The Poetry of Spiritual Homelessness: A Creative Practice of Coping with Industrial Alienation

Abstract

Industrialization involves a range of spatial and institutional practices that “turn a young and rural body into an industrialized and productive laborer” (Pun 2005: 77), transforming “lazy” and “unproductive” laborers “bodies and minds, behaviours and beliefs, gestures and habits, and attitudes and aptitudes” (79). These practices include placing the body on individuated positions on the assembly line (Rofel 1999), and imposing the timetable. Note the following poem about how a dagong (working for the boss) migrant reacts to the factory bell: The bell rings/hitting hard on my nerve/struggling to wake up from a lunchtime nap/time again to start the afternoon shift/a life manipulated by the bell: getting out of bed, eating, starting work, finishing work/even in my dreams I hear its piecing sound. (Zhang 2007: 46) 1 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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