Difficulty. Forms and Political Effects of Deviation in Writing and Contemporary Art

Study Group

Henrik Olesen, Inferno (Infierno), 2016, Museo Reina Sofía

Henrik Olesen, Inferno (Infierno), 2016, Museo Reina Sofía

Difficulty. Forms and Political Effects of Deviation in Writing and Contemporary Art is a study group aligned towards thinking about how certain contemporary artistic and cultural practices resist the referentiality that dominates the logics of production and the consumption of present-day art. At the centre of this proposal are the concepts of difficulty and deviation, under which it brings together any procedure capable of preventing artistic forms from being absorbed by a meaning that appears previous to and independent from its expression. By ensuring the perceptibility of their languages, difficulty invites us to think of meaning as the effect of a signifying tension; that is, as a productive and creative activity which, from the materiality of art objects, frees aesthetic experience from the representational mandate and those who participate in it from the passiveness associated with tasks of mimesis and decoding.

The economy of the referential norm translates the social logic of capitalism, where insidious forms of capturing subjectivity and meaning operate. In the early 1980s, and adopting a Marxist framework, poet Ron Silliman highlighted how this logic entailed separating language from any mark, gesture, script, form or syntax that might link it to the conditions of its production, rendering it fetichised (as if without a subject) and alienating its users in a use for which they are not responsible. This double dispossession encodes the political strategy of referential objectivity: with no subject and no trace of its own consistency, language is merely an object, that reality in which it disappears.

The political uses of referentiality, more sophisticated today than ever before, sustain the neoliberal-extractivist phase of capitalism that crosses through present-day societies politically, economically and aesthetically. Against them, fugitive artistic practices emerge which, drawing from Black and Queer studies and other subaltern critical positions, reject the objective limits of what exists, invent forms to name what lies outside what has already been named, and return to subjects the capacity to participate in processes of emission and interpretation.

Read from the standpoint of artistic work, the objective capture of referentiality may be called transparency. Viewed from a social contract that reproduces inequality in fixed identity positions, transparent in this objectivity are, precisely, the discourses that maintain the status quo of domination. Opposite the inferno of these discourses, this group aims to collectively explore, through deviant or fugitive works, the paradise of language that Monique Wittig encountered in the estranged practices of literature. For the political potency of difficulty — that is, its contribution to the utopia of a free language among equals — depends on making visible, first, its own deviations; from there, the norm that those deviations transgress; and finally, the narrowness of a norm which in no way exhausts the possibilities ofsaying, signifying, referring and producing a world.

From this denouncement of referential alienation, fetishisation and capture, Difficulty. Forms and Political Effects of Deviation in Writing and Contemporary Art turns its attention to the strategies of resistance deployed by contemporary artists and poets. Its interest is directed towards proposals as evidently difficult or evasive as those of Gertrude Stein, Lyn Hejinian, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Kathy Acker, María Salgado and Ricardo Carreira, and as seemingly simple as those of Fernanda Laguna, Felix Gonzalez Torres and Cecilia Vicuña, among other examples that can be added according to the desires and dynamics of the group. 

The ten study group sessions, held between February and December, combine theoretical seminars, work with artworks from the Museo Reina Sofía’s Collections and exhibitions, reading workshops and public programs. All these formats serve as spaces of encounter to think commonly about certain problems of poetics — that is, certain political questions — of contemporary writing and art.

Difficulty. Forms and Political Effects of Deviation in Writing and Contemporary Art inaugurates the research line Goodbye, Representation, through which the Museo Reina Sofía’s Studies Directorship seeks to explore the emergence of contemporary artistic and cultural practices which move away from representation as a dominant aesthetic-political strategy and redirect their attention toward artistic languages that question the tendency to point, name and fix, advocating instead for fugitive aesthetics. Over its three-year duration, this research line materializes in study groups, seminars, screenings and other forms of public programming. 

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Group director

Erea Fernández

Research strand director 

Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga

Organised by

Museo Reina Sofía

Practical data
Aimed at people with an interest in research, theory, writing and contemporary art.

  • Participant selection: Special consideration is given to the suitability of candidates’ trajectory and interests in relation to the study group content and to a commitment to attending all in-person sessions. Session participation entails a three-hour commitment every month, in addition to time devoted to preparation. 
  • Accommodation grants: Five accommodation grants are offered to those selected who live outside of Madrid. The grant covers accommodation costs for the night corresponding to each session held. To apply for this grant, candidates must provide written confirmation via the registration form, commit to attending all sessions and submit a text or work already completed, in line with the subject matter of the group. The above will be taken into consideration when awarding grants.    

Sessions: 23 February, 23 March, 20 April, 18 may, 15 June, 6 July, 7 September, 5 and 26 October, and 14 December 2026; from 4pm to 7pm.

Agenda

lunes 23 feb 2026 a las 16:00

Session 1. Against Transparency. Deviation as a Radical Practice

Work readings:

  • Silliman, R. (1981). Disappearance of the Word / Appearance of the World. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, 3, pp. 2-12. 
  • Stein, G. (1998). Composition as Explanation. In C. R. Stimpson and H. Chessman (Eds.), Gertrude Stein: Writings 1903-1932 (pp. 520-529). Library of America. 
  • Selection of difficult poems:
    • Benson, S. (1991). Blue book. La página, encarte, pp. 104-107. (E. Pujals Gesalí, Trad). (Original work published in 1988).  
    • Bernstein, C. (1991). 3 or 4 Things I Know About Him (3 o 4 cosas que sé de él). La página, encarte, pp. 108-111. (E. Pujals Gesalí, Trad.). (Original work published in 1988).  
    • Silliman, R. (1978). Ketjak. La página, encarte, pp. 132-135. (E. Pujals Gesalí, Trad.). (Original work published in 1978).
    • Stein, G. (2025). A Box (Una caja). In Ídem lo mismo (A. Fisher and B. del Pliego, Trads.) (p. 71). Kriller. (Original work published in 1914).
    • Hejinian, L. (2012). constant change figures. In The Book of a Thousand Eyes (p.177). Omnidown Publishing. 
    • Söderberg, A. (2023). Sound a Rose In [Vídeo]. Vimeo. 
    • MM Cabeza de Vaca, F. and Salgado, M. (2019). Nana de esta pequeña era (This Littler Era Lullaby) [Vídeo]. HAMACA. moving image platform. 
    • Tacoderaya (2020). titula este triste ánimo yop uwu [Performance recording made at Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Condeduque’s PoemRoom on 19 November 2020]

Complementary materials: 

  • Hejinian, L. (2000). Reason. In The Language of Inquiry (pp. 337-354). University of California Press. (Original work published in 1998).
  • Andrews, B. (1990). Poetry as Explanation, Poetry as Praxis. In C. Bernstein (Ed.), The Politics of the Poetic Form (pp. 23-44). Roof Books. 
  • Pujals, E. (1992). Language: un proyecto radical para la escritura de fin de siglo. In La lengua radical. Antología de la poesía norteamericana contemporánea (pp. 9-32). Gramma. 
  • Pujals, E. and Seminario Euraca (2019). También para la poesía hacía falta un 15M. L/E/N/G/U/A/J/E/o, 2, pp. 17-23. 
  • Shklovski, V. (1978). El arte como artificio. In T. Todorov (Ed.), Teoría de la literatura de los formalistas rusos (pp. 55-70). Siglo XXI. (Original work published in 1917).

lunes 23 mar 2026 a las 16:00

Session 2. Against Discourse. The Political Effects of Difficulty

Work readings:

  • Wittig, M. (2006). El caballo de Troya. In El pensamiento heterosexual (J. Sáez and P. Vidarte, Trads.) (pp. 95-102). Egales. (Original work published in 1984).
  • Wittig, M. (2006). El punto de vista: ¿universal o particular?. In El pensamiento heterosexual (J. Sáez and P. Vidarte, Trads.) (pp. 85-93). Egales. (Original work published in 1980).
  • Raimondi, S. (2018). Para una poética. Notas. Nayagua, 27, pp. 157-162.   
  • Chacón, P. (2013, 11 agosto). Cierta literatura actual, ¿no está a la derecha de la sociedad? [Interview with Violeta Kesselman]. Télam. 
  • Kesselman, V. (2017). A. Rapallo, 2, pp. 8-12. 
  • Perec, G. (1992). Engagement ou crise du langage. In L.G. Une aventure des années soixante (pp. 67-86). Seuil. (Original work published in 1962). 

Complementary materials:

  • Wittig, M. (2006). El pensamiento heterosexual. In El pensamiento heterosexual (J. Sáez and P. Vidarte, Trads.) (pp. 45-57). Egales. (Original work published in 1978).
  • Wittig, M. (2006). A propósito del contrato social. In El pensamiento heterosexual (J. Sáez and P. Vidarte, Trads.) (pp. 45-57). Egales. (Original work published in 1980).
  • Abello, A., Navacerrada, A., Villanueva, C. and Fernández, E. (2025, 14 november). Monique Wittig [Dossier of texts]. Jornada Infierno de los discursos, paraíso del lenguaje. Encuentro alrededor del pensamiento y la escritura de Monique Wittig, La Villana de Vallekas, Madrid. 
  • Kesselman, V. (2013). Intercambio sobre una organización. Blatt and Ríos. 
  • Raimondi, S. (2010). Poesía civil. 17grises editora (Original work published in 2001).

lunes 20 abr 2026 a las 16:00

Session 3. Forms of Non-Patriarchal Writing. Drawing from Gertrude Stein and Lyn Hejinian

Work readings:

  • Hejinian, L. (2000). “The Rejection of Closure”, in The Language of Inquiry (pp. 40–58), University of California Press. (Original work published in 1983). 
  • Stein, G. (1998). “Portraits and Repetition”, in C. R. Stimpson and H. Chessman (Eds.), Writings 1932–1946 (pp. 287–312), the Library of America. (Original work published in 1934). 
  • Spahr, J. (1996). “Resignifying Autobiography: Lyn Hejinian's My Life”, American Literature, 68(1), pp. 139–159. 
  • Fernández, E. (2025). “Procedures for Anti-Patriarchal Writing”, in Lyn Hejinian’s My Life. Tropelías. Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada, 43, pp. 35–53. https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_tropelias/tropelias.20254311198 
  • Fernández, E. (2025). “Political Forms and Effects of Drift in the Writings of Violeta Kesselman, Lyn Hejinian and Gertrude Stein”, in M. Cerón, E. Fernández, A. Martínez, S. Pérez Corchete and S. Pérez Gibert (Eds.), Ideología, imagen y sociedad (pp. 71–89). Dykinson. 
  • Perloff, M. (1994). “The Return of the (Numerical) Repressed: From Free Verse to Procedural Play”, in Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media (pp. 134–170), University of Chicago Press.
  • Huntsperger, D. (2010). Procedural Form in Postmodern American Poetry: Berrigan, Antin, Silliman, and Hejinian, Palgrave Macmillan.

lunes 18 may 2026 a las 16:00

Session 4. Dictée & Dicteuse. Linguistic Norm, Learning, History and Memory in the Poetics of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha 

— With Ana Pol

Work readings:

  • Cha, T. H. K. (1982). Dictée. Tanam Press.

Complementary materials:

  • Trinh, T. M. (1989). “Grandma’s Story”, in Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (pp. 119–151), Indiana University Press. https://bccfeministphilosophy.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/62005613-minhha-grandma-s-story.pdf

lunes 15 jun 2026 a las 16:00

Session 5. Debased Languages and Bastardised Inheritances. Borders, Traffic and Contagion

— From M. NourbeSe Philip and Luz Pichel

Work readings:

  • Philip, M. N. (2015). “Discourse on the Logic of Language”, in She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks (pp. 30–33), Wesleyan University Press. (Original work published in 1989).
  • Pichel, L. (2017). Co co co u (Á. Segovia, trans./re-writing), La uña rota, (fragment: pp. 1–31).
  • Pichel, L. (2017). Ser aldeá (Village Being). L/E/N/G/U/A/J/E/o, (1), pp. 14–16. https://ia600606.us.archive.org/24/items/LENGUAJEo12017/LENGUAJEo1_2017.pdf
  • Pichel, L. (2025). Cativa en su lughar / Casa Pechada, La uña rota.
  • Pichel, L. (2026). Las lenguas hablan por el hecho de aparecer (unpublished manuscript).
  • Salgado, M. (2025). “Notas para un libro refeito ((findologos, sobreopunto))”, in L. Pichel, Cativa en su lughar / Casa Pechada (pp. 125–137), La uña rota. (Original work written between 2012 and 2025).

Complementary materials:

  • Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1990). “What Is Minor Literature?”, in Kafka. Por una literatura menor (J. Aguilar Mora, trans., pp. 28–44), Ediciones Era. (Original work published in 1975).
  • Becker-Ho, A. (2002). Du jargon: Héritier en bastardie, Gallimard.
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