VOICING VULNERABILITY: MEDIATING VIOLENCE, VICTIMISATION AND FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY IN NORA GOMRINGER'S MONSTER POETRY*

Abstract

This chapter examines poetic works by the Swiss-German performance poet Nora-Eugenie Gomringer that draw on monsters as a conceptual lens to engage with experiences of vulnerable subjects, that is, those that have experienced harm or violence or are considered especially susceptible to these risks. The anthology Monster Morbus Moden (2013–17), with its initial collection Monster Poems (2013), reflects poetically on how female subjects and their bodies, which are conventionally represented as weak, are simultaneously and paradoxically considered dangerously non-normative and in need of policing. Gomringer explores how this paradox emerges from the interplay of textual and media surfaces, institutional logic and intersubjective power imbalances. The author employs an experimental mix of intertextual, intermedial and performative strategies that draws attention to the embodied and culturally iterative nature of such subject constructions. Putting emphasis on visualising and voicing victimisation, these works can be seen to probe to what extent a monstrous poeticisation of such experiences might shift stereotyping scopic regimes that produce the conditions for the widespread sexual violence against women or curtail reproductive freedoms. This experimentation, this article argues, seeks to establish awareness around the potential mobility of the concept of ‘vulnerability’ that has also been raised in recent feminist discussions.