american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang
american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang
american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 83<br />
trauma <strong>the</strong>ory, but I want to suggest that a possible factor <strong>in</strong> some<br />
critics’ aversion to <strong>poetry</strong> of witness and experience is partly due to <strong>the</strong><br />
suspicion of experience and memory caused by <strong>the</strong> prom<strong>in</strong>ence of<br />
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), trauma <strong>the</strong>ory, and <strong>the</strong> issues<br />
surround<strong>in</strong>g recovered memory. In addition to critics’ explicitly stated<br />
concerns about <strong>poetry</strong> of experience as a mere mimetic exercise <strong>in</strong><br />
which <strong>the</strong> poet is a simple recorder of <strong>the</strong> world, trauma <strong>the</strong>ory suggests<br />
that “experience” itself is a questionable signifier.<br />
Trauma <strong>the</strong>ory, though, is rife with problems. 4 In “The Trauma<br />
Trap,” <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> March 2004 New York Review of Books, Frederick Crews<br />
outl<strong>in</strong>es some major difficulties with trauma <strong>the</strong>ory that challenge its<br />
central claims. For <strong>in</strong>stance, <strong>the</strong> problems with recovered memory:<br />
How is it possible that some memories (those recovered dur<strong>in</strong>g<br />
regression) are more legitimate than o<strong>the</strong>rs? How is it that <strong>the</strong><br />
memory of trauma does not stand apart neurologically from normal<br />
memory? Crews po<strong>in</strong>ts out that <strong>the</strong>re is no evidence of memory<br />
repression <strong>in</strong> any study of holocaust survivors. He shows that memories<br />
of traumatic events are actually better remembered than ord<strong>in</strong>ary<br />
ones. The idea, I believe, that an agent cannot know her experience<br />
must be abandoned. Our experiences must not be thought <strong>in</strong>accessible<br />
to us; <strong>in</strong> poems of equivocal agency that depart from strict models<br />
of experience, for example, we must first know our experiences before<br />
we consciously (and strategically) depart from <strong>the</strong>m.<br />
Although it is imperative to discount any notion of trauma as a<br />
“missed” experience unknowable by an agent except through recovered<br />
memory <strong>the</strong>rapy, <strong>the</strong> connections between trauma <strong>the</strong>ory and<br />
<strong>the</strong> rhetorical strategies and figures of voice <strong>in</strong> poems of equivocal<br />
agency are <strong>in</strong>structive. Cassie Premo Steele argues that trauma is not<br />
recorded <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> usual, narrative way we remember experiences;<br />
<strong>in</strong>stead, <strong>the</strong>y are “encoded” <strong>in</strong> images that give us “<strong>in</strong>sight <strong>in</strong>to <strong>the</strong><br />
questions of ‘experience,’ so often deadlocked between praise from<br />
humanist fem<strong>in</strong>ists and rejection from poststructuralists” (3–4). Like<br />
<strong>the</strong> memory of a traumatic experience, which may be disjo<strong>in</strong>ted and<br />
disordered, <strong>the</strong> poems <strong>in</strong> chapter 2 often shift and displace any<br />
simple narrative of experience. They often fracture—or refuse to<br />
use—<strong>the</strong> humanistic, unified, s<strong>in</strong>gular speak<strong>in</strong>g voice and opt <strong>in</strong>stead<br />
for <strong>the</strong> primacy of images, sensations, and sounds, or for voices that<br />
expose <strong>the</strong> limitations of “experience” narrowly understood as what<br />
can be turned <strong>in</strong>to an accessible, realistic narrative. As Steele claims,<br />
poems can be like memories <strong>in</strong> that <strong>the</strong>y comprise images, feel<strong>in</strong>gs,<br />
rhythms, sounds, and physical sensations of <strong>the</strong> body as “evidence”<br />
that transforms experience <strong>in</strong>to <strong>poetry</strong> (5). Poems of equivocal agency