Anarchists in the Academy. Machines and Free Readers in Experimental Poetry

Dani Spinosa takes up anarchism’s power as a cultural and artistic ideology, rather than as a political philosophy, with a persistent emphasis on the common. She demonstrates how postanarchism offers a useful theoretical context for poetry that is not explicitly political―specifically for the contemporary experimental poem with its characteristic challenges to subjectivity, representation, authorial power, and conventional constructions of the reader-text relationship. Her case studies of sixteen texts make a bold move toward politicizing readers and imbuing literary theory with an activist praxis―a sharp hope. This is a provocative volume for those interested in contemporary poetics, experimental literatures, and the digital humanities.

Case Studies: Jim Andrews, Christian Bök, Mez Breeze, John Cage, Andy Campbell, Robert Duncan, Kenneth Goldsmith, Susan Howe, Jackson Mac Low, Erín Moure [Erin Mouré], Harryette Mullen, bpNichol, Vanessa Place, Juliana Spahr, Brian Kim Stefans, W. Mark Sutherland, and Darren Wershler.