In times of political repression, how have poets masked their dissent and safely transmitted their ideas to others?
What can current poets learn from these strategies to protect their dissent from scrutiny and censorship?
This project investigates the concept of THE HIDDEN STATE: underground communities of creative and political freedom who mask their dissent with state-approved discourse.
Initial research in this area will examine poets from Taiwan, Poland, Northern Ireland, Malawi, and the United States.
This project will also outline a theory of creative dissidence: THE RHETORIC OF POETIC CAMOUFLAGE.
Theoretical development in this area will call upon modern thinkers such as Lorde, Foucault, Glissant, Scott, Strauss, Booth, and Fulbright.
Like other “rhetorics,” THE RHETORIC OF POETIC CAMOUFLAGE has a dual purpose: both an analytical and a creative methodology, a way for “reading” and of “writing” poetic dissidence in THE HIDDEN STATE.
Within these communities, the rhetorical task of the reader and writer is also doubled because the poem under analysis and under creation is split between
- two audiences (the auditor & fellow dissidents)
- two aims (to show compliance & to express dissidence)
- two forms (compliant discourse & camouflaged dissidence)
- two authors (the implied compliant writer & the poet dissident )
This project will also offer four strategies of poetic camouflage with examples from representative poets.
For more information, contact Dr. Laurence Musgrove at lmusgrove@angelo.edu.