Literature and Activism

Literature has long played a significant role in social justice activism, in part because it gives voice to the political positions of marginalized groups, and because it can break traditional literary form so that we learn to read and make meaning in new ways. Literature has the power to move people, to create empathy, and to give readers insights into experiences different from their own. Literature is one form of activist art, which tends to embrace a few central principles: Activist art tends to be communal and collective, rather than merely individual; it emphasizes process over product, so that the process through which it is created is as important as the end result; and it tends to involve public participation. Literature serves as a key site of social change because culture and cultural representations are key sites of interrupting systems of oppression. Literature engages readers [Page 863]and elicits self-reflexive relationships between readers, writers, and the literary text, and so it holds unique potential to work toward social change.

The term literature can be defined broadly to include novels, short stories, poetry, nonfiction essays, political leaflets, manifestos, and zines. Each genre invokes a range of aesthetic forms and stylistic components that can be useful for activism. They all also, however, assume a certain literacy, which has historically been denied many marginalized groups. African Americans, for instance, were denied the right to read during slavery. Women at times were also denied the right to reach certain levels of literacy. Many literary forms also privilege the written form over other forms of expression, such as the kinds of oral history and storytelling that are deeply valued in many Native American communities, or the conjunto ballads typical in Chicano/a communities. This tension around literacy is itself an issue of social justice, since whose literary framework is privileged reflects power dynamics that have historically shaped cultural literacy in the United States.

Literature and politics have long been linked, and literary aesthetics have both reflected and helped shape social movements. Romanticism emerged from periods of social revolution and held the ideals of individual subjectivity, the emphasis on the supreme beauty of Nature, and individual liberty. Transcendentalism featured an emphasis on Nature and the senses, while many of its advocates were involved in the social reform movements of the time. Henry David Thoreau's Walden reflected the quintessential transcendental treatise on Nature and individual independence, though it also reflected Thoreau's class privilege. Modernism once again marked the artist as a revolutionary, arguing that traditional forms of art and politics were impeding progress and calling for an overthrow of old forms and the creation of new ones that could help society attain Enlightenment. The notable writers of the period experimented with literary form in ways that transgressed aesthetic boundaries and sought to articulate a radical politics through artistic form. Writers such as Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, William Carlos Williams, William Faulkner, Federico García Lorca, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, and Marianne Moore created groundbreaking experimental works. Nevertheless, Modernism also reflected a certain elitism that limited its usefulness for social justice activism. Moreover, its emphasis on totality and universalism erased the specificity of social location that progressive social justice movements often emphasized. Modernism did, however, offer a vehicle through which to protest the horror of World War I. Literature became a venue through which the avant-garde attempted to overthrow the status quo.

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