Ideas belong to all once they enter the public conversation

As Kenya inches closer to the elections scheduled for August next year, the political noise has notched a few decibels higher. The ping-pong between various political formations has dominated the social media streets. In some cases, the comments, accusations, counter-accusations and wild claims scrape the bottom of decency, like the proverbial handshake talked of by Chinua Achebe, which becomes something else if it goes beyond the elbow.

Not even the 2026 FIFA World Cup, now under way in the United States, Canada and Mexico, has done much to tone down the often unpalatable cacophony that is our electoral politics. As always, however, we shall leave the politics to the politicians.

What it all points to is the quality of our discourse as a people. Even in the intellectual space, we sometimes encounter confrontations or insinuations that remind one of the ad hominem fallacy. The fallacy, I need not explain here, is where, instead of sticking to an argument or criticising ideas, we attack the person. In Kenya, sometimes we attack their tribe or ethnic identity, but then again we shall leave the poli-tricks and poli-tricksters to the politicos.

Ironically, the same temptation to attack people instead of engaging their ideas sometimes finds its way into our intellectual and literary spaces.

Once upon a time, when I worked as a literary editor, on several occasions I shared a reader’s report with a manuscript’s author and they demanded to know the identity of the reader or literary adviser. I’d often calmly ask what aspect of the manuscript report they wanted to engage the reader on and some bluntly said they wanted to know whether the assessor of their script had written any novel, play or other literary work, or where they drew the moral or professional authority to point out gaps in other people’s works.

Sadly, that is not how it works in the real world. Some of the best editors I know, both in media and publishing, are not necessarily prolific or even published authors. Writing and editing are different skills, though they lie on the same creative continuum. Gifted writers are not necessarily good editors. I have seen editors pull reporters from the field to work as sub-editors, or authors hired as editors, sometimes with poor results.

Literary criticism

While some people navigate both skills with ease, even the best editor struggles to proofread their own work because familiarity hides what fresh eyes detect. Likewise, no author can see every gap in a text they have lived with for months or years. It often takes another pair of eyes to spot what the first missed. Publishing is therefore a collaborative process. What readers see as the final product of an author, in a newspaper or novel, is the result of a coordinated team effort.

Authors of literary works, like politicians, need to realise that once their effort leaves their hands, it takes on a life of its own. It has to be aligned with the editorial policy and house style of the publishing firm. It has to be assessed for gaps and edited for clarity, flow and organic completeness. Often, especially in book publishing, the author is called upon to revise the manuscript so that the editing does not encroach on authorial territory. The author also gets to see the work before it is packaged for printing and to make final corrections, but the story does not even end there.

Once a work is published, it is no longer simply a product of the author’s original intention. Book reviewers, for instance, are free to offer their own interpretation of the work. The author may not necessarily agree with the reviewer’s perspective, but so long as the critique does not descend into ad hominem attacks, all that is required of a reviewer is fairness. This also applies to literary criticism.

Readers do not engage with works of literature merely to uncover what the author intended. More often, we find in books not only what was in the author’s mind but also what resonates with our own experiences, fears, hopes, aspirations and biases. Thus, if you make a claim about a book’s characters, themes or style, you simply need to support it convincingly, drawing evidence from the text much as lawyers do in a court of law. As they often say in literary appreciation classes, there are no right or wrong answers—only well-supported and poorly supported interpretations.

True, writers are a sensitive lot. Some guard their texts so jealously even after publication and want everyone to see only what they intended the reader to see. But it never really works that way. Like a politician, writers need to be open to criticism and to grow a thick skin, if you will.

Every time I write in this space, I get lots of feedback, some commenting on language use, others disagreeing with my argument. I have, however, reconciled myself to the fact that life is beautiful because it is coloured by varying, even sometimes clashing, views. All we need to learn is how to agree or disagree without losing our cool or resorting to unpalatable language or the weaponisation of identity, as Kenyan politicians often do when the explication of ideas fails them.

Literary scholars have long argued that a published work no longer belongs exclusively to its creator. One of the best-known expressions of this idea came from French literary critic Roland Barthes in his 1967 essay *The Death of the Author*. Barthes argued that once a work enters the world, its meaning is no longer determined solely by the author’s intention but is completed anew by every reader who encounters it. Readers bring their own experiences, culture and worldview. The author’s intention is only one part of the conversation. The work gradually takes on a life of its own, often becoming bigger than the person who first imagined it.

So, as we watch the beautiful game and navigate political noise, we could borrow from literary criticism to lift our national discourse higher. Political noise may be inevitable in an el