Notes on the Death of Culture by Mario Vargas Llosa

Author:Mario Vargas Llosa
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374710316
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

V

Culture, Politics and Power

Culture does not depend on politics, or it should not, although this is inevitable in dictatorships, especially in ideological or religious dictatorships, in which the regime feels authorized to dictate norms and establish canons of behaviour within which cultural life evolves, under the vigilance of the state, which is committed to making sure that cultural life does not stray from the orthodoxy that supports the regime. The result of such control, as we know, is the progressive transformation of culture into propaganda. In these conditions culture withers, starved of originality, spontaneity, critical thinking, with no opportunity for renewal and formal experimentation.

In an open society, even if culture maintains its independence from official concerns, it is inevitable and necessary that culture and politics are connected and interact. Not just because the state, without impinging on creative and critical freedom, should support and promote cultural activities – above all by preserving and promoting cultural heritage – but also because culture should exert an influence over political life, submitting it to a continual critical evaluation and inculcating it with values to prevent it from becoming degraded. Unfortunately, in the civilization of the spectacle, the influence that culture exerts over politics does not help it to maintain certain standards of excellence and integrity but instead contributes to its moral and civic decline, stimulating its worst aspects, including, for example, bad acting. In the prevailing culture, politics has been increasingly replacing ideas and ideals, intellectual debate and programmes, with mere publicity and an obsession with physical appearance. As a consequence, popularity and success are achieved not so much through intelligence or probity as through demagogy and a talent for histrionics. We are thus left with the curious paradox that while in authoritarian societies it is politics that corrupt and degrade culture, in modern democracies it is culture – or what usurps the name – that corrupts and degrades politics and politicians.

To illustrate my point more clearly, I will step back in time and speak of public life in the context that I know best: in Peru.

When I first attended the University of San Marcos, in 1953, ‘politics’ was a dirty word in Peru. The dictatorship of General Manuel Apolinario Odría (1948–56) had created a situation whereby, for a great number of Peruvians, ‘getting into politics’ meant becoming involved in a criminal activity, associated with social violence and illegal actions. The dictatorship had imposed a Law of Internal Security in the Republic that outlawed all parties, and a rigorous censorship prevented the slightest criticism of the government appearing in newspapers, magazines or on the radio (television had not yet arrived). Instead, all the news outlets teemed with praise for the dictator and his accomplices. Good citizens were those who concentrated on their work and their domestic life without getting involved in public life, which was a monopoly of those who held power, protected by the armed forces. Repressive policies imprisoned APRA, Communist and trade union leaders. Hundreds of militants from these parties along

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