Negative Theology and Utopian Thought in Contemporary American Poetry: Determined Negations

Jason Lagapa

May 2017 · Springer

About this ebook

This book explores the utopian imagination in contemporary American poetry and the ways in which experimental poets formulate a utopian poetics by adopting the rhetorical principles of negative theology, which proposes using negative statements as a means of attesting to the superior, unrepresentable being of God. With individual chapters on works by such poets as Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Charles Bernstein, and Alice Notley, this book illustrates how a strategy of negation similarly proves optimal for depicting the subject of utopia in literary works.

Negative Theology and Utopian Thought in Contemporary American Poetry: Determined Negations contends that negative statements in experimental poetry illustrate the potential for utopian social change, not by portraying an ideal world itself but by revealing the very challenge of representing utopia directly.

About the author

Jason Lagapa is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas – Permian Basin, where he teaches courses in twentieth-century and twenty-first-century American poetry and creative writing. He has published articles in Contemporary Literature and Journal of Modern Literature and contributed to The Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein.