Cultural cowardice, identity politics a stifling mix, says Lionel Shriver

In a provocative interview, Orange Prize-winning ­author Lionel Shriver takes aim at cultural cowardice and identity politics.

Author and Journalist Lionel Shriver in Brooklyn, New York, yesterday, Picture: David Joshua-Ford.

Lionel Shriver quips: “It’s the ­Nigerian who is going to get me into trouble.’’

The Orange Prize-winning ­author, who is heading to Australia to deliver the prestigious John Bonython lecture, is referring to a villainous character of African heritage who will appear in her next novel, The Motion of the Body Through Space.

In a provocative interview, Shriver said with the rise of identity politics, “there are a lot of ­people now who would tell me I just can’t have people of other races in my stories. This is at such odds with what the world looks like right now, it’s almost said I can’t be a realist writer.’’

She said by including two black characters, one of whom is “not a good person’’, in her novel, due for release next year, “I’m pushing the envelope of what I’m supposed to do’’.

The iconoclast’s John Bonython lecture, organised by the Centre for Independent Studies, is titled Creativity In An Age of Constraint and will canvass how gotcha identity politics, the notion of cultural appropriation and the “hypersensitivities” of the MeToo movement could “lead to bad, obedient art’’.

Shriver said: “I believe that it’s really important for artists in this era to be brave and to push back, because there are a lot of people out there making up these rules, and they don’t have any standing … It’s really important to ignore this stuff, or even better, make fun of it.’’

The author of the best-selling novel-turned-film We Need To Talk About Kevin caused uproar three years ago at the Brisbane Writers Festival when she gave the keynote speech and said she hoped the concept of cultural ­appropriation was “a passing fad’’.

She also put a sombrero on her head.

Her address provoked a Twitter storm, worldwide media coverage and a “political exit’’ by Sudanese-Australian writer Yassim Abdel-Magied, who later ­accused Shriver of “mocking those who ask people to seek permission to use their stories’’.

An unrepentant Shriver said that since then, the restrictions on cultural expression that she identified in her Brisbane speech had “got much worse. That’s one of the strange things about that speech — it was, however bizarrely, ahead of its time.’’

Yesterday, the Britain-based American accused the Melbourne Fringe Festival of “institutional cowardice” following its decision to pull from its program a comedy, Aisha the Aussie Geisha, about a white Australian who attempts to win back her boyfriend by becoming the world’s first foreign geisha.

More than 70 artists and academics — most of whom seem not to have seen the show — signed a letter calling for it to be withdrawn. They claimed it belittled Asians and “borders on yellowface’’.

The show’s creator, comedian Kate Hanley Corley, and the festival complied, even though Corley said her intention was to send up “masculine Australian culture’’. She also said an earlier season of her show had been “well-received by audiences without any accu­sations of racism’’.

The once-edgy fringe festival said it aimed to create “safe cultural spaces’’.

Shriver said of the controversy: “It’s striking that the people so deeply offended onbehalfof the Japanese are not Japanese. Is there anyone on that list of 70 indignant signers of the open letter who is ­actually, say, from Tokyo?

“We’ve heard altogether too much about ‘white privilege’. How about ‘white posturing’? It’s even more prevalent. Along with ‘institutional cowardice’ … white posturing is a competition amongst the privileged to become even more privileged by annexing the moral high ground.’’

The Spectator and Harper’s magazine columnist claimed the left “has abandoned freedom of speech. In fact, there is a segment of the left … that thinks that the only reason you could possibly need freedom of speech is to be bigoted.’’