Jewish Mysticism from Borges to Cirlot: a Transatlantic Approach to the Possibility of a Non-Subject Subjectivity
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture December 21, 2018 Erika Martínez
Erika Martínez examines how twentieth-century Latin American and Spanish poets such as Huidobro, Borges, Gelman, and Valente drew on Jewish mysticism, particularly the Kabbalah, to explore a disruptive subjectivity rooted in stillness and a time that overflows ordinary limits. Drawing on Foucault's late concept of a new governmentality of self and others, Martínez argues that these poets experimented with a poetry without words, harnessing silence's insurrectional potential. Their work configures a non-subject, an unsecured subjectivity that can grow even from its own withdrawal, offering a post-secular revision of contemporary mysticism.