The disputed terrain is language

Abstract

This essay traces some contemporary poetics that oppose to the current relationship between language and capitalism—which is defined here as the conversion of our semiotic potentialities into capital and determined by the full legibility of the sign. At a time when material production and linguistic communication become equivalent (according to Paolo Virno), some poets are committed to an ethical criticism of the political economy of the sign. In their most recent books, Chilean poets Anwandter and Gubbins, and Peruvian Montalbetti attempt a reappropriation of language through cold means—language usage that falls between the legible and the illegible: combinatoires, pastiche, recycling of texts, autoreflexivity. The objective of this "conceptual poetry" is to open new forms of experience that stem from a resistance to signification itself.