Aphasia, Reassembly and Resemblance in the Black British poetry of the 21st Century

本研究的目的是建立当代英国黑人诗人如何利用“失语”的诗学。失语症在医学上被理解为“由于大脑损伤而获得的语言丧失”（Benson和Ardila 1996, 6），失语症也被比喻为世界范围内土著语言衰落的一个镜头（Devy 2016, 1），以及非殖民化诗歌技巧的阅读（Guttman 1996, 57）。通过这些隐喻用法，我将发展失语症的概念，作为一个透镜，通过它可以阅读英国黑人诗人的诗学。失语症的概念有机地适用于对种族、帝国、散居、翻译和文学的批判性讨论，在这些讨论中，语言丧失、无言和抹去的经历被视为历史殖民创伤的回响。除了作为隐喻的功能之外，它也可以作为诗人使用的一种诗歌手段，这些诗人打算通过他们的作品来解决这些遗产。对“重组”的关注是对英国黑人诗人为恢复声音主体性所做的修复行为的批判性观察。然而，失语症的话语意味着沟通的丧失——以及这种丧失如何在实践中呈现——本研究也试图概述失语症后重建的实践是什么样子的。最后，为了有助于理解1948年后仍在形成的英国黑人经典，我提出了“相似”一词作为批评的模型，而不是以“诗意的相同”为基础（Parmar 2015）。英国黑人社区由非洲人和加勒比人组成，他们的历史有时会融合，而在其他地方则不会。从这个角度来看，我想绘制出我们“了解自己作为一部分和群体”的交叉点（Glissant 1994,9）。为了寻找相似之处，我打算定义我们是什么，正如克劳迪娅·兰金（Claudia Rankine）所写的那样，“像家人一样旅行”（Rankine 2014）。

The purpose of this research is to establish how contemporary Black British poets utilise a poetics of 'aphasia'. Medically understood as the 'acquired loss of language due to cerebral damage' (Benson and Ardila 1996, 6), aphasia has also been used metaphorically as a lens for the decline of indigenous languages worldwide (Devy 2016, 1), and the reading of decolonial poetic techniques (Guttman 1996, 57). Through these metaphorical usages, I will develop the concept of aphasia as a lens through which the poetics of Black British poets can be read.The concept of aphasia lends itself organically to critical discussions of race, empire, diaspora, translation and literature wherein experiences of language loss, wordlessness and erasure are seen as reverberations of historic colonial trauma. In addition to functioning as a metaphor, it is also visible as a poetic device employed by poets who intend for their work to address such legacies.A focus upon 'reassembly' approaches a critical observation of what reparative acts Black British poets make to reclaim subjectivity of voice. Whereas a discourse of aphasia signifies communicative loss - and how such loss is rendered in praxis - this research also seeks to outline what the praxis of rebuilding looks like in the wake of aphasia.Lastly, to contribute to understandings of a still-forming Black British canon post-1948, I offer the term 'resemblance' as a model for critique that is not predicated upon 'poetic sameness' (Parmar 2015). The Black British community comprises African and Caribbean peoples with histories that sometimes converge and elsewhere do not. In this light, I want to map the intersections at which we 'know ourselves as part and as crowd' (Glissant 1994, 9). In seeking resemblances, I intend to define in what ways we are, as Claudia Rankine writes, 'travelling as family' (Rankine 2014).