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Abstract
In the nearly 800 pages that comprise the three volumes of his Graphology Poems 1995–2015 (Five Islands P, 2016), John Kinsella demonstrates an exemplary moral anger registering iterations of colonial “omni-speak” as unethical (1: 93). This paper reads Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer (Stanford UP, 1998) by way of apprehending the rhetorical substrata underpinning discourses of Australia as not just determining a sovereign colonial space; in a place where “history is absurdity […] history is overlay” (Graphology Poems 1: 158), Kinsella shows how indigenous and non-colonial others are consistently cast as extra-juridical and merely sub-human. These Graphology Poems not only anathemise and hex historical falsehoods of nation: Kinsella dares sound out the bullshit, and his iconoclastic language games refuse outright to acquiesce to the epistemically violent nullifications of antipodean identity.
disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
The author and publisher wish to thank Five Islands Press for kind permission to publish extracts from Graphologies (vols. 1–3) in this issue of Angelaki.
1 McCooey.
2 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 93.
3 Kinsella, Disclosed Poetics 10.
4 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 13.
5 Kinsella, Disclosed Poetics 112.
6 Ibid. 111.
7 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 246.
8 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 265.
9 Ibid. 158.
10 Ibid. 74.
11 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 2: 21.
12 Agamben, Homo Sacer 27.
13 Ibid. 12.
14 Ibid. 19.
15 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 178.
16 Kinsella, “How Does Activist Poetry Cope with Ambiguity?”
17 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 2: 137.
18 Kinsella, Polysituatedness 6.
19 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 2: 53.
20 Ibid. 86.
21 Agamben, Sacrament of Language 37.
22 Kinsella, Disclosed Poetics 50.
23 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 161.
24 Kinsella, Disclosed Poetics 50.
25 Kinsella, Polysituatedness 40.
26 Birns.
27 Eales.
28 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 17.
29 Atherton and Hetherington.
30 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 14–18.
31 Ibid. 123.
32 Ibid. 132.
33 Kinsella, Disclosed Poetics 1.
34 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 132.
35 Arendt 296.
36 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 152.
37 Agamben, Homo Sacer 15.
38 Ibid. 103.
39 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 30.
40 Ibid. 50.
41 Ibid. 91.
42 Ibid. 51.
43 Ibid. 63.
44 Ibid. 197.
45 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 21–22.
46 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 132.
47 Kinsella, Activist Poetics 16.
48 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 37.
49 Ibid. 19.
50 Kinsella, Disclosed Poetics 51.
51 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 37.
52 Ibid. 19.
53 Birns.
54 Kinsella, Polysituatedness 161.
55 Ibid. 159.
56 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 2: 111.
57 Kinsella, Disclosed Poetics 52.
58 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 2: 111.
59 Ibid. 112.
60 Ibid. 276.
61 Spivak 280.
62 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 75.
63 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 15.
64 Ibid. 102.
65 Kinsella, Disclosed Poetics 59.
66 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 69–70.
67 Ibid. 70.
68 Kinsella, Polysituatedness 72.
69 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 206.
70 Ibid. 215.
71 Kinsella, Polysituatedness 26.
72 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 206.
73 Kinsella, Polysituatedness 28.
74 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 99–101.
75 Ibid. 158.
76 Ibid. 109.
77 Ibid. 166.
78 Ibid. 118.
79 Ibid.
80 McCooey.
81 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 2: 246.
82 Kinsella, Disclosed Poetics 49.
83 Birns.
84 Deleuze and Guattari 35.
85 Birns.
86 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 88.
87 Ibid. 193.
88 Kinsella, Activist Poetics 16.
89 Kinsella, Polysituatedness 13.
90 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 2: 232.
91 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 88.
92 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 195.
93 Agamben, Homo Sacer 103.
94 Arendt 299.
95 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 14.
96 Ibid. 47.
97 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 130.
98 Ibid. 141.
99 Ibid.
100 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 2: 47.
101 Ibid. 50.
102 Ibid. 47.
103 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 1: 142.
104 Ibid. 146.
105 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 2: 21.
106 Ibid. 178.
107 Ibid. 177.
108 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 3: 124.
109 Kinsella, Graphology Poems 2: 21.
110 Ibid. 22.