‘Language is the House We Live in:’ Language-Centeredness and the Limits of Political Activism in Post-War American Poetry (1950-1980)

Abstract

This article discusses the political dimension of post-war American Poetry from around 1950-1980. The underlying argument is that the antirepresentationalist poetry produced in and around the LANGUAGE-school in the 1970s is the necessary continuation of the political and social activism initially opted for by the Beat Generation. I assert that the kind of language-centeredness typical for many works of the LANGUAGE- school was already entailed in central texts of the 1950s and 1960s, as writers began to examine processes of meaning production/construction in the social sphere. Looking at selected poems by Allen Ginsberg (“A Supermarket in California”, “Wichita Vortex Sutra”), Denise Levertov (the text collection To Stay Alive ) and Bruce Andrews (“I Guess Work the Time Up”), the article traces a specific feature of postmodern poetry, spotlighting the growing ambivalence inherent in the search for an alternative cultural politics instigated by post-war American poets. I point out how the increased interest in the (linguistic) constructedness of political realities resulted in a poetics of “nonnarrativity” and hermetic closure that began gradually to jeopardize the communicative foundation of their collective political goals. My article concludes by suggesting a conceptual link between the projects of multiauthorship engaged in by several LANGUAGE-poets and the Habermasian notion of “communicative rationality.”