Tracing the Form of Compassion: Homelessness in Leslie Scalapino’s “bum series.”
Tracing the Form of Compassion: Homelessness in Leslie Scalapino’s “bum series.”

Summary/Abstract: The article examines American avant-garde poet Leslie Scalapino’s poem “bum series,” included in 1988 collection way. Devoted to the theme of homelessness, “bum series” problematizes a poetic gesture of forging an ethical response to suffering, focusing on scrutiny rather than representation. I offer a reading of the poem alongside François Laruelle’s non-standard philosophical reflection, presented in his 2015 General Theory of Victims, according to which the ethical role of the intellectual needs to be rethought beyond the impulse to speak for the other, or to represent the other’s suffering. I trace similarities and differences between Laruelle’s and Scalapino’s positions. Whereas Laruelle’s abstract critique re-emphasizes “overexposure” that turns suffering into an image used by the media-savvy intellectuals, Scalapino’s poetic writing moves towards a nuanced investigation of the ways in which our perception of suffering is formed. Scalapino’s sense of ethics entails recognition of one’s implication in mechanisms of representation, emphasizing one’s accountability for one’s actions as well as conceptualizations. I also identify a speculative trajectory that informs Scalapino’s neo-objectivist experimentation with the non-hierarchical form of writing.

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