Reading like a radical

Image description: El Che Guevara leyendo el diario La Nación en Punta del Este, Uruguay. Wikimedia Commons.

Palestinian freedom fighter and modern literary icon, Ghassan Kanafani had said: “It is incumbent upon us to face the facts with a frank, courageous and revolutionary scientific mentality. A clear perspective of things and of the real forces taking part in the struggle leads to success, while impetuosity and spontaneity lead to failure.”

For Kanafani and others of that time of the late 1960s and early 1970s of struggle against forms of colonialism, formal apartheid, and capitalism, reading was a core element of liberation. Lived experience can only offer so much in terms of analysis that can aid in one’s attempt at shifting power relations in a direction that’s helpful. After all, experiencing racism can certainly expose oneself to the truth that living in America means living inside a country that is white supremacist and biased against our people. And yet, this limited insight does not really explore who or what is behind all of the racism and white supremacy does affect us, or how it functions in the first place. How can you attack something if you don’t even know what it looks like or where it is?

Hence, reading history, and yes, theory is very critical to developing a deeper perspective and understanding of how the political and social world operates. Without such knowledge, we end up drifting through life, occasional reacting angrily to things we’ve seen or heard, but not really effecting change, or not the kind of change that benefits our lives longer-term.

But writing and reading in the U.S. is at another modern low over the years. Part of the reasons for this have a lot to do with modern technology, such as iPads, and modern social media, which cuts into our attention spans quite crudely.

According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Only 38 percent read a novel or short story. A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023. (The study looked at people who had read a book, magazine, or newspaper; listened to an audiobook; or read an e-book.) Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book: Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet.

This leads to less political understanding including from working-class people of color who may either not vote or vote Democrat, including for centrist candidates who do not care about them. Or worse yet, may believe in the idea that internationalism is not something A) that matters to them or impacts them and B) it’s a world out there that’s just like the U.S., full of competition and political distortions.

Now, when reading or learning about politics, or in dealing with reading material that deals in political theory such as Marx or Lenin or Walter Rodney among others, it can be challenging to understand what it is they’re always talking about. From my own experience reading such texts, I do not overemphasize understanding every single line. In many political texts, the writer will repeat their main sources of arguments or beliefs, and sometimes between each point, it can feel like a winding road. And that’s ok too. The purpose is to gleam as much of the main point as you can, not to absorb every single line or idea perfectly. It’s always the main arguments that should matter. So if you do feel stuck on a reading by Fanon, for instance, do not give up on page 5 or 6 because it starts to get challenging. Push through because you will land on what the main core of his argument is.

Indeed, many texts require multiple readings. I too have gleamed new things from writers and thinkers like Fanon on a third or fourth read. And again, because of time constraints, when you do re-read something, do not again feel obligated to comprehend every inch of every page. You are here trying to at least gather some of the main arguments, and furthermore, learn HOW a writer like Fanon, or Lenin, or Claudia Jones is choosing to make their argument. Is it purely an essay format? Or is it in Fanon’s case, a kind of writing that mixes in the blunt imagery of colonialism with facts? The style of writing is another way to immerse yourself in the text.

Finally, it’s always important to try and read things in a group setting, or at the very least, find resources online including on YouTube that can help elucidate concepts that you might have missed. This is something I’ve done regularly, leaning on YouTube videos and in groups collective discussions over texts to help me also see things that I may have missed the first time, especially with fiction and literary work as well.

This brings us to our real final point which is, as radicals read widely. Fiction is a really great vessel for understanding our times and for group discussion dissecting politics. Vladmir Lenin was a huge proponent of reading literature and poetry.

Lenin knew better than most that classical Russian literature had always been infused with politics. Even the most “apolitical” of writers had found it difficult to conceal their contempt for the state of the country. Ivan Goncharov’s novel Oblomov was a case in point. Lenin loved this work. It depicted the inertia, indolence and emptiness of the landed gentry. The book’s success was celebrated by the entry of a new word into the Russian lexicon: oblomovism, which became a term of abuse for the class that helped the autocracy survive for so long. Lenin would later argue that this disease was not confined to the upper classes alone, but had infected large sections of the tsarist bureaucracy and filtered downwards. Even Bolshevik apparatchiks were not immune. This was a case where the mirror held up by Goncharov really did reflect society at large. In his polemics, Lenin often attacked his opponents by comparing them to almost always unpleasant and sometimes minor characters drawn from Russian fiction.

There are books such as Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, The Stone Face by William Gardner Smith, Granada from Radwa Ashour that carry with them history and unlike nonfiction work, interesting characters that can be fun and engaging to wrestle with intellectually.

Reading and thinking are essential to any revolutionary’s repertoire. Our movement represent the beauty and artistry of the human condition.