Introduction: Writing and rioting: literature in times of crisis

This chapter contends that the literary archive models ways of understanding this new era of riots in which we currently live. The prevalence of rioting as a tactic for expressing collective dissent may seem to epitomize the volatility of contemporary global politics, but literary writers have long registered the riot’s insurrectionary appeal. The writers that feature in this collection exemplify literature’s relationship to the quasi-political form of the riot; a relationship which has been complex and varied, sometimes participatory, reactive, incendiary, but above all archival. As this introduction details, assuming representational responsibility for popular activities that the nation state perceives as ephemeral and destructive, literature has fashioned instead a parallel archive of a style of collective practice that offers unique opportunities to the creative writer. The spontaneous logic of riotous activity presents especially demanding experiential conditions to the artist who would faithfully record it all. Tested in the innermost resources of their artistry, this introduction elaborates on how writers have not merely documented riots over the years, but developed diverse ways of seeing them, ways that attend more radically to the phenomenology and expressive nature of the riot, than historiographical explanations, sociological classifications, or political denunciations ever could.