The rule that writers should “stay in their lane”, meaning
that novelists, playwrights, poets, and screenwriters should only write about
characters sharing their own race, gender, or sexuality, has become a harmful
orthodox belief in modern culture. Supporters claim it is a progressive step
that acknowledges past injustices. However, it is actually a reactionary idea
that benefits privileged segments of the professional-managerial class rather
than serving the interests or hopes of working people.
The doctrine's central idea is straightforward: artistic
legitimacy is determined not by insight, imagination, or honesty but by the
artist's background. This identity serves as a passport to certain topics and a
barrier to others. What initially appears as a moral stance is actually a
mechanism for distributing cultural resources—such as grants, awards,
fellowships, review space, festival invitations, and publishing
opportunities—within a small, affluent social circle. As James McDonald
observes, the doctrine acts as a bureaucratic tool that allocates limited
opportunities across different levels of the academic and cultural middle
class, masking a pursuit of professional gain as a matter of fairness.
This ideological policing misses the real structure of the
publishing industry: a handful of large conglomerates focused on profit, where
marketing teams, risk managers, and quarterly earnings influence decisions more
than artistic merit. The “stay in your lane” rule doesn't address this issue;
instead, it gives the industry moral cover, framing commercial choices as
ethical.
The Attack on Imagination
Art depends on the writer's capacity to go beyond personal
biography. A novelist who can't imagine lives beyond their own isn't genuinely
a novelist. Similarly, a playwright who can't understand others' perspectives
has forsaken the essence of dramatic art. Ultimately, literature shines when it
uncovers common human experiences that transcend differences, the universal
elements underlying concepts of “otherness” and “sameness.”
Fencing off subject matter based on race or gender does not
protect the oppressed. Instead, it undermines art's role as a means of human
understanding. It reduces literature to a bureaucratic process of identity
verification, replacing the universal capacity for imaginative empathy with a
narrow, local view of authenticity.
The institutional manifestation of this doctrine is the
emergence of the “sensitivity reader,” representing a new form of ideological
oversight within publishing houses. These readers review manuscripts to flag
content deemed “offensive,” “inaccurate,” or “harmful” under evolving
upper-middle-class identity-politics standards. This process constitutes a form
of censorship disguised as concern. As with all censorship, its primary aim is
not to control the powerful but to suppress those who question the status quo.
Categories like “offence” and “harm” are flexible and can be
broadened to include anything those in charge consider inconvenient. It’s quite
possible, and probably likely, that a framework designed to regulate language
on race or gender now could later be used to target writers discussing class
exploitation, oligarchic wealth, or socialism. These topics can also be
reinterpreted as “upsetting” to someone.
Kuang’s Intervention and the Limits of Liberal Critique
Rebecca F. Kuang’s willingness to speak openly about this
issue is significant, given her stature. At the Hay Festival, Kuang criticised
the American publishing industry’s tendency to categorise books based on the
author's identity rather than their content. She noted that a writer like Kazuo
Ishiguro would not be classified as science fiction if he had a different
background. Kuang also called the demand for authors to write only characters
of their own race illogical. She observed that discussions about race are
increasingly confined within rigid, reductive frameworks that conveniently
divert attention from issues of class.
Kuang’s idea that a writer must look beyond personal
experience to write truthfully and compassionately points to a longstanding and
advanced branch of Marxist thought on art. Soviet critic A. K. Voronsky
maintained that an artwork's truthfulness isn't judged by its alignment with
ideological norms. Rather, it is judged by the genuine aesthetic response it
evokes in viewers: feelings of joy, empathy, or deeper understanding. Art
functions as a form of cognition; an approach to understanding the world, and
its worth depends on its ability to uncover what others have overlooked.
Voronsky cautioned against mistaking genuine insight for a
desire to impress, which only leads to affectedness and misunderstanding. The
idea of 'stay in your lane' conflates personal history with truth, identity
with understanding, and politeness with artistic value. Kuang does not believe
the publishing industry will reform on its own. She observed that public
pledges in 2021 were superficial, with no real change in who gets published or
who holds power. Notably, when HarperCollins workers protested for better pay
and conditions, Kuang didn't limit her response to comments on representation.
Instead, she joined picket lines and helped organise rallies. When asked about
her publishing hopes, she focused on unionising rather than diversity quotas.
This preference for collective, class-based action over individualist identity
politics is a key point to explore.
Identity Politics as a Tool of Class Division
None of this happens by chance. As Niles Niemuth pointed
out, the American ruling class and its European counterparts promote racial and
identitarian politics to serve a specific purpose: to break apart working-class
unity during times of rising inequality, widespread social unrest, and a
revived strike movement. Framing every social crisis as primarily a racial
issue is not just fashionable thinking; it is a deliberate political strategy
employed by the Democratic Party, trade unions, and the layers of the
pseudo-left connected to them.
Identity politics shifts focus away from class by dividing
workers into demographic groups. It turns social conflict into a race for
recognition instead of addressing exploitation. It also gives the ruling class
a moral language that hides its role in creating inequality and provides the
culture industry with profitable narratives that maintain capitalism.
The “stay in your lane” idea is not just a misguided
cultural trend; it is part of a larger ideological push to stop the rise of an
independent working-class movement.
The fight for artistic freedom cannot be won on the terrain
that identity politics stakes out. It requires the unity of writers, editors,
printers, warehouse workers, booksellers and readers across every line that the
doctrine insists on drawing between them. It requires rejecting the
bureaucratic policing of imagination. It requires a defence of the universal
capacity of human beings to understand one another — not through the narrow
lens of identity but through the shared experience of labour, exploitation,
struggle and hope.
A genuinely emancipatory literature will not be built on the
further subdivision of shelves by the author’s biography. It will be built on
the collective struggle of workers across the cultural economy. It will be
built on the recognition that art, like all human labour, is threatened by the
same forces that threaten wages, conditions and democratic rights.
