The Soul Might Well Have Been Dreamed by Cicadas: Inger Christensen’s Speculative Realism

Abstract

In this paper, I reconstruct Inger Christensen’s poetical thinking in a dialogue with the speculative turn in contemporary continental philosophy. Christensen’s poetry has been philosophically interpreted in line with the Romantic tradition. However, I argue that by reframing the context to present day debates in continental metaphysics, Christensen’s position can provide the building blocks for a new hybrid model —an object-oriented philosophy of nature. First, the relation between language as a transcendental semiotic system and reality as a mind-independent realm is addressed not as a correlation between humans and world but as a companionship between two aspects of nature itself. Second, Christensen advocates a generic model of becoming where the engine is fueled by the irreducible “state of secrecy” that generates beings, forces, events on a flat ontological and political plane without ever itself being revealed.