By the way, in U.S. "post-avant" poetry spheres, there is a fascinating exception to this rule of readily using shaming and character-assassination tactics against anyone who dares challenge the current mini-Stalinist hothouse atmosphere:
The long tradition of Ethnopoetics, which is given an unremarked, polite pass, even though its classical phase, ca. 60 through 80s, and beyond, constitutes far and away the most overwhelming example of Caucasian appropriation and reframing of non-Western cultures and works. A few of the most influential anthologies of postwar poetry are based on the cultural operation, in fact.
How account for such a contradiction? Doesn't it call out for explanation?
Maybe the silence is due to the very fact that the explanation is jaw-dropping evident: Ethnopoetics (not to mention its leading exponent and anthologist) has intimate ties to the whole history and evolution of postwar "post-avant" poetry and poetics. Thus its obvious complicities in what today is immediately and casually pegged as racism, get passed over in a zipped-lipped shush.
The hypocrisy would be funny, if it weren't so shamefully and collectively opportunist.
I am waiting for PennSound, Jacket2, and the Poetry Foundation to attack Ethnopoetics for its ethical sins.
Fat chance.
>>> M LEAHY <[log in to unmask]> 09/13/16 10:09 AM >>>
the full text of her speech is here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/lionel-shrivers-full-speech-i-hope-the-concept-of-cultural-appropriation-is-a-passing-fad
On 13 September 2016 at 16:01, Kent Johnson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
This seems it might be of interest to some.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/books/lionel-shriver-cultural-appropriation-brisbane-writers-festival.html
--
Mark Leahy
artist - writer - teacher
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www.markleahy.net
