“Breaking language”: Performance and community in Suheir Hammad’s poetry

ABSTRACT

This article examines Palestinian American poet Suheir Hammad’s strategy of “breaking language” across literary and performative modes, with a particular focus on the community structures that she establishes among her audiences and readers. It argues that her poetry – especially in its online remediation – challenges reactionary, nationalistic appeals to identity in the wake of public crisis by incorporating the disruptive action of “breaking” as a literary and performative device. In doing so, her work helps build more open, heterogeneous, and transnational affective bonds, both across and between established community lines. Reading performativity and community as major themes across Hammad’s work, the article tracks these influences from her performance of “first writing since” in 2002 to her 2008 poetry collection, breaking poems. An exploration of the connection between performativity and community in Hammad’s work is vital to understanding her contribution to contemporary American poetry and the broader literary landscape of postcolonial diaspora.

KEYWORDS:

• Suheir Hammad
• breaking language
• performance poetry
• digital literature
• community
• Palestinian American literature

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Sydney [Research Training Stipend].

Notes on contributors

Dashiell Moore

Dashiell Moore is a fourth-year PhD student at the University of Sydney. He has published articles in The Journal of Commonwealth Literature and Cordite Poetry Review. He has also been recognized for his teaching, awarded the Dean’s Citation for Excellence in Tutorials (with Distinction). His thesis, “The Redirected Poetic Encounter”, traces a poetic meridian between the Caribbean and Indigenous Australia to give a critical appraisal of comparative literary studies and postcolonial scholarship.