Revolutionary and author Ghassan Kanafani, was assassinated by Mossad in 1972. Kanafani remains as one of the best examples of how art and its use can be ever relevant and necessary for revolutionary politics. He never took part in the armed struggles often waged by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, of which he was a member, but instead waged his war for liberation against Zionist Settler Colonialism in the hearts and minds of not only the people of Palestine, but people all over the world. Kanafani used both his work as an artist and as a writer for the PFLP newspaper Al Hadaf (The Target) in order to bring art and raise consciousness within the wider Arab population.
For most people, art and politics may certainly cross paths, but could remain autonomous from one another. Not so for Kanfani. Whilst political art has always been praised an effective form of raising consciousness, political art is not necessarily revolutionary art, or political art made towards the arm of political or social revolution. Most political art remains within the boundaries of the commodity form, produced according to a timeline aiming for sales, achieved through calculated releases or performances to gain the most engagement and profit (though these are not always the same thing). They become events unto themselves. Revolutionary art is produced alongside political action and agitation, to compliment and articulate the historical processes .
. Whatever the story, it was written about and for Palestinians, for the purpose of Palestinian socialism. As his sister recalled: ‘Just the previous day Lamees had asked her uncle to reduce his revolutionary activities and to concentrate more upon writing his stories. She had said to him, “Your stories are beautiful,” and he had answered, “Go back to writing stories? I write well because I believe in a cause, in principles. The day I leave these principles, my stories will become empty. If I were to leave behind my principles, you yourself would not respect me.” He was able to convince the girl that the struggle and the defense of principles is what finally leads to success in everything.’
This type of commitment and artistic expression is very rare in Western countries. Western Artists (in some industries more than others) feel a strong revulsion when it comes to being attached to a political organisation. It’s one thing to turn up to protests or movements, but to declare yourself part of an organisation, to make art purely for the cause of that organisation? Personally I think a lot of artists see that as reducing themselves, a limit placed upon their genius. Artists have a habit of seeking autonomy from the people.
By divorcing oneself from the people with whom you are immersed in, you not only cut yourself off from the base of your “genius”, but you also deny yourself the position where you can use political art the most effectively. In the struggle you can make art not as a single, neatly wrapped piece of political art, but instead you can use art as pieces, weapons & tools within a political process. Art in a political sense should too become bullets with which we disrupt the dominant cultural representations of oppressed peoples, and the power dynamics & social relations which keep them oppressed.
So our art must be internationalist and anti-imperialist as well, if we want it to have the effectiveness we desire. Kanafani’s work with Al-Hadaf: He made Arab Marxist revolutionary ideas cool and trendy, unlike the boring media of the Lebanese Communist Party. He combined art with literature and information, all for the purpose of the liberation of Palestine. To commit oneself to a cause. Kanafani himself was killed doing the same. But given the current circumstances, where imperialism maintains a tight grip on the world, and restrictions on a domestic level in many places are tightening further, it is not simply enough to make one or two pieces about politics, or to make art with a general sense of political or social consciousness.
We must move beyond political art into revolutionary art. Our art must be the blending of many different parts, being part educational, part histography, part tradition, part avant-garde, committing itself in all areas to raising consciousness. As Cabral states ‘it is important not to lose sight of the fact that no culture is a perfect finished whole. Culture, like history, is an expanding and developing phenomenon.’ Contingent to change, culture requires that we intervene and make it a revolutionary culture, and it can only do that through an art which makes itself part of the liberating social processes of revolution. These are the lessons I think we can learn from Kanafani. This is not a perfect or total analysis and I encourage anyone who reads it to engage and think critically about how he gave his very life for his words actions and art.