Gräset är apoteksgrönt eller var går gränsen för ett gränslöst språk : om nationell identitet i svensk språkpoesi

Sammanfattning:

Based on the on the assumption that the two recent Swedish poetry collections mil by Anna Hallberg and mallamerik, mallamer, malameri, mallame, amerik, mallameka, merikka, by Lars Mikael Raattamaa, are constructed with theoretical questions about identity, national identity, language hierarchy and power in mind, this study aims to investigate the ways in which these issues come to expression. Simplified, the term language-poetry, or språkmaterialism, can be used to describe a language-philosophical poetry that aims to eliminate the hierarcic structures between writer and reader in a text and invite the reader to become the co-worker of it. The study shows that by different ways of eliminating the centre of the text, the text is made democratical. But one question that this study asks is how can a nation's conventional and standardised written  language – the language of the centre – be used to write itself out of this centre into the margin? Stepping from a theoretical background of postcolonial theories on identity and national identity, including reflections as those given by Benedict Anderson, Madan Sarup, Timothy Brennan, Stefan Helgesson and Mia Cuoto, the analysis points out how this poetry laborates with the terms bugging, repetition, national language identity, and space as poetic material, in order to work in line with ─ and contrary to - conceptions of a unified and shared language. Adapting and transforming the architectural term sprawl into literature, and spreading similar phrases over the pages by, for example, thematizing names, Swedish suburbs, and the use of language referents made empty, an elimination of the textual centre is shown to take place. This study concludes that in these poems it is by pointing out markers of a Swedish identity which is transparent that identity becomes both constituted and articulated, as well as problematized; concepts of collectivity, orality, and lack of textual coherence create a dimension of  boundlessness in language.