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This book examines how asbestos activists living in remote rural villages in South Africa activated metropolitan resources of representation at the grassroots level in a quest for justice and restitution for the catastrophic effects on their lives caused by the asbestos industry. It follows the Asbestos Interest Group (AIG) over a fifteen-year period through its involvement in grassroots research, in legal cases and in the compensation systems for asbestos-related disease. It examines how the AIG became grassroots technicians of translocal paperwork, moving texts back and forth between periphery and center, pushing documents through the textual mazeways of the courts, medical institutions, the compensation system and various government agencies. The book addresses rhetorical mobility and the extent to which, given the AIG’s position on the periphery, it has been able to enter the voices and interests of villagers into formerly inaccessible forums of deliberation and decision-making.
Trimbur demonstrates the transformative power of grassroots literacy in mobilizing the poor and resisting big industries. He merges activism with analytical rigor – adopting a creative style layered with the personal, narrative, and theoretically nuanced – to leave us with a text that will inspire us for similar forms of political engagement and academic relevance.
John Trimbur teaches rhetoric and writing studies at Emerson College, USA. His research interests include cultural studies of literacy, translingualism and the politics of language in South Africa.
Introduction: Circumstances, Motives, Methods, and Theories
Chapter 1. On the Periphery: Life and Literacy in the Kuruman District
Chapter 2. Asbestos Mining in the Written Record: A Brief History
Chapter 3. The Emergence of Asbestos Activism: From the ‘Period of Non-Awareness’ to the National Asbestos Summit of 1998
Chapter 4. Grassroots Activism and the Mobility of Documents: The Formation of the AIG
Chapter 5. Insurgent Lawfare and Form-Made Persons: From Asbestos Related-Disease Sufferers to Plaintiffs
Chapter 6. 'The Lawyer Stole the Money': The Political Economy of Compensation
Conclusion: Grassroots Activism, Popular Participation, and Contextual Spaces