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Document Details :

Title: 'Voorlopig denk ik: ik ben een kunstenaar'.
Subtitle: Het discours van de avant-gardist Paul van Ostaijen tussen 1916 en 1921
Author(s): BRU, Sascha
Journal: Spiegel der Letteren
Volume: 44    Issue: 4   Date: 2002   
Pages: 332-366
DOI: 10.2143/SDL.44.4.356

Abstract :
This article investigates what Lionel Trilling once called the ‘bloody crossroads of literature and politics’. More precisely, it focuses on the discourse of the Flemish avant-garde poet and nationalist Paul Van Ostaijen. So far studies of Van Ostaijen’s eminent role in the Flemish world of letters have by and large downplayed the poet’s interventions in the political realm. However, read with the post-marxist and radical constructivist discourse theory of the political theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Van Ostaijen’s discourse reveals that shifts in his political writings are closely tied to changes in his poetry and poetics. By highlighting a number of similarities between his work, that of Filippo Tomasso Marinetti and of André Breton, this article concludes with a plea for a further comparative discourse analytical approach to the relationship between politics and the (historical) avant-garde.

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