The Activist Character: Power and Empowerment in Bestselling Activist Memoirs in the United States

Abstract

This article introduces the activist as a widely disseminated character within the culture of social movement societies. Drawing on studies of activist identities, Alasdair MacIntyre on characters, and the sociology of critique, it argues that the activist provides one way of imagining unjust structures of power and the possibilities of critical empowerment. The article unpacks this character in 20 bestselling activist memoirs in the United States. Across the memoirs, the structures of power are understood as total, decentred, and internalised by the individual. Empowerment involves a work on the self that taps into a disruptive source of power outside these structures. While this construction of the activist is shared, it is also inflected through two distinct repertoires in which the activist is empowered through their authenticity or a transformative love that transcends the individual.