Christopher Edwards

THE POSTHUMANISM OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS by CHRISTOPHER EDWARDS A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy November 2016 Faculty of Arts School of Culture and Communication 1 Figure 1: Unknown. William Carlos Williams wearing beret (fragment). n.d, Photograph. Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscript Library, New Haven. 2 ABSTRACT There is a torn fragment of a black and white photograph in the Beinecke rare book room at Yale University, showing American poet William Carlos Williams wearing a beret and tie (see figure 1). A tear cuts off the right two thirds of the original image, but Williams himself has been cut in half by the framing of the shot itself. What remains of the image of the poet has, in turn, been beset by time and mishandling; a white crease bisects Williams’s face a second time. Yet of all the images that exist of Williams, it is this unusual photograph that, more than any other, sums up Williams’s most significant, and most significantly unrecognised, achievements as a poet. Despite his reputation as a poet of clarity, of economic and discrete images of wheelbarrows, chickens and plums, it becomes clear upon closer reading that Williams’s poetics actively resisted notions of unity, clarity and stability of forms—even at the level of his own subjectivity. Rather, Williams’s poetics is predicated on the assumption that all objects, all words, and all human subjects are, like the man in the beret in the photograph, unstable and fragile components of the continuum of the material world. So much so that Williams’s poetics preempts many of the interrogations of the nature of language and human subjectivity that would later constitute the critical movements of posthumanism. Based on this premise, I argue that the critical lens of posthumanism provides an unprecedented and productive means of answering some of the enduring questions surrounding Williams’s poetry. The central challenge that Williams’s poetics has always posed is how to reconcile the tension between Williams’s humanistic ethos and the profound materialism of his work. In other words, how can we speak of a poet who pushes human consciousness to the periphery of his poems in favour of material reality, who destablises distinctions between the human mind and the natural, mechanical and bodily worlds, who reveals, by virtue of his experience as a physician, humankind to be fragile, temporal, mortal compositions of flesh, blood and bones—but whose poetry and prose also embody a deep-seated humanistic ethos, premised on ideals of democracy, charity and empathy? I argue that, from the perspective of posthumanism, the tension between materialism and humanistic values is not a tension at all; rather, the two are intertwined and even at times 3 continuous. Williams’s poetry provides an early example of a particular contemporary notion of posthumanism, championed by Julie Clarke, N. Katherine Hayles and Cary Wolfe, in which the contingency and instability of language, human subjectivity and the borders between self and other serve as a valuable means of destabilising oppressive notions of authority and unity. Through an analysis of Williams’s approach to the relationship between the human subject and modern technology, the natural world, politics and medicine, I examine the ways in which Williams challenged, both thematically and at the level of language, humanist assumptions of the authority, autonomy and sovereignty of the human subject: assumptions that were used throughout the twentieth century to justify and perpetuate the subjugation of women and peoples of colour, the exploitation of the natural landscape, and the rise of fascist, nationalist and eugenic ideologies. I will suggest that the theories of writers such as Haraway, Wolfe, Clarke and Hayles offer the chance of reading Williams’s radical materialism and his posthumanist deconstruction of the humanist cogito not as a rejection of the humanity altogether, but as a poetic response to the various ethical, social and political challenges that defined the early twentieth century. 4 DECLARATION This is to certify that i. the thesis comprises only my original work except where indicated in the preface. ii. due acknowledgment has been made in the text to all other material used. iii. the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of bibliographies, and footnotes. Signed: Christopher Glenn Edwards Date: 16/03/2017 5 PREFACE Some of the findings from Chapter 1 have been accepted for publication, in a modified form, in my essay “‘Then He Kissed It With His Bumper’: The Autovehicular Posthumanism of William Carlos Williams” in the William Carlos Williams Review. Furthermore, some of the findings in Chapter 4 regarding Yes, Mrs. Williams were included in my essay “Translation, Fragmentation and Cosmopolitanism in William Carlos Williams's Yes, Mrs. Williams” in New Scholar (2016). 6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere thanks to Anne Maxwell, whose patient and inspiring supervision made both my honours year and this PhD candidature much less daunting and much more rewarding than they otherwise would have been. Thanks also to Deirdre Coleman for her insights and her guidance along the way. It has been a privilege and a delight to have spent this time with you both. Thanks to Sarah Blood for managing to be both a good mate and a good proofreader, without letting either role get in the way of the other. I am also very grateful to Laura Henderson for her faith in me, her support, her strength, her love, and the lovely reflective glow that her great, bright intelligence lends to those who know her. Also, thanks for looking after me when my laptop got stolen. Thanks to my parents, Marg (Mum) and Glenn (Dad). You told me to do what makes me happy and I called your bluff. Let’s see what happens next. Finally, thanks to the Melbourne live music scene: to all the people who I played music with, whose gigs I looked forward to during long days at my desk, whose shoves in the mosh pit shook me out of my own head, whose sweaty hugs meant the world to me, and whose company over beers taught me that ideas are only valuable when shared with good people. Thanks. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract.................................................................................................................................................... 3 Declaration.............................................................................................................................................. 5 Preface..................................................................................................................................................... 6 Acknowledgements............................................................................................................................... 7 List of Abbreviations............................................................................................................................ 9 Introduction: ‘It is the death of poetry you are accomplishing’................................................... 10 Chapter 1. Literary Posthumanism from the Ditch........................................................................ 46 Chapter 2. ‘Then he kissed it with his bumper’: Williams’s Posthumanist Relationship with the Modern Machine............................................................................................ 63 Chapter 3. ‘He who has kissed a leaf’: Williams’s Posthumanist Ecopoetics............................ 104 Chapter 4. ‘The Mutability of Truth’: Williams, Posthumanism and Democracy.................... 160 Chapter 5. ‘Was I not interested in Man?’: Williams as Doctor and as Poet.............................. 208 Conclusion: Williams, Twitter and Posthumanism in the Twenty-first Century...................... 259 Works Cited............................................................................................................................................ 279 8 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS A The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951) AG In the American Grain (1925) CP1 The Collected Poems, Volume One (1986) CP2 The Collected Poems, Volume Two (1988) DS The Doctor Stories (1984) EK The Embodiment of Knowledge (1974) I Imaginations (1970) IWWP I Wanted to Write a Poem: The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet (1958) ML Many Loves and other plays (1961) P Paterson, revised edition (1992) SE Selected Essays of William Carlos Williams (1954) SL Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) WM White Mule (1937) Y Yes, Mrs. Williams (1959) 9 INTRODUCTION: ‘IT IS THE DEATH OF POETRY YOU ARE ACCOMPLISHING’ In the introduction to Spring and All (1923), American poet William Carlos Williams anticipates an outraged reaction to his latest collection of poems. Taking on the voice of his imagined critics, he berates himself for his own affront to the metric, rhythmic and thematic conventions of English verse: Is this what you call poetry? It is the very antithesis of poetry. It is antipoetry. It is the annihilation of life upon which you are bent. Poetry that used to go hand in hand with life, poetry that interpreted our deepest promptings, poetry that inspired, that led us forward to new discoveries, new depths of tolerance, new heights of exaltation. You moderns! It is the death of poetry that you are accomplishing. (I, 88) As this statement suggests, the formal processes of poetic composition are not easily separated from matters of morality and human experience; the poem, and indeed literature

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