Guest lecture - Marius Henderson: "Crisis and Continuity: Spectra of Suffering in Contemporary Experimental North American Poetry"

The DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies “Russian-Language Poetry in Transition” (FOR 2603) cordially invites you to a guest lecture by Marius Henderson (Erlangen-Nürnberg): “Crisis and Continuity: Spectra of Suffering in Contemporary Experimental North American Poetry“

About the lecture:

The ongoingness of suffering-inducing societal and political scenarios of crisis, in the present, appears to call for poetic responses as well. This talk will investigate literary strategies in contemporary North American experimental poetry which thematically address forms of suffering that transcend the level of subjective experience and are written in the face of structural conditions that perpetuate suffering. The structural persistence of suffering, against the background of an affectively mediated becoming ordinary of scenarios of disaster, becomes the starting point for the poetic texts I will exemplarily scrutinize. These texts can be regarded as attempts to deal with or “write through” persistent conditions of suffering. Moreover, these recent poetic modes of rendering suffering do not only call for a more copious consideration of suffering as an analytical category but also for the development of pertinent critical conceptualizations of the nexus between suffering and literary representation. Therefore, this talk will also tentatively address the question how the relation between suffering and poetic writing may be conceived, in terms of critical literary and cultural theory.

Guests are very welcome!