We often find comfort in the supposed objectivity of reportage in the news, believing this to be the true source of “neutral language,” however the speaker of Brand’s poem reveals that language is always tied to systems of power which define the subject. In an attempt to subvert the identity politics which categorize and constrain the subject, Brand reappropriates the monotonous patriarchal narrative of the “news”, making it speak as a vigil of validation for the “other”, once victim to the wash of history. The poet is not simply regurgitating a catalogue of events, she is shifting the marginalized victim of history’s negation to a position worthy of lamentation in language. Consistent with Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto,” wherein the cyborg “exists in a non-oedipal narrative with a different logic of repression” (Haraway 292), Inventory deconstructs the Imperial reproduction of history via the monologue of the 24 hour news cycle, valuing the multiplicity of the heteroglossia instead. Comparatively, Inventory could be read as the ultimate evolution of the anti-essential, post-modern subject Brand refutes any semblance of a singular, consistent identity, positioning her “lyrical I” as an omniscient witness to the collective, conflict-ridden macrocosm.

Dionne Brand’s 2006 long poem Inventory plays within the posthumanist space of the “global-village.” While previous works, such as No Language is Neutral and Land to Light On, typify Brand’s non-essential subject position, exploding totalizing identity politics based on gender, race, sexuality, and class, these collections still appear to speak from a unified persona, confessing the experience of the poet herself.

Theory by dionne brand