"Who Was Ever Only Themselves?”— Precocity, Vulnerability, and Interbeing in Forrest Gander’s Be With Cover Image

"Who Was Ever Only Themselves?”— Precocity, Vulnerability, and Interbeing in Forrest Gander’s Be With
"Who Was Ever Only Themselves?”— Precocity, Vulnerability, and Interbeing in Forrest Gander’s Be With

Author(s): Julia Fiedorczuk
Subject(s): Poetry, Theory of Literature, American Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Forrest Gander; Ecopoetics; Mourning; Geology; Precocity; Vulnerability; Interbeing; Entanglement; Deep Time;

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to read Forrest Gander’s Pulitzer-winning 2018 volume, Be With, in the context of Judith Butler’s notion of vulnerability and the Buddhist concept of interbeing, introduced by Thích Nhất Hạnh. Gander’s search for a poetics of listening reaches a new intensity in Be With, a poetic lament for a deceased beloved. In this groundbreaking work, grief becomes a means of knowing the world where knowledge is understood “not as recitation but as/ the unhinging somatic event” (Gander 2018, 28). The new way of engaging with the world triggers a subjective reconfiguration that leads to the articulation of a deeply empathic poetics of vulnerability which becomes the basis for telling new stories of human, interspecies, and mineral entanglements.

  • Issue Year: 58/2020
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 157-172
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: English