ABSTRACT
One may be tempted to explore the protean energy of Gaia, which includes the vertiginous poiesis of humans, and to idealize the protean squeeze. As discussed in Chapter 2, Wendy Wheeler foregrounds how an environmental pressure can turn the “pregnant in potentia” of semiosis within an ecosystem into something kinetic that brings forth “new adaptive forms” (“Biosemiotic Turn” 272). Environmental pressures are necessary to unleash the energy of poiesis, and yet, an enthusiasm for protean energy can idealize the reality that, more often than not, the pressure exerted brings with it some level of trauma. This is true in the way trauma brings about new forms of storytelling and poetry making. Lisa Hinrichsen, working with Cathy Caruth’s ideas, puts it this way: “trauma fundamentally involves a crisis of representation” which figures into the “difficulty [and] rupture” we find in stories and poems that respond to and explore trauma. “Traumatic experience,” she continues, is “unable to be integrated into schemes of prior knowledge” (638)—and, I add, prior genres and prior forms. Something more is needed.
