White Space as Mpanelanelana: Developing the Poetics of Liminality

在马达加斯加，mpanelanelana（来自马达加斯加语anelanelana，意思是“之间”）是中间人、催化剂或精神媒介。阈限（Liminality，源自拉丁语limen，意为“阈值”）是一个从人类学话语中出现的术语，但现在在讨论介于状态或空间之间时，可以跨学科使用。通过在跨文化和跨语言背景下的创作实践、教学实践和批判性分析，该项目探讨了阈限在我们对“诗意”的理解以及诗歌的写作、阅读和批评中的重要性。研究时间将分别在英国和马达加斯加进行，包括学院内部和外部（在东安格利亚大学文学、戏剧和创意写作学院，以及塔那那利佛大学英语系）。创造性的论文提供了一种抒情性的声音，片段，痕迹和英语和马达加斯加语之间的“代码转换”；灵感来自当代西方绘画和诗歌的技巧，以及马达加斯加无处不在的一种通过负空间进行交流的形式。因此，通过对诗歌形式的实验，在技术层面上对阈限诗学进行了探索。与此同时，这个组成部分将无数形式的阈限作为主题的中心关注点：如何用感官体验“低强度冲突”的氛围；丝绸在马达加斯加调解生者与死者关系中的作用；不同文化背景下爱与怒的表达方式变色龙的着色和伪装作为一个概念；飓风眼内鸟类的行为；在一个大多数人从未见过大海的岛屿上，非法侵入、土地所有权和他者观念等。关键部分与西方评论家和理论家克雷格·德沃金、格林·麦克斯韦尔和加斯顿·巴舍拉等人的作品有关，也与马达加斯加评论家和理论家埃利·拉贾纳里森、塞尔日·亨利·罗丹和亨莫森·安德里亚尼扎菲等人的作品有关。它考察了从萨福到拉里·伊格纳和托马斯·a·克拉克的西方诗人的创造性作品，以及马达加斯加文学，从口头传统如Hainteny，到当代作家如michelle Rakotoson和Faribolana Sandratra成员的作品。它问，在地域诗学的理论讨论中，特别是在“激进的风景诗歌”中，对阈限的高度认识可能会有多大的帮助。为了获得实际的见解，它也从塔那那利佛大学和东安格利亚大学的创意写作教学中吸取教训。这为重新审视“中间”诗学，并在阈限诗学领域提出新的理论奠定了基础。它认为，留白可以作为一种诗意的技巧，不仅仅是为了“任意”的美学效果，就像在正式的实验主义传统中一样，而且，当植根于具体的社会人类学背景时，作为一种工具，为我们提供跨越日常界限的独特帮助：在意义的创造中，在我们与感官和情感的对话中；说出了不能说的话。

A mpanelanelana (from the Malagasy word anelanelana, meaning 'between') is a go-between, catalyst or spiritual medium in Madagascar. Liminality (from the Latin word limen, meaning 'threshold') is a term emerging from anthropological discourse, but now used across disciplines when discussing in-between states or spaces. Through creative practice, teaching practice and critical analysis in an intercultural and interlinguistic context, this project explores the significance of liminality in our apprehension of the 'poetic' and in the writing, reading and criticism of poetry. Research time will be divided between spells in the UK and in Madagascar, both outside and inside the Academy (in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and in the English Department at the University of Antananarivo).The creative thesis offers a lyric voice of fragments, traces and 'code-switching' between the English and Malagasy languages; inspired by techniques in contemporary Western painting and poetry - and by a form of communication via negative space that is omnipresent in Madagascar. There is an exploration of liminal poetics at a technical level, therefore, through experimentation with poetic form. At the same time, this component takes liminality in its myriad forms as a central concern thematically: how an atmosphere of 'low-intensity conflict' may be experienced with the senses; the role of silk in mediating relations between the living and the dead in Madagascar; ways of loving and expressing anger in different cultural contexts; the colouring of chameleons and camouflage as a concept; the behaviour of birds inside the eye of a cyclone; trespass, land tenure and notions of otherness on an island where most people never see the sea, etc.The critical component engages with the work of Western critics and theorists like Craig Dworkin, Glyn Maxwell and Gaston Bachelard - and with the work of Malagasy critics and theorists like Elie Rajaonarison, Serge Henri Rodin and Hemerson Andrianetrazafy. It examines the creative work of Western poets from Sappho to Larry Eigner and Thomas A. Clark - and Malagasy literature from oral traditions like the Hainteny, to the work of contemporary writers like Michèle Rakotoson and members of the Faribolana Sandratra. It asks how far a heightened awareness of liminality might help in theoretical discussions of the poetics of place and, in particular, of 'radical landscape poetry'. For practical insights, it also looks to lessons from the teaching of creative writing at the University of Antananarivo and at UEA. This sets the thesis up for a re-examination of the poetics of in-betweenness and for advancing a new theory in the field of liminal poetics. It argues that white space may be used as a poetic technique not just for 'arbitrary' aesthetic effect as in the formal experimentalist tradition but, when rooted in a concrete socio-anthropological context, as a tool that offers us unique assistance across everyday boundaries: in the making of meaning, in our dialogue with sense and emotion; in voicing what could otherwise not be said.