This dissertation intends to study the ways whereby contemporary Iberian poetry moves (in the double sense of emotionally
touching and politically mobilizing), and therefore can potentially produce, different models of sociality within the context of the 2008
financial crisis in Portugal and Spain. For that sake, it draws from the relatively recent affective turn in Cultural Studies, resulting
in an approach characterized by an understanding of emotions as practices. Contrary to traditional psychoanalytic perspectives, where
emotions are considered inner states and/or properties of the subject, Affect theory studies emotions as a liminal, relational production:
the result from the interaction of bodies with their environment, as well as between themselves. This approach has important implications
for literary criticism, as it involves addressing literary texts from their very material dimension. Therefore, and apart from paying
attention to its meaning, the key question would be what these texts do: what are their effects and how they impress, corporeal and
intellectually, on their readers. Issues of agency and subject-object distinction need to be reconsidered once we acknowledge that the
literary text acts upon the reader and transforms him/her. The project is structured in four chapters. The first one focuses in poetic
texts which, be it through traditional formats or newer devices, work, following Germán Labrador's terminology, as spaces of action. These
texts, poems from Antonio Orihuela, Filipa Leal, Pablo García Casado or Golgona Anghel, would be affective mediators, able to provide the
reader with politically mobilizing narratives and myths. It is possible to identify voices, narratives or scenes that describe or reflect
situations with which the reader empathizes, and that are able to move her to the point of changing a state of fear, disappointment or
apathy by another of mobilizing indignation. The second chapter is dedicated to those poetics centered in a re-elaboration of language for
subversive purposes. Following the premise that a new world cannot be thought using the old language of oppression, these poetics would
strive to overcome the currently mainstream prosaic realism. In this part I will analyze works from María Salgado, Enrique Falcón and
Antonio Méndez Rubio together with the Portuguese hypermedia poet Rui Torres; these authors distance themselves from figurative poetics
and embrace openness and indetermination, experimenting with various avant-garde means and elements. In a third chapter, I pay attention
to poets and MCs who shift between traditional formats and other material or virtual spatialities for their works, ranging from weblog
literature to street walls or hip-hop performances, which entail new restrictions and opportunities. Among others, I study the work of
Alberto Basterrechea, also known as neorrabioso (a mock self-definition that means "new enraged"). neorrabioso employs an aphoristic,
inflammatory writing with a colloquial and ludic characteristic mark: his brevity is, among other factors, a consequence of the fact that
he clandestinely paints his poems in the streets of Madrid. This will of regaining the public sphere for and by poetry is framed in the
activities of the 15-M movement, with which neorrabioso shares a project of renewing language in order to counteract institutional
newspeak. The last chapter studies, in an affective key, ecologist discourses in committed poetry. It will take Jorge Riechmann as its
central figure, but will also consider other authors such as Rui Lage or Fernando Aguiar. Thanks to their relational quality, emotions and
affects like shame or empathy (fundamental for the construction of a sense of community) have worked as dams for human ambitions,
particularly in a competitive and individualistic culture such as the Western. Thus, in this chapter I analyze poems susceptible of
rousing affects that function as limits: affects that, for instance, contribute to raise awareness that economic growth as an ends to
itself is a self-destructive fiction, incompatible with nature's finiteness, of which human beings are an inseparable
part. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2015. / November 30, 2015. / Affect and Emotion Studies, Cultural Politics, Iberian Contemporary Poetry, Social Activism / Includes bibliographical references. / Enrique Álvarez, Professor Directing Dissertation; Robinson Herrera, University Representative;
Juan Carlos Galeano, Committee Member; Delia Poey, Committee Member; Peggy Sharpe, Committee Member.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_360531 |
Contributors | López Martín, Alberto (authoraut), Álvarez, Enrique (professor directing dissertation), Herrera, Robinson A. (university representative), Galeano, Juan Carlos (committee member), Poey, Delia (committee member), Sharpe, Peggy (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college), Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (degree granting department) |
Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
Source Sets | Florida State University |
Language | Spanish, Spanish |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Text, text |
Format | 1 online resource (215 pages), computer, application/pdf |
Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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