Mick Hartley

Howard Jacobson in the Times:

Art matters. That oughtn’t be a controversial thing to say. Indeed, even those who choose to boycott art must agree that art matters, or they wouldn’t take such pains to silence it.

I am referring, of course, to the various attempts to shut down the making and distribution of art by Israelis who don’t share the boycotters’ interpretation of Israel’s war in Gaza.

That might mean many things, but the most striking is the assumption that if an Israeli doesn’t agree to call what’s happening “genocide” — perhaps on the grounds that it isn’t — and even if that Israeli otherwise feels as horrified by events as the boycotters, he or she must be exiled from the self-appointed, closed community of the caring.

Thus, to be a boycotter you must believe there is a hierarchy of compassion and condemnation. Only those whose anguish is as vociferous as theirs are allowed a voice. What makes this inquisition so grotesque is that the inquisitors are themselves artists or art-enablers….

Everything must be permitted for artists but the silencing of their fellows. To boycott authors, agents or publishers on the grounds that they hold views objectionable to you is to violate art and the part it has played in stirring and individuating the imaginations of men and women since the first cave drawing appeared.

Art is not to be confused with a post on social media. It is not a statement. It is not susceptible to thumbs-down disagreement for the reason that it doesn’t invite thumbs-up consensus. It is not an echo chamber. It is a meeting place, not only of people who read and look and listen differently to one another, but of the hostile and the loving, of the real and the imagined, of colours that are not meant to go together, of words that clash and contradict.

Those who cannot bear such vitality of contradiction congregrate with the like-minded in a safe space they call a boycott, but for which the real word is tyranny.