Positionality And Mobility In Political Poetry Essay

Positionality and Mobility in Political Poetry

“Let us resolve to think of transcendental mobility—as a mobile. The poem as a mobile of words and signs, dangled over the crib of culture, as to stimulate the mind to imagine new combinations.” – Leonard Schwartz

Here in the pacific, isolated on all sides, the islands are pebbles on the globe. Our only access to the world beyond is through technology in Zen mode: handpicked information through newspapers, television and the internet. The world perceives our location as that other place, far removed, where the only conflict exists between insects and lizards. The sentiment holds some truth to it, and to say that we are dislocated from the conflict in the Middle East is an understatement. Yet, Hawaii is home to one of the largest training grounds for the US military. Here, despite our distance, we are actively involved in the conflict 8,400 miles away without being in the presence of its violence. Further, writing about that experience creatively is often problematic. Writing about the Middle East, or any culture to which we do not belong is an exaggerated challenge where locally, the borders of culture are so thinly defined. Questions regarding cultural authenticity, or cultural authority and whether or not one is prepared or

One solution might be that writers must first identify themselves, acknowledge their personal history, and perhaps the collective history to which they belong. From a sense of physical and psychological location, writers can move forward into unfamiliar territory. While somewhat dated, the book, Orientalism by Edward Said frames much of the rhetoric in postcolonial literary studies. In it, Said suggests that from a place of collective consciousness, writers might speak on behalf of a culture (in this case, Said’s East) and avoid the temptation of speaking for