Dr Cornelia Gräbner
Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies and Comparative LiteratureAdditional Information
How can we best listen to expressions of imaginings of social and political transformations in the spirit of decolonizing liberation, global and local justice, and high-intensity democracy? What ways of listening put us in a position to respond, to join, to act in solidarity? Which culturally engrained obstacles stand in the way of such transformations, and how can we critically unravel and actively remove them? How can we best understand, and make the most of, the interplays of the poetic and the organisational, of experimentality and emancipation, of imagination and defense?
My research takes on such questions, by deploying poetic sensibilities and cultural analysis and by paying close attention to the poetic and cultural dynamics in three areas: performance and spoken word poetry, committed writing, and cultural imaginaries of acquiescece in the 21st century.
Performance and Spoken Word Poetry -- when it is socially and politically committed and outspoken -- plays with the adventurous poetic words, critical self-awareness, social situatedness, obstinate curiosity, political poignancy and joy in experimentality. It militates against the elitist contempt for oral cultures, and against the nationalist, völkisch /folkish and fascist denigration and destruction of some, and appropriation of others. It enacts and pre-figures alternatives to such contempt, disdain, denigration and destruction. In my engagements with performance poetry I seek to contribute to practices of listening and response that are astute, attentive, committed and open-minded, that strengthen the relevance of spoken word poetry to other areas of life, that nurture the capacity of organizers and poets to resist appropriation and dispossession by market forces and neoliberal cultural politics, and that share their struggle when they go counter to contemptuous aesthetics.
Committed writing -- in fiction and non-fiction, in poetry and prose -- is based on listening closely to those who are not listened to at all, or who are listened and responded to in ways that are not commensurate with their experiences, intentions and desires. The listening practiced before and during committed writing recognizes that the refusal to listen at all, as well as the refusal to (learn to) listen appropriately and respectfully, are political and ideological, even and especially when their practitioners claim neutrality for themself. Committed writing invites readers to practice different practices of listening: practices that work towards undoing privilege, create the potential for solidarity, and that engage with, and position themselves towards, the intensities of those who have committed politically. My research on committed writing -- often from Mexico and other Central American countries -- proposes practices of listening and response from a position that owns up to commitments and responsibilities; as part of it, I'm working with others on knowledges and pedagogies that are based on clear ethical and political positions (see blog series The Aliveness of Memory: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/languages-and-cultures/blogs/staff-blogs/cornelia-grabner/).
Imaginaries of Acquiescence in the 21st century are a constitutive feature of the cultures of contemporary low-intensity democracies, just as they have been features of totalitarian and dictatorial regimes in the past. I pick apart the hidden transcripts of acquiescence and suppression in our contemporary contexts, whereby 'acquiescence' can also refer to the engagement for, and the pacting with, authoritarian and right-wing movements on the basis of cherry-picking. Among other aspects, I address the dynamics of entanglement, the acquiescence to the stigmatization and expulsion of others, and the concatenations of submission and rendition.
Projects:
Collaborative: Contemporary poetry and politics: social conflict and poetic dialogisms (POEPOLIT II)
As a direct continuation of three previous research projects, researchers involved in the project Contemporary poetry and politics: social conflict and poetic dialogisms (POEPOLIT II, PID2019-105709RB-I00) explore the relationships between poetics and politics, and their impact in contemporary western societies. With three projects since 2010, the work of a stable group of international researchers has expanded poetics analyses theoretically and in practice, as well as their interfaces with politics. The project is of a comparative and relational nature and focuses on poetry in several languages and from a range of regions and territories.
Duration of the project: 2020-2023. Funding entity: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Spain). See https://poepolit.blogspot.nl/p/poepolit.html
Individual: Cultural Imaginaries of Acquiescence in Contemporary Low-Intensity Democracies, funded by The Leverhulme Trust from September 2017 until May 2019.
Research Overview
Cornelia carries out research in three main areas: performance and spoken word poetry, committed writing, and cultural imaginaries of acquiescence.
She explores the interplay of emancipation and experimentality in performance poetry, engages with committed writing as a practice of 'close listening', and picks apart the hidden transcripts of the cultural dynamics of acquiescence in the 21st century. She draws on the methodologies of literary and cultural analysis and is currently involved in the research project 'Contemporary Poetry and Politics'.
Specific topics include the role of the poetic word in the resistance to mega-projects; poetic testimony of the contemporary war against the poor; local organisational practices that resist the neoliberalization of urban culture; and Mexican committed writing from the 1970s to the present.
PhD Supervision Interests
performance poetry; literature, social movements and the public sphere; comparative literary studies; contemporary Latin American literature Proposals may take a comparative approach or may focus on the literature of particular countries.
Selected Publications
Absences and Opacities: Reading ‘Hidden’ Stories of Seafaring in B. Traven’s Ship of the Dead and Francisco Goldman’s The Ordinary Seaman
Grabner, C. 9/01/2018 In: Atlantic Studies. 15, 1, p. 83-102. 20 p.
Journal article
Poetry and performance: the Mersey poets, the international poetry incarnation and performance poetry
Gräbner, C. 31/12/2015 In: The Cambridge companion to British poetry since 1945. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press
Chapter (peer-reviewed)
Public spaces and global listening spaces: poetic resonances from the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity in Mexico
Gräbner, C. 08/2015 In: Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies. 11, 3, 26 p.
Journal article
“But how to speak of such things?”: decolonial love, the coloniality of gender, and political struggle in Francisco Goldman's The Long Night of White Chickens (1992) and Jennifer Harbury's Bridge of Courage (1994) and Searching for Everardo (1997)
Gräbner, C. 2014 In: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies. 20, 1, p. 51-74. 24 p.
Journal article
All Publications
Building Critical Hope at the Autonomous Center for the Memory of 'Our América': Integrity, Solidarity, Care
01/05/2023 → 30/04/2025
Research
Contemporary poetry and politics: social conflict and poetic dialogisms
01/06/2020 → 31/05/2023
Research
Poetry and Politics
01/01/2017 → 31/12/2019
Other
Contemporary Poetry in Public Spaces
01/01/2013 → 31/12/2015
Research
Poetry in Public Spaces
01/01/2013 → 31/12/2015
Other
Non-Lyric Discourses in Contemporary Poetry: Spaces, Subjects, Mediality
01/01/2010 → 31/12/2011
Other
Poetics of Resistance
01/10/2007 → …
Other
Universidad Autonoma de la Ciudad de Mexico
Visiting an external academic institution
Dr Ainhoa Montoya: Dispossession through Juridification
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
'They only want your Body and Soul': The Poetics of Rebellion and Resistance in Contemporary Tory Britain
Invited talk
(Un)fair Cities
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer Festival
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
(Un)timely Crises
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Against the Grain
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Annual Conference of the Cultural Studies Association
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
CINCO SESIONES DE POESÍA ACTUAL Y POLÍTICA
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
General Performance and Hidden Transcripts in Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island (2015): A Dialogue
Invited talk
Comparative or Relational? Responding to Performance Poetry on 21st Century Ongoing Violence
Invited talk
Lo poetico y lo politico en la actualidad
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Acquiescencia en las culturas de democracia de baja intensidad
Invited talk
Centro Académico de la Memoria de Nuestra América
Visiting an external academic institution
NECS 2018 conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Ciudadanxs zombies: Ciudad globalizada, acquiescencia y represión en la novela Satin Island de Tom McCarthy
Oral presentation
Kamchatka: Revista de Análsis Cultural (Journal)
Publication peer-review
Testimony. Poetry. Language.
Invited talk
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis
Visiting an external academic institution
Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Urban World-Making
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Writing for Liberty 2017
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Amsterdam Center for Globalisation Studies ACGS (External organisation)
Member of an organisation
Critical Studies Journal (Journal)
Publication peer-review
Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Music for Hope (External organisation)
Member of Advisory Panel
ASAP/Journal - Journal of The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (Journal)
Editorial activity
Situations and Events: Intensifications of State Violence in Mexico and the Poetics of Resistance
Invited talk
La poésie dans les éspaces publiques
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Annual Conference Society of Latin American Studies
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Authors and the World
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association: Capitals
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
A Contracorriente (Journal)
Publication peer-review
Latin American Utopian Visions
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Annual Conference Society of Latin American Studies
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
II Simposio Internacional "Cultura e Crise"
Invited talk
Poetic Disruptions of the Neoliberal Etiquette: The European
Invited talk
El otro mundo que si es posible: Neo-zapatismo y imaginarios de alterglobalisacion en el trabajo cultural
Invited talk
Who Grants Poetic Licence? Performance Poetry betweeen Social Critique, Political Activism, and the Market
Invited talk
La poesia en voz alta en los anyos 70 y 80: Tendencias y manifestaciones
Invited talk
Politics are Sexy: Gendered and Political violence in Francisco Goldman's 'The Long Night of White Chickens'
Invited talk
- Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research
- Latin America Research Cluster
- Poetics of Resistance