All 1 entries tagged Bettina Schmidt

Regenerating L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

Writing about web page http://zimbabwe.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=5748&x=1

"The Renaissance DIALOGUE was practiced in meetings of writers, artists and scientists in an attempt to create a humanist world.

"For example in remote places in the Toscana in Italy, and besides drinking, eating and making love, they engaged in controversial discussions about everything, and were completely satisfied with a situation that did not aim at achieving a consensus about ideas, issues and theories. Everything was open for discussion, and through this openness, a temporary closeness could exist, but not vice versa. They produced no closed and thus restricted systems – they were the outsiders – but at the same time practices in a system – being insiders – but of a special kind. But there was a rule: one person present was chosen and had to remain sober in order to write the protocol of the dialogues – as did the individuals who chose to write the protocol of Dambudzo’s dialogues. This chosen writer produced a system which could only be a glimpse of the non-system as dialogue, but should be seen to be just as polyvalent and multivocal as the DIALOGUE itself. Thus the DIALOGUE is both the condition of art – as non-system and of science – as system. Today we see a dialogue as a condition of postmodernism."

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E is useless without a social context; hence:

"L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E P=O=E=T=R=Y was not simply a movement to bring renewed interest to language, but to the structures and codes of language: how ideas are represented and formulated to transmit ideas, thoughts, and meaning...

"L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E P=O=E=T=R=Y also recognized that language is political. In the same way that American farmers hid behind tree trunks and took pop shots at British soldiers who stood in formation in open fields during the revolutionary war, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E P=O=E=T=S fractured the language in an attempt to wage their own rebellious assault against the social and political structure inherent in the Imperial force of the English language. In doing this, the entire reading process was overhauled, with the reader of this type of poetry forever changed in the way that he or she encounters text of any type." (source)

Hence Dambudzo Marechera. A D=I=A=L=O=G=U=E P=O=E=T.

George Ttoouli : 30 Jan 2008 11:07 |  Tags: Bettina Schmidt Creativewriting Dambudzo Marechera Modernism |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem