Reconfiguring Relevance: Poetry and Praxis in Response to Polycrisis
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Reconfiguring Relevance: Poetry and Praxis in Response to Polycrisis
Abstract: This paper examines the ways in which poetry, supported by practices associated with platforms, cooperatives, and protest movements, has increasingly shaped a new regime of literary legitimacy: a regime of praxis. In the current context of the ongoing global polycrisis (marked by pandemic, war, ecological breakdown, austerity, and the resurgence of the far right), literary relevance is established according to different rules. Extending Galin Tihanov’s tripartite model of literary regimes (aesthetic, political, and entertainment), I argue that post-2020 literary validation increasingly operates under the conditions of platform capitalism, where visibility, circulation, and legitimacy are mediated by digital infrastructures. As traditional mechanisms of consecration, such as literary criticism, cultural institutions, and prestigious prizes lose authority or credibility, literature remains relevant only insofar as it is accompanied by annexed forms of praxis: collective organizing, protest participation, cooperative publishing, and strategic engagement on social media platforms. Infrastructural change thus occurs in tandem with a shift in consensus regarding the literary canon. Focusing on Eastern Europe and the Global South, with case studies from Romania, Argentina, and Mexico, the paper demonstrates that literature is no longer primarily relevant as discourse, but it must be accompanied by an ethics of engagement, praxis being the condition that sustains authors within contemporary circuits of recognition and relevance.
Keywords: polycrisis, platform capitalism, symbolic capital, regime of praxis, queer comunities.
Citation suggestion: Ilie, Sofia. “Reconfiguring Relevance: Poetry and Praxis in Response to Polycrisis”. Transilvania, no. 3 (2026): 48-57.
https://doi.org/10.51391/trva.2026.3.06.
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