MARC Record from harvard_bibliographic_metadata

LEADER: 03407cam a2200361Ia 4500
001 013066599-1
005 20120214182540.0
008 110818s2012 enk b 001 0 eng d
015 $aGBB198804$2bnb
015 $aGBB198804$2dnb
016 7 $a015873890$2Uk
020 $a9780199609291 (hbk.)
020 $a0199609292 (hbk.)
035 0 $aocn751747565
040 $aUKMGB$beng$cUKMGB$dYDXCP$dWAU$dNLE$dDEBBG
043 $an-us---
050 14 $aPS374.E95$bH68 2012
082 04 $a810.9355609045$223
100 1 $aHouen, Alex.
245 10 $aPowers of possibility :$bexperimental American writing since the 1960s /$cAlex Houen.
260 $aOxford ;$aNew York :$bOxford University Press,$c2012.
300 $aviii, 282 p. ;$c22 cm.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. [257]-275) and index.
520 $a"In The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (1957) Georg Lukács discussed how the power struggle of the Cold War made it all the more pressing for literary writers to present 'concrete potentialities' of individual character in novel ways. Powers of Possibility explores how American experimental writers since the 1960s have set about presenting exactly that whilst engaging with specific issues of social power. The book's five chapters cover a range of writers, literary genres, and political issues including: Allen Ginsberg's anti-Vietnam War poems; LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka and Black Power theatre; William S. Burroughs's novels and the Space Programmes; Kathy Acker's fiction and Biopolitics; and Lyn Hejinian, Language poetry, and the Cold War. Each chapter examines how relations of character and social power were widely discussed in terms of potentiality: Black Power groups, for example, debated the 'revolutionary potential' of African Americans, while advances in the space programmes led to speculation about the evolution of 'human potential' in space colonies. In considering how the literary writers engage with such debates, Alex Houen also shows how each writer's approach entails combining different meanings of 'potential': 'possible as opposed to actual'; 'a quantity of force'; a 'capacity' or 'faculty'; and 'potency'. Such an approach can be characterised as a literary 'potentialism' that turns literary possibilities (including experiments with style and form) into an affective aesthetic force with which to combat or reorient the effects of social power on people. Potentialism is not a literary movement, Houen emphasises, so much as a novel concept of literary practice--a concept that stands as a refreshing alternative to notions of 'postmodernism' and the 'postmodern avant-garde'."--Jacket.
505 0 $a'Back! back! back! central mind machine Pentagon ... ' : Allen Ginsberg and the Vietnam War -- 'This black world of purest possibility' : LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka -- Writing outer space for 'potential America' : William S. Burroughs -- Novel biopolitics : Kathy Acker and Michel Foucault -- Making a person possible : Lyn Hejinian and language poetry -- Conclusion : potentialism and practical imagination.
650 0 $aLiterature, Experimental$zUnited States$xHistory and criticism.
650 0 $aAmerican literature$y20th century$xHistory and criticism.
650 0 $aSocial problems in literature.
655 7 $aCriticism, interpretation, etc.$2fast
899 $a415_565864
988 $a20120117
049 $aHLSS
906 $0OCLC