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Invited Articles

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2022): American Studies as Vulnerability Studies

Performing Vulnerability and Resistance in Spoken Word Poetry

  • Kosal Khiev
  • Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt
  • Martina Pfeiler
Submitted
March 19, 2023
Published
2022-12-30

Abstract

This article explores the duality of Kosal Khiev's poetry performances as performing vulnerability and resistance within global cultural contexts. While his live performances vocalize several forms of systemic racism that he experienced as a refugee, in the US foster care system and with the US prison-industrial complex, his live-streamed performances reach beyond national borders that have jeopardized his very existence. Over the past few years, his livestreams and social media posts have most succinctly served as creative channels through which Kosal Khiev addresses his vulnerability. His poetry included in this article not only acknowledges and comments on his vulnerability as interconnected with US politics but also writes himself back into the national discourse from the perspective of an exiled poet.

References

  1. Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. London: Penguin Books, 2019.
  2. Appadurai, Arjun. "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy." Theory, Culture & Society 7, nos. 2-3 (1990): 295-310. https://doi.org/10.1177/026327690007002017.
  3. Butler, Judith. "Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance." In Vulnerability and Resistance, edited by Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti, and Leticia Sabsay, 12-27. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
  4. Park, Edward J. W., and John S. W. Park. Probationary Americans. Contemporary Immigration Policies and the Shaping of Asian American Communities. New York: Routledge, 2005.
  5. Pho, Hai B. "Lowell, Politics, and the Resettlement of Southeast Asian Refugees and Immigrants 1975-2000." In Southeast Asian Refugees and Immigrants in the Mill City: Changing Families, Communities, Institutions-Thirty Years Afterward, edited by Tuyet-Lan Pho, Jeffrey N. Gerson, and Sylvia R. Cowan, 10-18. Lebanon: University Press of New England, 2008.
  6. Troeung, Y-Dang. "Iterations of War and Its Literary Counterforces: Vaddey Ratner's In the Shadow of the Banyan and Kosal Khiev's Why I Write." MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 40, no. 2 (2015): 96-116. https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlv011.
  7. Um, Khatharya. From the Land of Shadow: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Cambodian Diaspora. New York: New York University Press, 2015.

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