Rhizomatic poetry. A form of political engagement against capitalist society in twenty-first-century France

Villella, Dalila (2023) Rhizomatic poetry. A form of political engagement against capitalist society in twenty-first-century France. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

The main purpose of this thesis is to offer a Deleuzo-Guattarian reading of the poetry of Jacques Sivan, Vannina Maestri, and Jean-Michel Espitallier, as well as some selected excerpts from the literary magazine Java, founded and directed by these three authors from 1989 to 2006, to demonstrate how the concept of the rhizome is affecting contemporary French poetry, and to show that what is defined as ‘rhizomatic poetry’ in this thesis can attack capitalist society. The concept of the rhizome was elaborated by Deleuze and Guattari in 1976 in ‘Le Rhizome’ and conceived as an image of thought based on the logic of connection, multiplicity, and heterogeneity able to challenge the functioning of the hierarchical, tree-like image of thought based on the logic of binary oppositions and hierarchical relations at the basis of capitalist society. Deleuze and Guattari consider that hierarchical or arborescent thought is a source of oppression in capitalist society, and they criticise the unimaginative way of life that derives from it. As post-structuralists and deconstructionists, they believe that the way rhizomes evolve –unstructured, horizontal, and chaotic –can be replicated in thought to deconstruct or undo the capitalist model. In that sense, rhizomatic thought is an effective tool to transform society and free human existence from the capitalist regime. The idea of rhizomatic thought has been influencing the way Twenty-first-century French poetry engages in the fight against capitalism. As exemplified by the body of work by Sivan, Maestri, and Espitallier, a large group of contemporary French poets is using the rhizome as a model of writing and build their poetry collections as rhizomatic books‒ books that follow the rhizomatic logic and prompt their readers to think accordingly.

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