
Contents
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Introduction: An Apocalyptic Dilemma Introduction: An Apocalyptic Dilemma
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Carl Schmittand Utopic White Sovereignty Carl Schmittand Utopic White Sovereignty
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H.D.’S Dystopic Utopia H.D.’S Dystopic Utopia
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A Conclusion Before The Refusal To Conclude A Conclusion Before The Refusal To Conclude
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Susan Howe’s Antinomian Atopia: The Refusal of Conclusions Susan Howe’s Antinomian Atopia: The Refusal of Conclusions
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Notes Notes
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Cite
Abstract
This chapter explores the instability of dystopia and the limits of political theology through the juxtaposition of the German jurist and political philosopher, Carl Schmitt’s, radical misreading of Herman Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno’ and the myth-making poetics of the American ex-patriot poet, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)'s Trilogy. In the context of the Second World War, its approach and its aftermath, Schmitt and H.D. both engage in thought experiments that are simultaneously dystopic and utopic. H.D. knows this; Schmitt did not. The issues raised here are central to the work of the contemporary US poet Susan Howe with which the chapter closes. Howe’s poetry and essays, particularly in The Nonconformist Memorial, posit the usefulness of the idea of atopia, a thinking of the past, present, and future in which the alpha privative points to a more radical kind of “no place” than that first posited by Thomas More’s utopia. At the center of the argument is the idea that literature—and other works of the imagination—may be the necessary non-place, or place without the limitations of place, for thinking pasts and futures that are literally uninhabitable—and yet whose psychic, imaginative, intellectual, and affective existence is vital for human life.
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