[Commlist] CFP: Narrative Journalism and Socialism

Call for Papers Narrative Journalism and Socialism:
From Marxism to the New Lefts, in Action and Stories
Sur le journalisme | About Journalism | Sobre jornalismo
Editors of this special issue: Pablo Calvi (Stony Brook University, NY, 
United States), William Dow (American University of Paris, Université 
Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, France), Roberto Herrscher (Universidad 
Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile), Isabelle Meuret (Université libre de 
Bruxelles, Belgium) & Isabel Soares (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal).

From Jack London to George Orwell, from Upton Sinclair to Gabriel 
García Márquez, from José Martí to Elena Poniatowska, from Joseph 
Roth to Günter Walraff, literary journalists have often pursued a 
socialist agenda. Undercover reporters, muckrakers and, increasingly, 
whistleblowers share a common dedication and commitment to social 
justice and progress. Because it explores the extraordinary lives of 
ordinary people, narrative or literary journalism falls within the 
traditions of History from Below (United Kingdom), Alltagsgeschichte 
(Germany), or microstoria (Italy) of the past century, all of which have 
a staunch socialist or Marxist allegiance. Poverty, precarity, 
unemployment, displacement, imprisonment, malady, i.e. the many plagues 
that affect the downtrodden, feature as essential topics in 
Anglo-American literary journalism, French grand reportage, and 
Hispano-Portuguese crónicas. By way of illustration, Ted Conover 
follows Mexican migrants crossing the border to the United States, 
Adrienne Nicole Leblanc reports on a Puerto Rican family in the Bronx 
drug underworld, William T. Vollmann investigates poverty across the 
world, while in France, Florence Aubenas tells the stories of precarious 
workers and dropouts, and in Portugal Mário and Pedro Patrocínio tell 
of lives in Brazilian favelas and Angolan urban ghettoes. With the rise 
of populisms and right extremisms, movements from the left, far-left, 
and even beyond the left side of the political spectrum, have also 
gained in visibility. Socialism today, drawing either from its Marxist 
heritage or as a legacy of a pluralist Left, takes different directions, 
including radicalization or direct action. Grass-roots movement are 
thriving, whether they originate from the political sphere or civil 
society. The dramatic comeback of socialism is also characterized by the 
popularity of some politicians who totally assume this new turn to the 
left, from Bernie Sanders in the United States to Jeremy Corbyn in the 
United Kingdom. The nature of this socialism is not homogeneous; it 
comes in a variety of forms. Growing inequalities between elites and 
citizens, big bosses and minimum wage earners, and the shameless 
exploitation of vulnerable populations, cause considerable discontent on 
a worldwide scale. A global conversation allows for new ideas to emerge 
on the management and action levels, and “conscientization” (Paulo 
Freire) remains an important key to understand the prevailing climate, 
to untangle problems, to imagine viable solutions or even pedagogical 
projects. However, if radical imagination and direct action are 
undeniably back in favor, socialism does not necessarily mean radicalism 
or anarchism, nor Marxism, nor communism. Movements for social justice 
have always been supported and performed through storytelling. This 
issue of About Journalism will interrogate the specificities of such 
stories, which prompt and convey meaning to action, in a diachronic 
perspective. It will highlight the roots, convergences and divergences, 
but also the prospects for socialism in the twenty-first century, as 
well as the manner in which it is revisited and modernized by future 
generations. It will aim at understanding how narrative journalism, or 
literary reportage, allows for a better understanding of the stakes, 
promises, and values of socialism today, in a transcultural and 
interdisciplinary perspective. This issue will deal with the main 
motivations and subjects of socialism, now that it is actively 
resisting, and will define the journalistic and literary practices and 
strategies used to reflect such realities. It will analyze the poetics, 
poietics, and politics of narrative journalism when it specifically 
reports on the people from below, those whom we have come to call the 
new poor, the underprivileged, or poorly-paid workers. From a purely 
journalistic point of view, it is a fact that the political press is 
losing momentum and is being supplanted by pluralistic and nonpartisan 
media. Therefore, it is worth considering the vacuum left by many 
newspapers that explicitly assumed their left-wing alignment, be it 
simply socialist, progressive, or else, not to mention those who are 
still, strictly speaking, the official organs of a party – Le Peuple in 
Belgium, L’Humanité in France, Pravda in the Soviet Union, People’s 
Daily in China – to name just a few. This void is now filled by 
editorialists and polemicists of all kinds who are providing opinions 
and commentaries, while social networks offer space to vent off anger, 
hatred, and abuse. Conversely, literary journalists propose an 
alternative path where long-researched and well-crafted stories disclose 
the details of felt lives and reveal the humanness of complicated realities.
Papers for this special issue of the journal will reflect the variety of 
definitions, conceptualizations, representations, and interpretations of 
socialism, along the following lines: • -  Activism, radicalism, direct 
action, journalism • -  Ethics and aesthetics of literary/narrative 
journalism • -  Literary/Narrative journalism and social justice • - 
 Literary/Narrative journalism in immersion • -  Politically committed 
journalism, journalism of attachment • -  Active literature and positive 
journalism • -  Militant and pedagogical practices through the media • - 
 Representations of struggles and revolutions in media productions
***
The deadline for submitting the final manuscripts (30 to 50,000 
characters, including notes and bibliography) is 1st December 2019, at: 
(Isabelle.Meuret /at/ ulb.ac.be) Manuscripts may be written in English, French, 
Portuguese or Spanish. Double blind review.
https://surlejournalisme.com/?p=4123

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