Saying 'we': George Oppen's and Kant's lyrical 'common sense'. Issue 10 (2nd October 2020) - McGuinn, Jacob
ABSTRACT: Saying 'we', using the first-person plural, might speak for a community. But it also raises the problem of speaking as that community, determining it. In this paper, I address the poetics of this problem of indeterminacy through reading George Oppen. Oppen's negotiations with the social are focused on his increasing use of 'we' in place of a lyrical 'I-you' address. In reading this 'we' with Kant's 'common sense' – the aesthetic construction of consensus – I suggest that Oppen gives form to the indeterminacy of this common. In this, Oppen both re-imagines Kant's 'common sense' and troubles it. Kant's imagined community is shown to have limits in its own multiplicity. Reading Oppen's poetic use of 'we' against Kant's 'common sense', then, I explore the way each addresses a 'common' which exceeds their capacity to determine it. Finally, this leads me to consider the implications of these 'commons' for critical reading. If criticism is grounded on its own 'common sense', its form of sociability with its poetic object, then the inclusions and exclusions, the peculiar exterior-interiority of Oppen's and Kant's sociability, re-describe the limits of that critical reading, and should cause us to rethink its political implications.