Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the role of the global writers' organisation International PEN in creating, and at times hindering, spaces for literary activism in South Africa, focusing on shifting understandings of the 'literary' shaped by different international, national, regional and local pressures.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the role of the global writers' organisation International PEN in creating, and arguably at times hindering, spaces for literary activism in South Africa. Drawing on archival work done as part of the Writers' Organisation and Free Expression project (www.writersandfreeexpression.com), the paper traces PEN's relationships with other writers' organisations and literary initiatives, its shifting understanding of the relationship of literature to politics and of literary activism, and the tensions between nationalism and internationalism inherent in the organisation's structure and founding vision. Until its reformulation in 2003, the PEN Charter proposed an understanding of literature as 'national in origin' that profoundly shaped its work. In this paper I wish to explore how this shifting understanding of literature as national/global/regional/local shapes PEN's literary activism today - comparing, for instance, the two current PEN Chapters in South Africa, one Afrikaans and one predominantly English, and whether they understand themselves as engaged in the same types of literary activism, for the same ends - and how such understandings of literature animate other writers' organisations and literary initiatives in contemporary South Africa. While focussing on PEN today, I will be drawing on PEN's history in South Africa to better understand its work. In particular, I will consider the short-lived Johannesburg PEN centre (1978 -1981) that was closely associated with Staffrider and incorporated a number of existing township writers' groups, the challenges it faced, and the response of other PEN Centres to it.