This dissertation enters the conversation about what experimentalism has to do with poets of color while paying particular attention to the ways in which three women writing now—Myung Mi Kim, Claudia Rankine, and Marlene Nourbese Philip (the latter poet publishes under the name “M. Nourbese Philip)—deal with the complicated matter of contemporary selfhood. In all of their works, one of the central questions of poetic inquiry, “Who is speaking?” turns out to be a rather inappropriate question that forces traditional readings on these non-traditional texts, thus producing meanings that have more to do with poetic convention than the texts at hand. Instead, this project approaches these writers' texts asking, what kind of reading do these texts invite, as well as resist? Indeed, what kind of contemporary poetics do they create? This dissertation looks at how contemporary experimental poetry of racial mourning locates its grief not in racial experience itself, but in what produces identity-based experience in the first place. It contends that racial identity creates melancholia precisely because it is, paradoxically, a social construction that feels natural to us. Poets Kim, Philip, and Rankine use formal and linguistic innovation—including fragmentation, stammers, brackets, blank spaces, made-up words, lists, and pictograms—to re-imagine identity as inauthentic and unstable, while acknowledging the desire for a sense of one's self that's more whole, more sayable, more recognizable. This dissertation contextualizes their experimental work by charting a kinship between them, early elegiac poetries of racial mourning, and other contemporary poetry from Frederick Douglass to Major Jackson.

This dissertation concerns itself with a comparison of the differing aesthetic theories set forth by Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Derrida. After an introduction to the varying backgrounds informing Adorno and Derrida, Neo-Marxism and a certain kind of Heideggerian Phenomenology respectively, the dissertation then describes the most relevant points of these theories to this discussion and furthermore, how these transform any exegesis of literary texts. Subjects under discussion are the historic background of literary texts, truth-value in a piece of art, the question of societal relevance to/of literature, negativity in art, the critique of subjectivity, the question of the "text" and the relationship of literature to philosophy. These items are then further developed in critical practice; for that purpose, Adorno's essays on Stefan George and Derrida's work on Paul Celan were chosen. It is being argued that while Adorno takes a prescriptive stance on some issues of literature (e.g. canonization and a rejection of newer art forms), when it comes to the societal applications of literature, it is Adorno's theory that is better able to account for these, since it has a framework which allows for minute descriptions of these processes. On the other hand, Derridean text analyses can be more yielding due to various theoretical constructs such as differance, trace, dissemination, but his theory lacks a working definition for a societal grounding of literature, thereby seriously impeding its own progress. This becomes clear in his treatment of Paul Celan. While he is able to interpret many facets of Celan's poetry and theory of writing in a very interesting way, the one aspect informing all of Celan's writings, the Holocaust, is left aside. Due to the Derridan theory's lack of grounding in actual history, the historical fact of the Holocaust cannot inform his own writing, thereby cutting short an otherwise invigorating and extensive hermeneutical interpretation. Both theories have their advantages, but as theory geared toward societal change, Adorno's theory proves to be more yielding.

My goal in this dissertation is to shed light on a practice in printed literature often overlooked in philosophy of literature. Contemporary works of literature such as Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, and Irvine Welsh’s Filth each make artistic use of the features specific to printed literature such as font and formatting. I show that, far from being trivial aberrations, artistic use of font and formatting has a strong historical tradition going back to the Bucolic poets of ancient Greece. When these features deviate from traditional methods of inscription and perform some artistic function within the work, they are artistically significant features of the works themselves. The possibility of the artistic significance of these features is predicated on works of printed literature being visually mediated when one reads to oneself. All works of literature are mediated by some sense modality. When a work of printed literature is meant to be read to oneself, it is mediated by the modality of sight. Features specific to this method of mediation such as font and formatting can make artistic contributions to a text as well. Understanding the artistic significance of such features questions where we see literature with respect to other art forms. If these features are artistically significant, we can no longer claim that works of printed and oral literature are both the same performative art form. Instead, philosophy of literature must recognize that works of printed literature belong to a visually mediated, non-performative, multiple instance art form separate from the performative tradition of oral literature. / Philosophy

Thesis advisor: Jorge L.A. Garcia / When Odysseus sets sail from Circe’s island, she advises him to stop up his ears and eyes when he passes the Sirens or he will suffer terrible consequences. He makes his crew do it, but keeps his own senses clear, asking only to be tied to the mast so he cannot act on any bewitchments. This story could almost be an allegory about the moral danger of art. In this dissertation, I defend a small part of what I take to be the Odyssean thesis: that art is worth the danger it represents, and, specifically, that what I call "evil stories" are worth the danger they represent. The phrase "evil stories" is a shorthand, for me, for the longer phrase "stories which require us, in order to understand them, to imaginatively simulate the point of view of characters who commit acts of great harm for sadistic, malicious, or defiant reasons." I argue that auditing “evil stories” is not, for most people, and as part of a balanced imaginative diet, so morally dangerous that they ought to be avoided; moreover, I argue that it can be morally opportune to audit them and, in some special cases, morally obligatory. My strategy to defend this thesis is two part. First, I formulate and respond to what I take to be the most serious reasons to suspect that auditing evil stories is too morally dangerous. Those reasons include: the idea that auditing evil stories is itself an immoral action (chapter 3); the idea that it is a virtue to be unable to perform the mental operations involved in adequately auditing evil stories (chapter 4); the idea that understanding evil actions or characters is tantamount to condoning them (chapter 5); and the idea that being fascinated by evil undercuts one's standing to condemn it (chapter 6). Second, I venture several tentative arguments in support of the idea that evil stories can actually provide opportunities for moral growth and education: the idea that evil stories provoke unique and valuable kinds of moral reflection and that we can sometimes be obligated to audit them (chapter 7); and the idea that auditing evil stories is uniquely revelatory of some kind of moral truth (chapter 8). In the course of all this rebutting and reason giving, I propose a way of thinking about the ethics of audition in general which I call "role-centered response moralism," which develops obliquely across the subsections of various chapters. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2001. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 365-371).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1909. / Bibliography: p. 90-91.

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 58 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 52-55).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2002. / Adviser: Lee Edelman. Submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 197-212). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (Ph.D. )--Duquesne University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-197).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science, 2000. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 294-312).