Book contents
- The New Walt Whitman Studies
- Twenty-First-Century Critical Revisions
- The New Walt Whitman Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I The New Life of the New Forms: Aesthetics, Disciplines, Politics
- Part II Wet Paper Between Us: New Reading Methods
- Part III A Kosmos: The Critical Imagination
- Chapter 10 Critique Is Not That Old, Composition Is Not That New: Sadakichi Hartmann’s Conversations with Walt Whitman
- Chapter 11 Reading Whitman in Disenchanted Times
- Chapter 12 “Permit to Speak at Every Hazard”: Whitman’s Grammar of Risk
- Chapter 13 Whitman Getting Old
- Index
Chapter 11 - Reading Whitman in Disenchanted Times
from Part III - A Kosmos: The Critical Imagination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2019
- The New Walt Whitman Studies
- Twenty-First-Century Critical Revisions
- The New Walt Whitman Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I The New Life of the New Forms: Aesthetics, Disciplines, Politics
- Part II Wet Paper Between Us: New Reading Methods
- Part III A Kosmos: The Critical Imagination
- Chapter 10 Critique Is Not That Old, Composition Is Not That New: Sadakichi Hartmann’s Conversations with Walt Whitman
- Chapter 11 Reading Whitman in Disenchanted Times
- Chapter 12 “Permit to Speak at Every Hazard”: Whitman’s Grammar of Risk
- Chapter 13 Whitman Getting Old
- Index
Summary
This chapter thinks about the risks of becoming enchanted by Whitman’s writing. Under crisis neoliberalism, “risk” has become sutured to a phobia of being exposed as naïve; it is often risky to not have some explanatory framework or incisive critique at the ready. Of increasing resonance at this political juncture is what this chapter thinks of in terms of Whitman’s “grammar of risk.” To read Whitman’s poetry now is to feel the jolt of a form that momentarily suspends a language of looking through or beyond what is in front of us. This is not to advocate a “surface reading” that necessarily cancels political depth, but rather to think in terms of a surface consciousness that always imbues a moment of contact with the dignity it might deserve. This is an attitude towards others that continually risks disappointment, but it might also be the only nonviolent way forward we have.
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- Information
- The New Walt Whitman Studies , pp. 203 - 215Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019