politics and aesthetics: how agenda shapes our reading

In response to Lynnette's comment that

"To reduce the novella to the single issue of (non)-representation of African people is an unfair appropriation of literature for overtly political means."

I was having an argument/discussion with Ian about the Western canon. He believes that text should be judged only based on their aesthetic value and not be tainted by the politics of literature (am I wrong Ian??). It is almost impossible to not read feminism in a text by a woman or post-colonial agenda in a text by a writer from the "third-world". Indeed, sometimes the politics of literature overshadow the literature as an literary art form in itself.

Text now function more as sites of ideological contestation and the production and consumption of more contemporary text are such that both the reader and writer are encouraged and conditioned to engage with such politics.

The first time I read Said's argument on how the household in Mansfield Park in relationship to imperialism is problematic, I was shocked how he could take a very minor point and generate a full essay. However, reading Achebe in the same light, perhaps the point is not so much to condemn Conrad as a racist as to

1. reflect how readers have been conditioned to uncritically view the Western Canon as beyond moral/ethical reproach
2. reexamine the way readers align themselves to the now-flawed dominant culture
3. radically reshape the way we read
4. create and reclaim intellectual space for the non-dominant culture

While I agree with Lynnette's point that one should not judge a book based on it's political position, the second best thing one can do is to reveal it's flawed political position and open the text up for re-evaluation in light of the politics of representation.