Beyond Intimacy: Radical Proximity and Justice in Three Mexican Poets (McGill-Queen's Iberian and Latin American Cultures Series)

By: Christina Karageorgou-Bastea

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Synopsis: The ethos of poetry and its social efficacy cannot be underestimated in the quest for a fair society. The works of three contemporary Mexican poets – Abigael Bohórquez, Myriam Moscona, and Gloria Gervitz – offer models for examining important philosophical and literary questions that explore the relationship between art and the enactment of justice. Beyond Intimacy returns lyric poetry to the centre of struggles for justice within concrete historical frameworks, highlighting gender, ethnic, and cultural tensions. Through an analysis of works by these three poets, Christina Karageorgou-Bastea reveals the far-reaching social transcendence of poetry; she shows that lyric poetry invites a public dialogue where queer pariahs model citizenship, a dying language guards and transmits tradition, and the end of motherhood is the cusp in the struggle for woman’s freedom. The radicalization of intimacy, the relationship par excellence between self and other on which poetic interaction is based, has the power to dismantle deeply rooted hierarchies within art and society. Karageorgou-Bastea explores poetry’s potential for justice through different modes of intimacy including desire, filiation, and mourning.Meeting on the grounds of their aspiration to harmony, lyricism, and justice-making lead the way to social equity and fairness in Beyond Intimacy.