This project addresses the poetics of remembering historically traumatic events by examining Fred DAguiars long poem, Bill of Rights (1998). I argue that the poem constitutes a ritual of anamnesis against the forgetting of the events of Jonestown, Guyana through its detailing of the violence done by and on behalf of Jim Jones. Through a fictional poetic persona who has survived Jonestown, DAguiar explores that community and the ways in which it left scars on the individuals, and the collective, memories. I begin with a comparison of DAguiars work with another long poem that deals substantially with historical violence and dispossession, William Carlos Williamss Paterson. I then situate the poetics of both Williams and DAguiar in the context of Shoah literature and specifically in relation to Giorgio Agambens notion of testimony and to Walter Benjamins concept of the ethical state of emergency and political contestation that is inherent in all acts of remembering the past. Finally, I engage DAguiars reading of the Guyanese novelist, Wilson Harris, and of Harriss use of wilderness as a transformative agent, concluding that the poem, and the historical subject it depicts, constitute a stigmata that provokes further rituals of remembering.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-06042009-141301 |
| Date | 05 August 2009 |
| Creators | Pexa, Christopher John |
| Contributors | Professor Vera Kutzinski, Professor Kathryn Schwarz |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-06042009-141301/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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