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The American ecopoet, Mary Oliver (1935 – 2019) has never been read in the light of the concepts the French philosopher, George Bataille (1897 – 1962) introduced into the world of philosophy and literature even though the enterprise could be abundantly rewarding. Bataille poses the question of general economy as opposed to particular economy. The latter is narrow, rational, self-centered and pivoting around gathering and storage, while the former takes the whole sphere of life into account and concentrates on excess of energy, expenditure, universal wisdom which is far broader and more inclusive, sacrifice and permanence of the sum total of energy available in the living sphere as well as that of the living matter. Oliver, the poet, uses none of the philosopher’s terms, but the scenes she describes in her own poetic style and the language and discourse she uses concerning death reveal the same position and point of view as those of Bataille. That is the gap the present qualitative, library-based study tries to cover at least partially and in particular with regard to the question of death which with the help of an Oliverian stance and in the light of such Bataillean concepts as general economy, excess and expenditure, can turn into a moment of rebirth, vital to the health and a proper functioning of the whole universal system. This two-fold approach will hopefully contribute to both Oliver studies and to the body of research, done on Bataille.

The present essay focuses on the witnessing process of the enlisting poets’ effective responsiveness to the devastations they encountered; the two poets to be studied have been directly or indirectly traumatized by wars. The analytical perspective draws on Dominick LaCapra’s theories on historical trauma. It intends to uncover the traumatic effects of circumstances in post-war poems. The methodological procedure is grounded in the qualitative appraisal of the emotive aspect of the poets’ expressionist representation through critical discourse analysis. Trauma theories influence the research approach in historical and structural science, emphasizing witnessing levels, coined by Dori Laub, as the most significant determinant of the gestalt of interpretations. The poems’ demolished vibe exploits an insight into the amalgamation of historical trauma and its steps towards salvation. The authorial intentionality in war poetry aspires to enlighten human sorrow and redemption by restoring the literary application of the historical, structural, and perpetrator trauma hypothesis. The melioristic agenda for edification via physical and critical phases, such as acting out and working through, coined by LaCapra, foci in the varied poems to be scrutinized, enables the poets’ to maintain their readers’ empathetic identification with their characters’ predicaments in a psychoanalytic context.

This article examines heterotopia as a multimodal frontier in Samuel Beckett’s play That Time (1976), defining the concept through a Foucauldian lens. The article investigates the text of the play as a critical site that accommodates internal and external modes of spatial criticism, introducing mnemonic and external heterotopic sites, respectively. The play transforms into a critical locus that enables the artist to reconfigure spatiality and temporal locationality of certain places in Ireland by revisiting them through three fragmented voices. The article argues that the play not only disrupts conventional modes of storytelling set against a backdrop of descriptively relatable places but also challenges the audiences’ relationship with how memorialized times and spaces can reshape the historicity of lived experiences. The reshaped place is neither pure fabrication nor a byproduct of real-time simulation, but a product of conscious re-imagination cast across space-time continuum. As such, time is stretched across spatial continuum as much as one's memory deems necessary. The synchronic entanglement of memory and temporality transforms That Time into a site of epistemic inquiry, and changes the conventions of temporal progression. The play, the article concludes, expands spatial and temporal horizons simultaneously by considering episodic memories as well as visceral experiences.