Poethics: Maria Zambrano Fellowship

In this short talk, Larissa Lai takes up the coined term “poethics” as a way of being in language and in the body. She articulates it first in relation to recent discussions around the ethics of care, suggesting that poethical thought and practice can productively supplement care’s utopian leanings. Borrowing the term from in a line in Fred Wah’s Faking It in which he describes poethics as “something that surrounds you like your house it’s where you live”, Larissa Lai articulates Wah’s Diamond Grill a poethical text, and the Chinese Canadian cafe as an exemplary poethical space. The talk closes with a consideration of Joan Retallack’s thought on poethics as a necessary gamble that we have always already engaged. 

This talk is the third in a series entitled “Insurgencies: Speculative Fiction, Cultural Organizing, and Utopian Thought”, that Larissa Lai is giving under the auspices of a Maria Zambrano Fellowship at the University of Huelva.