Cynthia Franklin on Narrative and Activist Politics

Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews literature professor Cynthia Franklin about the politics of life writing.

Cynthia’s new book Narrating Humanity: Life Writing and Movement Politics from Palestine to Mauna Kea traces the complex ways activists, artists, cultural producers, and scholars engage genres like memoir and autobiography to resist racial capitalism, imperialism, heteropatriarchy, and climate change.

In their conversation, Cynthia and Cathy chat about why narrative plays such a large role in defining who gets to count as human and how that narrative definition shapes everything from economic policy and medical care to police violence and environmental degradation.

Cynthia shares how movements like Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Native Hawaiian movement to protect Mauna a Wākea push back against such narrative humanity, using collaborative praxis and transformative solidarity to build new models for collective care and liberation.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/153-cynthia-franklin