EVERY Word should Do a Full Time Job – the Politics of Maximalism, DJ:ism, and Lars-Mikael Raattamaa

• This paper is an attempt to take into joint account Jacques Rancière’s take on “politics” as a heterogeneous force, and Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s concept of “becoming”, when approaching contemporary avant-garde poetry. It could be argued that such an operation runs the risk of being self-confirming, or circular, due to the fact that the ideas of an ideal heterogeneity that permeate both these theoretical concepts also does play a vital part in the political avant-garde of the day. This risk might also be why such ventures are so rare. However, that particular line of argument could of course be reversed, just as well. If contemporary avant-garde, on the one hand, and critical theory, on the other, share certain basic assumptions, why should the relation between the two not be examined more closely? In this paper I will examine how Swedish contemporary poet Lars-Mikael Raattamaa, in his book Mallamerik, mallammer, malameri, mallame, amerik, mallameka, merrika…, attempts a move away from conventional poetic form. This attempt is in many ways analogical to how “the political” according to Rancière moves away from “polis”, and how the “becoming” (and related concepts in the writings of Deleuze/Guattari, like “nomadic”, “de-territorialisation”, “flesh”, “the molecular”, “the rhizom”) moves away from form and stability. This particular Raattamaa-book employs a poetics which could be described in terms of “maximalism”. More specifically, a modus of the DJ is used in order to create a kind of heterogeneous flow. Within this flow, certain conventional literary cue points, such as punctuation, syntax, author, are questioned, at least symbolically. Through text-strategies that could be labelled “maximalist”, or “political”, or “becoming”, Raattamaa performs a severe critique of the supposedly stable hierarchies of conventional poetic language, i.e. the “polis” (Rancière), or the “body” (Deleuze/Guattari).

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Literary Studies (hsv//eng)

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