Provocations in Twentieth-Century Poetic

This is a class about poetry and revolt. In a century of wars, unchecked proliferation of industrial and market systems in the continued legacy of settler-colonialism and the consolidation of state powers, does language still conduct with revolutionary possibilities? In this class, we will read manifestos, philosophical treatises, political tracts, literary polemics, poems, scores, and so on, as we consider poetry’s long-standing commitment to visionary practices that seek to liberate consciousness from the many and various structures of oppression. The term “poetry” is not limited to itself but becomes, in our readings, an open invitation to all adjacent experiments with and in the language arts. As such, we will look at the emergence of the international avant-gardes as well as a few student movements that populate and complicate the explorations of radical politics in the twentieth-century. In addition to our readings, students will be asked to produce creative responses for class discussion. Final projects will be provocations of their own design.

Required Texts:

Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto

Aimé Césaire: Notebook of A Return to the Native Land

Hilda Hilst: The Obscene Madame D

Marguerite Duras: Hiroshima Mon Amour

Guy Debord: Society of the Spectacle