Contingency of Bodily Experience in Texts of Lithuanian Poetry

Abstract

The article demonstrates a correlation between the poetic articulation of a non-normative bodily experience and a topic of different modalities (particularly contingency). The main goal of the article is to reveal this probable correlation, thus verses of the three Lithuanian poets will be rethought. All three poets encounter a different and unique bodily experience that is connected to severe kinds of disability. These three ways of articulation of disability in poetical texts demonstrate slightly different focusing on modalities: the first and the third examples (the verse of Rita Skorochodova and Jonas Mačiukevičius) show disclosure of a level of contingency. The second case, the poetry of Elvina Baužaitė, focuses on the level of impossibility (the universal one) being on the verge of necessity. Every example in its own way reveals limits of human abilities, the vulnerability of human existence, the fragility of a life-flow. All these notions can be revealed through experience of disability and because of this experience if only a poet chooses to articulate it. The second part of the article is aimed at revealing the relation between the concept of contingency, the bodily experience, and modes of its articulation. Explaining the correlation of the poetry analysed with the contemporary philosophical texts (especially of some post-humanist authors and representatives of the contemporary social critique) shows that the articulation of contingent situations and non-universal constellations (which is inherent to the contemporary observations of culture) moves the concept of disability out of the margins of cultural discussions and into a most intensive field of observation.