Decomposing Matter: From literary critique to language creation

Abstract

This article provides a context for the section “Creating Language and Theorizing Literature”. The editors of the section discuss both contemporary and historical articulations of the materiality of language from a new materialist perspective. The new materialist project comprises looking for the immanence of language via three realms: its relation, its theorization, and its creation. Therefore, moving away from representationalist practices demands a definition of language as animate, sensory material requiring creative labour for its realisation. The article provides an example of this materialization of language, via the concept of bodywording.