On our last NSTP common module lecture, Ms. Athena Charanne Presto talked about Citizenship and Nationalism. She defined what nation and citizenship meant and constituted.
The nation, which is cultural and communal, is different from the state, which is political. Nationhood has no set definition; the “nation” is neither good nor bad in essence, and it is a modern invention. It is also not universal: some nations are born out of struggles and revolutions, while others are not.
Citizenship can be either active or passive. One can be a citizen by birth, by blood, or by naturalization.
Ms. Presto shared this quote by Rebecca Solnit I also really liked:
“Politics is pervasive. Everything is political, and the choice to be apolitical is usually just an endorsement of the status quo and the unexamined life.”
I often see a lot of discourse on Twitter about whether art is political, specifically when talking about movies. With social justice awareness rampant on such a platform, with plenty of discourses and debates online about social issues, it is almost impossible to avoid stumbling on such discussions when enjoying media, like movies, for example. I see some people saying that they really just want to enjoy their movies, that “not everything has to be political.”
I think everything is political, because for something to exist, it has to exist in context, and that context reflects the culture, society, and social climate at that time. It only depends on the individual whether they consume or analyze something with that perspective of awareness, or they choose to ignore what’s going on around them. For something to be apolitical for you, you have to make an active choice (which is a contradiction, because by making that choice, you acknowledge first that the thing is political), or you are ignorant.