Periodic Reporting for period 3 - LITCOM (Literary Activism in sub-Saharan Africa: Commons, Publics and Networks of Practice)
Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2024-06-30
LITCOM explores the contours of literary activism in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It views literary activism as encoding a double meaning: both describing the act of opening spaces for literary expression, while also referring to the more explicit intersection of literary engagement and socio-political activism. LITCOM examines everyday encounters with and participation in literary activism as a form of social production creating new types commons, networks of practice and sometimes-ephemeral publics which function outside of the normative sphere of the state and civil society. It offers a notion of the literary as a lived space of mediation, engagement with which itself produces new understandings of the horizons of the political in SSA.
LITCOM asks:
1. What forms of civic participation are produced, contested and authenticated through the networks of practice and forms of commoning which arise from literary activism in SSA and what new publics does literary activism create?
2. How do the commons, networks of practice and publics produced by publishers, writers and readers function with respect to formalised civil society institutions and patrimonial structures in an era alternatively characterised as that of ‘late capitalism’ (Jameson) or ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman)?
3. How does the literary, both as aesthetic practice and mediating form, enable a more expansive understanding of the political and its horizons?
4. What kinds of social and political claims does literary activism engender across its various instantiations in SSA?
5. In what ways do the ecologies of literary activism and its attendant social production make visible new topographies of affiliation in SSA?
Operating across two primary strands with four cross-cutting case studies from Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda and Kenya, LITCOM combines fine-grained empirical analysis with broad-based literary and cultural readings to answer these questions.
LITCOM asks:
1. What forms of civic participation are produced, contested and authenticated through the networks of practice and forms of commoning which arise from literary activism in SSA and what new publics does literary activism create?
2. How do the commons, networks of practice and publics produced by publishers, writers and readers function with respect to formalised civil society institutions and patrimonial structures in an era alternatively characterised as that of ‘late capitalism’ (Jameson) or ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman)?
3. How does the literary, both as aesthetic practice and mediating form, enable a more expansive understanding of the political and its horizons?
4. What kinds of social and political claims does literary activism engender across its various instantiations in SSA?
5. In what ways do the ecologies of literary activism and its attendant social production make visible new topographies of affiliation in SSA?
Operating across two primary strands with four cross-cutting case studies from Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda and Kenya, LITCOM combines fine-grained empirical analysis with broad-based literary and cultural readings to answer these questions.
From 2021 with the easing of the pandemic, field research was able to recommence alongside continued desk research. During this time, the project team has engaged in twelve field visits to Nigeria, Cameroon, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya and Uganda, where we were able to work in partnership and through coproduction with seven different literary activist collections. Along with conducting interviews, focus groups and group interviews with over eighty individuals, we have also been able to run, in collaboration with our partners, twelve events (workshops, training days, public facing events including translation slams and editing slams) in the key territories, reaching audiences of several hundred. At present, three literary anthologies are in production in Francophone West Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, respectively, and around a dozen scientific papers are in press (due for publication in 2023). We have gathered a significant amount of data, which we are now in the process of analysing, with a view to commencing work on a scholarly edited collection and at least two monographs by the end of the project. PI Krishnan has also been approached about the possibility of writing a trade book around the project's methodological and ideological strands, as well as an academic book on method to be published by Bloomsbury.
Progress has been remarkable, and greatly exceeded the expected results. While the original proposal stated that three books would be published, there will now be a minimum of six books (both scientific and creative) and one magazine produced by the project. The exploration of literary networks has also expanded the project's scope, with new collaborations in Senegal, as well as significant impact in Northern Nigeria and the Swahili coast.