Poetics of the event or evental poetics? Writing as becoming-imperceptible in Howard Barker’s Hurts Given and Received

Abstract

There are indeed notable affinities between Blok/Eko and Hurts Given and Received (henceforth HGR) – a play the exploration of which constitutes the focal point of this chapter. Rather than predicating my engagement with HGR on theories derived solely from one thinker, I derive the premises of my conceptual framework from a host of thinkers of “the event” in a bid to develop a nuanced approach - without collapsing the conceptual, historical, political differences between them. Notably, this is undertaken in an attempt to remain attentive to the singularity of HGR and its depiction of ethical, aesthetic and epistemological aporias of the “experience” of the event. Unfolding the dynamics of the event in HGR through the conceptual framework, this chapter will demonstrate the ways in which both the nature poetry as it features in HGR and the dynamics of its inspiration/composition are evental. It will then seek to demonstrate how the evental both derives its dynamics from and is propelled by four pivotal components: becoming-other (through proximity with the Other), fragmentary writing, phantasm, and the virtual. Such an evental dynamics entails a movement from totality to infinity, from the absolute work to the fragmentary, from sovereign autonomy to heteronomy.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record