Toward Myriadmindedness

Toward Myriadmindedness is the first monograph to explore the posthuman imagination of Beat literature. It studies the poetry of Michael McClure, Diane di Prima, and Philip Whalen through the lens of critical posthumanism to show how their poems challenge the human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism that continue to shape US society. The book creates a new understanding of how Beat literature is interested in more than political protest within a specific historic moment in the 20th century. Stefan Benz shows that Beat poetry must be understood as creative scholarship, as literature that records, transforms, and mediates alternative forms of knowledge - forms of knowledge that allow for a challenge and revision of the ideological foundations of contemporary human-made crises.