Literary Neo-Avant-Gardes – Historicizing the Politics of Form

Résumé 0

This cluster of essays approaches the controversial question of the political intentions, implications, and effects of the literary neo-avant-gardes by scrutinizing the topos of a “politics of form,” which is so often foregrounded in and associated with neo-avant-garde practices. Following the assumption that the reconceptualization of this familiar explanatory figure calls for a greater consideration of contexts, the essays adopt a comparative perspective on neo-avant-garde literatures in Europe and the United States, through a series of case studies. They focus on sound poetry in postwar Europe, choric speaking in German and Austrian works, American Beat and Belgian neo-avant-garde, and on the reception and reconfiguration of Language poetry in contemporary literature. Bringing together surprisingly related literary innovations from significantly differing cultural and political contexts, the essays question and historicize the idea that radical formal devices and the breaking with social and aesthetic conventions always tend to work as “progressive” political interventions.