The Author as Activist: Literature, Politics, and Celebrity

What do such diverse authors as Benjamin Disraeli, Bernardine Evaristo, and Salman Rushdie have in common? They form part of long tradition of Anglophone writers who have made use of their public profiles to stage powerful political interventions. Where celebrities from the fields of performing arts and entertainment have earned criticism and ridicule for their forays into political activism, eminent writers have often been hailed as moral compasses, voices of reason, and prophetic insight. This suggests that literary celebrity is a distinct type of celebrity that emerges from overlapping spheres of art, entertainment, politics, and commerce. This project takes a historical perspective on the cultural authority of the writer as a tool of socio- political activism. Through selected case studies from the British context, covering a time period from the nineteenth century to the present, it reveals how this authority emerges from the interplay of literature, politics, and celebrity culture. Authorship, Persona, and Autobiomyths The project, which will result in a monograph, rethinks the established cultural histories of literary authorship, political activism, and celebrity by bringing them toget her through the perspective of life-writing. It argues that authors shape and sustain their cultural authority through autobiomyths: modes of self-presentation that get circulated through autobiographical formats and that often revolve around the idea of the writer as acute critic of the zeitgeist. Such autobiomyths are key components of the public persona authors construct outside the literary medium. From Author Genius to Collaborative Authorship The concept of the autobiomyth allows us to trace changing ideas and conditions of politically engaged authorship in different historical periods and ultimately reveals a move towards more inclusive, diverse, and collaborative forms of authority and legitimation. Refugee Tales, an outreach project aimed at ending indefinite detention in the UK, is a case in point: while taking advantage of the celebrity status of such literary heavyweights as Ali Smith, Bernardine Evaristo, and Nobel-Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah, the project relies on collaborative storytelling to communicate migrant experience to a broader public. As the focus shifts towards collective life narrative, jointly developed and told by migrants, writers, volunteers, and interpreters, the authority of the (usually white, male) author genius gets dismantled. What takes centre stage instead is the powerful process of storytelling as an act of remembrance, recording, or bearing witness. Shared, repeated, and circulated within the public sphere, it thus holds the potential to disrupt, and ultimately change, dominant discourses not only around immigration and displacement, but also around authorship, cultural authority, autobiography, and celebrity.