Aktivistisch schreiben

Book presentation of Activist Writing: History, Politics, and Rhetoric and panel discussion with the editors Pierre-Héli Monot, David Bebnowski, and Sakina Shakil Gröppmaier, moderated by Patrick Eiden-Offe

From a historical perspective, the written word has been a crucial infrastructure for activist politics. As a political practice, activist writing has consistently provided impulses for democratic participation, fundamentally shaping contemporary concepts of activism. The contributions in the volume Activist Writing: History, Politics, and Rhetoric (ed. by Pierre-Héli Monot, David Bebnowski, and Sakina Shakil Gröppmaier, Zurich: intercom Verlag 2024) examine activist writing from sociological, historical, and literary-theoretical perspectives. They demonstrate how manifestos, pamphlets, open letters, and polemical speeches have significantly influenced the political structure of modernity.

As a conclusion to the ZfL’s 2023/24 annual theme, Activism and Academia, Patrick Eiden-Offe discusses the volume and its underlying ideas with the editors, who are members of the ERC project The Arts of Autonomy: Pamphleteering, Popular Philology, and the Public Sphere (1988–2018).

In cooperation with the ERC project The Arts of Autonomy: Pamphleteering, Popular Philology, and the Public Sphere (1988–2018), the Amerika-Institut at LMU Munich, and intercom Verlag.

Admission is free, and registration is not required.

Fig. above: Robert Seymour: The March of the Intellect (ca. 1928), detail, London: British Museum, © The Trustees of the British Museum