‘Liberty to bend a piece of wire into a space sculpture’: Stefan Themerson, Kurt Schwitters, and the rhetoric around rights and refugees

PEN International's 1948 charter and its accession to NGO status made it one of the most globally recognisable institutions promoting and securing freedom of expression for writers and artists as a fundamental human right. PEN's transition from dinner club to NGO involved a post-war reckon...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inLiterature and history Vol. 33; no. 1; pp. 3 - 15
Main Author Chambers, Matthew
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.05.2024
Subjects
NGOs
Human rights
post-war literature
PEN International
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Summary:PEN International's 1948 charter and its accession to NGO status made it one of the most globally recognisable institutions promoting and securing freedom of expression for writers and artists as a fundamental human right. PEN's transition from dinner club to NGO involved a post-war reckoning with how to respond to institutional abuses of power and how to secure rights for those who had lost the traditional protections of the state. George Orwell and Stefan Themerson, writing on the 1944 PEN conference, offer insight into the political challenges PEN faced after the Second World War regarding state power and the rights of refugees.
ISSN:0306-1973
2050-4594
DOI:10.1177/03061973241245755