Slowing down the steps, resisting to positivity: wounds from psychopolitics in Inferno, by Pedro Eiras

Abstract

Starting from Byung-Chul Han’s reflection about psychopolitics as the new order of contemporary era, which governs the “burnout society”, we do a reading of some poems of Inferno (2022), by Pedro Eiras. In describing various scenarios of hyper-accelerated and hyperconnected urban life, the lyric subject starts to walk among his peers and, all together, they feel oppressed due to the excess of positivity imposed by big data. By transiting through different non-places, the poet presents a critical stance, with marked ethical concern, in relation to the subjective impacts of neoliberalism. Finally, we conclude that in the thirty-three hybrid cantos of Inferno the contra-diction present in the verses causes friction with the annulment of subjectivity by proposing, through the temporal experience generated by poetry, the gap, intimacy and deep boredom.