We are capable of engaging in different kinds of relations with objects and situations we meet. Any relation is, in principle singular and thus einmalig, unique. Still, certain general types of relationality do exist. Relations may be established with focus (“attention”) on usability, truth, ethics, power, authenticity—and of course, on “beauty,” on aesthetic value. This differentiation is an invention of the Modern world and in itself subject to historical change. In terms of “discursive areas” it has been theorized in varying (...) keys—including quite many universalist ones. We are free to choose our modes of attention. Still, institutionalized discourses in practice pre-configure these modes. Especially when it comes to art and Modernity’s “great divide” between poiesis and aesthesis, the conditions for attentional approaches appear largely pre-figured. The article discusses this pre-configuration and the institutionalized “freedoms” of art and its audience, respectively—including current calls to abolish such differentiations and to transgress the discursive boundaries of art. (shrink)

This article presents a critical theory of the medium of ‘normative’ prose. Relying on the work of critics of poet's prose and the philosophy of Badiou and Nancy, it commences by defining prose ostensibly as the immaterial and thus invisible dianoia or discursive other to the radically material poeisis. The essay then attempts to trace a brief history of critical attention paid to prose to uphold and further develop this thesis. Using the poeticized prose of Ron Silliman's Tjanting as an (...) exemplary, contemporary text the remainder of the article delineates the three elements of prosaic immateriality. The first is the predominance of the role of deixis in prose as the very act of referring to reference itself devoid of actual referents in the world, the moment of the predominance of prose as normative according to Godzich and Kittay. The second is the attempt by automatized prose discourse to occlude its alterity and the role of poetic alienation in revealing this automatization as a political/ideological construct. This is traced back to the formalism of Shklovsky and then reconsidered in the Language poetics of Ron Silliman's own theorization of the New Sentence as that which resists automatized syllogistic cohesion. Thirdly, the paper looks at the significant incursions in the field by one of the key contemporary thinkers, Giorgio Agamben. Analysing Agamben's theory of prose as the collapse of poetic semiotic singularity into semantic generality, I finish with a consideration of how Silliman's work resists this very gesture in an attempt to create a permanently materialized prose that resists being relegated to dianoia or the prose of generalized connections. (shrink)

As machines take over more tasks previously done by humans, artistic creation is also considered as a candidate to be automated. But, can machines create art? This paper offers a conceptual framework for a philosophical discussion of this question regarding the status of machine art and machine creativity. It breaks the main question down in three sub-questions, and then analyses each question in order to arrive at more precise problems with regard to machine art and machine creativity: What is art (...) creation? What do we mean by art? And, what do we mean by machines create art? This then provides criteria we can use to discuss the main question in relation to particular cases. In the course of the analysis, the paper engages with theory in aesthetics, refers to literature on computational creativity, and contributes to the philosophy of technology and philosophical anthropology by reflecting on the role of technology in art creation. It is shown that the distinctions between process versus outcome criteria and subjective versus objective criteria of creativity are unstable. It is also argued that we should consider non-human forms of creativity, and not only cases where either humans or machines create art but also collaborations between humans and machines, which makes us reflect on human-technology relations. Finally, the paper questions the very approach that seeks criteria and suggests that the artistic status of machines may be shown and revealed in the human/non-human encounter before any theorizing or agreement takes place; an experience which then is presupposed when we theorize. This hints at a more general model of what happens in artistic perception and engagement as a hybrid human-technological and emergent or even poetic process, a model which leaves more room for letting ourselves be surprised by creativity—human and perhaps non-human. (shrink)

Aesthesis, the classical term for sensing and perceiving, is at the heart of innumerable problems that plague global society. The purpose of this article is to open a conversation on aesthesis. We survey the roots and relevance of aesthesis as a direct albeit contested relation and engagement with the world and with Others. From its pre-Socratic origins, aesthesis has been both a pragmatic, somatic concept, prompting a re-evaluation of the distinction between experience and abstraction. We trace (...) its ongoing repression from Plato through ‘western’ theories of formal Aesthetics. Drawing on a relational interpretation of Protagoras’ aesthesis, we argue that modern pragmatists and radical empiricists, as well as more contemporary critics of the ‘colonization’ of aesthesis (Mignolo and Vasquez) by formal Aesthetics recognize and develop the relational and ethical aspects of aesthesis. We consider the role of the body, affect, and of the intangible or virtual qualities of aesthesis. The ethics of obligations (Weil) in the polis (Arendt) shows how aesthesis informs politics despite its repression in favour of moral and legal norms. We argue this is relevant to contemporary crises such as xenophobia and ecocidal climate warming. (shrink)

This article investigates the use of alogos aesthesis in the critical works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and aims to evaluate its role in Dionysius’ overall approach to aesthetic experience. Dionysius comments on alogos aesthesis in several of his essays, though the account given does not always appear to be coherent. Furthermore, his engagement with alogos aesthesis is often suggestive and does not amount to a comprehensive discussion of the phenomenon, let alone to a full theory of aesthetic (...) taste. The different issues emerging from Dionysius’ discussion of alogos aesthesis in various essays will be analyzed and connections to some of his rough contemporaries ( kritikoi, Cicero, Alexandrian grammarians) highlighted. Finally, it will be suggested that Dionysius’ discussion of alogos aesthesis emerges as one of the earliest surviving attempts to express the “sense of taste” in aesthetic theory. (shrink)

A new speculative ontology of aesthetics. In Aesthesis and Perceptronium, Alexander Wilson presents a theory of materialist and posthumanist aesthetics founded on an original speculative ontology that addresses the interconnections of experience, cognition, organism, and matter. Entering the active fields of contemporary thought known as the new materialisms and realisms, Wilson argues for a rigorous redefining of the criteria that allow us to discriminate between those materials and objects where aesthesis (perception, cognition) takes place and those where it (...) doesn't. Aesthesis and Perceptronium negotiates between indiscriminately pluralist views that attribute mentation to all things and eliminative views that deny the existence of mentation even in humans. By recasting aesthetic questions within the framework of "epistemaesthetics," which considers cognition and aesthetics as belonging to a single category that can neither be fully disentangled nor fully reduced to either of its terms, Wilson forges a theory of nonhuman experience that avoids this untenable dilemma. Through a novel consideration of the evolutionary origins of cognition and its extension in technological developments, the investigation culminates in a rigorous reevaluation of the status of matter, information, computation, causality, and time in terms of their logical and causal engagement with the activities of human and nonhuman agents. (shrink)

Emphasizing the embodied, physical aspect of María Lugones's decolonial feminism, this article elucidates ways in which the oppressed appears to colonizing gazes and beyond them in order to explore possibilities of resistance. It proposes “stillness” as a sentient physicality that can transgress the hold of racist/colonizing gazes and sense a multiplicity of worlds from a limen. In order to do this, it focuses on the temporality of “stillness” and on modes of appearing of resistant praxis.

Two types of systemic models of the mind – the enactivist and the representationalist model – are often depicted as contradictory and mutually exclusive. In this article, I investigate whether they can meaningfully coexist in a viable account of forming aesthetic judgments. I argue that the two models can simultaneously contribute to the understanding of aesthetic judging as an affective cognitive process. First, I clarify why the main disagreement between the models does not apply to the case of aesthetic judging. (...) Second, I trace a possible path for how the two models could be merged in the field of aesthetics. My main argument draws on the idea that perceiving aesthetic value does not belong to basic cognition that can be seen as _either_ enactive _or_ representational, and that hence we can choose to pick the best of both worlds. In other words, we can and indeed should incorporate aspects of both models to do justice to the phenomenon of aesthetic judging. Perceiving aesthetic value requires subjective, or embodied, metacognitive evidence. This representational enactivism entails that the aesthetic subject can be seen as an emergent functional system while the functional sub-systems that constitute the subject can be characterized in representationalist terms. (shrink)

Two types of systemic models of the mind – the enactivist and the representationalist model – are often depicted as contradictory and mutually exclusive. In this article, I investigate whether they can meaningfully coexist in a viable account of forming aesthetic judgments. I argue that the two models can simultaneously contribute to the understanding of aesthetic judging as an affective cognitive process. First, I clarify why the main disagreement between the models does not apply to the case of aesthetic judging. (...) Second, I trace a possible path for how the two models could be merged in the field of aesthetics. My main argument draws on the idea that perceiving aesthetic value does not belong to basic cognition that can be seen as either enactive or representational, and that hence we can choose to pick the best of both worlds. In other words, we can and indeed should incorporate aspects of both models to do justice to the phenomenon of aesthetic judging. Perceiving aesthetic value requires subjective, or embodied, metacognitive evidence. This representational enactivism entails that the aesthetic subject can be seen as an emergent functional system while the functional sub-systems that constitute the subject can be characterized in representationalist terms. (shrink)

Con el libro "Poiesis Educativa", la Fundacion Universitaria de Derecho, Administracion y Politica, S.C. Editorial, da comienzo a la coleccion FUNDAp - Educacion, cuyo proposito fundamental es acoger las creaciones de los estudiosos de la educacion desde sus diversos campos y ambitos de desenvolvimiento. Es un libro que desde el titulo nos propone, nos inquieta, nos reta. La autora expone en el su preocupacion por el hecho de que la conceptualizacion actual de la educacion reduce y socaba a esta, (...) en su empeno economicista y politicista de epistemologizar la educacion. (shrink)

O texto a seguir apresenta em diálogo ou aplica a uma certa concepção de experiência estética um amplo conjunto de evidências experimentais retirado da investigação de outros fenômenos mentais, em particular a experiência subjetiva de emoções e sentimentos. Provém de António Damásio a viga mestra, o esqueleto, a base, a estrutura de toda a minha argumentação. Minha principal hipótese é a de que certos objetos e situações ativam hiper-espaços dispositivos cerebrais associados à ocorrência de fenômenos como sensação de beleza, prazer (...) e alegria. Proponho que a emergência de uma experiência estética deve ser compreendida como resultado de uma percepção sensível que aciona uma rotina somático-cognitiva, função do disparo de um padrão de padrões neurais dispositivos. (shrink)

Abstract:How do we think aesthetically with the gendered and fleshly life of blackness, which cannot be represented within modernity’s aesthetic regime, yet is everywhere “bound to appear”? How do we begin to approach the splayed corpus of blackness without recourse to a conceptual grammar for and from which blackness is the ultimate declension? These questions compel us to rethink the relationship between blackness and the aesthetic, and to consider the metaphysical violence which is given in and through a racial regime (...) of aesthetics that is indispensable to the reproduction of the modern world. Emphasizing the ways this aesthetic regime, and the antiblack metaphysics it endeavors to sustain, are predicated upon and imperiled by blackness, I argue that blackness is a problem of and for “the body.” This paper enters this problem through the quotidian operations of the visual and proceeds to interrogate the elliptical deconstruction of the body in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, stressing the commonalities between Nancy’s philosophical gesture and the guiding tendencies of the recent “bodily turn” within the theoretical humanities. Reading Nancy and the bodily turn through Denise Ferreira da Silva and Calvin Warren’s critiques of the modern human subject and its genesis, I argue that philosophical and aesthetic inquiries which begin with the departure from the ontology of the proper body risk reinscribing that very same figuration by eliding the ontologically negated improper body, which bears the racial and gendered violence of the former’s displacements. Turning to Hortense Spillers, I contend that to speak of the impropriety of black enfleshment is to approach the limits of phenomenology, for which, I maintain, the “black body” can only appear as a dissimulation. Taking seriously Warren’s question — “How does one think with the improper?” — I engage in a strategic corruption of Jacques Rancière’s concept of “aisthesis.” I propose a theory of black aesthesis as that which emerges in the cut between the violent dissimulation of the “black body” and a black enfleshment that has always been both more and less than the phenomenological body. (shrink)

Having in mind the concept of poiesis, as Paul Valéry uses it, time and movement are presented as concepts produced within the project of understanding the natural world. From the idea of philosophy as a way of constructing through concepts the intelligibility of phenomena, I will show the coherence between the construction of the concept of time and that of the concept of movement.

Das 17. Jahrhundert ist beherrscht von der Maschine. Sie dominiert als technische Konstruktion die Theorien und Praxen der wissenschaftlichen Revolution und bedingt entscheidend den Aufstieg der empirischen Wissenschaften. Als Metapher hat sie Erklärungskraft für barocke Modelle von Welt und Mensch, von Körper und Geist; bildlich repräsentiert sie kulturelle und natürliche, weltliche und religiöse Prozesse. Auch Literatur und Theater sind nicht ohne Maschinen zu denken. Darum geht es in diesem Buch: um die polyfunktionale Figur der Maschine in Bezug auf theater- und (...) literaturästhetische Diskurse und Performanzen. Denn Maschinen haben im rationalistisch-mechanistischen Barockzeitalter nicht nur philosophischen Erklärungswert - sie besitzen zugleich Generierungspotenzial: das Potenzial, Neues und Anderes, Mögliches und Unmögliches zu generieren. Die Poiesis der Maschine in der barocken Theater- und Literaturästhetik steht zur Diskussion. Vorgestellt werden zwei zentrale poietische Prozesse: Die Maschine generiert literarisch-theatrale Möglichkeitsräume auf der Bühne und im Buch. Zum einen setzt die Theatermaschine die barocke Ästhetik des Spektakulären um, gesteigert in der maschinellen Theatralisierung der Welt im Rahmen des barocken Festes. Zum anderen inszeniert die Maschinenliteratur Technikutopien auf der Schnittstelle zwischen Wirklichkeit und utopisch-visionärer Möglichkeit – und steht damit für das noch nicht diversifizierte literarische System der Frühen Neuzeit ein. Den Hauptteil des Buchs bildet ein Repertorium, welches die Werkgruppe der "Theatra Machinarum" erstmals systematisch erfasst: gedruckte, ein- oder mehrbändige Technikschaubücher vom 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert, die reale und imaginierte Maschinen in Bild und Text präsentieren und sich, häufig durch einen theatermetaphorischen Titel, als Inszenierungen von Wissen auf einer Bühne ausstellen. (shrink)

I try to show that Aristotle does not restrict 'praxis' to those activities which have their end in themselves. NE VI 5, 1140b6-7 need not to be taken as an argument in favour of the restricted interpretation: the wording of the passage is compatible with the interpretation that the end of a praxis is (another) praxis (e.g. eupraxia), the end of a poiesis on the other hand is never a poiesis. This interpretation fits better the use of 'praxis' (...) throughout the NE. MM A 34, 1197a4-12 is discarded since the MM is not written by Aristotle. Next I discuss the relation between the verbs 'prattein' and 'poiein' on the one hand and the corresponding nouns 'poiesis' and 'praxis' on the other, in order to determine their exact meaning. To conclude, Aristotle's distinctions are compared to certain tenets of H. Arendt in her 'Vita Activa'. (shrink)

Reacting against the turn to transcendence that heavily characterized the medieval worldview, the modern worldview is fundamentally exemplified by a threefold turn to immanence, consisting of a subjective turn, a linguistic turn and an experiential turn. Language plays a pivotal role here since it mediates between the subjective and the experiential. Ricoeur’s treatment of metaphor, significantly laid out in his The Rule of Metaphor, is crucial in bringing about this linguistic turn that mediates the subject and its experience of the (...) world. Through an analysis of “seeing as” as a poietic reconfiguration of reality in the subject’s experience, language transforms and founds the world as a “being as.” What is disclosed in this interpretative transformation of reality is not simply an hermeneutical ontology but possibly—also through language—an hermeneutical axiology. (shrink)

Taking aesthetics as a racial regime of modernity, the focus of Bradley’s Anteaesthetics is experiments in Black art which are not ‘worlding but an illimitable descent made to come before the world’. With a powerful introduction reflecting upon Nina Simone at the Montreal Jazz festival, and chapters which take us through 19th-century paintings, cinema, texts, video installations, and digital art, Anteaesthetics forces us to encounter the horror, beauty, and racially gendered dimensions of a negative inhabitation substantiated through the absolutely dispossessive (...) field of worlding aesthetic refrains. Working against the grain of debate, aesthetics is not generatively enrolled for the modern subject possessed of ontological security to productively world itself in new ways. Rather, Anteaesthetics enables us to critically interrogate how investing in aesthetics requires working with the negative, taking an uncompromising stance towards aesthetics as a constitutive force of the ongoing violent legacies of modernity. (shrink)

Technology extends human perception and it intervenes in relations to the environment. Life in cities is particularly affected by newest technological developments, and city dwellers are most shielded and disconnected from the natural world by these very same technologies. The term technology stems from the Greek techne, and it refers to an instrumental relation to the world—a manipulation and adaptation of the environment to human needs. However, by intervening in everyday life and modifying relations to the environment, technology also produces (...) new forms of life and is therefore also poetic in the sense of poiesis. It is clearly distinguished from literary works because it opens worlds of possibilities that are not fictional. This makes a reflection on its poeticity all the more urgent, because the large-scale advent of new technologies such as the industrialization or the digitization radically changes the modes of perception and relations to urban environments. Art works like literature absorb and articulate these changes and are therefore useful “strange tools” for putting on display the changing modes of experiencing cities. For instance, industrialization, explosive urban growth and the rapid modernization of cities overwhelmed the senses. In its very form and rhythm, modernist literature performs the fragmented and brisk-paced experience of modernity. The digital age ostensibly promises intelligibility and order, for digital technologies can survey and manage vast amounts of information. Smart cities are designed for this purpose and for offering tailored solutions to the inhabitants’ individual needs. However, data analytics cannot capture the phenomenological quality of lived experience. Art works can, and contemporary literary works put on display urban life-forms characterized by disembodiment and by exhaustive information on any subject that on its own does not translate into any sense of meaning or belonging. (shrink)

Based on the understanding of aesthetics as the study of all processes and activities related to aesthesis in his original etymological sense as «sensibility», this paper argues that an evolutionary approach must follow the evolution of aesthesis from its inception. A degree of sensibility may perhaps be traced already at molecules sensing borders in DNA replication. The next stage, which may be defined as “cyto-aesthesis”, refers to evidence of cells’ actions to antigens, virus, enzymes or bacteria and (...) other significant elements in the intercellular fluid by their receptors’ sensibility to ligands. Darwin explored plants’ irritability specifically at their tendrils and petioles and there are studies on their sensibility to surface, nutrients, touch, water, temperature, seasonal cycles, color, gravity, and light. All animal species, including human beings, have evolved a keen sensitivity to predators and mates upon which their survival depends following evolutionary priorities and conditions. There is consequently no particular experience that we may call «aesthetic experience», a redundant term, since the whole spectrum of activities and effects of various species’ sensibility involves experiencing the world, namely, aesthesis. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine Arthur C. Danto s highly influential thesis that Andy Warhols Brillo Box ends art by obviating the need for art object to differ sensually from ordinary object. Coining the term Co-aesthesis, I demonstrate that it is only by improperly applying Extensionalism that anyone is able to make the claim that the Brillo Box is substantively equivalent to a Brillo Box in the first place: if we just work harder to coordinate the various visual, tactile (...) and contextual data striking our sensorium, we can arrive at a very different spot than the place from which we witness art ending — especially when we consider the revelations about multi-dimensionality in the realm of physics. To help make my point, I use Italian philosopher Tiziana Andina’s recent book Arthur Danto: Philosopher of Pop and her interpretation that, after Danto, a sensual Aesthetics parts company from a conceptual and sensually inert Philosophy of Art. (shrink)

With the recent renewed interest in AI, the field has made substantial advancements, particularly in generative systems. Increased computational power and the availability of very large datasets has enabled systems such as ChatGPT to effectively replicate aspects of human social interactions, such as verbal communication, thus bringing about profound changes in society. In this paper, we explain that the arrival of generative AI systems marks a shift from ‘interacting through’ to ‘interacting with’ technologies and calls for a reconceptualization of socio-technical (...) systems as we currently understand them. We dub this new generation of socio-technical systems synthetic to signal the increased interactions between human and artificial agents, and, in the footsteps of philosophers of information, we cash out agency in terms of ‘poiêsis’. We close the paper with a discussion of the potential policy implications of synthetic socio-technical system. -/- . (shrink)

We are living in a time of polarization. Cultural and educational institutions are confronted with the responsibility to provide tools and spaces for critical reflection, for engagement, and, more fundamentally, for meeting and recognizing each other in our differences. In this decolonial essay Rolando Vázquez introduces his critique which offers an option for thinking and doing beyond the dominant paradigms. It provides a critical analysis of modernity understood broadly as the western project of civilization, while it seeks to overcome the (...) dominion of western epistemology and aesthetics and their embedded eurocentrism and anthropocentrism. Importantly for decolonial thought we are all located in relation to the colonial difference that structures our modern/colonial order. It is only from an awareness of our positioned realities that we can enter in relation with each-other, that we can listen to each-other and learn each-other. 'Vistas of Modernity' is a new title in a series of essays commissioned by the Mondriaan Fund, concerning actual topics about visual arts and cultural heritage. Eelco van der Lingen (director Mondriaan Fund): Rolando Vázquez is cautious in presenting his analysis. He does not look for quick conclusions, but slowly guides the reader through the context of our history and the contemporary labyrinth of text, language, symbols and images which (often without being properly noticed) give great meaning to our existence. His decolonial aesthesis lifts us above the labyrinth and offers us a new panorama. (shrink)

O presente artigo procura determinar a poiesis educativa unamuniana, ou seja, as técnicas de ensino e de aprendizagem propostas por Unamuno para o ensino espanhol das primeiras décadas do século XX. Num primeiro momento, centrar-se-á no eixo professor-aluno. Para o autor, o decisivo é que a relação que une professor e aluno não seja austera como na escolástica, na qual os referidos elementos permaneciam afastados entre si, mas que fosse estruturada numa espécie de amor filial. A sua proposta pedagógica (...) consiste, portanto, na substituição do velho paradigma educativo escolástico por um personalismo educacional que fosse capaz de conceber professor e aluno como pai e filho em espírito. Num segundo momento, valoraremos as suas propostas pedagógicas para o eixo professor-saber, que, na sua perspetiva, deveria deixar de ser pensado como um templo do saber para passar a ser concebido como um mediador das aprendizagens, como o demonstra a sua famosa definição como agitador de espíritos. Depois, e em relação direta com os resultados anteriores, analisaremos a forma como o autor estrutura o eixo aluno-saber. Unamuno, ao recusar a conceção escolástica de discente como recipiente vazio, considera que este deveria aprender mais procedimentos que conteúdos, de tal forma que fosse capaz de procurar por si mesmo o saber que necessita, com constância, esforço e trabalho. E, num último momento, deslindaremos as suas sui generis conceções epistemológicas de saber e verdade céticas. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Artworks of realism have been the chief target continuously employed by critics to perpetuate a traditional view of art as mere imitation. In this article, I argue for a way to understand artworks of realism based on a suspension of the classical distinction between mimesis and poiesis. By examining the perception model and the poiesis of mechanically reproduced art, I argue that contrary to the traditional view, an artwork of realism does not represent what is ordinarily called (...) “reality” by imitating it; in what may seem a representation of the world an artwork of realism actually creates something from scratch, making neither an ontological claim to become and to replace the object in question nor an artistic claim to copy after the object; and despite its apparent achievement of resembling the objects in the world, an artwork of realism should be judged by itself as well as by itself as embodiment of conditions of seeing and of encountering, inhabiting, and interpreting the visible at a certain historical juncture. (shrink)

In a tribute to the intellectual legacy of Peter Fitzpatrick, this article explores the poiesis of modern law, as a constitutive ambivalence distilled in the affinity between law and literature. Reading with Fitzpatrick, the resolution of the contradictions of this law in myth depends, paradoxically, upon its fundamental irresolution. Reflecting upon the profound significance of his revelation of the mythology of modern law and its scholarly reverberations, I consider the constitutive tensions of this law as exemplified in the relation (...) between praxis and poiesis, the operative function of the former dependent upon the creative unfolding of the latter. The alchemy of autopoiesis, by which law boldly proclaims itself law, is made explicit in the eschatology of its archive and the formation of its sovereign subject in negation. Revealing the literary dimensions of this law, the conceit of autonomy is nonetheless subject to the subversive substitutions of the supplement. Pressing yet further, the autopoiesis of law is found to be enfolded within a generative sympoiesis, constituted by the movement between its apposite dimensions. Ultimately, extending Fitzpatrick’s rendering of the irresolution of modern law as decolonial, I explore the possibilities afforded by a reading of the fundamental mutuality of myths, and the decolonial conviviality of poiesis. (shrink)

At its core, this study understands its central term, poiesis as the process of forming new styles of sense-making and multiple modes of thought. Such plural styles deserve notice so far as they give readers alternate ways of organizing experience and interpersonal relations: they provide new worlds, in fact. The epithet "New-world" poiesis, then, is in one respect redundant, since new worlds are revealed through the "poetic" process itself. But the title also refers to current and past historical (...) encounters between an "old-world" Anglo-American mindset and its "others"---encounters between worlds that over time have qualified, tested, strengthened, and fractured each other. ;Poets who generate and interweave new worlds provide a context for maintaining a central debate within discussions of complexity in contemporary U.S. poetics. Assuming that lyric poetry can reasonably be expected to represent and to some extent transform experiences and perceptions of reality, the question arises as to what kind of experiences and worlds should be represented and/or transformed. On one hand, critics find that the role of the contemporary lyric is expressive, that is, most suited to approaching the internal conscious states or the social conditions of a person or group. On the other hand, as a fragmentary, associative use of language, lyric poetry shows the workings of language itself, a system of meaning concerned mainly with its own, ongoing re-organization. ;This debate between poetic language as providing either coherence or change---a debate that currently enjoys critical esteem and claims an increasing amount of attention from critics, poets, and anthologists---assumes that as complexity increases in poetic experimentation, the capacity for the poem to represent social relations diminishes. Poems that examine the surface texture of language, its critics claim, dissolve most often into a "play of words." Gathered into rival camps that it seems could hardly disagree more radically, the terms of the argument appear in the form of a debate between social identity and complex meaning systems. ;Detailing more specific versions of this debate, my project investigates four intellectual environments into which plural-world poetries have introduced complex lyric treatments of experience in order to distort dominant, established views: subjecting historical; cultural; linguistic; and urban discussions to a "deep pluralism." What I've found is that in the richest instances, long lyric poems that provide plural worlds allow for both resonance and wonder, both coherent sources of personal expression or social affiliation and an ability to appreciate multiple styles and to move across identities and ways of naming the real. Each aspect to the other is usually said to be incommensurate, and yet, at the right level of abstraction, or plurality, meaningful social distinctions can be made with minimal exclusionary consequences. (shrink)