Let's argue forever :)

“All fiction can be profitably regarded as argument.” Agree, disagree?

The minute I began pondering this question, a steady stream of fiction I’m familiar with proceeded to crowd my thoughts. Books that show rather than tell a point of view, creations of new worlds, better worlds, worse worlds, stories told in chapters or diary pages, poems with made up narrators that collect like photographs tears or joys on the page. Don’t they argue? Do they?

So, let’s say for the moment that fiction does serve as a platform well-suited for argument. What is this “profitably regarded” nonsense? Must an argument be profitable to exist? Profitable in that it makes money? That’s silly. Profitable in that it invites opposing conversation? Maybe. So why must an argument be profitable to be regarded? Regarded where? Where is this mysterious arena where we are regarding fiction, assuming that all fiction inherently holds a stance in an argument?

Anyways, isn’t everything an argument? After all, an argument can be made (and has been made by one of my favorite philosophers of language, Derrida) that all thought, all narrative, fiction or not, embodies two sides of one coin in one shape or another, portrays both the powerful and the powerless in some way.

So if you’re asking whether all fiction is argumentative, I say yes. Every work of fiction, whether subtly or outright, does present an argument, does present privileged language, choice morals, favored points of view, whatever it is you’re looking to argue about. And if you’re looking to argue profitably, there will always be someone on the other end who disagrees about the narrative itself or how the narrative presents that argument. That’s what you’re looking for, right? Or would you like to argue about it?

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