MURIEL RUKEYSER’S THE BOOK OF THE DEAD AND THE REPRESENTATIONAL CHALLENGES OF SLOW VIOLENCE

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12795/REN.2022.i26.07

Keywords:

Muriel Rukeyser, The Book of the Dead, slow violence, Rubbish Theory, Waste Theory, Waste Studies

Abstract

The events narrated in Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead (1938) constitute a good example what Rob Nixon calls “slow violence,” a type of “attritional,” non-spectacular violence that seems to resist effective literary representation. This essay focuses on the means Rukeyser deploys in order to overcome the representational limits posed by Nixon’s “slow violence”: the patchwork of genres, the choice of the poem-sequence structure and, last but not least, the visible process of “wastification” of the tunnel workers, who play such a central role in the poem. Read in the light of recent scholarship on waste, Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead emerges as one of the first poem sequences to explore the conjunction of material toxic waste (silica dust) and human wastification (Rubbish Theory).

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References

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Published

2022-11-09

How to Cite

Simal González, B. “MURIEL RUKEYSER’S THE BOOK OF THE DEAD AND THE REPRESENTATIONAL CHALLENGES OF SLOW VIOLENCE”. Revista De Estudios Norteamericanos, vol. 26, Nov. 2022, doi:10.12795/REN.2022.i26.07.

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Articles
Received 2022-01-07
Accepted 2022-09-08
Published 2022-11-09
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