Literature, Activism and Transformative Learning

Goutam Goutam Karmakar, Goutam Karmakar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN: 9781040827918
• Topic: Literature
• Index: Literature

This book illustrates how literary narratives can function as a type of activism, spanning socio-cultural, cognitive, intellectual, and political components within and beyond many communities, generations, and nations. These efforts promote ideals such as advancing the cause of social justice, facilitating social transformation, and safeguarding human values, rights, and the integrity of the environment.

This book emphasizes that activism includes literary narratives in which people, communities, or nations foster personal and societal reform, advocate for equity, and reinforce shared values. The intrinsic performativity of activism and the diverse forms of social engagement capable of transformative change render them relevant to the analysis of literary narratives. The ten chapters explore various facets of activism through literary narratives and the notion of social change at the grassroots level. They emphasize the importance of learning and the actions necessary for transforming education towards sustainable development through capacities such as multidisciplinary deliberation, problem-solving, and critical and holistic thinking. This volume cultivates a specific form of epistemic and social responsibility among authors, thereby facilitating a meaningful existence for all, while underscoring how literary activism embodies the endeavors of individuals and communities to interrogate, critique, and oppose varied interpretations of vulnerability, precarity, and injustice through conscious actions aimed at preserving collective well-being.

This volume will be of particular interest to scholars and students in literary studies, cultural studies, sociology, political science, environmental humanities, and education. It offers valuable insights for activists, community organizers, and policymakers engaged in social justice work. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Literature, Activism and Transformative Learning
• 1 Literary Activism and Afrofuturist Genealogies in Multi-authored Fiction
• 2 Plachimada Struggle and the Environmentalism of the Poor: (In)justice and Activism in Mayilamma: The Life of a Tribal Eco-Warrior
• 3 The Facts of Reconciliation: Fictions of Truth in the South African TRC
• 4 Writing Social Activism in the Refugee Camp in Safi Abdi’s Offspring of Paradise
• 5 Graphic Activism and Epistemic Justice in Vanni: A Family’s Struggle Through the Sri Lankan Conflict
• 6 Kerima Tariman Translates the Revolution: Guerrilla Warfare, Cultural Work, and Radical Literature
• 7 ‘Marvel at Your Being Part of This Splendour’: Sindiwe Magona’s Social-Ecological Consciousness
• 8 The Literary Space of Black Women: Trauma, Memory, and Literary Activism in Selected Works of Koleka Putuma
• 9 Memory, Resilience and Ecocentrism in shalan joudry’s
• 10 Values in South African Gujarati Literature
• Index