Benjamin J. Heal and Erik Mortenson present an EBSN panel titled "Beat Internationalism" for the American Comparative Literature Association annual conference, April 2021. The recording of day 1, featuring Sonya Isaak and Esther Marinho Santana was unfortunately lost.

Abstract:

The Beat Generation as literary movement is usually regarded as quintessentially American, rooted in the great American tropes of free expression, border crossing and anti-materialism. Often overlooked in favor of other literary movements, this seminar proposes to look beyond the familiar figures of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs to investigate the relations between their works, aesthetics and techniques and those of Beat voices from across the globe. The shock waves of Howl's radical poetics, publicized via the anti-obscenity court case, and the success of On the Road, reverberated globally, and can be seen to form a foundation for experimental, politically radical works published around the world. Building on the developing and widening formulations of ‘Beat’ by scholars such as Jimmy Fazzino, this seminar will work towards a definition of ‘Beat Internationalism’ as applied to the works examined, and consider areas of convergence. More theoretical questions pertaining to the transnational turn in American literary studies, and the para-textual nature of Beat literature are also welcome. The Beat legacy continues to be felt across popular culture; with retrospectives and exhibitions featuring work by the Beats continuing to be a success. What do the Beats mean to contemporary audiences, and how are their techniques and styles employed in the works of contemporary writers and artists? How has the radicalism of the Beats manifested internationally?

Presenter

Ya Chu Fu

Independent Scholar

Abstract Info

The article discusses how the Chinese artist Li Yuan-chia’s life philosophy and experiences as well as his art style resonates with the Beat Generation, in terms of the historical context of the Post-World War 2 period and their similar experimentalism and transnationalism. Li was born in China, and he later moved to Taiwan, Italy, and finally settled in the UK. The reason he kept moving has a lot to do with historical context in Taiwan, for instance, the 2nd KMT-CPC civil war（1945-1950), and the ‘White Terror’ (1947-1987). At the same time the writers, and often overlooked artists, of the Beat Generation- were experiencing similar political events, the Cold War between the US and Russia, and McCarthyism, in the US. Li Yuan-chia’s art utilizes the simplicity and minimalism of East-Asian visual art and Japanese Haiku and combines with Western Avant-guard styles, such as abstract expressionism. He often paints with calligraphic symbols with ink backgrounds and abstract blocks of colors. Interestingly, one of the artists associated with the Beat Generation, Brion Gysin, also experimented with abstract ink roller poems. If we put their works together, we can see a lot of similarities between them. This paper will explore Li Yuan-chia’s Beat connections and make comparisons between his life and work and that of Beat artists and writers, for example, Brion Gysin's paintings and permutation poems, and Bernice Bing and Jay DeFeo's abstract and minimalistic artworks and Beat sensibility.

Speaker Bio

Fu Ya Chu, graduated in 2019 from National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan, with a first-class honors degree in Psychology and Philosophy. She has an ongoing interest in visual art, literature, and translation, having translated letters of Taiwanese Modernist novelist Qi Deng Sheng and Professor A Robert Lee's poetry. She plans to study for a master's degree in comparative literature in the UK, and continue her research on Li Yuan-chia and Hong Kong writer Eileen Chung.

Presenter

Benjamin Heal -

National Chung Cheng University

Abstract Info

Taiwanese poet Hsia Yu has developed an iconic presence in her native country. Her sinophone works appear with a transnational flavor, inflected with French sensibilities and Western “Beat Generation” derived stylistics, incorporating a visual aesthetic best demonstrated by her most well known work, the self-published Pink Noise (2007), printed as a trilingual text on transparent acetate. Pink Noise utilizes the semantic problems with bi- and trilingual translation with texts composed in English auto-translated into Mandarin, allowing the breakdown of meaning that results from the over-literal auto-translation to become part of the poetry. This paper explores the poet’s experimentation with translingualism, from these experiments with the liminal spaces presented by machine translation to the broader pursuit of Beat experimentation that marks her work. As J.B. Rollins states, Hsia Yu’s ‘refusal to be cowed by cultural essentialism and her sense of the limitless possibilities of her native Mandarin’ highlights Hsia Yu’s importance in resisting the rigid formalism of Chinese poetry and her existence on the boundaries of specificity by embracing translingualism and experimentation.

Stephen Kellman’s The Translingual Imagination (2000) inaugurated the debate on ‘translingualism’, albeit unsatisfactorily, about texts and authors that incorporate different languages in their works. In noting the prevalence of multi- and translingual authors and texts suggests that social migration and exile, both core features of the Beat aesthetic, are great stimuli on creative literary production, and in the context of Taiwan’s troubled history is a particularly apt hypothesis. Language as a function of nationality and ‘language-loyalty’ can be seen as particularly problematic as native languages, Mandarin, Japanese, and English, are all part of Taiwanese culture. Hsia Yu’s work from the 1995 collection Friction, indescribable that rearranged text cut from her 1991 collection Ventriloquy, to Salsa (1999), which forced readers to cut the book’s deckle edges before they could read it, seen particularly in the context of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s cut-up experiments present a challenging poetics that engage with the evolving function of words and language while deconstructing institutions of knowledge formation. Her work also demonstrates the ongoing international legacy of the Beats, across language and media.

Speaker Bio

Benjamin J. Heal is Assistant Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan. Currently working on his monograph “Transatlantic Crosscurrents” which explores the European connections in the works of Paul Bowles and William S. Burroughs”. He is a board member of the European Beat Studies Network, managing the website and membership. He has published several articles on the Beats, and has wider research interests that include Chinese literature and translation, and the works of James Leo Herlihy and Mohammed Mrabet.

Presenter

peggy pacini

CY Cergy Paris Université

Abstract Info

In a chapter dedicated to Contemporary French Beat Writing, I had tried to raise the question as to whether there was such a thing as contemporary French beat writers. Perusal of anthologies of contemporary French literature and poetry confirms that there is no French beat writers stricto sensu. However, lineage and convergences are to be found between the Beat Generation and contemporary French writers and poets in time. This paper will develop in more depth how the drive, the radicalism and the experimental turn Beat writers embodied reverberated onto their French fellow poets and writers to these days. But perhaps more spefically, it will try to anchor these convergences in time and see whether such lineage and/or convergences are still visible among the younger generation of contemporary French writers and poets. Among the issue to be examined, this paper will first address the divergences that caused certain early French beat affiliated writers to disaffiliate or push further their experimental poetics. Second, the question of whose Beat filiation are we talking about when we consider the impact of the Beat Generation poetics in France and in time. If Ginsberg and Kerouac had been considered as models in the late 1960s, early 1970s, Burroughs’s legacy seems to endure a firm grip on contemporary French writers, in part due to his cut-up method. However, one should not in the process and in history of the contemporary French beat writing forget the invaluable impact of Claude Pélieu’s work on a whole generation of poets and writers, which this paper would also like to consider and examine. Eventually, the Polyphonix experience also seems to shed light onto the very idea of an international community of experimental writers and poets that extends beyond any categorization, if so then how valid can the existence a French Beat Generation nebula be ?

Speaker Bio

Peggy Pacini is Associate Professor at CY Cergy Paris University where she teaches translation and American literature. Her interests in scholarship include Beat studies, cultural production and communal identity, public reading and performance.

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