Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I examine Costa Rican poet Carmen Naranjo’s call for a poetic rebellion against a rigid political representation in Mi Guerrilla (1977). Recent theory on aesthetics and democracy informs my analysis of Naranjo’s poems as an alternate vision to liberal conceptions of democracy.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I examine the way in which the Costa Rican poet Carmen Naranjo calls for a poetic rebellion against a rigid political representation in Mi Guerrilla (1977). The lyric self ponders her participation in a given polity and by extension, her role in serving as a historical index of that polity's culture. I argue that the lyric self reasserts her political subjectivity by resisting the inscription of a collective "we" that lacks a sense of social and cultural responsibility. The constant search for a symbolic representation becomes the creative impetus that sustains the activism of the poetic speaker. Naranjo's poems target the homogeneous discourse of a consumer-driven, capitalist society. To counter this discourse, Naranjo focuses on the sensory experiences that can redefine the potential for civic and aesthetic engagement. Her poetry thematically touches upon the debate on neoliberalism and state adherence to the logic of the market that currently dictates our contemporary notion of democracy. I turn to recent theory on the relationship between aesthetics and democracy (Rancière, Panagia, and Docherty) to discuss how Naranjo's poetry identifies the ramifications of a politically stagnant discourse by linking it to a meta-poetic reflection on the appropriation of language itself. Through a textual analysis, I will show that what the poetic voice seeks is not a collective conscience, but rather calls for a personal introspection in order to produce a position of dissent within a given polity.