A novel about rulers misrepresents the nation itself
Evidence
In the book he speaks, again and again, of a ‘country’; but what he gives us is a portrait, by and large, of the cruel and claustrophobic world of its ruling class. That world he seems to know very well, but to think of the portrait of rulers as a portrait of the ‘country’ itself is an error, I think, not only of politics, narrowly conceived, but also of the social imagination. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 261
Categorization
- DEFINE: Distinguishes representing a ruling class from representing a country, a methodological distinction for reading political fiction.
- XREF: connects to: Conflating the ruling class’s portrait with the whole country is a social-imagination error. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 597; Confusing rulers for the whole society is a political and imaginative error.