
Reading Experimental Writing
Georgina Colby(Editor)
Edinburgh University Press
Published on 10. December 2019
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-1-4744-4038-7 (ISBN)
Description
Explores the challenges and significance of experimental writing
Offers a forum for reflecting on the significance of avant-garde writing for the twenty-first century Explores the way in which contemporary experimental writers engage with socio-political issues Utilizes unpublished archive materials bringing to light a number of previously unpublished worksIncludes innovative readings of significant avant-garde writers previously neglected in the critical canonBringing together internationally leading scholars whose work engages with the continued importance of literary experiment, this book takes up the question of 'reading' in the contemporary climate from culturally and linguistically diverse perspectives. New reading practices are both offered and traced in avant-garde writers across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including John Cage, Kathy Acker, Charles Bernstein, Erica Hunt, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Rosmarie Waldrop, Joan Retallack, M. NourbeSe Philip, Caroline Bergvall, Uljana Wolf, Samantha Gorman and Dave Jhave Johnston, among others. Exploring the socio-political significance of literary experiment, the book yields new critical approaches to reading avant-garde writing.
Offers a forum for reflecting on the significance of avant-garde writing for the twenty-first century Explores the way in which contemporary experimental writers engage with socio-political issues Utilizes unpublished archive materials bringing to light a number of previously unpublished worksIncludes innovative readings of significant avant-garde writers previously neglected in the critical canonBringing together internationally leading scholars whose work engages with the continued importance of literary experiment, this book takes up the question of 'reading' in the contemporary climate from culturally and linguistically diverse perspectives. New reading practices are both offered and traced in avant-garde writers across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including John Cage, Kathy Acker, Charles Bernstein, Erica Hunt, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Rosmarie Waldrop, Joan Retallack, M. NourbeSe Philip, Caroline Bergvall, Uljana Wolf, Samantha Gorman and Dave Jhave Johnston, among others. Exploring the socio-political significance of literary experiment, the book yields new critical approaches to reading avant-garde writing.
Reviews / Votes
The essays comprising this conceptually rich and astutely edited volume read contemporary experimental writing in terms of its engagement with a genuinely historical present moment, unfolding at manifold sites of turbulence. The result is a set of extraordinarily timely essays on aesthetic activism, reflecting an array of perspectives while sharing a sense of the contemporary as emergent and still incomplete. This is a powerful contribution to the moment, and one with long term significance. * Lyn Hejinian, University of California, Berkeley *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
30 colour illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
476 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4744-4038-7 (9781474440387)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Georgina Colby
Reading Experimental Writing
E-Book
11/2019
Edinburgh University Press
€0.00
Available for download
Person
Georgina Colby is Reader in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of Westminster. She has published widely in the field of avant-garde writing and feminisms. Her books include Kathy Acker: Writing the Impossible (2016), and the collections Reading Experimental Writing (2019) and, as co-editor, The Contemporary Small Press: Making Publishing Visible (2020). She is the series editor (with Eric White) of Edinburgh Critical Studies in Avant-Garde Writing and Edinburgh Foundations in Avant-Garde Writing.
Content
AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsPrefaceCharles Bernstein
Introduction: Reading Experimental Writing, Georgina Colby
1. 'Fog is My Land' A Citizenship of Mutual Estrangement in the Painted Books of Etel Adnan, Jennifer Scappettone
2. Reading Happily with John Cage, Lyn Hejinian, and Others, Alex Houen
3. Experiment, Inscription and the Archive: Kathy Acker's Manuscript Practice, Georgina Colby
4. Rereading Race and Commodity Form in Erica Hunt's "Piece Logic", Chris Chen
5. Contemporary Experimental Translations and Translingual Poetics, Sophie Seita
6. On Joan Retallack's Memnoir: Investigating 'the Experience of Experiencing', erica kaufman
7. A Queer Response to Caroline Bergvall's Hyphenated Practice: Toward an Interdependent Model of Reading, Susan Rudy
8. Reading Language Art on Digital Media: Reconfigurations of Experimental Practices, John Cayley 9. Charles Bernstein's Walter Benjamin, Among Other Things, Peter Jaeger
Notes on ContributorsBibliographyIndex
Introduction: Reading Experimental Writing, Georgina Colby
1. 'Fog is My Land' A Citizenship of Mutual Estrangement in the Painted Books of Etel Adnan, Jennifer Scappettone
2. Reading Happily with John Cage, Lyn Hejinian, and Others, Alex Houen
3. Experiment, Inscription and the Archive: Kathy Acker's Manuscript Practice, Georgina Colby
4. Rereading Race and Commodity Form in Erica Hunt's "Piece Logic", Chris Chen
5. Contemporary Experimental Translations and Translingual Poetics, Sophie Seita
6. On Joan Retallack's Memnoir: Investigating 'the Experience of Experiencing', erica kaufman
7. A Queer Response to Caroline Bergvall's Hyphenated Practice: Toward an Interdependent Model of Reading, Susan Rudy
8. Reading Language Art on Digital Media: Reconfigurations of Experimental Practices, John Cayley 9. Charles Bernstein's Walter Benjamin, Among Other Things, Peter Jaeger
Notes on ContributorsBibliographyIndex