Abstract
In an era of globalisation, and its impact on political, economic and social contexts, we are seeing greater demands for alternative approaches to establishing peace and sustainability. There is a need to create more meaningful platforms for understanding multiculturalism, resolving debates around identity politics, and for citizen advocacy beyond representational democracy. Fictional literature, as a discipline of the arts, has come to represent knowledge and a freedom of expression of ideas, particularly in its representation of politics and culture. Banning literature over the centuries has been a common method on the part of totalitarian regimes to condition and oppress the freedom of people. This paper will explore the role of fiction in promoting peace and advancing cultural engagement. It will examine its role in advancing cultural diplomacy within evolving globalisation. It will discuss the relationship between rhetoric and fiction, and its significance in representing the human condition within socio-economic, political and cultural contexts. It will identify some of the platforms where fiction is presented as a medium for citizen advocacy beyond the rhetoric of state actors. It will explore how the subjective imagination can support truths around the human condition in times of displacement, resultant diaspora, relational disconnect and conflict.
Compared with the reality which comes from being seen and heard, even the greatest forces of intimate life – the passions of the heart, the thoughts of the mind, the delights of the senses - lead to an uncertain, shadowy kind of existence, unless and until they are transformed, deprivatised and de-individualised, as it were, into a shape to fit them for public appearance. The most current of such transformations occurs in storytelling ...
—Hannah Arendt
The Human Condition (1998: 50)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adendorff C, Lutshaba U, Shelver A (2018) Policy implications of the 4th Industrial Revolution for the Cultural and Creative Economy. South African Cultural Observatory. Available at www.cdn.lgseta.co.za. Accessed 31 May 2022
Ang I, Mar P, Isar YR (2015) Cultural diplomacy: beyond the national interest? Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279311733. Accessed 1 Feb 2022
Alam R (2021) Kazuo Ishiguro’s deceptively simple story of AI. The New Republic. Available at www.newrepublic.com. Accessed 1 Feb 2022
Arendt H (1998) The human condition, 2nd edn. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Barnes J (2000) Aristotle: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Caduff C, Wälchli T (2019) Introducing literature in the discourse of artistic research. Available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctvrxk2rm.4. Accessed 2 Feb 2022
Chae Y (2008) Politicising Asian American literature. Routledge, Abingdon
Chakraborty N (2019) Contesting spaces and conflicting memories: a reading of Armenian Diaspora in Elif Shafak’s ‘The bastard of Istanbul’. Migration Diasporas Interdiscip J 2(1):8–31. Available at https://grfdt.com. Accessed 4 Feb 2022
Chen H, Hu UJ, Smith MD (2017) The impact of ebook distribution on print sales. Available at https://www.cmu.edu. Accessed 2 February 2022
Dalton RJ, Shin DC, Willy J (2007) Popular conceptions of the meaning of democracy: democratic understanding in unlikely places. Available at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2j74b860. Accessed 4 Feb 2022
Davies S (2013) Definitions of art. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication//281277088. Accessed 2 Feb 2022
Deranty JP (2014) Jacques Rancière: key concepts. Routledge, Abingdon
Emenyonu EN (2017) A companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Boydell & Brewer Inc., Rochester
Enaifoghe AO, Makhutla NE (2020) Exploring cultural diplomacy as soft power through cultural communication exports: a model of power for promoting peace and security. Afr J Gender Soc Dev 9(3):83–107. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344515924. Accessed 1 Feb 2022
Hensby A (2011) Globalisation: the global village. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316314050. Accessed 1 Feb 2022
Hosseini K (2021) UNHRCR Goodwill Ambassador Khaled Hosseini urges for support for displaced Afghan families. USA for UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency. Available at www.unrefugees.org. Accessed 1 Feb 2022
Ishrow Z (2017) Defining art and its future. J Arts Hum 6(6):84–94. Available at https://doi.org/10.18533/journal.v6i6.1207. Accessed 1 Feb 2022
Khirin N, Thoyibi M, Nugroho M (2018) Khaled Hosseini’s Worldview in the Kite Runner, A thousand splendid suns, and the mountain echoed: a genetic structuralism approach. Available at https://semanticscholar.org. Accessed 6 Feb 2022
Laing A (2017) Authors using social media: layers of identity and the online author community. Pub Res Q 33:254–267 (2017). Available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-017-9524-5. Accessed 31 May 2022
Milner HV (2018) Globalisation and its political consequences: the effects on party politics in the West. Princeton University. Available at https://scholar.princeton.edu. Accessed 31 May 2022
Munck L (2014) What is democracy? A reconceptualization of the quality of democracy. Available at https://www.researchgage.net/publication/324671976. Accessed 4 Feb 2022
Nafisi A (2003) Reading Lolita in Tehran. Penguin Random House, St. Ives
Nafisi A (2014) The republic of imagination: the case for fiction. Random House, London
Nobel Prize, available at https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes-in-literature/. Accessed 13 Feb 2021
Obama M (2021) ‘Unity with Purpose.’ Amanda Gorman and Michelle Obama discuss art, identity and optimism. Time. 15–22 Feb 2021. New York, US. Available at https://time.com/5933596/amanda-gorman-michelle-obama-interview/. Accessed 16 Feb 2021
Pack S (2000) Reception, identity, and the global village: television in the fourth world. M/C J 3(1). Available at https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1831. Accessed 1 Feb 2022
Pandya D, Toor GK (2019) Unifying power of storytelling: a study of Elif Shafak’s select novels. History Res J 5(4):1371–1377. Available at https://thematicsjournals.org. Accessed 29 Jan 2022
Raeff C, Fasoli AL, Reddy V, Mascolo MF (2020) The concept of culture: introduction to spotlight series on conceptualising culture. Appl Dev Sci 24(4):295–298. Available at https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2020.1789344. Accessed 29 Jan 2022
Rancière J (2004) The flesh of words: the politics of writing. Stanford University Press, California
Rancière J (2019) The edges of fiction. Polity Press, Cambridge
Repucci S, Slipowitz A (2021) Democracy under siege. Freedom House. Available at www.freedomhouse.org. Accessed 30 Jan 2022
Sarrica M, Wachelke J (2010) Peace and war as social representations: a structural exploration with Italian adolescents. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51022829. Accessed 27 Jan 2022
Shields C (2007) Aristotle. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, Abingdon
Thomson M (2016) Syria’s secret library. BBC News. Available at www.bbc.com. Accessed 13 Feb 2021
Thomson M (2019) Syria’s secret library: the true story of how a besieged Syrian town found hope. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London
Vuyk K (2015) The political impact of the novel. J Aesthetics Phenomenol 2(2):211–230. Available at https://doi.org/10.1080/20539320.2015.1104946. Accessed 15 Jan 2022
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Layton-Matthews, S. (2023). The Politics of Fiction: The Significance of Fiction as a Medium to Advance Dialogue and Advocacy Around the Human Condition in Politically Challenging Times. In: Sharifi, A., Simangan, D., Kaneko, S. (eds) Integrated Approaches to Peace and Sustainability . World Sustainability Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7295-9_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7295-9_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-19-7294-2
Online ISBN: 978-981-19-7295-9
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)