Published: 2024-01-22

Why Poets in the Anthropocene? An Outline of the Proposals of the Anthropocene Triangle

Patryk Szaj Logo ORCID
Section: GEologos. In search of new alliances
https://doi.org/10.31261/PS_P.2023.32.20

Abstract

The Anthropocene poses a challenge not only to the socio-political order, but also to literary studies – it calls for a rethinking of certain dogmas and methods in the study of literature. The starting point of the article is a reflection on the role of the imagination in the Anthropocene. Contrary to the convictions of traditional ecocriticism, the author argues that the reformulation of the individual imagination is not an appropriate response to the Anthropocene, and that literature cannot be reduced to the role of “teacher of the imagination”. Instead, the author proposes an immanentist approach inspired by the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It sees poetry as one of the social machines interacting in the field of immanence, whose role is to channel communal desires and find various outlets for them. The author then presents his proposal for a taxonomy of languages (material-discursive practices) of the Anthropocene in contemporary Polish poetry. He defines his taxonomic tool as an “Anthropocene triangle”. The vertices of the triangle are three competing material-discursive practices – the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene and the Chthulucene – as
the extreme points of the Anthropocene plane. The positioning of individual poetic projects in the field of the triangle depends on how close they are to each vertex.

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Citation rules

Szaj, P. (2024). Why Poets in the Anthropocene? An Outline of the Proposals of the Anthropocene Triangle. Postscriptum Polonistyczne, 32(2), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.31261/PS_P.2023.32.20

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Vol. 32 No. 2 (2023)
Published: 2023-03-29


ISSN: 1898-1593
eISSN: 2353-9844
Ikona DOI 10.31261/PS_P

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

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