Transdisciplinary approaches to activism across texts and genres

With a long-standing tradition in the humanities, activism has constantly informed both cultural production and scholarly theoretical thinking. In the arts, it is also tightly related to the concept of performativity, i.e. language as social action with the power of affecting reality, since it is mostly through language and performance that artists carry out protests, oppose resistance, and create new narratives that question and challenge hegemonic discourse. The visibility, proliferation, and popularity of such forms of activism online increasingly influence the public debate on pressing contemporary issues that are more and more digitally interconnected and (trans)mediated. This special issue of Lingue e Linguaggi aims to explore how activism fosters cultural and social change through performance art, literary provocations, music experimentations, and translation in the works of writers, spoken word poets, intellectuals, publishers, musicians, and performance artists. Relying on hybrid modes of communication and exploiting the technological resources of the new media – especially social networks – to reach a wider audience, they also produce new kinds of textualities and genres that need a transdisciplinary approach to be fully interpreted and appreciated. Not only do the texts and the projects analysed in this issue question the past and challenge the present, but they also envisage and anticipate a better and more just future by creating a performative counter-discourse in which the combination of verbal, visual, gestural, and musical language is pivotal.

在人文学科领域拥有悠久传统的行动主义（activism），始终为文化创作与学术理论思考提供着核心滋养。在艺术范畴内，行动主义与表演性（performativity）概念紧密关联——该概念将语言视为具备影响现实之力量的社会行动，而艺术家大多正是借助语言与表演发起抗议、反对对抗，并创作出质疑与挑战霸权话语的全新叙事。此类行动主义形式在网络空间的可见度、扩散度与普及度正日益提升，深刻影响着围绕当下紧迫议题的公共讨论——此类议题正愈发呈现数字化互联与跨媒介（transmediated）的特征。《Lingue e Linguaggi》本期特刊旨在探讨行动主义如何通过表演艺术、文学激辩、音乐实验与翻译实践，在作家、口语诗诗人（spoken word poets）、知识分子、出版人、音乐家及表演艺术家的创作中推动文化与社会变革。此类创作者依托混合传播模式，利用新媒体（尤以社交网络为代表）的技术资源触达更广泛的受众，同时催生了全新的文本形态与体裁，这些作品亟需借助跨学科方法方能得到充分解读与赏析。本特刊所分析的文本与相关项目，不仅旨在审视过往、挑战当下，更通过构建表演性反话语——其中言语、视觉、肢体与音乐语言的融合发挥着核心支撑作用——来构想并期许一个更美好、更公正的未来。