Power of the Pen

Imagination conjures change. First we dream it, then we speak it, then we struggle to build it. But without the dreams, without our decolonised imaginations, our efforts to name and transform the system will not succeed. –Patrick Reinsborough

Introduction

The central role of writers in “the movement” has long gone unquestioned. They are the celebrities, the rockstars of activist culture, and we often find ourselves consciously or unconsciously humming their tunes in our work. But as many activist-writers point out in their analysis of the systems of domination, power structures that are hidden can easily become stagnant and oppressive. Is this the case in activism?

In this essay I seek to examine the role of activist-writers’ works in global movements for change. Specifically, I am interested in whether writers help craft the kind of world we are trying to build, or whether they unconsciously reproduce the dominant paradigm. As both forms of discourse exist side-by-side in activist literature, I will examine how such reproduction or transformation occurs, with an eye towards empowerment and practical action. I see writing as a form of leadership – without an understanding of the power dynamics in our work, how can activist-writers be effective leaders?

As an aspiring writer, this topic interests me on a personal level. I want my work to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, so I am eager to understand the characteristics of each. I am interested in uncovering the obstacles in activist writing, as well as what makes it effective, with the intention of “flagging up” these issues for readers and writers alike. That said, this essay very likely reproduces the dominant paradigm, as I have written it for academic purposes, with limited time and scope to experiment with format and structuring.

The Word and The World: Writers as Mapmakers

Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai writes, “fiction, like myth, is part of the conceptual repertoire of contemporary societies. Readers of novels and poems can be moved to intense action… and their authors often contribute to the construction of social and moral maps for their readers.” I would extend this statement to all printed media, and indeed, all the mass media. Increasingly, television, films, music, advertising, and video games contribute to the way we see the world. However, with “radical” points of view generally unavailable in the mass media, activists as a social group face a heavy reliance on books, magazines, and websites for news and inspiration. From Chomskyesque tomes critiquing the corporatocracy to e-mails zipping around on thousands of listservs, the written word is the main vehicle used by activists to spread ideas beyond a local level. This creates an atmosphere in which activist-writers carry the main responsibility for constructing the “social and moral maps” of global justice movements. They fulfil what writers such as Alastair McIntosh calls the bardic function: “Celtic bards… maintained a ‘poetic map’ of social and geographical relations, and helped uphold social order.”

To complement the maps by which we can navigate political and cultural terrain, activist-writers offer frames through which to see and experience the world. Appadurai argues that “the link between the imagination and social life… is increasingly a global and deterritorialised one,” and indeed, in the course of publishing (in print or online), activist-writers’ frames are widely distributed both within and outside of the activism community. More than any other material, these textualised frames impact the way we collectively think, imagine, and behave as a movement. As R.D. Laing puts it, “as we experience the world, so we act.”

Framing: Reproducing Dominant Power Structures

To track your own desire, in your own language, is not an isolated task. You yourself are marked by family, gender, caste, landscape, the struggle to make a living, or the absence of such a struggle. The rich and the poor are equally marked. Poetry is never free of these markings even when it appears to be. –Adrienne Rich

No form of expression is completely free of the dominant paradigm. The power structures in which we were raised and through which we must move leave their “markings” on us, and inevitably, our thoughts, beliefs, values, and assumptions are shaped by our “toxic culture.” Under the scrutiny of conscious analysis and imaginative visioning, that toxicity can take the role of counterpoint to new, empowering frameworks. But unseen or unchallenged, or blindly reacted against, that toxicity can poison and disempower the most seemingly “radical” ideas, and can lock us back into the power structures we’re trying to transform. In a culture where the passive, third person voice-from-on-high is supreme, it is particularly easy to reproduce hierarchical models in activist writings.

In describing the experience of writers from oppressed groups, bell hooks notes that “it becomes easy to speak about what [the dominant] group wants to hear, to describe and define experience in a language compatible with existing images and ways of knowing, constructed within social frameworks that reinforce domination.” This statement is true for activist-writers as well. Whether radical messages get lost in the translation, or “alternative” ideas never quite become radical under the weight of the burgeoning hierarchy, a large proportion of activist discourse reproduces the dominant paradigm. For instance, reformist writers like Michael Moore speak to our sense of powerlessness when they advocate a course of action grounded in electoral politics.

In Downsize This!, Moore points out the uselessness of political debates between “two white guys in blue suits pretending to be enemies when in fact they believe in most of the same things,” and in Dude, Where’s My Country?, he meticulously chronicles the U.S. government’s lies in the build-up to the Iraq war. But his suggestions for instigating political change are to find better candidates, encourage more people to vote, write more letters to elected officials, and volunteer for the Democrats. Implicit in these solutions is the sense that We The People must wait for our elected officials to “get the message” and fix our problems for us. The double-edged blade of this philosophy is no sense of responsibility for the problems, and no sense of ownership of the solutions. It fits in well with the tactics of such online groups as United for Peace and Justice, MoveOn.org, and CodePink, where a PayPal donation constitutes what Adrienne Rich calls chequebook activism, “money in lieu of or in addition to time, to actual presence.” Michael Moore’s brand of rabble-rousing might then be called “ballot box activism” (or in the case of Fahrenheit 9-11, “box office activism”) – valuable for what it is, popular and widely accessible, but not to be confused with direct empowerment.

Similarly, many activist books are disempowering when they offer solutions that are self-absorbed or not widely accessible. In Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, Thom Hartmann exposes the oppressive structures of our culture as the root cause for impending ecological and social catastrophe. He suggests that personal meditation and spiritual practice are the best strategies to change the world. While he argues for a sense of interconnectedness, the underlying message seems to be that by meditating, you can be more aware of that cosmic connection, and thus superior to others who don’t recognize it. As bell hooks writes, “a culture of domination is necessarily narcissistic,” and this kind of individualistic strategy reinforces our sense of isolation. Furthermore, being more concerned with “feeling the vibes” than with practical solutions gives no sense of participation or ownership. Hartmann touts rural intentional communities as the best lifestyle for “conscious people,” but purchasing land and relocating to the countryside is not an option for most people, conscious or not. In this way, Hartmann reinforces cultural norms that value property ownership, disempowering those without access to property.

When framed in these ways, reading becomes both a buffer from despair and an act of self-righteous voyeurism. Readers can simultaneously relate to the world’s problems and feel safely removed from them. They can feel the problems are too big to solve, that it’s better left to the experts. They may even feel a sense of guilt or shame at being complicit, somehow not pure enough to become a change-agent, hoping that somebody else will solve the world’s problems before it’s too late. This sense of powerlessness is one of what Julia Cameron calls “comforting self-delusions.” If we feel no power to act, we also feel no responsibility. Action becomes cut off from the realm of possibility, and readers may imagine that by reading, by following the exploits of “real activists,” they are doing something useful.

However, I seek not to criticize or point fingers at writers who unconsciously reproduce the dominant paradigm in their work. As R.D. Laing puts it, “we must remember that we are living in an age in which the ground is shifting and the foundations are shaking… We attempt to live in castles which can only be in the air because there is no firm ground in the social cosmos on which to build.” I seek to shed light on these “castles in the air,” so that readers and writers alike may examine the literature more closely for a disconnect between the message and the framework it’s delivered on.

Framing: Offering New Power Structures

To continue Laing’s metaphor, there are many activist-writers in the global justice movement who do not construct castles in the air, but give us a bit of solid ground to build upon. Of anti-corporate activists, Naomi Klein writes, “by far the most important role… is to act not only as voices of opposition but also as beacons – beacons of other ways to organize a society, ways that exist outside of the raging battles between ‘good’ and ‘evil.’” Beyond critiquing the ills of our culture, beyond psychoanalysing our personal and collective demons, activist-writers can provide visions of what a better world looks like and models of how to get there. Even a whisper something that truly challenges the dominant paradigm can open readers’ minds to possibilities beyond hierarchy and dualism.

The practice of writers like Starhawk, Joanna Macy, and Molly Young Brown of including experiential exercises to illustrate analysis and vision is one such alternative model, with many interweaving layers. Books are inherently undemocratic in their one-way communication, but encouraging readers to continue their learning outside of books empowers them to draw their own conclusions, grounded in personal experience. By offering small, achievable exercises that are often intensely insightful, readers can gain a sense of accomplishment, possibility, and personal power. Seeing first-hand the processes of inner transformation or group dynamics in the context of theoretical ideas allows them to draw connections and build their own analyses, theories, and practices. It also provides guidance and a kind of training for readers who want to learn the skills of group process work by offering exercises to practice with, and facilitating such exercises builds community. My own experiences with these kinds of processes are beyond the scope of this essay, but I have seen their effects many times.

Books with this kind of model resist and subvert hierarchy because they are designed for readers to develop their own ideas beyond the scope of the writer’s words – it is not an “expert” imparting “wisdom” upon readers, but rather an invitation for readers to rediscover their own wisdom, drawing out a sense of personal power and stimulating a tremendous desire to bring that power into the world. This strategy has evolved from techniques of spiritual teachers across the religious spectrum, who realize that spiritual practice can only be learned by just that – practice. Empowerment, like democracy, must be exercised in order to be useful. For a culture unaccustomed to this kind of exercise, “baby steps” are crucial (enormous, radical leaps are also crucial, but beyond the scope of this essay).

Another way to subvert the dominant paradigm is storytelling, particularly using first-person narrative. As bell hooks puts it, “the telling of one’s personal story provides a meaningful example, a way for folks to identify and connect.” Brenda Ueland notes that first-person stories are “the only truth you know, that nobody else does.” Such stories bring the reader and writer to more equal footing, and break out of the dominating theory-only or voice-from-on-high model. In her journalistic book Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich focuses on sharing her minimum-wage experiences, empowering readers to come to their own conclusions. Similarly, The Freedom Writers’ Diary brings the stories of inner-city youth to a wider audience, who can then draw their own connections and insights from those stories. By using personal stories to help readers understand widespread societal problems, writers can give the problems a human scale. In a different approach, Luis Rodríguez interweaves personal narrative with historical and analytical insight to demystify urban gang culture in America.

Beyond understanding the problems, storytelling is fundamental in developing solutions. All of the writers whose work I critiqued above have some element of personal storytelling in their writing, but the trick (as I see it) is to tell stories in such a way that their internal processes are transparent. It is the difference between the story of a campaign’s success and the story of a campaign’s process – the former implies that campaigners were successful due to luck or divine providence, whereas the latter provides a model for readers to follow in their own campaigns. David Solnit does an excellent job gathering these kinds of stories in his anthology Globalize Liberation, the back of which states, “thirty-three essays provide food for thought, examples of effective action, and practical tools for everyone to use.” It is the intersection of these three elements that leads to empowerment – analysis, inspiration, and methodology (arguably head, heart, and hand). Each writer of course has their own specialty among these, but incorporating elements from all three is crucial for a work to be accessible and empowering.

If activist-writers provide us with frameworks through which to see the world and maps with which to navigate it, they also offer snapshots of possible destinations. Lack of vision seems to be a chronic problem in “the movement” – we know exactly what we’re against, but have very little idea about what we’re for. The prevalence in America of “Anybody But Bush” campaigns speaks to this. But as Arjun Appadurai puts it, “more persons in more parts of the world consider a wider set of possible lives than they ever did before.” Activist-writers help to offer empowering and sustainable possibilities. Articulating visions can happen directly or indirectly – telling stories about how the world might someday be, as in Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing, or working to subvert structures of domination by speaking in a “libratory voice,” as bell hooks exemplifies. Of late, articles about visioning as well as small, visionary vignettes have begun appearing in activist magazines, books, and websites. As a movement, we are miles behind the advertising agencies and corporate spin doctors who sell illusions for a living, but by offering true visions that are empowering, attainable, and speaking to our basic human needs, we are rapidly catching up. We are making our visions visible.

Conclusion

This movement is not, as one newspaper headline recently claimed, ‘so yesterday.’ It is only changing, moving, yet again, to a deeper stage, one that is less focused on acts of symbolic resistance and theatrical protests and more on ‘living our alternatives into being.’ –Naomi Klein

There is vast potential for activist-writers to use their words as a vehicle for “living our alternatives.” Their work contributes significantly to the frames through which we see the world, the maps by which we navigate it, and the destinations we dream of. As we have seen, however, it is easy to stumble on the pitfalls of writing within a capitalist, dominating culture. When writers make the world’s problems seem overwhelming, or speak from a voice of “authority” in the hierarchical sense, readers can be disconnected from a sense of power and responsibility. Implying that somebody else will “fix” things, or offering solutions that are impossible, unattractive, ineffective, or narcissistic, activist-writers can lead readers to assume that “being informed” is an adequate contribution to changing the world.

On the other hand, there are many writers whose work offers the seeds of alternatives. Encouraging readers to step beyond the literature and draw conclusions from their own experience is empowering and builds important skills for transformative change. First-person storytelling allows readers to “see” the problems (and the writers) on a human scale, and tales of activist triumph can blend analysis, inspiration, and methodology to catalyse and inform further triumphs. Courageous visioning of what “our” future may look like gives readers a sense of possibility, as well as a destination to keep in mind on the iterative path of changing the world. As Patrick Reinsborough puts it, “movements are about ideas.” Activist-writers are the messengers, the dreamers, the shamans who conjure new ideas into new worlds.