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Lilian Chaitas (Tübingen):
"Experimental, New, Open – American Poetry since the 1950s"
Abstract
Such labels as ‘experimental’, ‘new’, and ‘open’ represent often-used but scarcely-defined elements of literary and, especially, literary critical discourse. These labels and, by implication, such notions as experimentalism, newness, and openness have come to play a significant role in the field of American poetry since the 1950s. Far from having a fixed meaning in any formalist sense, their meaning(s) and value(s) prove to be subject to continual (re-)negotiation between and within different groups of agents in the field. What moves into the focus of interest from this perspective are the principles of distribution of these labels in the field of American poetry since 1950 as well as the different modalities of their use. With Pierre Bourdieu, I argue that these labels as well as the related concepts have been and are still used to produce distinction.
In my talk, I will turn to a fairly recent text that raises important issues with regard to the use(s) of the label ‘experimental’ in discourses of/on twentieth-century art and literature. I will discuss an essay by American poet-critic Ann Lauterbach which is aptly titled “Use This Word in a Sentence: ‘Experimental’” (2005). Lauterbach’s essay reveals the extent to which the term ‘experimental’ in specific is ingrained in discourses of/on post-World War II American poetry.
In my talk, I will turn to a fairly recent text that raises important issues with regard to the use(s) of the label ‘experimental’ in discourses of/on twentieth-century art and literature. I will discuss an essay by American poet-critic Ann Lauterbach which is aptly titled “Use This Word in a Sentence: ‘Experimental’” (2005). Lauterbach’s essay reveals the extent to which the term ‘experimental’ in specific is ingrained in discourses of/on post-World War II American poetry.
Bio
Lilian Chaitas is a research fellow at the American Studies Department at the University of Tübingen. She is currently working on her PhD thesis which examines the role that notions of experimentalism, openness, and newness have come to play in the field of American poetry since the 1950s. She has also published an article on “Postcolonial (Re)Visions of Toronto: Spatial Tactics of Resistance in Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion” (2006). Her further research interests include theories of the avant-garde, postmodernist fiction as well as literary and cultural theory.