Many of us believe that poetry, specifically activist and experimental poetry, is capable of intervening in our society, as though the right words will call people to action, give the voiceless a voice, and reorder the systems that perpetuate oppression, even if there are few examples of such instances. Nevertheless, my project looks at these very moments, when poetry alters the fabric of our real, to explore the ways these poetical interventions are, in effect, instances of what I have come to call “dissensual” poetry. Using Jacques Rancière’s concept of dissensus and the distribution of the sensible, my project investigates the ways in which dissensual poetry ruptures the distribution of the sensible—“our definite configurations of what is given as our real, as the object of our perceptions and the field of our interventions”—to look at the ways poetry actually does politics (Dissensus 156). I look at three different types of dissensual poetry: concrete poetry, sound poetry, and instapoetry. I argue that these poetic practices prompt a reordering of our society, of what is countable and unaccountable, and of how bodies, capacities, and systems operate. They allow for those whom Rancière calls the anonymous, and whom we might call the oppressed or marginalized, to become known. I argue that bpNichol’s, Judith Copithorne’s, and Steve McCaffery’s concrete poems; the Four Horsemen’s, Penn Kemp’s, and Christian Bök’s sound poems; and rupi kaur’s instapoems are examples of dissensual poetry.

Les poésies concrète, visuelle, sonore, apparues au début des années 1950 dans une vingtaine de pays du monde, dont l’Allemagne, la Suisse et l’Autriche, et les pièces radiophoniques expérimentales ont, jusqu’à présent, été perçues comme jeux formels avec le matériau verbal épargnant à leurs auteurs une prise de position politique par rapport au réel. Face à la réception réductrice du concept sartrien de « littérature engagée », les poétiques expérimentales apparaissent comme « désengagées ». Or, les auteurs invoquent la portée politique de leur déconstruction de poétiques traditionnelles, de normes linguistiques et de modes de pensée de la culture occidentale. Les formes d’écriture expérimentale ne seraient-elles pas alors des choix politiques au sens où elles ébranlent des visions et expériences du monde? Cette mise à distance du réel provoquerait ce que Rancière appelle la « subjectivation politique », c'est-à-dire l’émancipation du citoyen par rapport à son identité sociale figée par des manières de dire et de penser. Montrant l’intention politique immanente à certains choix poétiques cette étude aborde la notion d’engagement sous un angle poétologique / Concrete, visual and sound poetry, as well as experimental radio plays, appearing in the early 1950s in Germany, Switzerland and Austria specifically, have until now been perceived as formal games with language, sparing their authors from taking any political position with regards to reality. Given this narrow understanding of the sartrian concept of “engaged literature”, experimental poetry hence appeared as “disengaged.” And yet, authors insist on the deconstruction of traditional poetry, of linguistic norms and of the Occidental vision of culture. As a consequence, shouldn’t we also understand experimental literary forms as political in the sense that they shatter our traditional vision and experience of the world? The distance taken from reality leads to what Rancière calls “political subjectivity”, by which he means the emancipation of the individual from a fixed social identity through news ways of saying and thinking. Analyzing the political intention inherent to specific poetical choices, this study offers a poetic approach of literary political engagement