Negative Theology and Utopian Thought in Contemporary American Poetry

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Introduction

   • Jason Lagapa

   Pages 1-14

3. Our Message Was Electric: Susan Howe and the Resuscitation of Failed Utopian Projects

   • Jason Lagapa

   Pages 15-39

4. And Be Whole Again: Antiphony, Deprivation, and the “Not-Yet” Place of Utopia in Nathaniel Mackey’s Splay Anthem

   • Jason Lagapa

   Pages 41-65

5. Leave Us the World: Apophasis, Dissent and the Pluralist Politics of Charles Bernstein’s Poetry

   • Jason Lagapa

   Pages 67-90

6. Pages to Come: Utopian Longing and the Merging of the Detective Story with the Artist’s Novel in Alice Notley’s Disobedience

   • Jason Lagapa

   Pages 91-116

7. Afterword—Not Yet the End: the Resistance to Closure in Bloch’s Anticipatory Consciousness and Contemporary Experimental Poetry

   • Jason Lagapa

   Pages 117-125

8. Back Matter

   Pages 127-135

   PDF

This book explores the utopian imagination in contemporary American poetry and the ways in which experimental poets formulate a utopian poetics by adopting the rhetorical principles of negative theology, which proposes using negative statements as a means of attesting to the superior, unrepresentable being of God.  With individual chapters on works by such poets as Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Charles Bernstein, and Alice Notley, this book illustrates how a strategy of negation similarly proves optimal for depicting the subject of utopia in literary works. 

Negative Theology and Utopian Thought in Contemporary American Poetry:  Determined Negations contends that negative statements in experimental poetry illustrate the potential for utopian social change, not by portraying an ideal world itself but by revealing the very challenge of representing utopia directly.

• distopian
• religion
• experimental poetry
• God
• religious
• pluralist

“In Negative Theology and Utopian Thought in Contemporary American Poetry, Jason Lagapa takes the next step in illuminating the Utopian function at work in contemporary American poetry. Steeped in the Marxist tradition of such critics as Ernst Bloch and Fredric Jameson, Lagapa carefully analyzes the work of four crucial poets—Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Charles Bernstein, and Alice Notley—in order to demonstrate how these poets’ innovative strategies mobilize the anticipatory force that Bloch names the ‘not yet.’ Lagapa makes convincing use of the tradition of negative theology, a tradition predicated on rhetorical premises that are surprisingly appropriate to both Utopian thinking and poetic experimentation. At a time when such thinking is at a premium, Lagapa reminds us that our poetry remains an abundant storehouse of visionary tropes.”  - Norman Finkelstein,  Professor of English, Jewish Studies, Xavier University, USA

• English Department, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, Odessa, USA

  Jason Lagapa

Jason Lagapa is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas – Permian Basin, where he teaches courses in twentieth-century and twenty-first-century American poetry and creative writing.  He has published articles in Contemporary Literature and Journal of Modern Literature and contributed to The Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein.

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