Writing as resistance in an age of demagoguery

Abstract

Writing has long been regarded as an act of overt or covert resistance, depending on the contexts in which writers have questioned and challenged those in power and the means, both materially and discursively, by which they have exercised that power. These written acts of resistance have utilized a variety of genres ranging from outright attacks on the ruling classes in the form of political demands and public pronouncements to more subtle critiques of society in essays, novels, and poetry. In contrast to the written texts that openly called for radical societal changes in famous and widely-disseminated manifestos and declarations, some written acts of resistance at times have had to dissimulate their intentions and aims in order to ‘fly under the radar’. While openly critical manifestos aimed to interpellate or ‘hail’ (Althusser, 1971) their intended addresses in a direct call for action, (e.g., Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto in 1848), what are the ways in which equally subversive but seemingly more discreet and circumspect texts call for action in their naming of injustice, inequality, and oppression in the domains of race, class, gender, and sexuality? Are the discursive methods and appeals to readers involved similar in these two different approaches, and how has resistance, rebellion, and even revolution been dialogically co-created at different historical junctures? What do written acts of resistance mean today in our current age of neoliberal and increasingly nationalistic demagoguery as it has been enacted in countries