Entangled Species: The Inclusive Posthumanist Ecopoetics of Juliana Spahr

Abstract

In her most recent collection, Well Then There Now (2011), Juliana Spahr promotes an inclusive posthumanist ethics by composing poetry that adopts the complex patterns of nature, a poetry that models the shared, connective spaces we inhabit with others. Reacting to our contemporary moment of intense globalization and economic imperialism, and the environmental changes accompanying these giant social forces, Spahr conducts investigations of and through language in order to become more fully aware of the interconnections between self and others; and between self, others and environment, including how material interconnections shape our social and cultural conditions. Through her signature use of Steinian repetition and parataxis—alongside a process of cutting up, hashing, and recycling text—Spahr looks critically at the systemic intersection of all organisms, including the artificial or non-living other. As this essay argues, by emphasizing points of convergence between human, machine, and animal, Spahr’s inclusive poetics teaches us how to live intersectionally with respect and regard for other species, and encourages us to acknowledge our existence as co-existence.