art takes on an especially vital role, given the numerous examples of
political forces that work to transform reality, and not in any elevating
direction, but rather work to drag humanity down to a place of dark, sin-
ister forces that dehumanize culture.
Art, then, I propose, matters to us in part because it can help us to
see the world in a different way, it has the power to elevate us and con-
nect us to what is best about our shared humanity and to give rise to new
feelings and ways to respond to even the grimmest of realities. This, in
turn, can have important effects upon how we see ourselves, that is, upon
our self-image. In his, Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century,
Jonathan Glover discusses the many traps of terror that have stood in the
way of moral progress, and the many political tyrannies that have trans-
formed social reality in the most violent and appalling ways, affecting,
of course, identity (both individual and national) and culture. In what he
has to say about identity and culture, we find a fruitful point of connec-
tion with the experience of art:A person’s identity is something not completely given, but is partly created.
Some characteristics, including those linked to tribal membership, such as
skin pigmentation or other ethnic features, are just given. We do not choose
our parents, where we are born, or what language we are brought up to
speak. We do not choose the religion and culture we absorb as children. But
there is also the identity people create for themselves, typically elaborating
on, or branching out from, this ‘given’ identity. This self-creation gives part
of the sense people have of their lives being worth while.^18The story we tell about ourselves is central to “our sense of our own
identity.”^19 Art shaped the story that Primo Levi told to himself, the
memory of the lines from Dante helped him to think himself back into
humanity, a humanity that the Nazis were bent on speaking and thinking
him (and all other Jews, gypsies, and those they deemed unfit for inclu-
sion in the human race) out of. Art shaped the “content and tone” of the
private and secret story that Levi told to himself in order to save himself
from the slow death that the narrative of the Death Camp was structured
to carry out.^20
One point that Levi’s reflections place in clear light is that art helps
us to expand our sense of identity, to avoid the impoverishment of iden-
tity thrust upon groups by pugnacious nationalisms of the sort so well
described and documented by Glover in his book. Art’s connection to
humanism is central to the use of art in our culture, and art that severs
its connection with humanity is, or so I shall argue, art that negates one
of art’s most vital roles.82 Elizabeth Millán