is a big part of this too; it frees you from the limitations and cruelties of the moment."[^3] When asked the question "What can literature do in the face of such chaos, injustice, and violence?" Wole Soyinka replies, "Well, present a model of possibilities, and that is all. Beyond that, nothing. The fact that literature is not helpless is proven by the fact that it attracts power. Those who hold power use it to censor, to harass \[writers] so literature is not as helpless or insignificant as some people think."[^2] [[But art is not enough]]. ![[One shouldn't expect literature to be committed —Wole Soyinka]] Jill Dolan speaks to the performing arts as "small but profound moments in which performance calls the attention of the audience in a way that lifts everyone slightly above the present, into a hopeful feeling of what the world might be like if every moment of our lives were as emotionally voluminous, generous, aesthetically striking, and intersubjectively intense." These performances "make palpable an affective vision of how the world might be better." She calls these "utopian performatives" which "transport us out of our current lives to imaginative emotional, psychological, and physical spaces that promise richer, more beautiful lives."[^1] [[What is Performatism?]] Fargo Nissim Tbakhi writes, > In this way, what the long middle of revolution requires, what Palestine requires, is an approach to writing whose primary purpose is to _gather others up with us_, to generate within them an energy which their bodies cannot translate into anything but revolutionary movement. This is what \[Augusto] Boal modeled for us in his theatrical experiments, which were dedicated to empowering audiences to _act_, to participate in a creative struggle to envision and embody alternatives. For Boal, theater was not revolution, but it was a rehearsal for the revolution, meant to gather communities together in that rehearsal. Creative work readies us for material work, by offering a space to try out strategies, think through contradictions, remind us of our own agency.[^4] Mark Mattern speaks to the "prefigurative capacity of art: its capacity for pointing toward a better world of greater freedom and less domination, and the ways some art forms already model that world."[^1] He continues, "for some anarchists a fully realised anarchism is itself the lived reality of art, understood to mean a life of creativity, free and full expression, unalienated labour, and the joy and spontaneity associated with many forms of art. In other words, art is a model of a fully realised anarchist way of life."[^1] Emma Goldman says, > I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things. Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world—prisons, persecution, everything.[^1] ![[If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution —Emma Goldman]] Nature writer Rachel Carson believes, "the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race."[^5] [^1]: [Anarchism and Art | The Anarchist Library](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mark-mattern-anarchism-and-art) [^2]: [Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka on a Lifetime of Art and Activism ‹ Literary Hub](https://lithub.com/nobel-laureate-wole-soyinka-on-a-lifetime-of-art-and-activism/?utm_source=pocket_saves) [^3]: [Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish: ‘We can’t begin to comprehend the loss of art’ | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/04/najwan-darwish-palestinian-poet-israel-gaza-war) [^4]: [Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide • Protean Magazine](https://proteanmag.com/2023/12/08/notes-on-craft-writing-in-the-hour-of-genocide/) [^5]: [Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland – The Marginalian](https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/02/27/jonathan-franzen-spark-birds-orion/)