Tvärsöver otysta tider: Att skriva genom Västerbottens och New Englands historier och språk tillsammans med texter av Susan Howe / Across Unquiet Times: Writing Through the Histories and Languages of Västerbotten and New England in the Company of Works by Susan Howe

Abstract

Tvärsöver otysta tider / Across Unquiet Times is a dissertation within the field of literary composition. It is an investigation of the histories and languages of Västerbotten, in the north of Sweden, and New England, in the northeastern United States, with and through the writing of the poet and literary scholar Susan Howe. With a focus on reading’s generative aspects—the writing of reading; its pluralistic sources as well as trajectories—the research asks which aspects of historical and literary Västerbotten and New England arise when read through each other, by way of Howe’s writings. A key concern is whether these aspects can be written, not separately, nor as a comparative study, but as concerted resonances. If so, then what are the characteristics of those resonances, and what might mediating and performing them add, or change? Through diffractive thinking and writing, performance writing, translational writing, punning, and listening, some of the more ubiquitous and problematic words, concepts, and phenomena of the cross-resonating textualities of the regions are dealt with. This work is done first and foremost by drawing on works by Susan Howe, the new materialist and feminist theoretical physicist Karen Barad, and the poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant. Aspects of colonialism and settler-colonialism, Protestant ideas and related language, and forests and word-forests are diffractively written through in a variety of forms of writing. Poetry plays an important role, as does the concept of unsettling, which formulates a specifically literary response to the ever-ongoing workings of settler-colonialism. The concept of hegemonic listening is put forth as an addition to the composer and educator Michel Chion’s three listening modes. It is formulated by way of historical silences and noises, and in turn, enables listening to, elaborating on, and writing across the unquiet.