{"title":"Illness and the Corporeal Experience as a Source of Collective Healing in 21st-Century American Poetry","authors":"Ronie K. Stephens","doi":"10.51865/jlsl.2022.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51865/jlsl.2022.08","url":null,"abstract":"Though 21st-century poetics is informed by protests and increasingly nuanced conversations about intersectional experiences, representations of chronic and acute illness are fairly rare. Even in the post-confessional era, with poets embracing vulnerability, ableism continues to dominate the genre. However, several poets have embraced their respective illnesses, centring their experiences not as wholly traumatic but as gracefully human. I argue that poets like Danez Smith, Andrea Gibson, Rachel McKibbens and others help insert acute and chronic illness into conversations about American poetics. American literature has long been complacent regarding the erasure of people living with illness, as well as its tendency to sensationalise trauma rather than centre the human experience in stories of illness. 21st-century poets are challenging this paradigm, effectively transforming their respective illnesses into a catalyst for activism and grounding their experiences in representations of the corporeal as flawed, vulnerable and yet miraculous.","PeriodicalId":40259,"journal":{"name":"Word and Text-A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86330894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Poetry, Disability and Metamodernism: Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic","authors":"D. Mironescu","doi":"10.51865/jlsl.2022.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51865/jlsl.2022.07","url":null,"abstract":"Based on Ilya Kaminsky’s poetry volume Deaf Republic (2019), this article aims at placing contemporary disability poetics at the crossroads of modernism and metamodernism. The first part makes an assessment of the modernist poetics of disability created against the background of the prevalent ableist ideology as it is found in the American and Romanian traditions, and examines the ways in which disabled poets react, creatively and politically, to the tradition of marginalization to which they were subjected. A particular place is given to Deaf poetry and to the limitations it had to surpass socially and creatively. In the second part of the essay, I introduce metamodern affect to sketch out a poetics of disability in the 21st century which overcomes the predicaments of modernist writing and reading codes through a new way of conceiving corporeality, oppression, and relationality.","PeriodicalId":40259,"journal":{"name":"Word and Text-A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84025188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Review of Antoine Traisnel's, Capture: American Pursuits and the Making of the New Animal Condition","authors":"M. Fuchs","doi":"10.51865/jlsl.2021.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51865/jlsl.2021.14","url":null,"abstract":"This is a review article of Antoine Traisnel's Capture: American Pursuits and the Making of the New Animal Condition.","PeriodicalId":40259,"journal":{"name":"Word and Text-A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics","volume":"100 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74950817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Found in Narration: Nonhuman Voices in Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise and Colin McAdam’s A Beautiful Truth","authors":"Magdalena Jagodzka","doi":"10.51865/jlsl.2021.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51865/jlsl.2021.11","url":null,"abstract":"This article delves into the problem of nonhuman subjectivity in two literary texts: Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise with the first-person tortoise narration, and Colin McAdam’s A Beautiful Truth that employs the collective primate narrator. While nonhumans cannot actively participate in the act of creation of the text, their presence in the story, arranged by the author, conveys multiple meanings. Considerations of the narrative techniques are critical for negotiating the relevance of nonhuman actors. I argue that although each author finds different methods of giving voice to nonhumans and both ensure practical significance of animal particularity, nonhuman subjectivity should not be perceived as a fixed value of the presented literary texts.","PeriodicalId":40259,"journal":{"name":"Word and Text-A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88367332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bodily Traces: Animal Matter, Historical Books and the ‘Lifelessness’ of Writing","authors":"Eva Spiegelhofer","doi":"10.51865/jlsl.2021.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51865/jlsl.2021.07","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout the medieval and early modern periods in Europe, animal-derived materials were routinely used in book production, and thousands of animals thus left their bodily traces in and on supposedly human cultural artefacts. Acknowledging their presence requires us to rethink how we conceive of life and presence in relation to writing and of animals in relation to textuality. The animals whose remains were turned into books not only embody meaning but their bodies became meaning in the shape of text. This article sets out to follow the material traces of these animals rendered invisible centuries ago to draw attention to the tangible animality of our literary heritage. By raising consciousness for the essential, yet often neglected role other animals played in its creation, my research troubles traditional animal-human and nature-culture binaries, calling for a more nuanced appreciation of animal lives in- and outside (human) texts.","PeriodicalId":40259,"journal":{"name":"Word and Text-A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics","volume":"63 4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91095006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Homofaunie: Non-human Tonalities of Listening in Derrida and Cixous","authors":"Naomi Waltham-Smith","doi":"10.51865/jlsl.2021.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51865/jlsl.2021.05","url":null,"abstract":"In L’animal que donc je suis Jacques Derrida suggests that the question of what would be proper to the animal should ‘change tune’. I read this extraordinary passage, in which Derrida calls for us to lend an ear to an ‘unheard-of music’ that neither emancipates the non-human nor condemns it to inarticulate noise, in conjunction with the nexus of animality, telephony and the cri de la littérature that unfolds in Hélène Cixous’s writing, exploring the significant role assumed by the sonorous in these descriptions of non-human life. For Cixous, the telephonic power of near-instantaneous substitution and of prostheticity is inseparable from the sounds produced by the coterie of animals that populate the writings of these two authors. What is intriguing is that this bestiary is almost always said with a certain homonymy or homophony. Hence this article traces what I dub an ‘homofaunie’ echoing Cixous’s series of puns and neologisms such as ‘(t)elefaun’ and ‘(t)elephantasy’ that capture Derrida’s attention. The article asks what is at stake for theorizing non-human life – not just animal but also plant and so-called inanimate life – if the mode of questioning is to be redirected by a specifically aural attunement in which listening itself is retuned under the guidance of untranslatable homophony.","PeriodicalId":40259,"journal":{"name":"Word and Text-A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83674503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Animal (As) Writing, Writing (As) Animal","authors":"Rodolfo Piskorski","doi":"10.51865/jlsl.2021.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51865/jlsl.2021.01","url":null,"abstract":"This is the introduction to the volume.","PeriodicalId":40259,"journal":{"name":"Word and Text-A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics","volume":"2016 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86642174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bugging: The Kaleidoscopic Literary Politics of Insects","authors":"N. Seiler","doi":"10.51865/jlsl.2021.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51865/jlsl.2021.08","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the appearance of insects in Polish literature of the mid-socialist period. It will elaborate a post-humanist perspective on the peaking presence of flies, wasps, bugs or worms in literary texts both as a motif and as an aesthetic strategy. The article investigates the way the deployment of insects in and through the text modulates the view of and the perspective on their human fellows, and how these modulations can be traced to the social reality of the socialist 1960s and 1970s.","PeriodicalId":40259,"journal":{"name":"Word and Text-A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90652381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"I Stink, Therefore I Mink: A Manifesto","authors":"Marie Garnier","doi":"10.51865/jlsl.2021.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51865/jlsl.2021.06","url":null,"abstract":"The recent mass culling of mink in Denmark and elsewhere, following the animals’ contamination by a COVID-19 variant, is taken as a re-entry point into Derrida and Lacan’s mink-mediated conversation in The Beast and the Sovereign. Out of the etymological ‘stink’ attached to the mink emerges an animot gifted with (unlimited) ink, with a potential to disturb philosophies of language, to write back or strike back, as it has recently done in the form of alignments of dead yet resurfacing animals. In the wake of Derrida’s verbal disseminations around the vison, and of Lacan’s attribution of a ‘sort of language’ to the animal in The Formations of the Unconscious, this essay follows an animal pack with includes the 17 million mink programmed for (double) extinction by inhumation and cremation. A hauntology follows, adumbrated by Lacan’s interest in the ‘secretion’ of fur, mink oil and (psychoanalytic) sense, and by Derrida’s encounter with the neoliberal, crypto-vison Alain Minc in 1994.","PeriodicalId":40259,"journal":{"name":"Word and Text-A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75117187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fictional Menageries: Writing Animals in the Early Twenty-First Century. A Review of Timothy C. Baker, Writing Animals: Language, Suffering, and Animality in Twenty-First-Century Fiction","authors":"Antonis Balasopoulos","doi":"10.51865/jlsl.2021.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51865/jlsl.2021.15","url":null,"abstract":"This is a review article of Timothy C. Baker's Writing Animals: Language, Suffering, and Animality in Twenty-First-Century Fiction.","PeriodicalId":40259,"journal":{"name":"Word and Text-A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76880353","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}