Penpoints Gunpoints and Dreams

<em>Penpoints Gunpoints and Dreams</em> explores the relationship between art and political power in society taking as its starting point the experience of writers in contemporary Africa where they are often seen as the enemy of the postcolonial state. This study raises the wider issues of the relationship between the state of art and the art of the state particularly in their struggle for the control of performance space in territorial temporal social and even psychic contexts. Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o calls for the alliance of art and people power freedom and dignity against the encroachments of modern states. Art he argues needs to be active engaged insistent on being what it has always been the embodiment of dreams for a truly human world.