Anarchists in the Academy. Machines and Free Readers in Experimental Poetry

Description

Dani Spinosa takes up anarchism’s power as a cultural and artistic ideology, rather than as a political philosophy, with a persistent emphasis on the common. She demonstrates how postanarchism offers a useful theoretical context for poetry that is not explicitly political—specifically for the contemporary experimental poem with its characteristic challenges to subjectivity, representation, authorial power, and conventional constructions of the reader-text relationship. Her case studies of sixteen texts make a bold move toward politicizing readers and imbuing literary theory with an activist praxis—a sharp hope. This is a provocative volume for those interested in contemporary poetics, experimental literatures, and the digital humanities. 1 Precursors to Digital Writing 1 Jackson Mac Low Is Something Something 3 John Cage Making Excessive Noise 14 Robert Duncan Plagiarizing 25 bpNichol for the Curious Viewer/Reader 35 2 Feminism, Print, Machines 51 Susan Howe Sleeping in the Library 54 Erín Moure’s Name in Quotation Marks 71 Juliana Spahr Prefers Both 84 Harryette Mullen Making Kimchee in a Museum 95 3 Easy Concepts 107 Kenneth Goldsmith Talking to Himself 111 Vanessa Place Without Serifs 124 Christian Bök Obsolesces the Avant-Garde 134 Darren Wershler andor Any Number of Readers 142 4 Digital Interventions 153 Jim Andrews Drifts Apart 156 W. Mark Sutherland Puts the Cedar in Abecedarian 166 Brian Kim Stefans Alphabetizes Dreams 177 Andy Campbell, Mez Breeze, and the Constrict(l)ure of Code 186