What is it about?
This essay critically examines various strategies taken in the most compelling contemporary American antiwar poetry written against the occupation of Iraq. It finds both limitations, as many poets have succumbed to a postmodern distance from events, and brilliance, in poets who have discerned ways of eliciting hope in the aims of such poetry.
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Why is it important?
Linda Hutcheon’s term transideological irony is used to show how many poets are complicit, in their irony, with rubrics of the dominant discourse such as ‘‘a nation at war.’’ In light of Zizek’s Lacanian-Marxist formulation of jouissance, the imperial jouissance manifest in much poetry presented as thematically ‘‘antiwar’’ is examined in terms of both successes and shortcomings.
Perspectives
The lack of trenchant antiwar poetry for such a war based on lies disturbed me very much, and may have created enemies for me among the poetry community. Also, because of intense patriotism, even this Canadian journal dragged its feet after accepting the article for publication. The research was completed based on 2009 data. It took three years to see print after acceptance, presumably for fear of seeming to support anti-Americanism. I would have hoped Academia could be a last bastion of critical thinking. Not so. Only when criticism of the war came back in vogue did the journal dare publish it.
Dr Dean Anthony Brink
interpoetics@gmail.com
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Resisting ImperialJouissance: The Transideological Line in Recent American Antiwar Poetry, Canadian Review of American Studies, January 2013, University of Toronto Press (UTPress),
DOI: 10.3138/cras.2013.001.
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