Realism both critiques and reinforces the status quo’s exclusions

Evidence

If humanism is the great sine qua non of Western political and cultural life—larger than a discourse, experienced as more intrinsic than mere ideology—then realism, as the dominant aesthetic growing within the humanist world, must be understood as a particular kind of historically traceable construct with an ambivalent relationship to power. Realism has been the vehicle for some of the most stringent novelistic criticisms of the status quo while at the same time reproducing assumptions about normality and humanity that work to pathologize those who exist outside its orbit. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 438

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines realism’s double function: vehicle for critique yet complicit in pathologizing outsiders to its humanist orbit.
• XREF: Connects to the contesting-vs-reinforcing distinction the reader is gaming out for Hamid and Naqvi — realism itself is the ambivalent medium. — connects to: Realism’s function is to preserve consciousness from doubt, not to copy reality — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 475; Realism is defined by avoiding the question of reality and serves ruling power — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 482; Materialism opposes religion while realism opposes speculation and transcendence (+7 more)