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Poetics and Justice in America, Japan, and Taiwan shows how entitlements are implicated in all areas of life-human and nonhuman-that poetry reaches. Through a creative adaptation of Badiou's philosophical framing, this book argues that poetry matters as a form of media particularly suited to integrating diverse fields of knowledge and attention in newspapers, Tweets, and performance as well as volumes of poetry. Recasting intertextuality as more relational than referential, the author argues for the importance of poetry in realizing how social change and ecological justice are bound up in our orientations of affiliation. Each chapter focuses on particular sets of problems engaged by poets in different contexts to various ends in Japan, the US, and Taiwan. Some chapters explore the subtle implications of openly provocative styles, while others question the muted poetic intimations of injustices that are left standing unchanged in the name of aesthetics. Poets and performance artists featured include Amiri Baraka, John Ashbery, Tawara Machi, Rodrigo Toscano, Hung Hung, and John Cage. The author argues for examining poetic expressions in terms of what discursive fusions and affiliations they embody beyond the intimation of good intentions or ironic passing over.
List of contents
Introduction: Poetic Configurations and Intertextuality after Badiou and Angenot
Part I: On Ecological Engagement in American Poetry
Chapter 1: Romantic and Anthropocentric Agency in Contemporary American Ecopoetry
Part II: Social and Ecological Criticism in Contemporary Japanese Poetry
Chapter 2: Post-Bubble Satirical Verse in Neoliberal Japan
Chapter 3: Nuclear Hegemony and Material Indices: The Verse Boom after Fukushima
Chapter 4: Tawara Machi's Classical Pop Poetics of Consumerism and Travel
Part III: Settling Scores: Poetry Out of the New York School and Beyond
Chapter 5: Racialization, Sound, and Affiliations of Change in Amiri Baraka's Performance Poetry
Chapter 6: Sun Ra's Chromatic Affirmations: Subtractive Collaboration and Afrofuturism
Chapter 7: Situating Intentionality and Social Critique in the Poetry and Performance of John Cage and Rodrigo Toscano
Chapter 8: The Double Edge of Indifference in John Ashbery's Late Work
Part IV: Poetry of Emergent Communities
Chapter 9: Human Rights and the Arts in Contemporary Taiwan: Hung Hung's Literary and Dramatic Productions
Chapter 10: Precarious Spaces and Intertextual Jouissance in Queer Communities in San Francisco and Tokyo: The Poetry of Justin Chin and Ishii Tatsuhiko
About the author
Dean Anthony Brink is professor in the department of foreign languages and literatures at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University.
