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Werne Wolf iniciava el seu treball “The lyric: Problems of Definition and Proposal for Reconceptualisation” (2005: 21-56) de forma irònica, però també amb lucidesa. L’obria amb una cita molt coneguda de Samuel Beckett, que recentment un tenista suís, Stan Wawrincka, s’ha tatuat a l’avantbraç: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.// Try again. Fail again. Fail better” (Worstward Ho). De fet, potser el títol més escaient o l’advertència que haurien d’incloure tots els estudis de teoria poètica eixiria d’un escurçament del seu “La poesia: problemes”. No obstant, l’ambigüitat del nostre, “L’espai del poema”, permet plantejar alguns dels temes que es tracten en les pàgines d’aquest volum i esbossar uns alters.

En una reflexión general sobre los procesos y prácticas culturales emergentes, Wlad Godzich subrayó la imposibilidad de estudiarlos de acuerdo con las categorías hegemónicas y convencionales, para las que en realidad suponen un desafío. La delimitación de la noción de poesía en nuestro tiempo, habida cuenta de su estatus multifuncional e inestable, es una tarea compleja. Refiriéndonos a la hibridación genérica y discursiva podríamos condensar la mayor parte de sus reformulaciones, causadas también por la aceptación de lo popular, lo masivo o lo tecnológico, y por la potencialidad crítica de la subjetividad y el sujeto. En línea con lo señalado por Godzich, tales cambios exigen nuevas perspectivas y metodologías de análisis, que vayan más allá de las derivadas de genologías de base apenas textual. Las poéticas que son objeto de estudio en este libro no serán acotadas en términos lingüísticos, nacionales o interartísticos; de forma correlativa, se presta atención a sistemas de significación no (solo) verbales, al acoger análisis sobre prácticas performativas, grafiti e intervención, poesía fractal o formatos televisivos, privilegiando siempre la investigación de su incidencia como interacción y mediación pública, además de sus efectos socio-políticos.

En este estudio se investigan nociones aportadas por la crítica literaria y socio-cultural en torno a la discursividad del espacio como modo de producción. Asimismo, se redefine el espacio poemático verbal en contraste con el espacio fractal y se propone un modo inclusivo de lectura del mismo basado en propuestas teóricas de diversas escuelas de pensamiento y nuevos espacios epistemológicos: formalismo (Víctor Shklovsky), postestructuralismo (Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja Roland Barthes; Mitchell W. J. T.; Mieke Ball), psicología de la percepción (la Gestalt), el concepto de espacio negativo “Ma” (Alan Fletcher; Richard B. Pilgrim), la poética cognitiva (Gaston Bachelard; Peter Stockwell; Reuven Tsur). De modo particular, se analiza el concepto de espacio como agente semiótico en la poesía fractal de Ramon Dachs y Roger Olivella.

Para começar a falar de “contaminações”, vou relatar uma viagem e uma performance que realizei. No dia 22 de junho de 2007, contrariando todos os conselhos de amigos, médicos e parentes, peguei um avião de Paris para Kiev, na Ucrânia, e de lá parti de carro, com um guia e mais duas pessoas, para Pripyat, a cidade fantasma onde houve em 1986 a famosa catástrofe de Chernobyl. Era uma viagem cheia de riscos, claro. Na cidade, a mais afetada pelo acidente, não se pode morar, não se pode comer, não se pode ficar muito tempo. Ali estávamos expostos a uma média de 130 microroentgens por hora de radiação gama, proveniente do césio que paira no local. Isso nos permitiria ficar, no máximo, duas horas. Ficamos quase seis. Apesar de não ser uma cidade propria mente turística, a arquitetura uniforme, remanescente do antigo bloco comunista, os edifícios em ruínas e de arestas enferrujadas, os objetos contaminados, deixados pelos mora dores há vinte anos, as ruas invadidas pelo mato causavam um estranho fascínio. Em determinado momento, avisei que eu precisaria me afastar do grupo e, diante do Palácio da Cultura, bem no centro da cidade, realizei a primeira (e provavelmente única edição da) Conferência poético-radioativa de Pripyat. A conferência contava com abertura solene, leitura de poemas meus e de Paul Dehn “poeta que escreveu sobre e sob a era atômica” e com o “abandono” de alguns livros no lugar. Ali, na solidão daquela conferência de um homem só, a milhares de quilômetros de qualquer coisa familiar, circundado pelo silêncio do fim do mundo, eu fazia, ainda que sem saber, um hino às contaminações, além, claro, de me contaminar, tornando-me, provavelmente, o primeiro poeta radioativo do mundo. Sim, haviam me alertado do risco de desenvolver um câncer ou gerar um filho anormal. Mas pergunto: não faria isso também parte da performance?

Un dels poemes més famosos de W. H. Auden, la seva elegia a W. B. Yeats (“In Memory of W. B. Yeats”) conté un vers que difícilment podria haver estat escrit en èpoques anteriors, “perquè la poesia fa que res no passi”; en el mateix poema, just al començament, el poeta dóna una altra imatge que enllaça amb un dels altres grans poemes seus, “Musée des Beaux-Arts”, “Far from his illness/ The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,/ The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays” (W. H. Auden, 1966: 141-143). Molt similar a la imat ge del dolor i del sofriment aliens quan en l’ècfrasi del quadre de Brueghel tot passa en plena normalitat en el moment que Ícar s’enfonsa en l’aigua. Potser en algun instant es pot arribar a pensar que la funció de la poesia no fa que passi res (la relació amb el poema de Yeats és amb la seva activitat política en pro de la independència d’Irlanda) i s’hauria de quedar en la con templació de la bellesa, aquella contemplació desinteressada, plaer desinteressat del que parlava Kant. És en un altre ordre de fets que la poesia no pot “actuar”, no té una incidència en la realitat que, en aquest cas sí, podria arribar a reflectir. Ambdós poemes d’Auden apareixen l’any 1939.

Introduction The experiences of democratization in Latin America and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and early 1990s brought attention to the forces of civil society as key actors in the demise of authoritarian rule (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986; Cohen and Arato 1992; Bernhard 1993; Linz and Stepan 1996). More recent literature questions the inherently pro-democratic character of civil society activism (Warren 2000; Armony 2004; Jamal 2007). In both lines of argument, societal associations or social movements are at the core of the inquiry. However, Hirschman’s category of “voice,” which encompasses as much articulation of discontent as it does actions of protest (Hirschman 1970), reminds us that for civil society activism to evolve, something fundamental is necessary: an arena in which voices can be raised and heard and in which government and society interact. The question of civil society, thus, is intrinsically linked to the conditions, contours, limitations and possibilities of communication, media and the public sphere. Ever since the term “Facebook revolution” (Smith 2011) was coined for the social mobilizations that led to the downfall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, this link between communication, civil society activism and democratization has received great media attention. However, most of this attention focused on the mobilizing potential of the digital media at the moment of rupture. This chapter takes a contemporary perspective as it seeks to contribute to our understanding of the Internet’s impact on civil society dynamics in a non-pluralist context through a diachronic comparison. Based on an empirical study of the Cuban case, the argument is as follows. Prior to the entry of the Internet, the civil society debate centered around the quest for higher degrees of autonomy for associations and institutions within the framework of the state-socialist regime. In contrast, the new media enabled the emergence of a new, less state-dependent type of public sphere; as a consequence, the civil society debate has become increasingly centered on the assertion of individual citizenship rights within andvis-à-vis the state. The reformist civil society quest of the pre-Internet period failed in part because of its character as behind-the-scenes-struggle, shielded from public view, which impeded a broader mobilization of protest when the state decided to rein in the incipient push for civil society. In contrast, the current drive for civil society indeed finds strong public repercussion; for its democratizing potential to come to fruition, the crucial fault-line is to connect web-based voice to public debate and social action in the country’s physical off-line environment. By taking Cuba as object of empirical analysis, this study selects a case with a particularly thorough form of authoritarian hold over the public sphere: a formal monopoly of the Cuban state on mass media, established in the historic experience of twentieth-century state-socialism and upheld even two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. At the same time, Cuba is strongly exposed to transnational influences and a transnational articulation of voice, due to a large number of emigrant and diaspora communities that remain highly attached to their country of origin (Fernández 2005). The approach chosen to analyze the impact of the Internet on state-society relations is through a diachronic comparison of the Cuban development in two distinct periods: the pre-Internet period, i.e., Cuba in the early to mid 1990s, when the Cold War alignment had already become history but web-based technologies did not yet have a major presence on the island; and more than a decade later, since the mid to late 2000s, when web-based media had made their entry on the island. Formal data on Internet access and use are scarce and unreliable. For 2009, the Cuban Ministry of Informatics and Communications gives the figure of 1,450,000 Cubans, or 12.7 percent, as “Internet users” (ONE 2009)1 without specifying the precise uses this number includes. The figure certainly should not be mistaken for access to the World Wide Web, which remains severely restricted. Instead, the figure most probably includes all Cubans with some kind of (even if only sporadic) access to closed domestic networks or with access to e-mail services. At the same time accounts are shared and, as for other goods and services, also Internet access has a black market side that escapes official statistics. Moreover, Internet content “travels” by USB stick also to many who do not have access themselves. For both these periods, the study relies on the analysis of numerous primary documents, as well as newspapers and secondary literature. In the case of the post-Internet phase, in addition to the above, documents published on the web have been a primary source of analysis. While some authors link issues of civil society and Internet voice merely to the political opposition, this chapter does not limit its focus to this divide but analyzes as much societal actors working within the established institutions of the socialist state as well as those outside of it. In both periods under scrutiny field trips to the island were undertaken in which actors from a broad range of positions were interviewed. While these interviews are not cited directly due to political sensitivities, they provide an invaluable background for the trends described.

During the twentieth century, two movements in Cuban art played a critical role in creating an expanded space for societal debate and cultural expression: the artistic avant-garde and the Afro-Cuban movement. Initially flourishing in the late 1920s and early 1930s, these collective efforts took on new forms in the changed environment after 1959. After the Revolution, conditions for cultural production changed with the official position that art should serve ideological functions, but both avant-garde and Afro-Cuban production continued, at the risk of conflict with the state. In the face of a restrictive state that sought to control such expressions, the Afro-Cuban movement and avant-garde art collectives developed along parallel, and sometimes intersecting, lines.

Reprinted as ?In the Place of the Public Sphere? Or, The World in Fragments? in: Public Good, # 1, 2008, pp. 46-55.