'Dash me with Amorous Wet, I can Repay You'. (21st October 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Murray, Caleb
• Is Part Of: Journal for the study of religion, nature and culture. Volume 16:Number 3(2022)
• Page Start: 22963
• Page End: 22963
• Publication Date: 2022-10-21
• Subjects: Human ecology -- Religious aspects -- Periodicals; Environmental protection -- Religious aspects -- Periodicals; Ecology -- Moral and ethical aspects -- Periodicals; Ecology -- Religious aspects -- Periodicals; 201.7705
• DOI: 10.1558/jsrnc.22963
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1749-4907

Abstract

Abstract : Walt Whitman's poetry is famously full of 'self' and self-contradicting: 'Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)' The scholarly attention to paradox and contradiction often takes the form of an attention to various 'binaries' in Whitman's prose and poetry; well-trod binaries include body-soul, sacred-profane, nature-culture, and woman-man. However, a queer attention to the poetic construction of such binaries reveals them to be fluid and ultimately non-binary. Whitman and his speakers construct binaries that relate to religion, gender, and nature, but in poeticizing the construction of binary logic (e.g., man-woman), Whitman and his speakers reveal such purportedly self-contained and discrete domains to be open, fluid, and co-constituting. Recognizing the poetic performance of 'binary' logic will reshape reader's understanding of ethical and political implications of Whitman's queerly relational nature ethics.